I am setting up this blog to address a number of technical and legal issues that, over the long run, can affect the freedom of media newbies like me to speak freely on the Internet and other low-cost media that have developed in the past ten years.
Since the 1990s I have been very involved with fighting the military "don't ask don't tell" policy for gays in the military, and with First Amendment issues. Best contact is 571-334-6107 (legitimate calls; messages can be left; if not picked up retry; I don't answer when driving) Three other url's: doaskdotell.com, billboushka.com johnwboushka.com Links to my URLs are provided for legitimate content and user navigation purposes only.
My legal name is "John William Boushka" or "John W. Boushka"; my parents gave me the nickname of "Bill" based on my middle name, and this is how I am generally greeted. This is also the name for my book authorship. On the Web, you can find me as both "Bill Boushka" and "John W. Boushka"; this has been the case since the late 1990s. Sometimes I can be located as "John Boushka" without the "W." That's the identity my parents dealt me in 1943!
New report for Senate obtained by Washington Post make social media companies look like easy marks for organized enemy propaganda
Craig Timberg and Tony Room have a detailed Washington
Postarticle Sunday about a report for the Senate intelligence committee on
Russian manipulation of American political views with social media disinformation
on many platforms, starting around 2014 (about the time ISIS caught public
attention).
The campaigns consistently targeted various identarian
groups. At the same time, more individualistic users were unaware that some of
their more distant friends and followers were easily influenced by people
posing as Americans with more extreme views.
Occasionally they created fake accounts impersonating
real American users, but were often caught quickly.
A few would try to manipulate users into illegal
activity, like assisting people to come into the country illegally.Sometimes they would friend less
impressionable users and try to see if they could swindle them, and then often
give up and disappear.
Many tried to appeal to emotion.
It is shocking how the large social media platforms
became a “computational tool” for authoritarians.
The Post maintains they were very determined to get
Donald Trump elected.
Update: Dec. 18 The company that provided the report seems to be New Knowledge. If you "like" a message from a bot, you'll see more of it. From the CNN deport it's pretty obvious that the presentation from the bots is very biased and extreme. Another report comes from the Computational Propaganda Projectat Oxford University.
But there is also some evidence that Russians trolled more intellectual speakers and concluded that they didn't "care" about people whom elites considered as anti-intellectual and impressionable, and would not pay attention to what was happening. They exploited "cultural Marxism" techniques from the past. They are exploiting the idea that many "elites" feel "air-gap" protection from paying much attention to the feelings of those "beneath them" and having much to do with them. It's the "basket of deplorables" issue.
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