Feckless WaPo Prints Disinfo About “Russian Trolls”
This is classic propaganda
Over the last several days, Kremlin propagandists, far-left tankies and controlled opposition have used this article as a “gotcha” to push the false narrative that Russia “had little influence on 2016 voters.”
The Washington Post should retract this propaganda immediately.
The issue with the story is that the study is extremely limited in scope and utterly fails to understand or address how Russian influence actually works.
The only thing the study measures is direct influence from identified Internet Research Agency (IRA) accounts and extrapolates “influence” from that. This is meaningless. Russian influence in the 2016 election was not primarily from IRA “Russian trolls” it was from compromised Americans.
The subhead is a pure lie:
“A study finds minimal impact from Russian influence operations on Twitter in the Trump-Clinton presidential race.”
This may as well have been written by the Kremlin. It conflates a tiny part of Russian influence with all Russian influence. This is disinformation. It should be retracted.
The study takes every opportunity to minimize and deflect from the psyops being run by Americans like Mike Flynn on behalf of the Russians.
The study is not an unbiased look at foreign influence, it’s disinformation designed to minimize it.
“Only 1% of users accounted for 70% of exposures” is a tell. The “1%” were Americans who were compromised and working to overturn the election. These were people like Kremlin puppet Donald Trump’s social media director Justin McConney aka “Microchip,” neo-Nazi Russian assets like Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich, Baked Alaska, and Mike Flynn Jr., and amoral Republicans who were perfectly happy to knowingly parrot Russian talking points.
“Russian influence campaigns was eclipsed by content from domestic news media” fails to understand the level of influence the Russians had — and have — on the press. For example, the Washington Post.
And this conclusion makes very clear what the purpose of the study is:
“The results have implications for understanding the limits of election interference campaigns on social media.”
No they fucking don’t.
The only thing the data actually says is that there was a huge ramp in IRA accounts tweeting disinformation leading up to the election. It says nothing about how that disinformation was used.
Also, how does a study purporting to report on “Russian Trolls” not include “Guccifer” who was identified as a Russian cutout, or Wikileaks run by Kremlin asset Julian Assange? Just those two accounts launched and fed Pizzagate which was being promoted by Kremlin propagandists like Mike Flynn’s employee Tracy Diaz.
The study examined a tiny part of Russian influence, failed to show how that influence was spread, and then completely misinterpreted the data in their conclusions which were then spread to the readers of the Post.
If the Washington Post needs to see how Russian influence works, they need only look at how the false story they printed is being weaponized by Kremlin propagandists.
The Washington Post is following the New York Times down the pathway of deflecting and minimizing Russian influence by printing articles which allow propagandists to validate their lies.
Mainstream media has an enormous blind spot when it comes to Russian influence. The reason? Russian influence.
#ArrestMikeFlynn
100%. Reminds me of “they only spent x dollars on facebook ads.”
Only looking at one small aspect of a coordinated multi pronged influence campaign is going to severely underestimate its impact.
Follow the money
I haven’t had time to look into who authored the “study” but have a hunch it’s going to be similar to what the controlled opposition did for QAnon using cutouts to push false narratives.