#boycottNFL is connected to Russia?
Russia-Linked Social Media Stoked U.S. Culture Wars Through the Election Up to National Anthem Debate
http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2017/09/27/how_russia_linked_social_media_stoked_u_s_culture_wars.html
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On Wednesday, the New York Times reported Twitter accounts suspected of being linked to Russia flooded social media on both sides of the weekend’s debate over players kneeling for the national anthem at NFL games. The accounts, which are under surveillance, used the hashtags #boycottnfl, #standforouranthem, and #takeaknee to inject themselves into Americans' line of sight online. Twitter is particularly fertile ground for attempts at an influence campaign because, unlike Facebook, it does not require users to confirm their identity. “In addition to Russia-linked Twitter accounts that posed as Americans, the platform was also used for large-scale automated messaging, using ‘bot’ accounts to spread false stories and promote news articles about emails from Democratic operatives that had been obtained by Russian hackers,” the Times notes. “Since last month, researchers at the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan initiative of the German Marshall Fund, a public policy research group in Washington, have been publicly tracking 600 Twitter accounts — human users and suspected bots alike — they have linked to Russian influence operations. Those were the accounts pushing the opposing messages on the N.F.L. and the national anthem.”
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