From Forbes in a last ditch effort against a Trump win. Or, wild card accusations amount to nothing.
Added to the list of the
"Wishful Thinkers" and
paid haters of the
USA and Russian Alliance.
Russian troll farm makes US comeback
Max Seddon in Moscow and
Hannah Murphy in San Francisco an hour ago (6-7 minutes).
After the FBI tipped off Facebook that the obscure left-wing website Peace Data was a
clandestine front for Russia this week, the site’s anonymous administrators responded the only way a troll knows how: by brazenly posting through the scandal.
“We’re assured that Peace Data became a victim of a collaborated provocative effort from Facebook and FBI who want to shut up
independent leftwing voices prior to the presidential elections and to disguise it with the fight against made up Russian threat,” the trolls wrote in a lengthy post riddled with grammatical mistakes and clunky Russian syntax.
Researchers say Peace Data, a small group of about a dozen accounts that hired unwitting American freelancers, is the first known attempt this year by people linked to the Internet Research Agency, the infamous St Petersburg troll farm, to meddle in the 2020 US election.
The US says the IRA is funded by Evgeny Prigozhin, a caterer-turned-warlord
known as “Putin’s chef”, and indicted 13 of its employees for their attempts to interfere in the 2016 election.
In a roundtable discussion with all 13 defendants last month published on one of his many websites, Mr Prigozhin claimed that the IRA did not exist. “This is all falsifications by foreign secret services after Hillary Clinton’s shameful defeat,” he said. “Now there are new elections in the US . . . so they are hyping up the interference story again.”
Peace Data’s name was evidently created with a nod and a wink for its Russian bosses: in Russian, it sounds like
pizdato, the obscenity for “fucking amazing” in the
mat swearing language.
“Only Prigozhin would think that this influence campaign is f***** great; any reasonable observer would conclude that this is f***** insane,” tweeted Sergei Radchenko, a professor of international relations at Cardiff university.
One of many government-linked troll farms in Russia, the IRA began as an effort to stifle domestic dissent before targeting the US as part of what Washington says eventually became a multi-faceted campaign to boost then-candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 election.
The polarised environment in the US was fertile ground for the IRA, whose knowledge of US politics was initially so poor that its employees only learned what swing states were a few months before the election, according to the US indictment.
“Russia doesn’t really need to create a lot of content in this situation to drive the division that it seeks to drive. It really just needs to amplify the existing discord in the United States,” said Nina Jankowicz, a fellow at the Wilson Center, author of a recent book about Russian disinformation.
The seemingly broad online assault by disparate actors — which ranged from state-sponsored hacking to an IRA meme of Jesus arm-wrestling Satan — indicates a lack of central direction from the Kremlin, according to Sergey Sanovich, a scholar at the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University.
“There is certainly a supply side there in the sense that these people are competing for money, often good money from black budgets,” Mr Sanovich said. “Friends of the presidential administration compete to get the contract and show the goods — what was the reach,” based on incomplete engagement figures that Facebook does not make fully available to researchers.
Run by people previously associated with the IRA, Peace Data mirrored its efforts from the US 2016 presidential election, seeking to “steer potential Democratic voters away from the Democratic candidate”, according to Ben Nimmo, director of investigations at research group Graphika.
In particular,
the operatives posted in certain Facebook groups hosting users that might be swayed against Joe Biden, such as democratic socialist groups, in the same way the 2016 campaign aimed to suppress the vote for Hillary Clinton.
“The content is very
typical for Russian information operations abroad,” Mr Sanovich said. “US imperialism, discontent with capitalism, even things that follow Russian foreign policy doctrine,” such as articles accusing the Belarus opposition of being western puppets. “They used to run it in print, now they run it online.”
The unmasking of Peace Data has reopened longstanding divisions in the US over whether Kremlin interference helped Mr Trump become president.
“On the right, people deny any election interference happened in the first place,” said Thomas Rid, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and author of a recent history of disinformation. “On the left, people want to believe they basically installed Trump. Both are exaggerations and have become part of the polarised narrative in the US. People are just scared that something like 2016 could be repeated.”
But the paucity of data available from social media platforms makes it difficult to determine whether the IRA’s activity had a significant effect on voters.
Despite using sophisticated efforts to cover its tracks, such as using AI-generated photos for the site’s fake editors and tricking unsuspecting Americans into contributing articles, Peace Data only existed for a few months before it was discovered.
Its posts only achieved “single-digit engagement figures” bar a few that “gathered thousands each in what appears to have been an attempt at false amplification”, according to Graphika.
