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Russian Trolls Tried -- and Failed -- To Push Divisive Content On Vaccines (fortune.com) 190

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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Russian Trolls Tried -- and Failed -- To Push Divisive Content On Vaccines

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  • "Outside of the Russian trolls, virtually no real Twitter users actually responded to the messages"

    Not even the stupid McCarthy bitch, who has thousands of dead kids on her conscience?

    • by OrangeTide ( 124937 ) on Saturday August 25, 2018 @11:52AM (#57192504) Homepage Journal

      or Donald Trump [twitter.com] ? He even states it more plainly [twitter.com] than this.

      It is clear that our commander-in-chief believes that vaccines causes autism. Despite any evidence. So I don't really worry too much about what some Russian bots are saying when we have real Americans spreading stupid theories.

      • I don't think it's clear at all that he believes that vaccines cause autism. He just likes to position himself as the one guy who will tell the truth, even when doctors, the media, the FBI, etc. are lying to you. That's what got him elected.

        And by the way, he's backing so many conspiracy theories, that at least one of them is likely to be true. Like picking 20 long-shots art the horse track. I personally like "9/11 inside job" at 20:1
      • President Trump refuses to ignore mounting evidence of serious health risks, even when that threatens pharma corporate profits. Because he actually cares about the well-being of the American people.

        And all you can do is scream, "HERESY!!!!!!"

    • Purpose of good (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Saturday August 25, 2018 @11:53AM (#57192514) Homepage Journal

      "Outside of the Russian trolls, virtually no real Twitter users actually responded to the messages"

      An obvious response comes to mind.

      Why not pick a political agenda (such as vaccination) and engineer a bot army that argues for the correct position?

      Specifically in this case, why doesn't a group of 40-or-so people get together and agree to play the analogous "troll" position, build a couple of hundred bots, and sow complacency and agreement (instead of divisiveness)?

      It sounds like bot trolling is an effective and disruptive way to sway many things - an election, regime satisfaction, and scientific belief.

      Why doesn't someone use that technique for the purposes of good?

      • Re:Purpose of good (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Unknown User ( 4795349 ) on Saturday August 25, 2018 @11:58AM (#57192542)
        To answer your question: because it would be immoral. The end does not justify arbitrary means.
        • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

          How about Russian twitter trolls are cheaper than American ones and will push what ever agenda they are paid to push, the typical PR=B$ troll scam, multiple accounts to push what ever agenda they are paid to push. Contracted out to the cheapest groups, going on for years. They are making up all sorts of crazy shit about every thing, insane paranoia, to push, a Mcarthyist style putsch, you know, speak against the American establishment and you are a Russian agent. Then you would also have, Russian nut ball a

        • Bots spreading useful information became immoral when?

      • Re:Purpose of good (Score:5, Insightful)

        by nine-times ( 778537 ) <nine.times@gmail.com> on Saturday August 25, 2018 @02:27PM (#57193376) Homepage

        There's a relatively non-obvious problem with your suggestion: Truths and falsehoods often don't have the same quality of information.

        To give a really simple example, consider these two statements:

        1) Joe tells you that he has invented a perpetual motion machine.
        2) Ed tells you that Joe almost certainly has not invented a perpetual motion machine.

        This is already simple, and I picked a topic so that you would already know that Joe is lying (or is wrong), and Ed is correct. What's more, this is an example that should be relatively easy to test and verify, so there's not a lot of ambiguity. Still, a lot of people will probably believe Joe, even in the face of evidence against it.

        But now ignore the subject matter for a second and think about the rest of the sentence. In this example, Joe claims [A] is true, and Ed claims that [A] is "almost certainly" false. That's because Joe, in the act of lying, is free to make statements with total certainty. Ed, in telling the authentic truth, has to admit that his knowledge is incomplete. Until Ed gathers more information about Joe's claim, he can't tell you what the machine is actually doing, does not have a physical model for the machines operation, and so on a certain level, has to concede a level of uncertainty.

        In addition, Joe is telling you something you want to believe, it's exciting. It opens possibilities. In a lie, Joe is free to construct his statement to tell you things you want to hear, and to engage you in whatever way is advantageous to him. Ed, on the other hand, it telling you something boring and disappointing, and it closes off possibilities. Because he's telling the truth, the kind of engagement that he can offer is limited by the reality of the subject he's trying to convey.

