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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
It's from 2015, but this NY Times Exposé of the Internet Research Agency
is worth a read.
This puzzled my dining companion, a former agency employee named Ludmila Savchuk. She shook her head as she lifted the heavy floral curtain to take another look. It was a traditional Russian restaurant, with a dining room done up like a parlor from the early 1900s, complete with bentwood chairs and a vintage globe that showed Alaska as part of Russia. Savchuk’s 5-year-old son sat next to her, slurping down a bowl of ukha, a traditional fish soup. For two and a half months, Savchuk told me, she had worked 12-hour shifts in the building, always beginning at 9 a.m. and finishing at 9 p.m., at which point she and her co-workers would eagerly stream out the door at once. “At 9 p.m. sharp, there should be a crowd of people walking outside the building,” she said. “Nine p.m. sharp.” One Russian newspaper put the number of employees at 400, with a budget of at least 20 million rubles (roughly $400,000) a month. During her time in the organization, there were many departments, creating content for every popular social network: Live Journal, which remains popular in Russia; V Kontakte, Russia’s homegrown version of Facebook; Facebook; Twitter; Instagram; and the comment sections of Russian news outlets. One employee estimated the operation filled 40 rooms.
Every day at the Internet Research Agency was essentially the same, Savchuk told me. The first thing employees did upon arriving at their desks was to switch on an Internet proxy service, which hid their I.P. addresses from the places they posted; those digital addresses can sometimes be used to reveal the real identity of the poster. Savchuk would be given a list of the opinions she was responsible for promulgating that day. Workers received a constant stream of “technical tasks” — point-by-point exegeses of the themes they were to address, all pegged to the latest news. Ukraine was always a major topic, because of the civil war there between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian Army; Savchuk and her co-workers would post comments that disparaged the Ukrainian president, Petro Poroshenko, and highlighted Ukrainian Army atrocities. Russian domestic affairs were also a major topic. Last year, after a financial crisis hit Russia and the ruble collapsed, the professional trolls left optimistic posts about the pace of recovery. Savchuk also says that in March, after the opposition leader Boris Nemtsov was murdered, she and her entire team were moved to the department that left comments on the websites of Russian news outlets and ordered to suggest that the opposition itself had set up the murder.
Savchuk told me she shared an office with about a half-dozen teammates. It was smaller than most, because she worked in the elite Special Projects department. While other workers churned out blandly pro-Kremlin comments, her department created appealing online characters who were supposed to stand out from the horde. Savchuk posed as three of these creations, running a blog for each one on Live Journal. One alter ego was a fortuneteller named Cantadora. The spirit world offered Cantadora insight into relationships, weight loss, feng shui — and, occasionally, geopolitics. Energies she discerned in the universe invariably showed that its arc bent toward Russia. She foretold glory for Vladimir Putin, defeat for Barack Obama and Petro Poroshenko. The point was to weave propaganda seamlessly into what appeared to be the nonpolitical musings of an everyday person.
In fact, she was a troll. The word “troll” was popularized in the early 1990s to denounce the people who derailed conversation on Usenet discussion lists with interminable flame wars, or spammed chat rooms with streams of disgusting photos, choking users with a cloud of filth. As the Internet has grown, the problem posed by trolls has grown more salient even as their tactics have remained remarkably constant. Today an ISIS supporter might adopt a pseudonym to harass a critical journalist on Twitter, or a right-wing agitator in the United States might smear demonstrations against police brutality by posing as a thieving, violent protester. Any major conflict is accompanied by a raging online battle between trolls on both sides.
edited 5th Apr '18 6:05:53 AM by megaeliz
The Galveston County Daily News put up an editorial on the front pagr of today's paper saying Trump's tariffs (but not tying his name into them, instead using the Department of Commerce instead) were making newsprint harder to come by and they were going to have to make some changes.
Took a quick look at their mobile site and couldn't find anything there yet, but if anyone can, that would be appreciated.
"We're all paper, we're all scissors, we're all fightin' with our mirrors, scared we'll never find somebody to love."
X5 FPTP is part of the reason but it’s not the only one, other countries use FPTP but still have small third parties. FPTP reduces any single race to a two party fighting, but there’s no reason for every race to have the same two parties fighting. Especially when you currently have some seats that aren’t contested at all.
