Russia is hacking your social media news feed

[Blue_Tires]

Now that most of our information — and the information news organizations use as raw material — is delivered by technology platforms such as social networks, what we know about the world is potentially hackable.

Propagandists must no longer convince professional news organizations to spread their stories; they just embed them into social media news feeds. Employees of the Russian propaganda machine, in particular, seem to be focused on finding ways to game the modern news delivery system. And though their techniques aren't perfect, they're making progress.

In a recent post on Medium.com, John Borthwick and Gilad Lotan of Betaworks, the New York City-based venture capital firm, detailed two cases in which hackers, apparently originating from Russia, attempted to mess with the news flow in the West. One of the two operations succeeded; the other failed.


The first case can be called up with a Google search of the terms "ISIS France support." That will yield, near the top of the results, stories from Newsweek and Vox.com describing a poll carried out for the Russian state-owned network, Russia Today. According to the survey, 16 percent of French citizens, and 27 percent of those ages 18-24, have a positive opinion of Islamic State. This, of course, is utter nonsense: the 27 percent number, for example, is based on a sample of only 105 young French people. Yet reporters from Vox and Newsweek saw the numbers in a tweet and wrote pieces citing the poll, not realizing it was bunk.

http://www.tricities.com/news/opinion_columns/russia-is-hacking-your-social-media-news-feed/article_557821b8-c868-11e4-84df-4b666fe7be98.html

Sadly, the emoprog dudebros will ignore this story as usual...Maybe I should put "NSA" in the thread title just bait some of them in...

[House of Roberts]

1. If Russia is hacking me, then they are extremely bored, and not well informed.

I don't use the social media, AKA YouTwitFace, enough to help them.

I did do a search for tires on Tire Rack recently, and now I get Tire Rack banner ads here at DU regularly.

[TexasTowelie]

2. Russia is hacking our news feed

or is it you?

Somebody pulled a DUzy in the Good Reads forum this afternoon.

[djean111]

3. And Google and Facebook are determining what is in it. And the NSA is recording it all.

We have been told, quite loftily, that we don't have to worry if we have nothing to hide, and that the media is corporately corrupt anyway. Once that is accepted, the ability to be outraged is gone. At least for me.

Hacking? All the countries who CAN, DO.

Edited to add - I don't use Facebook or anything else like that. Looking at Facebook when I accidentally click on something that takes me there - looks like there is so much crap about games and such that I have to wonder what even constitutes a "newsfeed" on Facebook. Whatever Bezos says, I guess. That was always my assumption, that it is doctored in some way anyway.

[Fumesucker]

4. I've seen this movie before