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Russian Trolls Tried -- and Failed -- To Push Divisive Content On Vaccines (fortune.com) 190
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday August 25, 2018 @10:34AM from the thinking-of-the-children dept.
Russian trolls "seem to be using vaccination as a wedge issue, promoting discord in American society," according to a new study shared by long-time Slashdot reader skam240. "The topic became another issue the Russian trolls seized upon to widen existing rifts in America and turn citizens against each other," reports NBC News.
But Fortune reports there's more to the story:
While the latest study highlights how Russian outfits have increasingly used social media to toy with people's emotions to influence their behavior, it's also notable for the fact that most Twitter users appeared to have ignored its anti-vaccine messages... Outside of the Russian trolls, virtually no real Twitter users actually responded to the messages, said the paper's author David Broniatowski, an assistant professor in at George Washington University's School of Engineering and Applied Science. Generally, Russian trolls try to exploit controversial topics like religion, and race and class division, but "sometimes they get it hilariously wrong," he said.
Broniatowski attributed the campaign's failure to the content of the tweets, which included: "VaccinateUS mandatory #vaccines infringe on constitutionally protected religious freedoms;" "Did you know there was a secret government database of #vaccine-damaged children? #VaccinateUS;" and "Dont get #vaccines. Iluminati are behind it. #VaccinateUS." The messages were so far-fetched that even people who believe in conspiracy theories chose to ignore them. |
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| cauz |
Feb. 2, 2019, 3:14 p.m. |
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| Howard Gardner |
I believe that the brain has evolved over millions of years to be responsive to different kinds of content in the world. Language content, musical content, spatial content, numerical content, etc. |
| David Brinkley |
Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians. |
| Michele Bachmann |
Where do we say that a cell became a blade of grass, which became a starfish, which became a cat, which became a donkey, which became a human being? There's a real lack of evidence from change from actual species to a different type of species. |
| Jimmy Fallon |
I wanted to be the next Dana Carvey. This was my ultimate goal. If I ever cut into a birthday cake and made a wish, I would wish to be on 'Saturday Night Live.' If I threw a coin into a fountain, I would wish to be on 'Saturday Night Live.' If I saw a shooting star, I would wish to be on 'Saturday Night Live.' |
| Cindy Gallop |
If I ran the world, I would find a way to bring the wealth of human good intentions and corporate good intentions together - to activate them collectively into shared action against shared objectives that produces shared hard, tangible results. |
| Sheldon Jackson |
Among those best known, their highest ambition is to build American homes, possess American furniture, dress in American clothes, adopt the American style of living and be American citizens. |
| Peter Abelard |
Are you not moved to tears and bitter compassion, when you behold the only Son of God seized by the most impious, dragged away, mocked, scourged, buffeted, spit upon, crowned with thorns, hung upon the infamous cross between two thieves, finally in such a horrible and execrable manner suffering death, for your salvation and that of the world? |
| Otto Hahn |
First we attacked the Russian soldiers with our gases, and then when we saw the poor fellows lying there, dying slowly, we tried to make breathing easier for them by using our own life-saving devices on them. |
| James Caan |
I really believe that you grow up a certain way in New York. There's a New York morality, a sense of loyalty. You know how to win and lose. There's a thousand kids outside, you know who to push and who not to push. There's a sixth sense you develop just because it's New York. |
| Gilbert K. Chesterton |
The object of a New Year is not that we should have a new year. It is that we should have a new soul and a new nose; new feet, a new backbone, new ears, and new eyes. Unless a particular man made New Year resolutions, he would make no resolutions. Unless a man starts afresh about things, he will certainly do nothing effective. |
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Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots
and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate
Objectives.
To understand how Twitter bots and trolls (
“
bots
”
) promote online health
...
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NSA's 'Codebreaker Challenge' Features Exploiting Blockchain To Steal Ethereum (ltsnet.net) 51
Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday September 22, 2018 @05:34PM from the show-me-the-money dept.
"The National Security Agency's 2018 Codebreaker Challenge kicked off on Friday, 9/21, and runs through 12/31," writes Slashdot reader eatvegetables. Each year's challenge -- which is open to U.S. students -- comes with its own (fictitious) backstory which the organizers say is "meant for providing realistic context."
This year's story?