X7 All members, I get that paying money is a weird concept but it’s how the membership get ownership of the party, the party is going to need funding and if you don’t want that to come form big business it’s got to come from somewhere. I pay £1 a month to be a member of the UK Labour Party, it gives me a vote when we decide our leader, when we decide our executive council, when we pick our local candidates, it gives me the chance to become a delegate at national conference for my local party, ect...
The best bet I can see is packaging it as part of a general "election reform" position. Things like gerrymandering, voter suppression, and campaign contributions are already on people's radar. You could campaign on a platform of fixing all that (which people would support) and also include switching from FPTP to, say, STV
or IRV
in the list of reforms.
That said, it'd still be something of a toss up, as those reforms would have the least popular support and thus be first on the chopping block for compromising when it comes time to actually write legislation.
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.It's a pretty tall, solid windmill to be tilting at when there are other things we could be doing to much greater effect.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"My understanding is that this couldn’t be done at a federal level anyway, so it would have to be done state by state, that poses the issue of it creating weird imbalances unless it done in a way similar to the popular vote compact and only comes into force once a number of states have signed up.
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ Cyran- 2000: 1.3 million
- 2006: 1 million
- 2010: 400000
- 2017: 300000
Currently we have a net negative immigration rate...more people leave than people who cross.
There is no existing road network that can handle it.
Last funny note of this wall thread: The only company that can make enough concrete for the wall is in:
Wait for it
MEXICO
edited 5th Apr '18 7:27:12 AM by megaeliz
We've been saying this since his campaign started, the Wall wouldn't be killed by politics but by the logistical impossibility of the entire thing. Because its a political promise isolated to one (far from dominant) wing of one party, and that anyone else will can it the moment they get into power, it would never get very far. Because the chance of the Trump wing staying in power for over 10 years is pretty damn low, even in a worst case situation.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.What has Trump Tweeted in the last few days?
Yesterday's Fox and Friends Livetweet:
We are not in a trade war with China, that war was lost many years ago by the foolish, or incompetent, people who represented the U.S. Now we have a Trade Deficit of $500 Billion a year, with Intellectual Property Theft of another $300 Billion. We cannot let this continue!
When you’re already $500 Billion DOWN, you can’t lose!
And here's this morning's haul.
The Fake News Washington Post, Amazon’s “chief lobbyist,” has another (of many) phony headlines, “Trump Defiant As China Adds Trade Penalties.” WRONG! Should read, “Trump Defiant as U.S. Adds Trade Penalties, Will End Barriers And Massive I.P. Theft.” Typically bad reporting!
Why do people keep claiming that election laws in the states cannot be changed by federal law?
First article, fourth section, first clause of the US constitution: The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations, except as to the Places of chusing [sic] Senators.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanIt may seem reasonable in the case of Nazis but I see no reason that it would be restricted to them.
We’re journalists at a Sinclair news station. We’re pissed.
When Sinclair announced that all stations in the company’s network, including ours, would be required to roll out a “Journalistic Responsibility Promo,” the mood at our station darkened. Our anchors were told in an email that the script they would read was a straightforward public service announcement about the dangers of biased news stories. But after we actually laid eyes on the script, many of us felt uncomfortable.
“Unfortunately, some members of the media use their platforms to push their own personal bias and agenda to control ‘exactly what people think,’” the anchors recited. “This is extremely dangerous to a democracy.”
We hated the way the PSA bashed other news outlets and the way it insinuated that we were the only truthful news source — despite the rightward tilt our network has taken over the years. Our anchors privately said they felt like corporate mouthpieces, especially when they found out no edits of the script were permitted. Yet bosses made it clear that reading the message wasn’t a suggestion but an order from above.
It seemed like everyone knew all of this was a bad idea. We expected fallout. But we didn’t know how viral the promo would get until Friday, when an edited Deadspin video featuring the robotic voices of Sinclair anchors reciting the same script word for word exploded on our Twitter feeds. Our station’s Facebook page was inundated with angry messages denouncing our journalism, our station, and our employees.
