Facebook blocks the account of a son of Netanyahu by Islamophobic messages

Facebook blocks the account of a son of Netanyahu by Islamophobic messages

The battle continues because the investment is minimal, the political revenues are many, and the punitive consequences are minimal

  Uncovering Russian interference in the 2016 elections and taking action against his government did not end it. Unlike. Since the Cambridge Analytica scandal revealed that Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were unwitting accomplices in the victory of Donald Trump, Russian intelligence, like any virus, simply transformed and spread to other smaller and more vulnerable platforms, often emerging

That is one of the conclusions of the report that the Informatics Propaganda Project of the University of Oxford and the Graphika analysis firm have prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee. The efforts of the Russian Internet Research Agency (IRA) do not begin or end in 2016. In fact, the 47-page report studies its infiltration between 2012 and 2018 until it concludes that it contaminated the main social networks with videos and information intended to favor the election of President Donald Trump and, later on, to help him in his government agenda.

   The virus does not disappear, it evolves and multiplies, it learns from its own mistakes, it becomes more sophisticated and it spreads around the globe. This is the most detailed radiography that has been done to date on these efforts, although the conclusion is the same as that already had on the table of his office Barack Obama, then signed by the intelligence services. "What is clear is that all the messages were clearly aimed at benefiting the Republican Party and specifically Donald Trump," he says.

With all the information available to them about the profile of the users of these social platforms and the sophisticated algorithms that allow predicting their behavior, based on apparently innocent information, the trolls of the IRA targeted extreme right-wing groups to encourage hatred and fear towards minorities. And at the same time they tried to "confuse and discourage" them so they would not vote.

A second report prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee by New Knowledge researchers, Columbia University and Canfield Research abounds in this last aspect. The Russian trolls "targeted the black community through a wide range of multimedia platforms well connected with African-Americans to create an influential ecosystem." Latinos, gays, Muslims, veterans ... It was about fragmenting society into social groups to infiltrate them and poison them emotionally. More than a thousand videos served as a hook to identify the most reactive users who fed the database with their comments and a simple click of 'Like' or 'I do not like'. They chimed them and generated conversations that the IRA agents took note of.

Now it is the special prosecutor Robert Mueller who watches over them, having already charged three companies and 13 Russian citizens. When the attention of the investigations focused on Facebook and Twitter, from which many users were disgusted, the trolls mutated and became strong on Instagram, another platform more fashionable that "probably is the battlefield" in the upcoming elections . That platform, also from Facebook, almost doubled the number of interactions that were recorded in the mother ship of Mark Zuckerbeg, creator of the monster that the Russians have taken over.

The battle continues, because the investment is minimal, the political revenues, many, and the punitive, minimal consequences. "It seems likely that the US will continue to face Russian interference in the future," the report concludes.