        I'm not an experts-- and there are experts in this kind of thing-- but I think it's pretty clear when you think about it that you can't get people to believe something simply by presenting them with true information, even from an abundance of sources. Often enough, people choose to believe falsehoods because they're comforting, easy, pleasant, or exciting.

        It also makes a lot of sense when you think about your suggestion. You're asking, "Why not create a bot army that argues for the truth?" But there are already plenty of people posting the truth. You don't need a bot army to push the idea that people should vaccinate their children, because you already have an army of smart, responsible, informed people who are pushing that viewpoint, but it's still failing to convince the anti-vaxxers.

        It's not because there isn't enough information or that there aren't enough voices, but that "vaccines caused my child's illness" is a story that people like. It lets them off the hook for any responsibility for their child's illness. It puts the blame on something that seems small and easy to avoid. If it's genetic, you don't really have control over that, and it feels like it's your fault for having shitty genes. If it's pollution, then you have to figure out who to blame and how to stop pollution. If it's a vaccine... well, you never liked bringing your kids in for vaccines anyway.

        • Such certainty! Such calm repose in confidence of the infalliblity of corporate and academic officialdom! Even in the face of your own valid arguments about the difficulty of proving something to be "true". Such serenity in ignoring all risk - only a fool could let mere evidence challenge the received TRUTH.

          Brother, I admire your pious conviction. It is said that faith is a gift from God. Truly you have been blessed!

        • by Calydor ( 739835 )

          Maybe I'm missing the point entirely, but when Ed told me that Joe almost certainly hadn't created a perpetual motion machine I started getting curious.

          • You are not missing anything. An ounce of wit is worth a pound of wisdom. Claims and counter-claims are not neat and linear problems confined to ideal individuals. Were you observation trivial, all the jokes made by framers of the discipline of Economics would not exist.
        • Often enough, people choose to believe falsehoods because they're comforting, easy, pleasant, or exciting.

          You can get people to believe a lie that they know is a lie for a few seconds just by speaking the lie without delay and with a sense of certainty. Your speaking with certainty causes them to doubt themselves. What would you expect from a non-skeptic that doesn't have the benefit of knowing your lie is a lie?

      • "It sounds like bot trolling is an effective and disruptive way to sway many things - an election, regime satisfaction, and scientific belief.

        Why doesn't someone use that technique for the purposes of good?"

        Because the technique does not produce one outcome or the other, it produces chaos. It may just so happen that out outcome prevails in chaos, or maybe all you get is the chaos. Those using the technique effectively don't care about any of the possible outcomes as much as they care about the chaos.

    • Re:Really? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by hey! ( 33014 ) on Saturday August 25, 2018 @11:55AM (#57192522) Homepage Journal

      I know people who are anti-vaxxers who are not stupid or uneducated. What they are is emotionally overwrought. In the architecture of the human brain, emotions have absolute priority over reason, so once you give your feelings a free rein they can lead you anywhere.

      We call these particular people pushing the anti-vaxx bullshit "Russian trolls" because of the tools they happen to use, but if you look at what they're actually *doing*, it'd be more accurate to call them "Russian propagandists". And propagandists know all about the power of inciting passion, both positive and negative.

      The Russian government has taken the measure of our society, and they obviously believe they have found a weakness. Freedom of communication and association. If their propagandists can encourage people to associate based on violent and paranoid passions, they can weaken us. It's psychological warfare, and that's not just a metaphor. In this case there will be casualties.

      • We call these particular people pushing the anti-vaxx bullshit "Russian trolls" because of the tools they happen to use, but if you look at what they're actually *doing*, it'd be more accurate to call them "Russian propagandists".

        I've been arguing for months that we should be calling them "Russian spies". To call them "trolls" implies that they're just being a bit pesky, and it's all in good fun. I agree that "propagandists" is more accurate, but it doesn't capture the fact that it's a foreign government doing this out of malicious intent, and for their own strategic advantage. They're spies, and they're doing a good job infiltrating our telecommunications and public discourse.

        • by hey! ( 33014 )

          The precisely correct term for what you're talking about is "provocateur".

