Russia Reactivates Its Trolls and Bots Ahead of Tuesday's Midterms - The New York Times
Researchers have identified a series of Russian information operations to influence American elections and, perhaps, erode support for Ukraine.
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
[Photo: The St. Petersburg building that is said to be the site of the Russian Internet Research Agency. Cybersecurity researchers have tied the agency to a new Russian misinformation effort.Credit...Mstyslav Chernov/Associated Press]
By Steven Lee Myers
Steven Lee Myers, who has reported from Russia and China, writes about misinformation and is based in San Francisco.
Nov. 6, 2022Updated 10:38 a.m. ET
The user on Gab who identifies as Nora Berka resurfaced in August after a yearlong silence on the social media platform, reposting a handful of messages with sharply conservative political themes before writing a stream of original vitriol.
The posts mostly denigrated President Biden and other prominent Democrats, sometimes obscenely. They also lamented the use of taxpayer dollars to support Ukraine in its war against invading Russian forces, depicting Ukraine's president as a caricature straight out of Russian propaganda.
The fusion of political concerns was no coincidence.
The account was previously linked to the same secretive Russian agency that interfered in the 2016 presidential election and again in 2020, the Internet Research Agency in St. Petersburg, according to the cybersecurity group Recorded Future.
It is part of what the group and other researchers have identified as a new, though more narrowly targeted, Russian effort ahead of Tuesday's midterm elections. The goal, as before, is to stoke anger among conservative voters and to undermine trust in the American electoral system. This time, it also appears intended to undermine the Biden administration's extensive military assistance to Ukraine.
"It's clear they are trying to get them to cut off aid and money to Ukraine," said Alex Plitsas, a former Army soldier and Pentagon information operations official now with Providence Consulting Group, a business technology company.
The campaign — using accounts that pose as enraged Americans like Nora Berka — have added fuel to the most divisive political and cultural issues in the country today.
It has specifically targeted Democratic candidates in the most contested races, including the Senate seats up for grabs in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania, calculating that a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could help the Russian war effort.
The campaigns show not only how vulnerable the American political system remains to foreign manipulation but also how purveyors of disinformation have evolved and adapted to efforts by the major social media platforms to remove or play down false or deceptive content.
Last month, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an alert warning of the threat of disinformation spread by "dark web media channels, online journals, messaging applications, spoofed websites, emails, text messages and fake online personas." The disinformation could include claims that voting data or results had been hacked or compromised.
The agencies urged people not to like, discuss or share posts online from unknown or distrustful sources. They did not identify specific efforts, but social media platforms and researchers who track disinformation have recently uncovered a variety of campaigns by Russia, China and Iran.
Recorded Future and two other social media research companies, Graphika and Mandiant, found a number of Russian campaigns that have turned to Gab, Parler, Getter and other newer platforms that pride themselves on creating unmoderated spaces in the name of free speech.
These are much smaller campaigns than those in the 2016 election, where inauthentic accounts reached millions of voters across the political spectrum on Facebook and other major platforms. The efforts are no less pernicious, though, in reaching impressionable users who can help accomplish Russian objectives, researchers said.
"The audiences are much, much smaller than on your other traditional social media networks," said Brian Liston, a senior intelligence analyst with Recorded Future who identified the Nora Berka account. "But you can engage the audiences in much more targeted influence ops because those who are on these platforms are generally U.S. conservatives who are maybe more accepting of conspiratorial claims."
Many of the accounts the researchers identified were previously used by a news outlet calling itself the Newsroom for American and European Based Citizens. Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, has previously linked the news outlet to the Russian information campaigns centered around the Internet Research Agency.
The network appears to have since disbanded, and many of the social media accounts associated with it went dormant after being publicly identified around the 2020 election. The accounts started becoming active again in August and September, called to action like sleeper cells.
Nora Berka's account on Gab has many of the characteristics of an inauthentic user, Mr. Liston said. There is no profile picture or identifying biographical details. No one responded to a message sent to the account through Gab.
