Senate Reports On ‘Russian Influence Campaign’ Fail To Discuss Its Only Known Motive
DISPATCHES FROM MOON OF ALABAMA, BY “B”
U.S. media is again making a big fuzz about the alleged 'Russian' attempts to 'influence' the presidential elections in 2016.
In March the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee commissioned two reports about the alleged 'Russian influence' via social media. Those reports (1, 2) were released yesterday but not endorsed by the committee.
Both reports rely on data that Facebook, Google and Twitter gave to the intelligence committee. The data contained tweets, Facebook posts, videos and how many likes, shares or retweets they received. These are from accounts which for some reason are believed to be related to the Internet Research Agency (IRA) in St. Petersburg. Most of these activities occurred after the 2016 election.
Both reports look at the usage data and the content themes the IRA run pages provided. Both claim that the intent of the IRA was to influence the election and to sow discord within the U.S. population. But there is no, none, nada, zero evidence in the data that the IRA had such an intent. Nor is their any testimony or statement on it.
In contrast the Muller investigation, which looked into the case, found evidence that the IRA had a commercial intent. Unfortunately this is mentioned neither in the two reports, nor in the current news about them. The only really known motive the IRA had when it created those accounts and filled them with content is simply ignored.
We showed in The "Russian Ads" On Facebook Are Just Another Click-Bait Scheme that the IRA people simply created pages on Facebook and elsewhere to attract as many 'eyeballs' as possible. This so called 'click bait' was used to lead people to webpages on which the IRA sold advertisement space.
This was confirmed when the Muller investigation indicted the IRA as described in Mueller Indictment - The "Russian Influence" Is A Commercial Marketing Scheme. Point 95 of the indictment says in relation to wire fraud accusations:
Defendants and their co-conspirators also used the accounts to receive money from real U.S. persons in exchange for posting promotions and advertisements on the ORGANIZATION-controlled social media pages. Defendants and their co-conspirators typically charged certain U.S. merchants and U.S. social media sites between 25 and 50 U.S. dollars per post for promotional content on their popular false U.S. persona accounts, including Being Patriotic, Defend the 2nd, and Blacktivist.
The IRA wanted to make money.
It therefore naturally concentrated on content themes that took the least effort to create while attracting a maximum numbers of 'eyeballs' which could then be sold to advertisers. That is why some of its pages were about cute puppies. Cute puppies always sell. Using the news value of the election the IRA created pages that were pro-Trump and pages that were anti-Trump. Themes that did not attract enough eye-balls were discarded, those which did well were further promoted. This maximized the numbers of potential eyeballs and thus its advertisement income.
The reports say that a relatively high share of the IRA pages were about issues that interested African Americans.
The New York Times thus headlines: Russian 2016 Influence Operation Targeted African-Americans on Social Media:
[One] report gives particular attention to the Russians’ focus on African-Americans, which is evident to anyone who examines collections of their memes and messages.“The most prolific I.R.A. efforts on Facebook and Instagram specifically targeted black American communities and appear to have been focused on developing black audiences and recruiting black Americans as assets,” the report says.
...
The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us. On YouTube, the largest share of Russian material covered the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality, with channels called “Don’t Shoot” and “BlackToLive.”
...
The report does not seek to explain the heavy focus on African-Americans.But the Internet Research Agency’s tactics echo Soviet propaganda efforts from decades ago that often highlighted racism and racial conflict in the United States, as well as recent Russian influence operations in other countries that sought to stir ethnic strife.
"The commies are coming to steal our slaves!" The New York Times could just have reprinted this page 3 story from 1930:
biggerThere is of course no evidence that the IRA had any special intention in catering to a black audience except for making money. The Muller indictment even highlights the IRA created site 'Blacktivist' as one of its advertisement assets. Attracting people from marginal groups, who are not well served by mainstream media, is obviously easier than to market to a mainstream audience which already gets flooded with news relevant to it. Moreover, creating Youtube channel with publicly available videos of police attacks on black citizens takes little effort while potentially attracting a significant audience.
Both reports published yesterday fail to investigate the content and available date with regard to its commercial value. Both fail to look into it under the aspect of the only documented motive the Internet Research Agency had.
These reports are thus just extensions of the sorry excuse the Hillary Clinton campaign made up after she lost the election: "Blame the Russians!"
Posted by b on December 18, 2018 at 01:05 PM | Permalink
The farce is complete: NY Times blames Russia for "Voter Suppression" that derailed Hillary's sure win of the Presidency. Caitlin Johnstone writes about it here: Mass Media’s Russia Hysteria Is Openly Acknowledging The Power Of Propaganda.
But her analysis falls short. IMO this outlandish claim is not just about scare-mongering but something more sinister: providing an excuse for Hillary's (likely) throwing of the election to Trump. Once THAT is acknowledged, the election hairball and "Russia meddling" hysteria quickly unravels to reveal CIA-MI6 scheming behind the SELECTION of Trump.
Frankly, the only thing that will break thru the stupor created by the MSM echo-chamber of Russia fear-mongering is the widespread realization that the 2016 "election" was fixed: Sanders 'sheepdogged' for "'crooked' Hillary" who threw the election to Trump.
Welcome to the rabbithole.
Note: I made this comment on the Open Thread just before b's post. Seems more relevant here.
Also note: Logical reasoning for 2016 election having been a setup can be found in this comment (also on the Open Thread).