Mr Rid said the IRA’s “effectiveness was massively blown out of proportion in 2016 and 2017, so that created a market and expectations for them in 2020 — to deliver success again”.
Getting discovered does not necessarily mean the IRA has lost, however.
During the 2018 midterm elections, the group took advantage of being caught by Facebook to sow chaos during those polls, according to Nathaniel Gleicher, Facebook's head of cyber security policy.
“[We saw] attempts to co-opt the narrative of widespread Russian interference . . . to create division and now more importantly undermine faith in the system,” he said.
By Peace Data Team Since the publication of a high profile statement from Facebook and a tsunami of smearing publications
peacedata.net
By Peace Data Team September 2, 2020
Since the publication of a high profile
statement from
Facebook and a tsunami of smearing publications in worldwide mainstream media regarding our website we received countless angry replies, incendary comments, and threats. We perceive this is as a declaration of an all-out war against
PeaceData and we’re ready to put up a fight. The following is our reply to the forces behind this attack who claim to be the champions of free speech and truth but in reality are the fartest thing from that.
Facebook baselesly accused us of working with Russia. Moreover, we were called the Russian Trolls.
Nathaniel Gleicher, who heads Facebook’s cybersecurity policy, stated that the decision to remove our accounts was based on a tip from the
FBI. What’s happening here exactly? Facebook just follows an FBI lead and blocks all accounts of an independent media resource and tops it with declaring its creators Russian trolls. These actions taken by Facebook is the perfect tool to suppress any unpopular opinion, to badmouth a website that hosts content displeasing the Facebook board.
Let us remind you that the founder and the CEO of Facebook
Mark Zuckerberg (the same Mark Zuckerberg who has increased his net worth by
$30 billion during the pandemic, the time when so many Americans
lost their jobs and the ability to
pay rent) has a long history of
collaborating with ABC agencies and proudly
walks alongside such monstrous figures as Donald Trump who is one of the main adversaries to freedom and democracy. Mr. Zuckerberg doesn’t like the fact that we speak up against police brutality and endless wars, so he just denies us the ability to be heard. Isn’t it one of the most horrendous examples of censorship?
We’re assured that PeaceData became a victim of a collaborated provocative effort from Facebook and FBI who want to shut up
independent left-wing voices prior to the presidential elections and to disguise it with the fight against made up Russian threat. Editorial board believes that the blocking of PeaceData and the smearing campaign developed by Facebook and FBI will be followed by crusade against many other left-wing media resources from America and elsewhere. We have but one thing to tell Facebook and Mr. Zuckerberg personally —
the main threat to the democracy, the truth and the freedom of speech is you.
PeaceData never published any paid coverage or propaganda, unlike CNN, who followed Facebook’s and FBI’s lead and
accused us of collaborating with Russia. It is CNN who, until recently, diligently ignored cases of police brutality against Black citizens of the U.S., calls for Medicare for All and avoided the topic of horrifyingly violent conflict in Yemen which we covered
extensively.
We assume this whole operation could possibly be a sham performed by the FBI to demonstrate their ‘hard work’ and justify millions of taxpayers’ dollars spent on the expensive actions of ‘combating foreign influence’.
We’re genuinely happy that we became the target for
smearing of a media like Forbes which has been serving interests of top 1% and ignoring widening inequality gap and horrifying levels of poverty for as long as it existed. We, on the other hand,
covered this topic on numerous occasions. These attacks are the best indication that we’re doing something right.
Finally, we are glad to receive false accusations from renown brainwashing machines like
The New York Times and
The Washington Post, because it is they who are responsible for discrediting socialistic ideas worldwide while licking boots of corporate monsters like Jeff Bezos and justifying deeds of war criminals like George W. Bush.
One of the main complaints we face is the fact that we hide our real names, but the scale of a smearing campaign against PeaceData started as if by command is the best proof that remaining anonymous was our best decision. It is very regretful that those who wish to speak truth have to hide their identities in this day and age.
PeaceData is supported by our own finances and small contributions from a few compassionate readers. Articles published by PeaceData shed the light on dirty deeds of many powerful and rich personalities who are willing to go to great lengths to neutralize us. Therefore, anonymity is only necessary. We’re sorry if this necessity troubled some of our contributors and readers. We apologize for that. Not all heroes wear masks, but some are required to do so.
The PeaceData editorial board dreams of the day when all nations of the Earth are free from tyranny, corruption and the rule of the money. We will continue doing everything possible to make this happen.