          • Well... If you want to get all technical and debate it, the term "provocateur" is sometimes used to describe people who are somewhat innocuous. For example, I've heard people say that Kanye West is a provocateur, in the sense that he does provocative things. Then there's the term "agent provocateur", which would be somewhat apt, but arguably describes a subset of "spies".

            That is, the term "spy" is sometimes used generally to indicate anyone involved in intelligence, espionage, or some kind of adversarial

          • Why are you dragging Andy Kaufman into this? /s
      • In the architecture of the human brain, emotions have absolute priority over reason

        Maybe for YOU.

      • Everyone who disagrees with me is emotionally unbalanced!!

    • She is even more stupid than you think: https://www.androidpolice.com/... [androidpolice.com]
  • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Saturday August 25, 2018 @11:36AM (#57192438) Homepage Journal
    ...why did they remove the mercury from them after people started noticing and complaining? Comrade, think about it.
    • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25, 2018 @11:47AM (#57192486)

      Because dumbasses like you were using it as an excuse to not vaccinate their kids and they hoped removing it would help avoid more kids dying of diseases we can prevent.

      • by 110010001000 ( 697113 ) on Saturday August 25, 2018 @11:49AM (#57192492) Homepage Journal
        Rats! We have been foiled again Comrade! It would have succeeded if it weren't for the clever people here and the moderators!
      • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25, 2018 @12:16PM (#57192618)

        Because most people don't understand chemistry. Fearmongers spread that vaccines contained mercury even though it was in the form of the compound thimerosal which breaks down to ethylmercury in the body. Neither thimerosal or ethylmercury are one of the harmful mercury compunds like methylmercury, which is an organic compound that is formed by organisms combing mercury with carbon, or elemental mercury which is also toxic. However, good luck convincing the average person about the difference between ethylmercury and methylmercury.

        • Because most people don't understand chemistry. Fearmongers spread that vaccines contained mercury even though it was in the form of the compound thimerosal which breaks down to ethylmercury in the body. Neither thimerosal or ethylmercury are one of the harmful mercury compunds like methylmercury, which is an organic compound that is formed by organisms combing mercury with carbon, or elemental mercury which is also toxic. However, good luck convincing the average person about the difference between ethylmercury and methylmercury.

          Your post suggests that methylmercury differs from ethylmercury by being an organic compound, combining mercury with carbon; that is, that ethylmercury is not an organic compound, that it doesn't combine mercury with carbon. Would you like to clarify that, or do you have a fundamental misunderstanding of chemistry?

    • STFU and go get some chelation therapy for all that mercury you've obviously been snorting.
  • If you read Russia backwards it is Satan.
  • Thiomersal (Score:1, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The main reason people were against vaccinations were not the vaccines themeselves, but rather the mercury compound thiomersal [wikipedia.org] that was used as a preservative in them. The mercury exposure was claimed to cause autism in children. There were supposedly a bunch of scientific studies disproving this, but thiomersal was nevertheless eliminated from vaccines administered to children. It is still used in other vaccines that you might be getting as an adult. Yeah, Big Pharma says it is perfectly safe, but just go

    • Re:Thiomersal (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anubis IV ( 1279820 ) on Saturday August 25, 2018 @02:07PM (#57193262)

      Your own link indicates that you’ve got the cause and effect backwards. It wasn’t normal people being wary of thiomersal that led to its removal: it was the removal of thiomersal that led to normal people being wary of it.

      The reason thiomersal was removed from vaccines was because it metabolizes to ethylmercury, which is similar to a known-danger, methylmercury. Working on the assumption that it was just as dangerous, the CDC did some naive extrapolations from what we knew about methylmercury dosages and determined that the dosage of thiomersal in a vaccine, while likely not dangerous, was close enough that it was better to have it removed. So, as a purely precautionary measure, the CDC had thiomersal removed from all vaccines beginning in 1999 (with Europe following suit), which was the right thing to do until further studies could be done. Later studies discovered that ethylmercury flushes out of the human body much faster than methylmercury and interacts very differently with our tissue, making it nowhere close to as dangerous as methylmercury, meaning that it was always perfectly safe at the dosage levels present in vaccines.