The account, with more than 8,000 followers, posts exclusively on political issues — not in just one state but across the country — and often spreads false or misleading posts. Most have little engagement but a recent post about the F.B.I. received 43 responses and 11 replies, and was reposted 64 times.
Since September the account has repeatedly shared links to a previously unknown website — electiontruth.net — that Recorded Future said was almost certainly linked to the Russian campaign.
Electiontruth.net's earliest posts date only from Sept. 5; since then, it has posted articles almost daily ridiculing President Biden and prominent Democratic candidates, while criticizing policies regarding race, crime and gender that it said were destroying the United States. "America under Communism" was one typical headline.
The articles all have pseudonyms as bylines, like Andrew J, Truth4Ever and Laura. According to Mr. Liston, the website domain was registered using Bitcoin accounts.
ImageElectiontruth.net lists a cafe in Cotter, Ark., as its contact. The cafe has closed, replaced by the Cotter Bridge Market. The market's owners said they knew nothing about the website.Credit...Trent Bozeman for The New York Times
For its contact information, electiontruth.net lists a cafe inside a converted gas station in Cotter, Ark., a town of 900 people on a bend in the White River. The cafe has closed, however, and been replaced by Cotter Bridge Market, a produce shop and deli whose owners said they knew nothing about the website. No one at Election Truth responded to a request for comment submitted through the site.
Mr. Liston said that links to electiontruth.net appeared to be closely coordinated with the accounts on Gab linked to the Russians.
In another campaign, Graphika identified a recent series of cartoons that appeared on Gab, Gettr, Parler and the discussion forum patriots.win. The cartoons, by an artist named "Schmitz," disparaged Democrats in the tightest Senate and governor races.
One targeting Senator Raphael Warnock of Georgia, who is Black, employed racist motifs. Another falsely claimed that Representative Tim Ryan, the Democratic Senate candidate in Ohio, would release "all Fentanyl distributors and drug traffickers" from prison.
The cartoons received little engagement and did not spread virally to other platforms, according to Graphika.
A recurring theme of the new Russian efforts is an argument that the United States under President Biden is wasting money by supporting Ukraine in its resistance to the Russian invasion that began in February.
Nora Berka, for example, posted a doctored photograph in September that showed President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine as a bikini-wearing pole dancer being showered with dollar bills by Mr. Biden.
"As working class Americans struggle to afford food, gas, and find baby formula, Joe Biden wants to spend $13.7 billion more in aid to Ukraine," the account posted. Not incidentally, that post echoed a theme that has gained some traction among Republican lawmakers and voters who have questioned the delivery of weapons and other military assistance.
"It's no secret that Republicans — that a large portion of Republicans — have questioned whether we should be supporting what has been referred to as foreign adventures or somebody else's conflict," said Graham Brookie, senior director of the Digital Forensics Lab at the Atlantic Council, which has also been tracking foreign influence operations.
The F.B.I. and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency did not respond to requests for comment about the Russian efforts. Mr. Brookie called the revived accounts "recidivist behavior." Gab did not respond to a request for comment.
As before, it may be hard to measure the exact impact of these accounts on voters come Tuesday. At a minimum, they contribute to what Edward P. Perez, a board member with the OSET Institute, a nonpartisan election security organization, called "manufactured chaos" in the country's body politic.
While Russians in the past sought to build large followings for their inauthentic accounts on the major platforms, today's campaigns could be smaller and yet still achieve a desired effect — in part because the divisions in American society are already such fertile soil for disinformation, he said.
"Since 2016, it appears that foreign states can afford to take some of the foot off the gas," Mr. Perez, who previously worked at Twitter, said, "because they have already created such sufficient division that there are many domestic actors to carry the water of disinformation for them."
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In case you are wondering why you are suddenly seeing some characters online again.
I saw this on Newsy the other night:
TikTok Has Been Hiring Former CIA, FBI, and NSA Officers
In other words, the Republican Putinites have their talking points.
When I wandered back into this place a couple of months ago I was like, "omg..is everyone left in this chatroom a Russian spy?"
