Operatives of the Kremlin-linked troll farm called the Internet Research Agency reportedly created Twitter accounts pretending to be local newspapers — and shared real local stories rather than fake news.
According to NPR, at least 48 separate Twitter accounts were created well before the 2016 presidential election and were designed to look like legitimate city newspapers.
In some cases, they used names of newspapers from the past, such as the Chicago Daily News, which folded in 1978.
The accounts, some of which gathered nearly 20,000 followers, didn’t purposely spread false news and instead shared credible local news stories without any particular slant.
NPR notes that the plan for such accounts was to create trust among media consumers before starting to infuse misinformation into its shared posts.
“They set them up for a reason. And if at any given moment, they wanted to operationalize this network of what seemed to be local American news handles, they can significantly influence the narrative on a breaking news story,” Bret Schafer, a social media analyst for the Alliance for Securing Democracy, told the outlet.
“But now instead of just showing up online and flooding it with news sites, they have these accounts with two years of credible history,” he added.
More
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
2 comments:
Those few dumb enough to believe that those papers existed were suckers.
It is not illegal to lie in this country. The "legitimate" news organizations in this country do it every day. Compare it to what the US has historically done to other countries elections. I see nothing criminally wrong with what the Russians did.
Post a Comment