Thread: Thousands attended protest organized by Russians on Facebook

Added for Archive. Liberal sheep....colluding and being duped by foreign nationals.

Thousands attended protest organized by Russians on Facebook

BY ALI BRELAND -
10/31/17 01:15 PM ED

Thousands of Americans attended a march last November organized by a Russian group that used social media to interfere in the 2016 election.

The demonstration in New York City, which took place a few days after the election, appears to be the largest and most successful known effort to date pulled off by Russian-linked groups intent on using social media platforms to influence American politics.

Sixteen thousand Facebook users said that they planned to attend a Trump protest on Nov. 12, 2016, organized by the Facebook page for BlackMattersUS, a Russian-linked group that sought to capitalize on racial tensions between black and white Americans. The event was shared with 61,000 users.

As many as 5,000 to 10,000 protesters actually convened at Manhattan's Union Square. They then marched to Trump Tower, according to media reports at the time. The BlackMattersUS-organized rally took advantage of outrage among groups on the left following President Trump’s victory on Nov. 8 to galvanize support for its event. The group’s protest was the fourth consecutive anti-Trump rally in New York following election night, and one of many across the country.

“Join us in the streets! Stop Trump and his bigoted agenda!” reads the Facebook event page for the rally. “Divided is the reason we just fell. We must unite despite our differences to stop HATE from ruling the land.”

While the focus has been on Russian efforts ahead of the election, the BlackMatters rally days after Trump's victory shows that Russian-linked social media influence efforts continued after the election.

The BlackMatters organizing group was connected to the Internet Research Agency, a Russian “troll farm” with ties to the Kremlin, according to a recent investigation by the Russian Magazine RBC. Facebook has identified the Internet Research Agency as the group responsible for purchasing 3,000 political ads on Facebook’s platform and operating 470 accounts that appear to have attempted to influence the perspectives of Americans during the 2016 elections.

Facebook has since deleted those 470 accounts. BlackMatters's account has been deleted as well, although Facebook has not officially confirmed the reason for BlackMatters being deleted from its site. Twitter also appears to have deleted an account associated with the group, possibly in its own purge of accounts linked to Russian actors.

“This is another example of why it’s important to disclose who is paying for promoted posts on Facebook,” said Katherine Haenschen, a professor who researches digital media at Virginia Tech.

The march is an example of the types of “organic content” — posts created by users, rather than as ads — that lawmakers are looking for as they investigate the extent of Russian political manipulation of social media platforms. But Haenschen believes Facebook’s paid features might have helped the event go viral.

“It also speaks to the challenges of organic reach. It’s unlikely that this audience is free or organic,” Haenschen said, referring to BlackMatters's Facebook reach which included over 99,000 users who liked the page, according to an archived version of the page from May 16, 2017.

Facebook recently announced that it would introduce new transparency features, including making users who run election ads verify their identities with the company.

Haenschen says that this isn’t enough. She argues that this type of event that isn’t explicitly about elections could fall through the cracks, and says that Facebook should be aware of all users using the platform’s paid features.

For its part, Facebook says that it's trying to make sure that such content stays off its platform.

"The foreign interference we saw is reprehensible and outrageous and opened a new battleground for our company, our industry and our society," says Facebook General Counsel Colin Stretch in testimony he is set to deliver to the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday. "That foreign actors, hiding behind fake accounts, abused our platform and other internet services to try to sow division and discord — and to try to undermine our election process — is an assault on democracy, and it violates all of our values."

Top Democrats in the House and Senate Intelligence committees, Sen. Mark Warner (Va.) and Rep. Adam Schiff (Calif.), have both said that such organic posts tied to paid content will reveal the true scale of the Kremlin’s alleged social media campaign.

According to numbers in Facebook’s general counsel’s leaked congressional testimony, the number of people potentially touched by organic content eclipses the potential number reached by ads by hundreds of millions.

Lawmakers will have the chance to dig into this more when Facebook shares organic posts it has found to be created by Russian actors. Top lawyers from Facebook, Twitter and Google are expected to testify on Tuesday and Wednesday.