Nah, the social contagion of disinformation has just spread far and wide.
Gotta watch those Russians.. they keep getting their Hemispheres mixed up..
Vlad kept thinking I was in the Northern Hemisphere, bit of a worry when they have a finger on the button..😬
Arvo...well a couple of months ago I did ask if some were Russians in disguise..
I got a penalty...I wore it with pride.. my first I didn't even get one on Newsvine..even after bagging out Vlad the bad..
Oh the joy!! We have got State elections in two weeks time...feel free Russia, China... anyone!!
Sigh...it's more than a Koala can bare..
From what I hear FoxNews might as well be a Russian in disguise these days.
I don't have a cable TV package so I really don't know first hand.
Arvo revi.. don't watch fox news or any other news other than whats on the normal commercial channels... that's enough for a laugh..
I look at it...no news is good news...just have to sieve the crap from the crap..
I am off, the sun, sand and surf is calling.. ripper first swim for Spring...🦈
Trust me, if I wanted to watch a "news" source, Fox"News" would be the first one I would check out.
They hardly try to hide it. Some of the most vocal Russian shills are Fox mainstays. Fucker Carlson is a committed Putinite fascist. Russian media was even instructed by Putin's propaganda department to use Carlson's Fox broadcast clips.
That's a reasonable question.
The topic has been discussed in the press. Here's one example:
Tucker Carlson, downplaying Russia-Ukraine conflict, urges Americans to ask, ‘Why do I hate Putin?’
Bill Maher sort of asked his roundtable in the second part of his show, "what's going on with Fox News these days. It's like the whole network is taking Russia's side on everything these days?" I think he's funny and often "not wrong." He was the inspiration for "FoxNews is a Russian in disguise."
I no longer have access to Fox, CNN, or MSNBC because I went shopping around for a cheaper streaming package than YoutubeTV. And to be honest, I don't miss them. But if I had access to Fox I would check it out for a day or so to see what they are up to.
Trump is Putin's #1 fanboy, butt Trump's stranglehold on the Retrumplican party has been slipping. There is a new “conservative” who is now seems to be more popular than The Donald. Fucker Carlson, the most poopular personality on Fox Noise, seems to be the new de facto leader of White-wing knuckle draggers.
The Donald was an obvious Russian asset (probably because of Kompromat). Carlson seems to be even more pro-Putin (probably because of his stupidity). Carlson, like many conservatives, is a chicken hawk. Even though Carlson avoided military service, he criticizes US generals and other combat veterans. Carlson has also praised Hungary's prime minister Viktor Orbán, who has suppressed civil liberties and intimidated the media. Orbán opposes a "mixing of races" and advocates "White Christian values". Orbán was the first speaker at CPAC and he got many standing ovations. Fucker Carlson dedicated a week to praising Orbán on Fox "News".
Then there are Retrumplicans, like Senator RonAnon Johnson of Wisconsin, who have read Russian propaganda into the Congressional Record. Before Trump, the old school Republicans used to criticize Russia. Today's Retrumplicans seem to love Vladimir Putin.
Faux Noise is a comedy channel.
Sometimes it's fun to watch because it's an unintended parody of actual news.
So this article gave me a healthy dose of worry, so I was checking our bots, and we are fine.
Hope so.
The thing that bugs me is the NYT finally gets to writing about it on the Sunday before the election on a Tuesday.
For an institution that is supposedly worried about the end of democracy, that is an awful lot like being a day late and a dollar short.
Well, you might want to make up your mind about them, then. They are either a liberal paper or they are not.
The New York Times has been beating the drum about Jan 6 and election deniers since Jan 7.
But somehow they let the Russian disinformation problem go without additional coverage after everyone got embarrassed by believing everything in the Steele Dossier was true. (The pee tape thing sure does sound in character but it was probably BS.)
I remember talking to people on Newsvine back in 2013 (or so) who had refined talking points about how the USA was backing a west leaning fascist party in Ukraine. (They made you feel that you were uninformed about US foreign policy and needed to read more.) Then in 2016 it turns out that Trump has a campaign manager who was previously helping Russian leaning candidates in Ukraine.
