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http://amp.thedailybeast.com/trump-...d-russian-propaganda-days-before-the-election

Some of the Trump campaign’s most prominent names and supporters, including Trump’s campaign manager, digital director and son, pushed tweets from troll accounts paid for by the Russian government in the heat of the 2016 election campaign.

The Twitter account @Ten_GOP, which called itself the “Unofficial Twitter account of Tennessee Republicans,” was operated from the Kremlin-backed “Russian troll farm,” or Internet Research Agency, a source familiar with the account confirmed with The Daily Beast.

The account’s origins in the Internet Research Agency were originally reported by the independent Russian news outlet RBC. @Ten_GOP was created on November 19, 2015, and accumulated over 100 thousand followers before Twitter shut it down. The Daily Beast independently confirmed the reasons for @Ten_GOP's account termination.

The discovery of the now-unavailable tweets presents the first evidence that several members of the Trump campaign pushed covert Russian propaganda on social media in the run-up to the 2016 election.

A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment, “for privacy and security reasons."

Two days before election day, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway tweeted a post by @Ten_GOP regarding Hillary Clinton’s email.

“Mother of jailed sailor: 'Hold Hillary to same standards as my son on Classified info' #hillarysemail #WeinerGate” the tweet reads.

Three weeks before the election, Brad Parscale, the Trump campaign’s digital director, retweeted a separate post from @Ten_GOP.

“Thousands of deplorables chanting to the media: "Tell The Truth!" RT if you are also done w/ biased Media!” the tweet read.

 

[kevin1025]

 

[Killa Sasa]

Twitter is definitely complicit and I hope Mueller brings down every single one of the shit stains involved regardless of their role.

 

[Gutek]

The president himself retweets white supremacists. Don’t know how this matters anymore. We’re through the looking glass.

 

[x24hrs2livex]

Of course Team Trump pushed Russian propaganda, they were in collusion with the Russians.

 

[Inuhanyou]

daily beast should not be considered a credible news source IMO.

Their news sources and headlines are almost as credible as Trump statements most times.

Just being against Trump doesn't mean an individual, organization or outlet is "good". And Daily beast has proved that too many times at this point.

 

[Beartruck]

The part that gets me in how dark and scrunched his face gets while denying it. She touched a nerve hard and he could barely contain it.

 

[Thunder Monkey]

The president himself retweets white supremacists. Don’t know how this matters anymore. We’re through the looking glass.

Getting pissed and noisy about the destruction and ignorance of presidential norms, societal norms, is the only avenue we have left.

 

[Gutek]

daily beast should not be considered a credible news source IMO.

Their news sources and headlines are almost as credible as Trump statements most times.

Everything in this article you can verify yourself. They just put two and two together after we learned that TenGop was a Russian account.

 

[Mael]

LePen and Phillipot did the same in France but since they lost, nobody gives a shit.
How things would be different if the US didn't have an electoral college...

 

[theechrisfox]

Those were some easy targets. Hook, line, and stinker. This country was steered right into diarrhea.

 

[Shadow Puppetry]

A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment, “for privacy and security reasons."

 

[DiipuSurotu]

LePen and Phillipot did the same in France but since they lost, nobody gives a shit.
How things would be different if the US didn't have an electoral college...

New French president’s team used honeypot accounts to delay/distract Russian hackers

 

[Adam Blue]

A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment, ”for privacy and security reasons."

I wouldn't be surprised if the FBI already had Twitter hold back on a few things. We found out that the FBI and FB had been working on a few things based on findings during the 2016 election.

EDIT: By few things, I mean explanations, account bans, etc. Anything that could further jeopardize the investigation - enough of that happens. Out of the FB thing, there were policies in place that helped stop the ad network from being taken advantage of for the German and French elections - all learned from the US election.

 

[theclosetfan]

daily beast should not be considered a credible news source IMO.

Their news sources and headlines are almost as credible as Trump statements most times.

Just being against Trump doesn't mean an individual, organization or outlet is "good". And Daily beast has proved that too many times at this point.

What did they misreport?

Daily Beast is owned by Newsweek and has the same Editor-in-Chief.

Edit: They are no longer owned by Newsweek.

 

[Fergie]

He’s retweeted straight up racist stats and other tweets from either Russian bots or deranged Trump stans during his campaign as well.

He’s been deep in this stuff for a while.

 

[Joe]

Fascinating to go back and see "@Ten_GOP" finding its way on GAF

 

[Joe]

Buzzfeed also reported it: https://www.buzzfeed.com/kevincolli...ke-account-run?utm_term=.lq2VEPelb#.rmqX5mrk3

They also add that the real Tennessee GOP notified Twitter of the fake account a year before Twitter finally shut it down:

On three separate occasions — Sept. 17, 2016, March 1, 2017, and Aug. 14, 2017 — the Tennessee GOP reported the fake account to Twitter for impersonating it, according to email correspondence that Dawkins shared with BuzzFeed News.

According to screen shots captured by the Internet Archive, the fake account did switch its Twitter profile in February from “I love God, I Love my Country” to one that admitted it wasn’t an official account: “Unofficial Twitter of Tennessee Republicans.

It wasn’t until sometime between Aug. 18 and Aug. 25, 2017

 

[Gluka]

This account was everywhere during the election and there was no way to tell it was actually ran by Russians. They understood American culture, the latest right-wing talking points, memes and had a decent following of real high profile right-wingers who would promote their posts regularly so their reach never seemed suspicious. It's kind of shocking honestly.