BlackMatters had organized other protests, but none revealed so far reached the level of support that the Nov. 12 protest did — in many cases, the organization’s events fizzled out and didn’t come to fruition. Others that actually did take place had a limited and isolated reach.

Other events that appear to be organized by the group tended to focus on rallies around race flash points, including the deaths of black men killed by law enforcement, The Hill found after reviewing 15 events by the organization. Others claimed to offer free legal education for immigrants.

One event was shared with 1,300 users on Facebook, of which 240 ultimately said that they would attend the “One Person One Vote One March,” on Dec. 3 in New York City, a protest against the electoral college. But it's unclear if the event actually occurred and, if it did, how many people attended.

“The Electoral College is an outdated, undemocratic system that does not reflect our modern society, and it needs to be changed immediately,” the event description reads. “Every American should be guaranteed that their vote counts!"

Posts on BlackMatters’s website also focus on matters of racial justice, highlighting instances of police brutality and racial justice concerns in the U.S.

The group reportedly recruited Americans who were unaware of its links to Russian actors to help its mobilizing efforts and organize these events.

“I thought it was a knockoff of Black Lives Matter,” one organizer who unwittingly worked with the group told BuzzFeed, but changed his mind after looking at the group’s website, which he thought “looked legit.”

The group’s social media and digital messaging contrasts with earlier social media activity by Russian actors who may have tried to interfere in the election. Outlets like The Daily Beast have revealed social media activity for Russian-linked groups that attempted to mobilize pro-Trump groups on the right before the election.

http://thehill.com/policy/technology...ns-on-facebook

Obviously they weren't in collusion with the Trump Campaign so who were they in collusion with?! The FBI?! The CIA?!

These Americans Were Tricked Into Working For Russia. They Say They Had No Idea.
Posted on October 17, 2017, at 10:34 p.m.

Rosalind Adams
Hayes Brown

BuzzFeed News spoke to four people who organized black rights protests and taught self-defense classes after being contacted by Russian trolls pretending to be US activists.

Russia’s most infamous troll farm recruited US activists to help stage protests and organize self-defense classes in black communities as part of an effort to sow divisions in US society ahead of the 2016 election and well into 2017.

Four people contacted by what is believed to be the “American Department” of the St. Petersburg-based Internet Research Agency told BuzzFeed News that while they found their contacts strange, they never suspected that they were the target of foreign recruitment.

The operation, including the names of the activists, was first reported by Russian news outlet RBC in a major investigation published Tuesday.

One target was Micah White, a cofounder of Occupy Wall Street. When he was contacted in May 2016 by a man named Yan Big Davis, who presented himself as a freelance reporter, he didn’t think anything of it, since he often gave interviews about activism.

According to emails seen by BuzzFeed News, Davis said he was writing for a site called BlackMattersUS, which had over 200,000 followers and focused “mostly on racism and police brutality themes.” In its report, based on interviews with current and former employees of the troll farm as well as a source close to its leadership and internal documents, RBC found that BlackMattersUS was linked to the Internet Research Agency.

The BlackMatters site, which is still up, features awkward language throughout. Its contact page tells those who would reach out, “You are exactly that person, who can help us to figure out not only the top stories, but also the events that are really important to an ordinary African-American.” The group did not immediately respond to a BuzzFeed News request for comment.

Although the group’s main site is still live, its Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook accounts have been suspended. RBC said Facebook suspended the group’s account as part of a purge of 470 accounts run by the Internet Research Agency. Andy Stone, a Facebook spokesperson, told BuzzFeed News he was "not able to confirm" that the groups were suspended as part of the purge.

Davis wrote to White requesting an interview. “We admire the job you did for the protest movement in the US,” he wrote in an email seen by BuzzFeed News.
When they spoke on the phone the following month, White said the connection sounded as if Davis was calling from a long distance. His accent sounded strange. He assumed he was probably speaking to an African man.

“The idea that he was a Russian was the furthest thing from my mind,” White told BuzzFeed News.
The questions Davis asked him in the interview also sounded different to him than the questions he routinely gets from reporters.





Micah White



White said that after the story was published on the BlackMatters site a few days later, he didn’t think more about it. But Davis continued to email him for several months and asked him to promote some events. White said that since the interview had been so strange and the piece hadn’t particularly resonated with him, “I just kind of ignored them.”

