Adam Schiff: Russia turned Americans against each other on Twitter, Facebook

[timosman]

They guy is on Committee on Intelligence :rolleyes: - https://intelligence.house.gov/about/hpsci-minority-members.htm


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TQU4rgGOn0

[goldenequity]

A highly touted story yesterday from the New York Times – claiming that Russians used Twitter
]more widely known than before to manipulate U.S. politics – demonstrates this recklessness.

The story is based on the claims of a new group formed just two months ago
by a union of neocons and Democratic national security officials,
led by long-time liars and propagandists such as
Bill Kristol, former acting CIA chief Mike Morell, and Bush Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff.
I reported on the founding of this group, calling itself the Alliance for Securing Democracy,
when it was unveiled
(this is not to be confused with the latest new Russia group unveiled last week
by Rob Reiner and David Frum and featuring a different former CIA chief (James Clapper) – calling itself InvestigateRussia.org –
featuring a video declaring that the U.S. is now “at war with Russia”).

The Kristol/Morell/Chertoff group on which the Times based its article has a very simple tactic:
they secretly decide which Twitter accounts are “Russia bots,”
meaning accounts that disseminate an “anti-American message” and are controlled by the Kremlin.
They refuse to tell anyone
which Twitter accounts they decided are Kremlin-loyal,
nor will they identify their methodology for creating their lists
or determining what constitutes “anti-Americanism.”

They do it all in secret, and you’re just supposed to trust them: Bill Kristol, Mike Chertoff and their national security state friends.

And the New York Times is apparently fine with this demand, as evidenced by its uncritical acceptance yesterday of the claims of this group –
a group formed by the nation’s least trustworthy sources.

But no matter. It’s a claim about nefarious Russian control.
So it’s instantly vested with credibility and authority,
published by leading news outlets,
and then blindly accepted as fact in most elite circles.

From now on, it will simply be Fact – based on the New York Times article –
that the Kremlin aggressively and effectively weaponized Twitter
to manipulate public opinion and sow divisions during the election,
even though the evidence for this new story is the secret, unverifiable assertions
of a group filled with the most craven neocons and national security state liars.

That’s how the Russia narrative is constantly “reported,”
and it’s the reason so many of the biggest stories have embarrassingly collapsed.
It’s because the Russia story of 2017 – not unlike the Iraq discourse of 2002 –
is now driven by religious-like faith rather than rational faculties.

No questioning of official claims is allowed.
The evidentiary threshold which an assertion must overcome before being accepted is so low as to be non-existent.

And the penalty for desiring to see evidence for official claims,
or questioning the validity and persuasiveness of the evidence that is proffered,
are accusations that impugn one’s patriotism and loyalty
(simply wanting to see evidence for official claims about Russia is proof, in many quarters,
that one is a Kremlin agent or at least adores Putin –
just as wanting to see evidence in 2002, or questioning the evidence presented for claims about Saddam,
was viewed as proof that one harbored sympathy for the Iraqi dictator).

Glenn Greenwald
Yet Another Major Russia Story Falls Apart. Is Skepticism Permissible Yet?
https://theintercept.com/2017/09/28/yet-another-major-russia-story-falls-apart-is-skepticism-permissible-yet/

[Raginfridus]

Is this guy really claiming Hillary was the All-American vote, and that voters needed anybody's help feuding over who was the lesser of two evils? That's great that you've caught on to those bots and trolls Congress; the internet's well acquainted with and know them apart from the averagely normal user.

Will this Neocon-ennobled committee disclose what bots were Democrat/Republican? Which bots were AIPAC, DoD, and NSA? Which ones came from England and Saudi Arabia? Will they remind the goodly people that they've been packing, cracking, and stacking the electoral districts since Governor Elbridge Gerry?

Meanwhile, real shit's not getting coverage:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-supreme-court-kennedy-20170926-story.html

[goldenequity]

Ron Paul on ‘Russian social media meddling’ (Streamed live)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uy-rXvbwZs





Assange reminds Russophobes that Podesta emails showed Facebook colluded with Clinton
https://www.rt.com/usa/404971-assange-facebook-podesta-collusion/

913571797978804224




Twitter testimony on ‘Russian meddling’ leaves Democrats ‘deeply disappointed’
https://www.rt.com/usa/404960-twitter-testify-senate-russia/



Part of the revelations to Congress was that RT, RT America and RT en Español spent $274,100 for 1,823 US ads for their respective Twitter accounts that "definitely or potentially targeted the US market."

RT Editor-in-Chief Margarita Simonyan said that she wasn't aware paying for advertising is now considered suspicious or harmful in a developed democracy such as the United States.

"This is forcing us to go a step further and come clean that we also spent money on advertising at airports, in taxis, on billboards, on the Internet, on TV and radio. Even CNN ran our commercials,"Simonyan said. "By the way, similar campaigns are conducted by the American media in the Russian segment of Twitter. It'll be very interesting to find out how much they spend on it, who they target and for what purpose."

Though Twitter promised to work with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) and Congress on making the social media platform more transparent, this was apparently not good enough for Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia), the senior Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Warner said he was disappointed in Twitter after the meeting, saying their presentation was "frankly inadequate on almost every level," according to CBS News.

"The notion that their work was basically derivative, based upon accounts that Facebook had identified, showed [an] enormous lack of understanding from the Twitter team of how serious this issue is, the threat it poses to democratic institutions, and again begs many more questions than they offered," Warner said, adding that the American public had the right to know if any ads that appear on Twitter's newsfeed were "generated by interests from Americans or generated by interests from, by activities of foreign powers."

Facebook Chief Security Officer Alex Stamos admitted that the "vast majority of ads run by these accounts" had nothing to do with the election, voting, or a particular candidate.

Google said it had failed to unearth any facts that would implicate Moscow in exploiting advertising to manipulate the election.

"We're always monitoring for abuse or violations of our policies and we've seen no evidence this type of ad campaign was run on our platforms," Google said last week, according to Reuters.

The House and Senate Intelligence Committees have invited Facebook, Google and Twitter executives to testify before Congress on Russia and the 2016 election. The open hearing before the Senate committee is scheduled for November 1.