Trolling, Free Speech and the Law

Recently, our lab published a paper “frame contests” within the #Black Lives Matter  and #Blue Lives Matter conversations on Twitter in 2016. Not surprisingly, those conversations often had a very divisive tone. [thread]

For that work, we created a shared audience graph that demonstrated the underlying structure of those frame contests—and clearly demonstrated two “sides” of the political conversation. Echo chambers.

When Twitter released the 1st batch of accounts related to the RU-IRA troll factories, we cross-referenced those with our #Black Lives Matter  & #Blue Lives Matter data and… some of the most active & most influential accounts ON BOTH SIDES were RU-IRA trolls.

In other words, there are paid trolls sitting side by side somewhere in St. Petersburg hate-quoting each other’s troll account, helping to shape divisive attitudes in the U.S. among actual Americans who think of the other side as a caricature of itself.

Twitter has an opportunity to help people understand what is happening to us - not just to the “other side” - but to our side/ourselves. To help us become aware of HOW we’re being manipulated. Just telling us we’ve interacted w/ one of these accounts misses the opportunity.

One thing's for certain, The UN and state governments might want to look into criminalizing the use of AI for impersonation.

Researchers from Cyprus University of Technology, University College London, and the University of Alabama, analysed 27,000 tweets posted by a thousand Twitter users identified as having ties with Russian propaganda factory the Internet Research Agency, and were therefore likely to be state-sponsored trolls.

The activities of these accounts were compared against a sample of ordinary Twitter users, who acted as a baseline.

Using a statistical model known as Hawkes processes, the researchers quantified the influence that these accounts actually had on the dissemination of news on Twitter, Reddit and 4chan.

Troll accounts manage to reach a substantial number of Twitter users with their messages, but rarely succeed in making the content they were promoting spread virally.

"We find that their effect on social platforms was minor, with the significant exception of news published by the Russian state-sponsored news outlet RT (Russia Today)," the researchers concluded.

Social media companies respond to U.S. Congress: Facebook, Twitter, and Google are again in the spotlight following submission of responses to questions from the Senate Intelligence and Judiciary Committees on Russia’s use of these platforms during the 2016 presidential election. Facebook’s responses show previously unreported Russian efforts: “Russian operatives used Facebook to publicize 129 phony event announcements during the 2016 presidential campaign,” with “about 62,500 users mark(ing) that they would attend the event, and an additional 25,800 express(ing) an interest in attending.” In one instance, Russian trolls created opposing events on the same day: One was promoted to "Stop Islamization of Texas,” while the other was created to "Save Islamic Knowledge." CNN this weekend posted video of these events, which took place at the same location, at the same time on May 21, 2016 — a clear illustration of Russia’s goal of sowing discord and pitting Americans against one another. Clint Watts, non-resident fellow at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, explains in Politico “Not only did they influence how people viewed Russian policy, they got people to take physical action. That’s unprecedented.” Twitter divulged that Russian-linked bots retweeted Trump “almost half a million times during the final months of the 2016 election.” According to CNN, “The accounts retweeted then-candidate Donald Trump 10 times more than they retweeted his rival Hillary Clinton.” Twitter’s response also showed that “50,000 accounts retweeted Wikileaks almost 200,000 times.” In response to a question about whether foreign actors sought to influence U.S. elections in 2017, Google and Twitter said that they “aren’t aware” of any suspicious state-sponsored activity, while Facebook declined to respond directly. Experts are questioning whether this response means the companies are actively monitoring their platforms or passively looking for meddling retroactively. Further complicating the discussion, The New York Times reported on a U.S. company named Devumi that “sells Twitter followers and retweets to celebrities, businesses, and anyone who wants to appear more popular or exert influence online” — exposing a phenomena that foreign intelligence services could also use to acquire fake accounts. (Senate Intelligence Committee, Senate Judiciary Committee, The Washington Post, CNN, Politico, Bloomberg, The New York Times)

