Cable Forum - View Single Post - UK Intelligence report in to Russian interference in UK Elections/Scottish Referendum

**Hugh** · 22-07-2020, 13:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carth

I'm with Nomadking on this, I haven't seen or heard a single instance that shows any actual proof of anything by anyone.

Lots of whispering, gesticulating, nudge nudge, what if type of crap circulating on the social media platforms, farcebook and twitter banning lots of 'fake' accounts etc, but nothing that shows me a direct line to a Russian telling me how to vote.

I do recall lots of bumf from political parties telling me how I should vote, maybe they're all Russian backed?

Again, that’s not how it works...

They used Social Media to target specific groups of people, displaying posts/ads that either provoke a reaction against something, or to strengthen their support for something - they use false Identities to make them look local, rather than be from "Boris in Vladivostok".

Example

Quote:

Psychologists and students of advertising say the ads were cleverly designed to look like other internet memes, and to appeal to readers’ emotions. Jay Van Bavel, an associate professor of psychology at NYU, says he was surprised at the sophistication of the campaign. “It wasn’t transparent lies. It was just pushing our buttons,” says Van Bavel. “To me, this is more pernicious. It’s not a matter of fiction that we can root out with fact-checking. It’s more about turning Americans against each other.”

The ads took issues that voters care about and then “fed them to us as aggressively as possible,” he says.

Facebook estimates that 10 million people saw the paid ads and up to 150 million people saw other content from the fake accounts, which Facebook has traced to the Internet Research Agency, a Kremlin-backed troll farm. The ads were placed by fake accounts with names like United Muslims of America, Blacktivist, and LGBT United that could have passed for real Facebook groups.