      As for your advocacy that people make up their own minds, how about you let someone who has gone to school for the better part of a decade so that they could specialize on this topic break the issue down for you, rather than relying on Wikipedia? What next, hand people the source code to the Linux kernel and tell them they should make up their own minds about whether it’s being used to spy on out children? People aren’t equipped to make up their own minds about these sorts of topics. Either equip them to do so or point them to those who are. Telling people to “go and make up their own minds” without a foundation to do so or any of the relevant context that is necessary for an informed opinion is like pushing someone off a cliff without a parachute or any training on how to use one.

      And while a few people took note of thiomersal’s removal and bandied around conspiracy theories, it probably would have blown over, were it not for Andrew Wakefield [wikipedia.org] publishing his long-since discredited, retracted by its publisher, fraudulently-researched paper indicating a link between vaccines and autism. In doing so, he effectively threw fire on the burgeoning anti-vax movement, allowing it to become the circus it is today, with brainless celebrities repeating utter and complete FUD as fact. Mind you, he was never licensed as a medical practitioner in the US, and he was stripped of his license in Europe as a result of his name being erased from the medical register by the UK’s General Medical Council, which is the strictest sanction they could impose after finding him guilty on all charges brought against him.

      As for thiomersal in vaccines being linked to autism, it hasn’t been. In fact, the rate of autism has continued to increase since thiomersal was removed back in 1999, which is a contraindicator to the notion that it’s at fault. But hey, why let facts get in the way of what you’re saying?

      • by Anonymous Coward

        how about you let someone who has gone to school for the better part of a decade so that they could specialize on this topic break the issue down for you, rather than relying on Wikipedia?
        People arenâ(TM)t equipped to make up their own minds about these sorts of topics.

        This attitude is just one of the many things that keep the issue alive in the first place. "You are not educated enough to understand the issue" used as an argument always indicates that you are the one who does not understand the issue.

        • "You are not educated enough to understand the issue" used as an argument always indicates that you are the one who does not understand the issue. If you understand something, you should be able to explain it in a simple and straightforward way, so that any layman could understand it.

          We can, and we have. People just refuse to accept it. I can tell you all day that ethylmercury and methylmercury behave differently in the body, but if you're a jackass who insists on believing that both are dangerous and that I'm part of some grand conspiracy to poison your kids there is not a damn thing I can do to change your mind.

          Someone pointing out that you're not an expert and don't understand something is not an insult. None of us are experts in the vast majority of things there are to know. If

        • This attitude is just one of the many things that keep the issue alive in the first place. "You are not educated enough to understand the issue" used as an argument always indicates that you are the one who does not understand the issue.

          Except that isn’t what I argued. I said people aren’t equipped to understand, so you should be equipping them to do so or pointing them to people who are equipped to do so. I never suggested people are too stupid to understand. That’s an argument you’re trying to shove in my mouth.

          If you understand something, you should be able to explain it in a simple and straightforward way, so that any layman could understand it.

          I literally spent an entire paragraph explaining why you were wrong in a simple and straightforward way so that you could understand. It was the paragraph right before the one you quoted. I was practicing w

      • Some kind of preservative is needed.
        Deuterium oxide could be use to preserve vaccines as it is by definition sterile and microbes
        cannot grow in it without extensive adaptation. Additionally, D2O reduces protein denaturiztion at low temperatures.
        However, trying to explain stable nuclear isotopes to non-scientists once the word "nuclear" is uttered is impossible.

  • failed? (Score:4, Informative)

    by Lordfly ( 590616 ) on Saturday August 25, 2018 @11:52AM (#57192508) Journal

    There's currently a measle outbreak in a dozen states because so many idiots think vaccines will kill their child.

    Once again, the Russians are running circles around us.

    (and hello to all the Brave Comrades reading Slashdot here! I hope you get an extra ration of vodka today.)

  • by Anonymous Coward on Saturday August 25, 2018 @11:54AM (#57192518)

    TFA>_ Russian outfits have increasingly used social media to toy with people's emotions to influence their behavior

    They're not toying with people's emotions, they find cracks in American classes (arising from poor education in the first place) and use them to place wedges (inflammatory comments) and divide the country even further.

    That is not very sophisticated from them and the guilt is partly upon the Americans themselves for failing to provide decent affordable education. It's funny how people from a failed ideology (socialism/communism) can still exploit flaws in capitalism.