We are journalists at one of the 193 local television stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group, a media corporation with conservative and pro-Trump ties. We are writing this essay because we’re disturbed by the editorial direction our leadership is taking, and we want people to know that many of us at Sinclair reject what our company is doing. We’re writing this anonymously because if we spoke out under our names, we could lose our jobs — and potentially owe money to Sinclair.
It’s already an uncertain, strange time for journalists. Trust in the media is low. Right now, journalists need all the support they can get. This promo, despite the lip service it pays to “journalistic integrity,” encourages the opposite.
And just when we thought the bad publicity over the on-air editorial couldn’t get any worse, Donald Trump tweeted:
"So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased. Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke."
For many of us, that was the death knell. The perception among much of the public was that Sinclair was Trump TV. Now it felt like that perception was a reality. Had Trump’s seal of approval put us in the same camp as Infowars and Fox News? This was a place many Sinclair journalists never expected, or wanted, to be in.
A station we’ve cared about for many years has been stripped of its credibility. The station lost longtime viewers — and respect from the community, its most important asset.
And we Sinclair employees have lost respect for our jobs.
Disconcerting content from the company didn’t start with this promo
Most of the time, we don’t feel like we work for Sinclair — we feel like local journalists who cover what’s going on in our communities. Our corporate leaders don’t influence our local stories.
They do feed us a stream of conservative-leaning nationally focused content. Sinclair recently produced a multi-part series on immigrants in Sweden, for instance, and the many alleged “issues” the country experienced as a result. Commentary by a former Trump aide, Boris Epshteyn, which runs under the title “Bottom Line With Boris,” now airs on many Sinclair stations multiple times a week, often boiling down topics to a simple message: “Donald Trump is right and Democrats are wrong.” When the Eagles won the Super Bowl, Epshteyn complained about athletes who refused to visit the White House.
Every time we have to hear Epshteyn’s catchphrase, “The bottom line is this,” we feel a little queasy. It makes us want to apologize to the people watching and tell them we wish we didn’t have to run this.
The tone of Sinclair’s national news stories has slowly become more slanted. We’ve gone from unusually aggressive coverage of Hillary Clinton’s emails to reporting on the so-called “deep state.” Sinclair pushes a daily segment that tracks terrorist-related incidents around the world. It feels like Sinclair management is turning up the heat on pro-Trump content, and we, the journalists at this station, are the frogs in the pot.
If we could escape that pot by quitting, we would do it tomorrow. But it isn’t that easy.
Under a clause that appears in many contracts (as Bloomberg News has reported), if an employee quits, he or she could end up owing the company thousands of dollars. The penalty for breaking a contract is a payment to Sinclair of part of the employee’s annual salary, based on a complex formula. That’s money most employees simply don’t have. It’s a decision between possibly going bankrupt or sticking it out for another X number of years. (When asked for comment by the Huffington Post, a Sinclair spokesperson said, “Liquidated damages are standard in our industry.”)
Faced with the choice between possible unemployment and staring into a camera to read this script, many chose to swallow hard and read it.
We feel for the dozens of anchors who appeared in the promo. We didn’t have to read the script on camera. Hardworking journalists, many of whom were beloved by their communities, are now picking up the pieces of their reputations. Their faces are plastered all over the Internet, people calling them shills, bobbleheads, and puppets.
We know some anchors tried to resist, but for many reasons, they felt pressured to read it. They had families to support. They literally couldn’t afford to quit. (A Sinclair spokesperson told the Huffington Post, “No one was told their job was on the line.”)
The fact that the editorial has gone viral probably makes many of them anxious and uncomfortable. While we’re sympathetic, we think anyone involved with the promo should feel uncomfortable. Maybe news directors, anchors, and producers did what they had to do, but now they should be asking themselves some questions. They should be questioning their values, as well as the industry they work in and the company that put them in this position.
So far, it doesn’t seem like Sinclair is backing down
We’d like to think Sinclair will learn something from this, that they will admit they made a mistake, apologize to their employees and viewers, and take actions to rebuild trust with both. We’d love to see a public pledge from Sinclair that no station in their network has to run anything it doesn’t want to.
But it doesn’t seem like that’s the plan.
In a response to the media, Sinclair wrote, “We aren’t sure of the motivation for the criticism, but find it curious that we would be attacked for asking our news people to remind their audiences that unsubstantiated stories exist on social media.”