Facebook’s news feed changes: BuzzFeed posted the news survey that Facebook will ask users to complete in order to gauge the trustworthiness of publications — it has two questions: 1) Do you recognize the following websites and 2) How much do you trust each of these domains. Adam Mosseri, Facebook’s head of news feed, explained the survey’s simplicity, stating "meaningful patterns can emerge from broad surveys." According to Casey Newton in the Verge, “no one knows how important the survey rankings will be to the distribution of news on Facebook.” As Casey Michel writes in Think Progress, “In theory, the move should help gut outlets known for outright fabrication;” however, a News Whip study found that since Facebook’s changes, one of the “top four stories with the most engagement” is actually from “Your News Wire, a notorious fake news factory.” The story, which claimed that the CDC blamed the influenza vaccine for the “deadly flu outbreak,” received “more overall engagements than any story from outlets like The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, ABC, CBS, CNN, NPR, or even Fox News.” Michel cautions that Facebook’s changes are no “remedy,” stating “the swirl fake news … is far from over.” (Buzz Feed, BBC, The Verge, Think Progress)

Democracy and technology — Facebook is thinking about the nexus: Facebook is engaged in some soul-searching as it unveiled a new series of blog posts addressing the nexus between social media and democracy. Samidh Chakrabarti, product manager for civic engagement, states that he is “not blind to the damage that the Internet can do to even a well-functioning democracy,” since social media “amplifies human intent — both good and bad.” Citing Russia’s use of Facebook to interfere in the 2016 election, he says the company is committed to “transparency” in order to tackle foreign interference and also to hold our elected officials accountable. Responding to the question “Is Social Media Good or Bad For Democracy?” are Cass Sunstein, professor at Harvard Law School; former Estonian president and Alliance for Securing Democracy Advisory Council member Toomas Hendrik Ilves; and Ariadne Vromen, professor of political sociology at the University of Sydney. Sunstein responds to the question by stating, “On balance, they are not merely good; they are terrific;” reminding us that “social media can prod citizens to seek solutions.” Ilves finds that “The power of social media today mirrors the power of companies during the Industrial Revolution — railroads, energy, and water companies that we know today as ‘utilities’ deemed so vital that they need to be regulated. This may be the direction liberal democratic governments take with social media companies — deeming them too big, too powerful, potentially too threatening for politicians to tolerate;” stating, while ”the effect on electoral democracy has been profound,” “where there is no electoral democracy, there is no debate.” And Vromen, while recognizing the challenges posed by disinformation, believes social media “has the capacity to expand and diversify political equality around the world [which] is a net good.” (Facebook)

Czech and Bosnian elections: Incumbent Czech president Miloš Zeman won a second five-year term this weekend while reports continued to grow of disinformation targeting his opponent Jiri Drahos. According to RFE/RL, Drahos was portrayed as “a pedophile, a thief, and a communist collaborator,” as well as a supporter of immigration, which played on the Czech public’s fears of “a possible influx of Muslim extremists.” The Atlantic Council finds that “at least 8 million Czech koruna has been provided by the secretive organization Friends of Miloš Zeman,” in a “scheme organized by Zeman’s chief advisor, who has direct Kremlin links.” According to the Atlantic Council, Zeman is the “Kremlin’s most important ally: He regularly repeats Kremlin narratives about the inefficiency and absurdity of anti-Russian sanctions, and surrounds himself with people who have strong personal and business ties with Russia.” Mark Galeotti, speaking of the domestic conditions that support the rise of populist, anti-liberal candidates, cautions “all those who decry the elections of the Zemans of this world should look to closing this political and cultural chasm. Moscow exploits this gap — but it is we who are failing to close it.” An initiative set up by European Values Think-Tank and the Prague Security Studies Institute to debunk the disinformation being promoted about Drahos garnered over 100,000 visitors to its Facebook page in its first twenty-four hours — perhaps a sign that citizens are beginning to question the source of information they receive. Russia is also turning its sights on Bosnia ahead of elections there in October — Jane’s 360 reports that there has been an “increase in activity on Twitter by accounts promoting a narrative that is distinctly pro-Russian and favorable to the two main parties that advocate separatism and increased decentralization in Bosnia,” pointing to Russia’s use of bots and trolls to influence the conversation on social media in favor of pro-Russian parties. (RFE/RL, Atlantic Council, Raamop Rusland, Jane’s 360)