Russia has been playing a long game while the open societies in the west have simply been getting played.
You are splitting hairs here.
People storming the Capitol to reverse an election result and people running for office to put themselves in key positions to overturn the next election result that they don't like is part of the same problem. And Russia supporting that same political party makes it even worse.
It's not just Russian trolls that show up on all the social media websites (except for this one, of course) that we have to worry about. It's the gazillion dollars Russia has been able to move into the west in order to influence our system. Russian oligarchs make a lot of friends in high places when they start buying luxury apartments in cities like New York and London.
When you start following the money, it's shocking how much Russian money has found its way to American politicians. It's probably harder to identify media personalities who are getting enriched by Russian dollars.
I think you are the one that needs a better media diet.
Where Republican election deniers are on the ballot near you
What's keeping democracy experts up most at night? An overturned election Analysis: Amid all the voting changes in state laws, giving more power to partisan officials to overturn an election is at the top of the list of concerns.
And for God's sake, some elected officials already tried to overturn the LAST presidential election.
While people were breaking into the Capitol elected members of congress were objecting to slates of electoral college delegates.
I mean, seriously, don't watch FOX all day and then think it's other people who have been brainwashed.
To paraphrase Baldwin, I'm not your short order cook.
The Steele Dossier was initially funded by one of Trump's Republican primary opponents (Marco Rubio). Then a legal firm sold it to a backer of Hillary Clinton.
The Trump Dossier: What We Know and Who Paid for It
Who paid for it?
During the Republican primaries, a research firm called Fusion GPS was hired by The Washington Free Beacon , a conservative website, to unearth potentially damaging information about Mr. Trump. The Free Beacon — which was funded by a major donor supporting Mr. Trump’s rival for the party’s nomination, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — told Fusion GPS to stop doing research on Mr. Trump in May 2016, as Mr. Trump was clinching the Republican nomination .
ele Dossier was initially funded by one of Trump's Republican primary opponents (Marco Rubio)
How many time are you going to repeat that lie? Try and understand your own link for starters.
Derp.
Lol. Don't be so hard on yourself. So you've embarrassed yourself by repeating a debunked lie from 5 years ago and then didn't understand your own link.
That's okay! Tomorrow's a new day and the more you read, the better you'll get at it!
I felt the same way when I read the lie you posted and that anyone would still try to pass that bullshit off as fact.
For those that are still interested in the truth.
The opposition research conducted by Fusion GPS on Donald Trump was in two distinct operations, each with a different client. The first research operation, from October 2015 to May 2016, was domestic research funded by The Washington Free Beacon . The second operation, from April 2016 to December 2016, was funded by the DNC and the Clinton campaign . Only the second operation involved the foreign research that produced the dossier. [48] [49] From April 2016 into early May, the Washington Free Beacon and the Clinton Campaign/DNC were independently both clients of Fusion GPS.
DERP.
The Washington Free Beacon is a conservative website. It was funded by Marco Rubio. You called it "the first research operation". I said, it "was initially funded by one of Trump's Republican primary opponents (Marco Rubio)."
I did NOT lie. I also added the link to the site that published the material I quoted.
You plagiarized your paragraph from Wikipedia. You didn't even to use quotation marks.
Fuck off.
DERP!
Sure you did, the article clearer stated the dossier was no part of the original group and solely funded by the Clinton campaign.
and what you wrote was this.
The Steele Dossier was initially funded by one of Trump's Republican primary opponents (Marco Rubio)
and that is a lie. Do fuck off!
Russians have a long history of election meddling. Putin's buddy just admitted to interfering in US elections.
A Putin Ally Says Russia is Interfering in the Midterms
Yevgeny Prigozhin, a prominent businessman who founded a private mercenary force closely linked to the Kremlin, posted a sardonic statement about election meddling.