To them, everyone is wrong. Every media outlet who reports on them is out to get them. Right now, it looks like they’re just going to charge ahead, cry “fake news,” and hope this goes away.
We wonder who they got that from.
https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/first-person/2018/4/5/17202336/sinclair-broadcasting-promo-deadspin
edited 5th Apr '18 10:02:57 AM by megaeliz
So, anyone been following the recent happenings at the EPA? This is getting to comical levels of corruption. A top aide just resigned as a result
and a resulting email scandal for Pruitt has been uncovered, one where he might have committed an actual crime to cover up.
I'd like to say this fellow might be a superior choice to Scott Pruitt for the next EPA head.
And Bernie Sanders somehow decided it was a good idea to go to Jackson on the anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr's death and...attack Obama and the Democrats. I just....yeah.
edited 5th Apr '18 10:03:16 AM by Lightysnake
You mean "but his emails?"
Yet another example of Sanders's tone deafness?
edited 5th Apr '18 10:16:34 AM by sgamer82
It's astounding...his twitter feed is full of pictures and videos of himself talking about it as opposed to maybe, just maybe, images of MLK Jr....and he photobombs Al Sharpton with the most awkward photo.
As of this point, Sanders is really verging to the realm of just being a complete jackass, though. Attacking the first black President in a state he insulted when he lost it is a special new low for him.
To say Sanders "attacked" Obama and the Democrats is kind of an exaggeration and taken out of context. He called the Democrats' business model in the last couple of years a failure and said that people can't admit that, since Obama was such an extraordinary candidate. Sounds to me he's attacking anyone but Obama?
He's still incredibly tone-deaf though.
And what pray-tell is the Democrats "business model"? Because to call it a failure is to brazenly underscore and ignore all the ways they've done good work, which fits Sanders I suppose in that he wants to mold the party in his image while refusing to properly join it.
Also that's totally attacking the Democrats.
edited 5th Apr '18 10:34:54 AM by Fourthspartan56
"Einstein would turn over in his grave. Not only does God play dice, the dice are loaded." -Chairman Sheng-Ji Yang

The reason for the two-party system in the US is because we use first-past-the-post voting, not because we have open parties. Third parties act as a spoiler (ie, if you have one right-wing party and two major left-wing parties, the right-wing party will always win even if there are considerably more left-wing voters, because you'll end up with a split of something like 30% for the far-left party, 30% for the center-left party, and 40% for the right-wing party), so no one votes for them. As a result, both parties have to be big tent parties with wide appeal in order to avoid alienating anyone on their half of the political spectrum. Until you change the FPTP voting system, parties won't kick people out even if they could.
If we didn't have FPTP, the political parties would shake out as something like Progressive (economically and socially left), Religious Left (economically left, socially right, emphasis on the former), Labor (economically left, socially right), Religious Right (economically left, socially right, emphasis on the latter), Libertarian (economically right, socially left), and Conservative (economically and socially right). As things stand now, the Progressives and Religious Left are reliably Democrat, the Religious Right, Libertarians, and Conservatives are reliably Republican, and Labor is a toss-up depending on the individual voter and candidate.
If we switched to a system that allowed this, the main benefit would be to avoid some of the logjamming in Congress that results from the weird party politics where individual politicians have to vote against policies they actually agree with or else be voted out of office for insufficient party loyalty. eg, the Religious Right is often in favor of social safety net programs, but resolutely anti-abortion, while Libertarians don't care about abortion but are dead-set against the social safety net. Because they're all lumped into one party, that party has to be 100% anti-abortion (to avoid alienating the Religious Right) and anti safety net (to avoid alienating Libertarians). This is how you get things (like gun control) with something like 70% national approval but it still can't get through Congress — because it's a dealbreaker for one part of one party, it becomes a dealbreaker for the whole party, and thus doesn't happen even though it's got majority support of individual members of Congress.
With separate parties, you could negotiate those kind of things more easily. All of the economically left parties could work together on the social safety net. All of the socially left parties could work together on ending the war on drugs. All of the economically right parties could work together on controlling the federal deficit. Etc etc etc.
edited 5th Apr '18 4:05:31 AM by NativeJovian
Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.