Spain and the U.K. confront disinformation: A new report by Spain’s Defense Ministry’s Center for Strategic and Defense Studies warns that “Russian hacking operations to support Catalonian independence continue and could intensify.” Josep Basques, University of Barcelona political scientist who wrote the report, said “Russia is using Spain's conflict to weaken NATO,” and warned that “similar efforts could be repeated in other European countries with pro-independence movements.” In order to combat disinformation, Tech Crunch reported that the U.K. is establishing a “dedicated national security unit to combat state-led disinformation campaigns,” to address what Prime Minister May’s spokesperson described as an “interconnected complex challenge” of “fake news and competing narratives.” The unit, which will be called the National Security Communications Unit, will be based in the Cabinet Office. (VOA, Tech Crunch, Reuters)

A helping hand from Dutch intelligence and new cyber threats in the United States and the U.K.: A Dutch publication de Volkskrant reported that “Hackers from the Dutch intelligence service AIVD have provided the FBI with crucial information about Russian interference with the American election” that they gleaned from infiltrating Russian hacking group Cozy Bear, which carried out the attacks on the DNC in 2016. Discussing whether the Kremlin is behind the Russian hacking, Rob Bertholee, the head of the AIVD, said there is “no question.” A Reuters investigation found that technology widely used by the U.S. government, including SAP, Symantec, and Mc Afee, which protect sensitive national security agencies allowed “Russian authorities to hunt for vulnerabilities in software.” Reuters spoke with private sector cyber experts, former U.S. security officials, and some U.S. tech companies who believe “that allowing Russia to review the source code may expose unknown vulnerabilities that could be used to undermine U.S. network defenses.” The head of the U.K.’s National Cyber Security Centre, Ciaran Martin, warned of a major cyber-attack against the U.K., stating “I think it is a matter of when, not if and we will be fortunate to come to the end of the decade without having to trigger a category one attack.” According to The Guardian, a category one attack could include an attack against critical infrastructure, election interference, or a provocative move by a hostile state; “Intrusions have been blamed on Russia, China, and Iran,” with some “espionage-based, scouting out vulnerabilities in infrastructure for potential future disruption.” (de Volkskrant, Reuters, The Guardian)

The information ecosystem: DFR Lab presented a case study of the recent anti-Morgan Freeman campaign on social media after Freeman appeared in a video “warning that Russia launched an information war against the United States” in order to show how information is laundered throughout the media ecosystem, finding that “The Russian government’s propaganda and influence operations use a full spectrum model which spans social and traditional media. Some of the channels it uses are overt and official; others are covert and claim to be independent. They all work together to create the appearance of multiple voices and points of view, masking a coordinated approach.” (DFR Lab)

Department of Commerce and DHS issue joint report on defending against botnets: The report, which was released for public comment, is entitled “Draft Report on Enhancing Resilience Against Botnets,” issued in response to Executive Order 13800, Strengthening the Cybersecurity of Federal Networks and Critical Infrastructure. The report cites botnet threats as “used for a variety of malicious activities, including distributed denial of service (D Do S) attacks that overwhelm networked resources, ransomware attacks that hold systems and data hostage, and computational propaganda campaigns to manipulate and intimidate communities through social media.” While the use of social media is listed as a botnet threat, their one recommendation for defending against and deterring such activity in the future is to invest “in innovative technologies to address computational propaganda.” A new paper by New America, while recognizing the importance of investments in research, also recommends “changes to election law, data privacy protections, and competition policy,” due to the “nature of this crisis” which “requires an ambitious approach to reform from Silicon Valley C-Suites to Capitol Hill to the handsets of everyday Internet users.” (Information Technology Laboratory, New America)

