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The reports, both commissioned by the committee, are based on tons of data that Facebook, Twitter and Google shared with the committee about Russia's campaign to influence the presidential election. 2016 and American politics in general. Much of the data has not yet been publicly disclosed.
Researchers analyzed over 10 million tweets, 116,000 Instagram posts, 61,000 posts on Facebook and 1,000 videos posted by the Russian-based Internet Research Agency (IRA), the trolls group indicted by special advocate Robert Mueller earlier this year.
In one case, through his page "Army of Jesus", which targeted Christians, the group offered "free advice to people with a sexual addiction," discovered New Knowledge.
The report states that the false counseling service could have created an opportunity to blackmail or manipulate the people who made use of it.
"Recruit an asset by exploiting a personal vulnerability – usually a secret that would inspire shame or cause personal problems." or financial loss if exposed – is a timeless espionage practice ", says the.
New Knowledge says that it is unclear whether anyone has accepted the offer of counseling
Switching to Instagram
All major social media platforms were used as part of the campaign, reporters said, but New Knowledge discovered that in 2017, as investigators and journalists began to dig up the Russian campaign on social networks on the two most-used platforms, Facebook and Twitter, "the IRA has transferred much of his activities towards Insta gram "
Facebook's spread of misinformation on Instagram has received less attention than other platforms.
"The most prolific efforts of the IRA on Facebook and Instagram were aimed specifically at black American communities and seem to be focused on developing black audiences and recruiting assets. "the report notes.
Wikileaks and Local News
New Knowledge discovered that the IRA had made sustained efforts to undermine confidence in the mainstream US media while touting the merits of Wikileaks and Julian Assange ".
On October 4, 2016, the report notes A small number of publications from IRA pages reinforced Assange's "reputation as a freedom fighter". It was the first group articles on Assange for about a month, according to the analysis. A few days later, on October 7, Wikileaks released the hacked emails of John Podesta, chairman of the Clinton campaign.
The emails had been hacked by the GRU, the intelligence service of the Russian army, according to an indictment of the special advocate Robert Mueller earlier this year.
New Knowledge notes that, even though it has no definitive proof, "given the involvement of GRU in hacking the DNC with Wikileaks, it is possible that the IRA was tasked with socializing WikiLeaks to right and left audiences. " [19659002] In addition, researchers found that 44 Twitter accounts posing as US-based news agencies had collected more than 600,000 subscribers. The report notes that many of the fake news agencies portray themselves as local media and that the group could have based this strategy on studies showing that Americans trust local media before the national media.
Support Trump, Repression of Voters
19659002] The report notes that the IRA was primarily focused on supporting Donald Trump's candidacy and undermining Clinton's, including by increasing support for Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein at the end of the election cycle. New Knowledge notes that in the days leading up to the legislative elections, the IRA began to "deploy voter suppression tactics on targeted accounts of the black community, while sowing fear on targeted accounts to right on electoral fraud and spreading worrying warnings "that the election would be stolen and that violence might be needed. "
On the morning of the election, an IRA account, @racist_paul, sent" dozens of tweets harassing various Jewish journalists and other (real) Twitter users with content. about how Trump "warm an oven" for them. "
Silicon Valley
Report Criticizes Cooperation of Social Media Companies with Committee.
After Considering Data Gathered to Committee by Giants of Technology, New Knowledge has concluded that the companies may have provided the "bare minimum" to meet the demands of the committee.
The firm informed lawmakers that there were probably more Russian accounts than social media companies have.
A Google spokesman said the company had not commented on the report, but had indicated the steps taken by the company to combat misinformation since 2016.
A Twitter spokesman told CNN that the company had made "significant progress" to prevent the manipulation of its services.
"Our goal is to improve the health of the public conversation about to be a platform and the protection of the integrity of elections is an important aspect of this mission, "said the spokesman. "We have made great progress since 2016 to counter the manipulation of our service, which includes the release in October of additional data relating to previously disclosed activities, in order to allow the continuation of independent academic research and investigation."
A Facebook spokesman said that he did not have any comments on the report.
Second Report
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