In August 2016, Davis emailed him about a flashmob dedicated to the MOVE 9, members of a black radical group that formed in the 1970s who are currently in prison. “I hope you will share our aspiration to bring attention to MOVE 9, seven of them are still alive,” Davis wrote. “They were in rows of the first people who fought with police brutality because they were worried about the safe future of black kids.”

White didn’t respond. “I support MOVE but it’s also outside of the normal concerns for black activists I would say,” he told BuzzFeed News.

The following month, Davis emailed him again asking him to share information with his “audience”about the case of Jerome Skee Smith, an African-American convicted of a murder he says he didn’t commit. “It is really the case when only simple sharing can save his life,” Davis wrote to him. White also didn’t respond. Davis emailed him one final time to tell him that the trial had been pushed back and to ask again that he share the information with his audience.

“Thank you for being a part of this. Together, we are creating history,” Davis wrote to him. An email sent to the address for Davis that corresponded with White went unanswered.

BlackMattersUS also contacted other activists such as Conrad James, who runs a nonprofit based in Raleigh, North Carolina called Living Ultra-Violet. James told BuzzFeed News that BlackMattersUS reached out with a message from its Facebook page, rather than from an individual member, asking him to speak at a rally in September 2016 after the death of Keith Lamont Scott, a black man who was shot by police in Charlotte.

“I thought it was a knockoff of Black Lives Matter,” James said about the name, but when he looked at their website, “they looked legit.”

James said that when he found out there was no organizer for the event, he offered to organize the rally himself and was told by the page’s manager to contact a woman named Stephanie Williamson, who he described to BuzzFeed News as a spokeswoman. While James said he found this odd, the only other detail that struck him as strange was a white man who he said accompanied Williamson and never said a word or smiled.

Other things checked out, however. Williamson gave him a bank card to pay for expenses such as microphones and speakers, James said. And the permits for the event appeared to be in order. James said he also organized a second, larger rally in October for BlackMattersUS that took place in tandem with a national set of protests organized by the NAACP, the ACLU, and other groups. BuzzFeed News could not immediately track down Williamson. A video hosted by the Black Matters YouTube account is titled “Stephanie Williamson at BM Charlotte protest.” James says that he no longer has Williamson’s contact information. It’s unclear whether Williamson was herself tricked into participating.

James said he didn’t find out that the group was linked to a Russian troll farm until he was contacted by reporters from RBC a few weeks ago.
But it was “angering,” James said, that “they were using black culture here in America as a springboard for a divisive tactic and strategy.”

The troll farm was also linked to a group called Black Fist, according to RBC. Black Fist’s site says that the group teaches black communities self-defense, or as the Black Fist site put it, "organized by black for black." The website is still up, though its Facebook and Instagram accounts have been suspended. The group did not immediately respond to a BuzzFeed News request for comment sent to the email address provided on its page. Facebook also declined to comment on Black Fist’s page being taken down.

"Be ready to protect your rights," the site reads. "Let them know that Black Power Matters."

One of the trainers listed on the Black Fist website, Omowale Adewale, says he was directly contacted by what he now knows to be the troll farm to hold courses in New York City. He's been active in politics for years, his personal website says, and is also an MMA fighter. His Instagram feed is filled with posts about civil rights and his vegan lifestyle. (A fourth person, who was also listed as a trainer on the site but did not wish to be named, said that they had no connection with the group and was unaware of their listing.)

Adewale, in an interview with BuzzFeed News between personal training clients, said that he was first contacted by the man he knew as "Taylor" via his Instagram in January 2017, to teach four self-defense classes a month. Though he was initially wary, his concerns dropped once the first of the payments came through — $320 per month. Adewale, like White, described the man with whom he spoke over the phone but never met, as having "an accent from the African continent."

"I'm thinking there is a sense he wanted to do something for the community, get this aptitude for self-defense, and I'm thinking someone else is handling education somewhere else, other community issues as well," he said. "We never talked about that."