    Their methods are the classical FUD, applied to vaccination, Democrats (supposedly) ulterior motives, technology (space exploration/round world), etc etc

    Only the stupid fall for it, but the problem is that success in America is measured by affluence, not by intellectual prowess. Given enough stupid voters one could even promote a stupid President and make him victorious.

    People have a tendency of being proud of what they do even if it's dumb. Some Windows users are proud of not understanding computers -- imagine that!

    • I agree that part of the problem is education. On the other hand, I don't think that quite covers the problem.

      For one, there are highly educated people who fall for really stupid scams. We could look at adding something to our education system to help people recognize scams, propaganda, etc. It wouldn't be a bad idea, but I don't think that really covers it either. I honestly think that part of the problem is, propaganda has taken on an unhealthy role in our everyday society already, leaving us open to

  • the one thing I find the conspiracy theorists have in common seems to be a shared community. It doesn't matter how weird or nutty you are, if you believe then you're one of us and we'll put up with all your crazy shit. I see the same behavior in a lot of hobbies. Pipe clubs come to mind. I see the pattern a lot with Table top RPG players too. More controversially I see it with religions and gun lovers.

    If anyone's wondering why so many folks believe this kind of clap-trap that's why. It lets people who a
    • You should visit one of the Tesla fan sites (like electrek.co or Teslarati). It just shows how insular people can become completely delusional.
  • by Anonymous Coward

    ....whilst all cybersecurity experts laugh at the 'evidence' for what it is - garbage.

  • If you're gonna troll, you need to learn the English language gooder. It embiggens the effectiveness of your message.
  • And here I was thinking it was due to utter cluelessness in our own society. But noooo, all those idiots anti-vaccers, through no fault of their own, were just misled by zee eevil Russians!

    Given their total mind control and inevitable world conquest, I think the only thing left for us defenseless sheeple is to just join the wave of the future and learn Russian. I mean, I have _some_ defense against them in the form of an adblocker, but how long can I hold out when they control my every move? Hell, even this

    • by Max_W ( 812974 )

      ...I think the only thing left for us ... is to ... learn Russian....

      Actually it would be a good idea. All the leading "specialists" on Russia: Müller, Clintons, McCain, etc. do not speak a word in Russian, never visited Russia, except maybe an airport and diplomatic buildings in the capital, have a vague idea of its history and culture.

      As a result they just cannot grasp the issues, problems, and worries of the Russian society. It seems to me sometimes they are trying to communicate not with the real country but with a phantom which they themselves created by a coll

      • I read in "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" that the agents that they sent to various locations basically always had a complete lack of both the culture and language of the place they where supposed to "set up shop in". It's as if the agency didn't trust people with too much knowledge of the country they where supposed to spy on (aka if they know this much about Russia then they must be KGB agents).
      • Ok, let's have a slightly more serious posting then. I don't speak Russian, but I can read Cyrillic. You can learn too - it takes about an hour to learn the 33 characters (less if you already know Greek). Armed with this knowledge I have visited Russia three times, and found to my delight that I can make sense of a substantial amount of text that I see out on the street, with a great many words similar to Dutch or English words. Note that this is not standard for a Slavic language; Polish or Czech are writt

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Pay no attention to the media behind the curtain.

  • by Anonymous Coward

    Libs want us to inject who knows what into our bodies and hurt our kids for unproven "vaccine" when it is proven kids do just as well without them and are safe from the autism. I bet this whole story is just more fake stuff from lamestream media, but even if it were true I'd thank the Russias for at least trying to help us see light instead of endless lies and bullshit of liberal SJW politics maskerading as "science".

  • Due to moronic Westerners getting there first

  • it's also notable for the fact that most Twitter users appeared to have ignored its anti-vaccine messages.

    But ... Russians! It's not possible to simply ignore their messages, is it??

    I thought they had secret mind control powers on social media!

  • We're on to you fucking Russian sonsofbitches, fuck off back to your shitty dictatorship and tell Putin you failed.

    Of course if it weren't for so-called 'social media' then none of this would happen. Dump Facebook, dump Twitter, dump all of it. Go back to actually being social with actual people so you know who the hell you're talking to.
  • We should hire the conspiracy theorists to search for foreign subversive activities.

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." -- Albert Einstein

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