[Infowarrior] - As Scrutiny Of Social Networks Grows, Influence Attacks Continue In Real Time

[Richard Forno]

As Scrutiny Of Social Networks Grows, Influence Attacks Continue In Real Time

September 28, 20175:01 AM ET
Philip Ewing

Twitter officials are expected to meet with Senate Intelligence Committee investigators. Staffers want to know about the use of fake accounts, bots and trolls to influence the trends and topics on the social platform.

This week brought a slate of fresh examples of ways in which users — some of them demonstrably Russian, others not — continue to try to use Facebook, Twitter and other platforms to jam a crowbar into existing American political divisions and wrench them further apart.

Oklahoma's Republican Sen. James Lankford cited the ongoing national debate over free speech and protest in the National Football League, which has set players who want to call attention to police brutality — and are demonstrating by kneeling during the national anthem — against President Trump and cultural conservatives.

"We watched, even this weekend, the Russians and their troll farms, their Internet folks, start hashtagging out 'take a knee' and also hashtagging out 'boycott the NFL,' " Lankford said at a hearing of the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Wednesday.

"They were taking both sides of the argument this past weekend and pushing them out from their troll farms as much as they could to just raise the noise level in America and make a big issue seem like an even bigger issue as they're trying to push divisiveness in the country," he said.

That's the very same modus operandi that Senate Intelligence Committee investigators and others have detected in Russian influence-mongers' use of Facebook last year.

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http://www.npr.org/2017/09/28/554024047/as-scrutiny-of-social-networks-grows-influence-attacks-continue-in-real-time