The classes weren't hugely attended when they started in March — at most, a dozen people, Adewale recalled. Sometimes nobody would show up at all. But attendance started to rise as "Taylor" began paying for Facebook ads and other promotions to get more people to show up in Queens, then in added sessions in Brooklyn, Adewale said.

Soon there were two classes a week. Adewale said he was instructed by Taylor to take pictures and video of the sessions. He never spoke with any of the other four trainers listed on the site, he says, but became suspicious again when the people paying him began having trouble with Google Wallet, insisting that he switch to using PayPal.
That, combined with the fact that the group never discussed the politics that had drawn him in, caused Adewale to be leery.

"When I started to ask questions, that's when they had somebody who wanted to train with me, so they could start their own class," Adewale said, but that person was a martial arts novice, an oddity for a self-defense class. According to Adewale, Taylor soon stopped contacting him altogether.

The classes stopped in May. But Adewale said he didn’t realize that the situation was connected to Russia until recent reports began to connect Russian efforts to sway the election through Facebook, Twitter, and — in particular — targeting black organizers.

"The whole time I thought this was something they made up at the DNC," he said about the reported Russian interference in the election. "But they didn't contact me during the election, so what I'm getting from media outlets is that they're making it seem like it's just for the election. It was in January they contacted me."

Adewale said that Google has been in touch with him since May to discuss the security of the company's products.

"I think they were using everything they could, and when they could no longer use those resources, when they were being found out, then they were shutting everything down," he said.

Twitter Was Warned Repeatedly About This Fake Russian Troll Account But Refused To Take It Down

https://www.buzzfeed.com/rosalindada...18X#.fbPzJMoDZ

11/1/17

Russian Facebook Trolls Got Two Groups of People to Protest Each Other In Texas

10/30/17

Facebook says 126 million Americans may have seen Russia-linked political posts

10/31/17

Russian-backed social media accounts attacked Clinton before election, Trump after

10/31/17

'Kill them all' -- Russian-linked Facebook accounts called for violence

8/18/16

How Russian Trolls Are Ruining the Internet

I think this was all instigated and executed by agents and contractors of the FBI and CIA. Just my opinion.

Facebook ads purchased by Russian 'troll farm' sought political chaos on both sides of 2016 election

by Diana Stancy Correll | Sep 26, 2017, 7:01 PM

The descriptions for ads bought by a Russian "troll farm" and shared on Facebook were politically charged and intended to instigate political discord during the 2016 presidential election, according to reports this week. However, they were not necessarily intended to favor one candidate or issue.

Some of the ads expressed support for gun rights and the Second Amendment, while others discussed the dangers of undocumented immigrants to democracy in the U.S., CNN reported Tuesday.

Additionally, some of the ads advocated the Black Lives Matter movement, while others slammed it, according to a Washington Post report.

As a result, Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Richard Burr, R-N.C., said he did not think the ads were an indication of the Kremlin interfering in the 2016 presidential election, but rather about creating political "chaos" on both sides of the aisle.

"Listen, I've said I don't think this is about collusion. Facebook is a company that most advertisers rely on Facebook's information to determine what the target is," Burr told reporters Tuesday. "I think clearly there was an effort to bring some chaos to groups on the right and the left, so there's nothing that, at least preliminary, would lean toward one candidate versus the other. I think there was equal money sent trying to create some type of chaos on both sides of the political or ideological spectrum. We'll find more as we go in."

Additionally, Alex Stamos, Facebook's chief security officer, said the majority of the ads did not reference a candidate or the 2016 elections. Instead, he said the ads seemed to be simply divisive in nature, spanning a number of political issues.

"The ads and accounts appeared to focus on amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum -- touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights," he said in a statement earlier this month.

Facebook has provided copies of the ads and information to special counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Kremlin.

Facebook is anticipated to provide the same content to the Senate and House Intelligence Committee this week.

Facebook announced earlier this month $100,000 was purchased for ads from June 2015 to May 2017 by a Russian group called the Internet Research Agency -- a group that has promoted pro-Russia propaganda. The money was connected to approximately 3,000 ads and 470 "inauthentic accounts and pages."

As a result, Facebook suspended 470 accounts associated with the ads because they failed to meet authenticity requirements.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/fa...rticle/2635728