By Dan Bilefsky and Ivan Nechepurenko
With alarm over foreign manipulation of the U.S. midterm elections swirling ahead of Tuesday’s vote, an influential Russian businessman and close associate of President Vladimir V. Putin sardonically boasted on Monday that Russia was interfering in the election.
“Gentlemen, we have interfered, we do interfere and we will interfere,” the businessman, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin , known as “Putin’s Chef,” said in a statement posted by his catering company in response to a question from a Russian news outlet. “We will do it carefully, precisely, surgically as we are capable of doing it. During our targeted operations, we will remove both kidneys and liver at once.”
RIA Novosti, a Russian state-owned news agency, described the comments as ironic. But Mr. Prigozhin — the founder of a shadowy mercenary force closely linked to the Kremlin — has been accused of being deeply involved in such operations. In 2018, he was indicted by the United States in a case involving the troll factory that spearheaded Russian efforts to meddle in the 2016 elections in the United States.
Last year, the F.B.I. also put Mr. Prigozhin on its most-wanted list and the U.S. Treasury placed him under sanctions for organizing disinformation campaigns in elections in Asia, Europe and Africa. The U.S. government imposed additional sanctions on Mr. Prigozhin in March, shortly after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
A U.S. State Department spokesman, Ned Price, called Mr. Prigozhin’s comments “a bold confession.”
“If anything, it appears to be just a manifestation of the impunity that crooks and cronies enjoy under President Putin and the Kremlin,” he said during a briefing Monday afternoon in Washington. He added that it was clear that a person of Mr. Prigozhin’s stature would not be in a position to make such claims unless “the Kremlin, at some level” didn’t approve.
In late September, Mr. Prigozhin acknowledged that he was the founder of the Wagner Group , the private military force that has fought on Russia’s side in the war in Ukraine. Its fighters have also been deployed in support of the Kremlin’s military campaigns in Africa and the Middle East , occasionally doing battle against U.S. forces.
Researchers have detected a new, though more concentrated, campaign by Russia to try to influence Tuesday’s midterm elections . They said that the goal, as in previous U.S. elections, has been to empower angry conservative voters with the aim of undermining faith in American democracy. And, at a time when soaring energy prices and inflation threaten to dent support for the war, the campaign also appears intent on undermining the Biden administration’s extensive financial and military support for Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.
The campaign — using accounts that pose as enraged Americans — has specifically targeted Democratic candidates in the most heated races, including the Senate seats being contested in Ohio, Arizona and Pennsylvania. The calculation appears to be that a Republican majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives could dent American support for the war in Ukraine.
Wait! The left has been telling us there was no interference with the 2020 election. Maybe that should be investigated like it was in 2016...
Seems like the liberals are getting their excuses ready for the red wave coming. After all if they don't have their excuses they may be forced to look in the mirror.
If there is a red wave it will be because of the stupidity of MAGA and the submissiveness of the mainstream media.
It will be because of the 2 years of far left radical policies.
John remember that famous line issued for a political favorite of yours?
"It's the Economy Stupid"
Remember that?
what has happened over the last two years is the democrats took our economy which was growing at a rate that hadn't been seen in 40 years, and turned it around to where it the worst in the last 40 years... And it took all of a year to do that and everything they are claiming to have done is only deepening it...
This election is a referendum on liberal democrat economic policies... we went from one of the greatest economies we had ever seen to one of the worst in the space of a year...
The result of economic policies between the two sides is stark and vivid and cannot be sluffed off on the other side...
And the people are about to decide which side they like better...
Delusional. When Joe Biden took office unemployment was over 6 percent and the GDP was dead in the water. That is what the pandemic did to the economy, during Trumps last year. Wasnt Trumps fault but what Biden was handed, which was terrible, wasnt his fault either.
Excellent. Keep up that narrative. I am sure it will help in 2024.
Do you want me to lie for MAGA? Not gonna happen.
I thought I made it clear. I want you to do exactly what you are doing.
You think that devangelical is a repub?
Dev is far too intelligent to be a Retrumplican.
The question was what Revillug thought.