Hamilton 68 dashboard: Hamilton 68 was thrust into the media spotlight this week after data from the dashboard was included in a Congressional letter sent to the social media giants over the pro-Russian influence network’s attempts to amplify the #releasethememo hashtag. As noted in the last dispatch, the network monitored on Hamilton 68 was extremely active in promoting the hashtag — a trend that continued throughout last week. It should be reiterated that the presence of a hashtag on the Hamilton 68 dashboard does not necessarily suggest that the success of a hashtag is the result of Russian influence operations, nor does it mean that hashtag originated with the Russian-linked influence operation network we monitor. Interestingly, Wikileaks’ offer to pay for a copy of the memo was also among the top UR Ls on the dashboard, continuing a trend of pro-Russian accounts promoting Wikileaks content and defending its creator, Julian Assange.

Artikel 38 dashboard: While a great deal of activity on the dashboard last week focused on the ongoing coalition talks in Germany, an old favorite Kremlin talking point was also resurrected, as conspiracy theories over the downing of MH 17 over Eastern Ukraine bubbled to the surface yet again. After a damning report from Bellingcat on Russia’s MH 17 deceptions, the Russian-influence network in Germany participated heavily in both the generic #mh17 hashtag as well as the more pointed #ukrainekillermh17. The Kremlin’s efforts to discredit the various multinational investigations into the tragedy continues to be a major theme in both the United States and Germany, and, as a result, a not-infrequent topic bandied about pro-Russian networks online. (Bellingcat)

In a week of bad news for those seeking to dismiss Russia’s attempts to influence the 2016 presidential election, several sites focused their efforts on discrediting the various think tank initiatives — including our own — that work to expose Russian propaganda and active measures. Starting with a tweet from Julian Assange that directly attacked Hamilton 68 as a propaganda tool of the deep state, the Russian network online amplified several stories that took shots at various foreign policy initiatives. A Zero Hedge article that was among the most popular UR Ls on Hamilton 68 last week attempted to sully the reputations of almost every Russian initiative, from Prop Or Not to the Atlantic Council’s DFR lab. This effort is consistent with the Russian media strategy of discrediting negative voices through personal smear campaigns, proving yet again, if you don’t like the message it’s always easier to go after the messenger. (Zero Hedge) (I'm not linking to that, if you want to see for yourself, they do in the article)

On Tuesday morning—the day after the House Intelligence Committee voted along partisan lines to send Rep. Devin Nunes’ memo, alleging abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, to President Donald Trump for declassification—presidential adviser Kellyanne Conway was confronted with the idea that Russian trolls were promoting the #releasethememo hashtag online. She was offended. Russian trolls, she told a television interviewer, “have nothing to do with releasing the memo—that was a vote of the intelligence committee.” But her assertion is incorrect. The vote marked the culmination of a targeted, 11-day information operation that was amplified by computational propaganda techniques and aimed to change both public perceptions and the behavior of American lawmakers.

And it worked. By the time the memo got to the president, its release was a forgone conclusion—even before he had read it. ^note  Fake News! We all know actually didn't read it at all. ...

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In the space of a few hours on January 18, #releasethememo exploded on Twitter, evolving over the next few days from being a marker for discussion on Nunes’ memo through multiple iterations of an expanding conspiracy theory about missing FBI text messages and imaginary secret societies plotting internal coups against the president. #releasethememo provided an organizational framework for this comprehensive conspiracy theory, which, in its underpinnings, is meant to minimize and muddle concerns about Russian interference in American politics.

