Disinformation or more accurately, lying, is Russian doctrine. Everything that they say seems to be a lie and designed to delay appropriate action.
Uncovering these rings, publicizing them, and shutting them down needs to be a top priority. I think a lot, if not most, of the bad decisions made by voters stem from these kind of bad actors. We've let it go on for long enough.
Not only voters, also politicians. Everyone can be influenced, even those in power :)
You'd have thought publicising them would involve not only saying they exist, but also educating people about what the misinformation is. As far as I can tell from a quick scan, the article doesn't talk about the message the proganda is pushing. I'm just as clueless as before about what I should believe and what I shouldn't.
Are the public just meant to know when they're being lied to?
Wait?!! RUSSIA?!?!?
Misinformation campaign?!?!
Surely some mistake?!?!
That would be SO unlike them!!!
DISinformation. The difference is that misinformation might or might not be intentional, whereas disinformation is organised intentional misinformation with specific goals in mind.
Not that I blame you for getting it wrong, mind you, since most media outlets consistently do.
I'm expecting a really nasty autumn this year. A big chunk of Russia's campaign against Europe is held up by Ukraine and they badly need a stooge US president again.
Musk also opened Twitter's doors wide for state-sponsored manipulation and agitation campaigns. All protections are offline and the teams are gone, under the guise of free speech.
To add: Twitter under Musk also complies with all government censorship requests since Musk took over. News on Twitter has been hugely influential in the past in protests in authoritarian states, but that's clearly a thing of the past now.
Full compliance with government censorship was 83% in may last year, up from the 50% it was before Musk.
And partial + full compliance was at 98.8%, up from 92% before Musk. And the remaining 1.2% were not denied, just status unknown, so it's basically 100%.
I wonder what the current numbers are and how the full/partial takedowns are geographically distributed. It wouldn't surprise me one bit if partial compliance was limited to some western countries and it's full compliance everywhere else.
Elon Musk, the self declared "free speech absolutist", what a shithead.
Anyone else getting tired of Russia's bullshit?
If you're in a country that shares a border with Russia, or are Canadian or British and understand the end goal of this, you've been sick of it for a while.
Europe certainly is. I should note that while most of their campaigns happen over on Twitter & Facebook that if federated social media ever took off in a big way it would happen there too and it might actually be harder to control if it did.
Well yes and obviously. Russia is a bad actor and obviously wants to sow division & doubt over the war in Ukraine, to sow division in general, and to slander political enemies. They have a special interest in interfering with US and European politics.
They're not the only bad actor of course. If you see memes & misinfo trend about immigration, Ukraine, drugs, vaccines, climate change, abortion, gas & oil, politics, NATO, EVs, MAGA, Palestine / Israel, dissidents etc. then invariably there is a bad actor driving that crap. They'll use their clusters of bots on Twitter to amplify the info until it gets picked up by useful idiots looking to retweet around.
If you see memes & misinfo trend about immigration, Ukraine, drugs, vaccines, climate change, abortion, gas & oil, politics, NATO, EVs, MAGA, Palestine / Israel, dissidents etc. then invariably there is a bad actor driving that crap.
The thing is, there's a lot of stuff in those topics you list that we need to have social discourse about and there are legitimate differences of opinion on. I don't think you can write everyone that is against what somebody/government deems as "approved fact" as a bad actor. I'm sure I would disagree with you on a number of those topics and would argue them in good faith. This is what makes it all so hard.
Yes you can have a social discourse. What I mean is somebody took time to turn some disinfo in meme form and amplify it. This is inauthentic actors poisoning discussions with lies and division.
Rightwing idiots are already drooling to swallow up everything they say.
Russian propaganda is big on the left, too.
Honestly Portal Kombat is a great name.
It's a great pun, but I hate how good an English pun it is, especially for the operation. It suggests that these guys aren't hacks, and have enough language and culture skills to blend in. The recent "warm water ports" gaffe comes to mind.
Also, intelligence agencies don't use cute code names for things like this since it makes it easier to work out the operation scope or intent. To me, this also says that the operation is "at arm's length" and the name was coined by non-government folks. Think: information age mercenaries.
Reason number %large_number% + 1 why support for Ukraine cannot falter. Russia cannot win its offensive there and continue to spread its poison across the world.
Without paywall. (Initially posted the same link, but then I noticed their comment. Leaving mine up since theirs doesn't explicitly say what the link is)
No shit .
Why even fund uncovering these. Just build your systems with this as a consideration. If it's not Russia it will be someone else.
To prove that they're real. Without proof it can be seen as a conspiracy
'Just'
Just make sure all information is correct. How hard can it be?
How do you defend against something without first uncovering it and seeing how it works?
finally?!
These dudes look like we've just walked in on them kissing
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