 

[Dr.Acula]

Did the Trump campaign retweet Russian accts because they were Russian, or just because they were awful? Because they retweet awful stuff, it doesn't mean they were aware they were of Russian origin. Not that I'm saying it's a good thing that the Trump campaign was retweeting sources of which they had no knowledge of the origin, but it's different than coordinating with Russians.

 

[Master Yoshi]

I can't handle gifs from the debates. I knew in my heart Hillary had it in the bag. It fucking hurts.

 

[Chmpocalypse]

I can't handle gifs from the debates. I knew in my heart Hillary had it in the bag. It fucking hurts.

Without Russia, she did. trump is illegitimate.

 

[kirblar]

daily beast should not be considered a credible news source IMO.

Their news sources and headlines are almost as credible as Trump statements most times.

Just being against Trump doesn't mean an individual, organization or outlet is "good". And Daily beast has proved that too many times at this point.

Dude, they're reporting on a respected Russian newspaper's reporting. Of which there is much more (and this may need a megathread for everything coming out of that report.)

Mother Jones Summary: http://www.motherjones.com/politics...igation-about-a-kremlin-linked-troll-factory/

Original Source (in Russian) http://www.rbc.ru/technology_and_media/17/10/2017/59e0c17d9a79470e05a9e6c1?from=center_1

A notorious Russian internet “troll factory” spent about $2.3 million during the 2016 election cycle to meddle in US politics, paying the salaries of 90 “US desk” employees who helped wage disinformation campaigns via social media that reached millions of Americans. The operation also contacted US activists directly and offered them thousands of dollars to organize protests on divisive issues, including race relations.

These revelations and many more came out in an investigation published on Tuesday by the Russian newspaper RBC about the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a tech firm based in St. Petersburg, Russia, that has developed a specialty in spreading pro-Kremlin messages in the West.

The IRA has been written about before by a number of news outlets, and by RBC itself. But this latest piece from RBC—a respected business newspaper in Russia known for angering the Kremlin with its reporting on Putin’s associates—is the first to home in on the IRA’s operations during the 2016 US election.

By the middle of 2015, as the US election was ramping up, the IRA’s staffing had increased to between 800 and 900 people. The organization had also shored up its arsenal of media tools to include “videos, infographics, memes, reporting, news, analytical materials,” and more.

In spring 2015, a number of IRA staffers held an experiment to see if they could successfully organize a live event in the US from behind their computer screens in St. Petersburg. They did this by targeting New Yorkers on Facebook and attempting to lure them to a specific event where they would receive a free hot dog. There were no actual hot dogs, but enough people showed up at the specified location to make the agency deem the experiment a success. “From this day, almost a year and a half before the election of the US President,” writes RBC, “the ‘trolls’ began full-fledged work in American society.”

Within the next year, the staff of the IRA’s “American Department” grew threefold, increasing to between 80 and 90 people—about one-tenth of the entire agency.

Three former employees of the IRA told RBC that the head of the American Department is a 27-year-old Azerbaijani man named Dzeihun Aslan, a point also corroborated by an internal Telegram chat obtained by RBC. (Aslan denied any such involvement in conversation with RBC.)

By RBC’s calculations, the American Department spent about $1 million annually on salaries. The lowest-level employees were paid about 55,000 rubles ($960) per month, but also received bonuses based on “the reactions of participants in communities” they were targeting.

RBC identified 118 Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts linked to the IRA’s meddling in US politics.

In September 2016, at the height of the US election season, the American Department posted more than 1,000 pieces of content per week, reaching between 20 and 30 million people that month.

A source close to the leaders of the IRA told RBC that most of the agency’s American content had less to do with supporting a specific candidate than with promoting volatile social issues that happened to dovetail with Trump’s rhetoric. “There was no directive to ‘support Trump,'” one source told RBC. “Direct connections were drawn between societal problems and the actions of the ruling party at that time [the Democrats]. Hillary [Clinton] is the party’s representative, which means she’s also to blame.”

RBC analyzed hundreds of IRA posts and found that Clinton was mentioned in the posts much more often than Trump.

The total budget for promoting political ads to American audiences came to about $5,000 a month, or about $120,000 from June 2015 to May 2017. About half of that was spent on content aimed at sowing racial divisions.

The IRA spent about $80,000 to support 100 US activists who organized 40 different protests across the United States.

That last part is a big one. The GOP has been astrotufing for ages, but direct foreign interference w/ live protests like that is a big step up from the cyber-stuff.

 

[Shadybiz]

Did the Trump campaign retweet Russian accts because they were Russian, or just because they were awful? Because they retweet awful stuff, it doesn't mean they were aware they were of Russian origin. Not that I'm saying it's a good thing that the Trump campaign was retweeting sources of which they had no knowledge of the origin, but it's different than coordinating with Russians.

Yeah, this doesn't really prove anything, other then the fact that they're awful and/or idiots.

 

[Version 3.0]

No collusion necessary this time; the GOP just agrees with Russian trolls as a matter of policy.

 

[devilhawk]

This account was everywhere during the election and there was no way to tell it was actually ran by Russians. They understood American culture, the latest right-wing talking points, memes and had a decent following of real high profile right-wingers who would promote their posts regularly so their reach never seemed suspicious. It's kind of shocking honestly.

I love the GAF post that refused to believe it wasn't the actual Tennessee GOP account.

 

[RDreamer]

Guys, it doesn't matter if this proves collusion or not.

What it does show, though, is that Russia's scheme to interfere worked so goddamned well that even campaign officials were interacting and retweeting their stuff. If they did it on purpose that's obviously bad, but if the campaign didn't that's still bad. Russia interfered in a massive way and the current President still doesn't fucking care and won't do anything to protect us from it. He won't even say one single bad thing about Russia. That's the bad part about all this, and it doesn't need collusion for proof.