The rapid appearance and amplification of this messaging campaign, flagged by the German Marshall Fund’s Hamilton 68 dashboard as being promoted by accounts previously linked to Russian disinformation efforts, sparked the leading Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees to write a letter to Twitter and Facebook asking for information on whether or not this campaign was driven by Russian accounts. Another report, sourced to analysis said to be from Twitter itself, identified the hashtag as an “organic” “American” campaign linked to “Republican” accounts. Promoters of #releasethememo rapidly began mocking the idea that they are Russian bots. (There are even entirely new accounts set up to tweet that they are not Russian bots promoting #releasethememo, even though their only content is about releasing the supposed memo.)

But this back and forth masks the real point. Whether it is Republican or Russian or “Macedonian teenagers”—it doesn't really matter. It is computational propaganda—meaning artificially amplified and targeted for a specific purpose—and it dominated political discussions in the United States for days. The #releasethememo campaign came out of nowhere. Its movement from social media to fringe/far-right media to mainstream media so swift that both the speed and the story itself became impossible to ignore. The frenzy of activity spurred lawmakers and the White House to release the Nunes memo, which critics say is a purposeful misrepresentation of classified intelligence meant to discredit the Russia probe and protect the president.

And this, ultimately, is what everyone has been missing in the past 14 months about the use of social media to spread disinformation. Information and psychological operations being conducted on social media—often mischaracterized by the dismissive label “fake news”—are not just about information, but about changing behavior. And they can be surprisingly effective.

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The hashtag#releasethememo wasn’t the only attempt to dominate online discussion. Before being targeted by amplification campaigns, there were other hashtags being put around by conservative social media mobilizers that either didn’t take off—#FIS Agate,#FIS Amemo, #releasethedocument, #releasethefile—and others that were previously used as catch-alls for conspiracies—#Deep State, Transparency, etc. For example, Zeldin tweeted at 4:27 p.m. on January 18 that he had just read the FISA memo and called for its public release.

He used the hashtag#transparency. In the 4 hours after that tweet, there were more than 500 tweets targeting him with the hashtag #releasethememo. At 8:28 p.m., Zeldin tweeted #releasethememo from his verified congressional account.

Verified alt- or far-right personalities—@gatewaypundit, @jacobawohl, @scottpresler, among others—began using the hashtag, in particular tagging Gaetz. At 9:53 p.m., Wiki Leaks tweeted #releasethememo. Before midnight, King, Meadows and Gaetz had all tweeted #releasethememo; so had Laura Ingraham, a massively influential conservative media personality with 2 million followers. Each time an influential verified account used the hashtag, it was rapidly promoted by a vast network of accounts. From its appearance until midnight, #releasethememo was used more than 670,000 times.

By midnight, the hashtag was being used 250,000 times per hour. At 2:53 a.m. on January 19, the pro-Trump conservative personality Bill Mitchell was posting an article from Breitbart about how #releasethememo was trending online. The hashtag had become the organizing framework for multiple stories and lanes of activity, focusing them into one column, which got a big boost from right-stream media and twitter personalities.

Some, like Breitbart, would argue this volume is representative of the outpouring of grass-roots support for the topic. But compare this time period to other recent significant events. During a similar duration of time covering the Women’s March on January 20—when more than a million marchers were estimated to be involved in demonstrations across the country—there was a total volume of about 606,000 tweets using the #womensmarch2018 hashtag during its peak (being used at a pace of 87,000 times per hour). During the NFL playoff game the next day (#jaxvsNE), there was a volume of 253,000 tweets, with a top speed of about 75,000 tweets/hour.

The pace and scale of the appearance and amplification of #releasethememo is barely even comparable. This is because the hashtag benefited from computational promotion already built into the system. It was used to target lawmakers who would play a role in releasing the memo—lawmakers who argued that there was public pressure to release the memo. Up until the time of the vote, Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee were collectively targeted with #releasethememo messages over 217,000 times. Raúl Labrador, Zeldin, King, Meadows, Jordan and Gaetz—all of whom promoted #releasethememo to the public and their colleagues—were targeted more than 550,000 times in 11 days. By the time Speaker of the House Paul Ryan spoke in favor of releasing the memo, he had been targeted with more than 225,000 messages about it.