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Russia's Anti-VPN Law Goes Into Effect
A Russian law that bans the use or provision of virtual private networks (VPNs) will come into effect Wednesday. The legislation will require ISPs to block websites that offer VPNs and similar proxy services that are used by millions of Russians to circumvent state-imposed internet censorship. It was signed by President Vladimir Putin on July 29 and was justified as a necessary measure to prevent the spread of extremism online. Its real impact, however, will be to make it much harder for ordinary Russians to access websites ISPs are instructed to block connections to by Russian regulator Roskomnadzor, aka the Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media. The law is just one part of a concerted effort by t...
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sraeli Spies 'Watched Russian Agents Breach Kaspersky Software'
msmash 6 hours ago 134
Israeli spies looked on as Russian hackers breached Kaspersky cyber-security software two years ago, according to reports. From a report: The Russians were allegedly attempting to gather data on US intelligence programs, according to the New York Times and Washington Post. Israeli agents made the discovery after breaching the software themselves. Kaspersky has said it was neither involved in nor aware of the situation and denies collusion with authorities. Last month, the US government decided to stop using the Russian firm's software on its computers. The Israelis are said to have notified the US, which led to the ban on Kaspersky programs. The New York Times said that the situation had been described ...
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Do Social Media Bots Have a Right To Free Speech?
One study found that 66% of tweets with links were posted by "suspected bots" -- with an even higher percentage for certain kinds of content. Now a new California law will require bots to disclose that they are bots.
But does that violate the bots' freedom of speech, asks Laurent Sacharoff, a law professor at the University of Arkansas.
"Even t...
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Russian Shipwreck Allegedly Carrying $130 Billion In Gold Has Been Rediscovered
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Mechanics:
A salvage company has located the remains of a Russian warship lost during the the Russo-Japanese War. The battle-damaged cruiser Dmitrii Donskoi was scuttled off the coast of Korea in 1905, reportedly carrying a cargo of gold worth an estimated $130 billion in today's dollars. An international consortium of companies plans to salvage the gold.
According...
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Russian journalist and Putin critic dies after being beaten up by strangers
Nikolai Andrushchenko, 73, was co-founder of the Novy Peterburg newspaper
A Russian journalist known for his criticism of President Vladimir Putin has died after being beaten by unknown attackers, it has been reported.
Nikolai Andrushchenko, 73, who co-founded the Novy Peterburg newspaper, was attacked six weeks ago and had been in a coma since then.
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Thirty Countries Use 'Armies of Opinion Shapers' To Manipulate Democracy (theguardian.com)
The governments of 30 countries around the globe are using armies of so called opinion shapers to meddle in elections, advance anti-democratic agendas and repress their citizens, a new report shows. From a report on The Guardian:
Unlike widely reported Russian attempts to influence foreign elections, most of the offending countries use the internet to manipulate opinion domestically, says US NGO Freedom House. "Manipulation and disinformation tactics played an important role in elections in at least 17 other countries over the past year, damaging citizens' ability to choose their leaders based on fac...
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Wana Decryptor Ransomware Using NSA Exploit Leaked By Shadow Brokers To Spread Ransomware Worldwide
A ransomware attack running rampant through Europe today is spreading via an exploit leaked in the most recent Shadow Brokers dump. Researchers said the attackers behind today's outbreak of WannaCry ransomware are using EternalBlue, an exploit made public by the mysterious group in possession of offensive hacking tools allegedly developed by the NSA. Most of the attacks are concentrated in Russia, but machines in 74 countries have been infected; researchers at Kaspersky Lab said they've recorded more than 45,000 infections so far on their sensors, and expect that number to climb. Sixteen National Health Service (NHS) organizations in the U.K., several large telecommunications companies and ...
This post is a comment.
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New Study Finds It's Harder To Turn Off a Robot When It's Begging For Its Life
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge:
[A] recent experiment by German researchers demonstrates that people will refuse to turn a robot off if it begs for its life. In the study, published in the open access journal PLOS One, 89 volunteers were recruited to complete a pair of tasks with the help of Nao, a small humanoid robot. The participants were told that the tasks (which involved answering a series of either / or questions, like "Do you prefer pasta or pizza?"; and organizing a weekly schedule) were to improve Nao's learning algorithms. But this was just a cover story, and the real test came af...
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