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Dec 18, 2018 1:28:56 PM | 2
SNL recognizes that Hillary blew it. The December 15th "Cold Open" contains the line:
... all she had to do to win was visit Wisconsin ONCE.
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Dec 18, 2018 1:33:43 PM | 3
Russiagate has no clothes, which makes it even more important to pretend that it has lots of clothes.
Posted by: worldblee | Dec 18, 2018 1:44:20 PM | 4
The difference between the 60s and now is that the Russian Federation is a capitalist country: just because a company is hqd in Russia, it doesn't mean it is directly connected to the Kremlin.
Yes, the USSR waged propaganda warfare against the USA in the 50s and 60s by using its real existing racial segregation. But that was the apex of the Cold War: propaganda warfare was declared for everyone to see, and both sides did it with mucho gusto.
Nowadays, only one side is using propaganda warfare, and, which is worse: propaganda over non existent things. A well done propaganda war is waged over true facts or societal aspects of the enemy, so that said fact is exacerbated. A bad propaganda warfare is waged when you have to invent the fact out of the blue.
Anyone but themselves will do as a scapegoat to distract from the pig's ear corruption mess that is American democracy.
Posted by: Jake | Dec 18, 2018 2:02:45 PM | 6
How this disinformation campaign against russia could live show how absurd west have become.
Not to mention how they will jail Flynn for talking TALKING to other nations ambassadors!"Are you really gonna pretend that people saw this Russian (alleged IRA) ad and where all like "i Have to vote for Trump now"
https://twitter.com/Fart_cry/status/1074775743194910721
Posted by: Zanon | Dec 18, 2018 2:03:45 PM | 7
"we need to target the yankskis where it counts. we need to strike their center of influence - really go after the people with the most power over the voting process. let's target...black folks!" president malcolm x is surely spinning in his grave!
maybe next time they can spend a few million on felons and undocumented mexicans.
Posted by: the pair | Dec 18, 2018 2:06:33 PM | 8
... they're passive and stupid, that they're only there to be manipulated by someone and that the someone rightfully should be the Democrat Party
You could say the same about other groups too: women, LGBT, elderly, immigrants, etc.Collective action is suppose to enable these groups to combat the tyranny of the majority - but that purpose is defeated to the extent that the leaders/major donors of the Democratic Party identify with, and act for, the majority or the establishment.
Posted by: Jackrabbit | Dec 18, 2018 2:19:58 PM | 9
The reports cited by the New York Times include one by a group called New Knowledge. The author, Renee DiResta, recently wrote a post called "The Digital Maginot Line" accuses "ideological extremists" of using the internet to attack corporations and industries, and influence people against liberal ideology and democratic norms, undermining market capitalism (www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/the-digital-maginot-line/). It is hosted on RibbonFarm, which recently featured an article by Google's Jigsaw engineer cited by the Washington Post as the agenda of the Trilateral Commission (www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/my-four-word-wish-for-thanksgiving/2018/11/20/). The goal is to "increase friction" and stop ordinary people from sharing ideological content. Note also that the DiResta report highlights MintPressNews and the Centre for Research on Globalisation as part of the disinformation network (www.dropbox.com/s/f3jav3mfd87g4pq/Whitepaper%20final.pdf?dl=0) This is all about the elite nullifying the events of the past 2 years and promoting corporate neoliberal totalitarianism....
Posted by: Culture Jammer | Dec 18, 2018 2:55:11 PM | 10
And the Jury composed of the US Public still awaits the provision of evidence to prove any of the Russiagate allegations and is about ready to declare a mistrial as the bullshit isn't sticking except to the hands of those massaging it.
Jackrabbit @2--
Hoped to read your comment at Caitlin's arguing she's missing the entire point of it all.
Posted by: karlof1 | Dec 18, 2018 3:03:10 PM | 11
There is no tyranny of the majority, because there is no majority, only state and a popularity show every four years or so. It is not hard to believe that the Dems gave away the election, same goes for the unneeded UK election purposefully bringing in DUP as a twister. What is blatantly obvious, even to those who create a suppressive counter narrative to diminish the effect of outside witness, is that without discontent in society no propaganda from anywhere is going to stir up more than ridicule. So we have it that sectors of society are caught at a certain level in a (not so) great war of part synthetic influences, and the average person does not get beyond giving up and going home to watch the drama game of tennis it turns into. You know why this barrier of forbidden is created, it is so average people don't get a straight view of the average leaders we have, and from there witness the true manipulation we are subject to. Just like some are more equal than others, some countries are more unjust than others, but most people would rather accept the distraction than expect an honest answer of how their own country is run.
Posted by: Noname | Dec 18, 2018 3:04:25 PM | 12
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In addition to the historical echoes B mentions, it's also exactly analogous to Southern white racists who were outraged over "outsiders" coming in to rile up "their" Negroes who were otherwise perfectly content. That's the Democrat Party and the pro-Democrat faction of the corporate media for you.
Meanwhile all sentient human beings are still waiting for the explanation for why Hillary refused to campaign in those three critical states, and for why she ran such a grotesquely incompetent campaign in general. Obviously we're never going to get that explanation from the Dembots or the media, who themselves are as clueless and demented as she is. That's why they supported her in the first place. They could identify with that kind of smug stupid elitism.
Posted by: Russ | Dec 18, 2018 1:22:31 PM | 1