Trump, whom the Washington Post reported was swayed by the opinions of some of the congressmen listed above, was targeted more than a million times. Fox News personality Sean Hannity, said to speak daily with Trump, was targeted 245,000 times and became a significant promoter of the hashtag. Hannity, of course, knows exactly what he is doing, and was recently showered with praise for his propaganda skills by colleague Geraldo Rivera, who argued “Nixon never would have been forced to resign if [Hannity] existed” back in the ’70s.

What does it all mean?

A year after it should have become an indisputable fact that Russia launched a sophisticated, lucky, daring, aggressive campaign against the American public, we’re as exposed and vulnerable as we ever were—if not more so, because now so many tools we might have sharpened to aid us in this fight seem blunted and discarded by the very people who should be honing their edge. There is no leadership. No one is building awareness of how these automated influence campaigns are being used against us. Maybe everyone still thinks if they are the one to control it, then they win, and they’ll do it better, more ethically. For example, by using it to achieve a political goal like releasing the Nunes memo.

Social media platforms have worked diligently to make us believe they had no idea this was happening, or that they are working to expose and correct the problem. But the algorithms work exactly as they are supposed to—in one aspect, by reinforcing your own beliefs without challenging them, and in another, by creating perceptions of popularity that are intentionally false and coercive. If the Twitter analysis referred to by the Daily Beast has been accurately conveyed by the source, there should be many questions. How are they determining influence? Did Twitter know the origins of the #releasethememo campaign when it suspended some (apparently many) of the accounts involved? In which case, did they do so to hide some of the aspects of computational propaganda at play, choosing to say it was an issue of free speech—an “organic” “Republican” campaign flourishing on a healthy platform—rather than one of national security—the infestation of their platform with the deep machinery of manipulation, a portion of which is foreign?

A recent analysis from DFR Lab mapped out how modern Russian propaganda is highly effective because so many diverse messaging elements are so highly integrated. Far-right elements in the United States have learned to emulate this strategy, and have used it effectively with their own computational propaganda tactics—as demonstrated by the “Twitter rooms” and documented alt-right bot-nets pushing a pro-Trump narrative.

OSWIECIM, Poland — When the Nazis looked to build Auschwitz, they chose this out-of the-way village that had been home to a Polish Army barracks.

There was no collaborationist government in Poland. The Nazis wanted to destroy their state and enslave the Poles. By the end of World War II, six million Poles had been murdered, including three million Jews.

That shared pain has at times been a source of understanding. But it became a source of anger on Tuesday, when Poland’s president signed legislation making it a crime to suggest Poland bore any responsibility for atrocities committed by Nazi Germany.

The law has two parts. One outlaws the phrase “Polish death camps.” More troubling, historians say, is the second part, which makes it a crime — punishable by a fine or up to three years in prison — to accuse “the Polish nation” of complicity in the Holocaust and other Nazi atrocities. They say the nationalist government is trying to whitewash the role of Poles in one of history’s bloodiest chapters.

On Tuesday, Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson criticized the law, saying that it “adversely affects freedom of speech and academic inquiry.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel likened the law to Holocaust denial.

Poland’s government on Monday canceled a planned visit by Israel’s education minister, Naftali Bennett, after he criticized the law. “The blood of Polish Jews cries from the ground, and no law will silence it,” Bennett said.

The law is the latest controversial act by a government that has curbed media and judicial independence, while pushing a populist narrative that casts Poland in a bitter battle with the European Union to regain its sovereignty.

Germany is the dominant power in the bloc, and analysts say it is no coincidence that Poland’s nationalist government talks regularly about the crimes of World War II. For instance, it brings up the idea of Germany paying war reparations, an issue that many authorities consider settled as a matter of international law.