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Pay attention, kids! "The cyber propaganda-which frequently picks at the rawest, most sensitive issues in public discourse-is being pushed across a variety of platforms and with a more insidious approach than in the 2016 election" #WednesdayMorning politico.com/story/2019/02/…
2-"A wide-ranging disinformation campaign aimed at Democratic 2020 candidates is already under way on social media, with signs that foreign state actors are driving at least some of the activity.The main targets appear to be Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren
3-" (D-Mass.), former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), four of the most prominent announced or prospective candidates for president. A POLITICO review of recent data extracted from Twitter and from other platforms, as well as interviews with data
4-"scientists and digital campaign strategists, suggests that the goal of the coordinated barrage appears to be undermining the nascent candidacies through the dissemination of memes, hashtags, misinformation, and distortions of their positions. But the divisive nature of many
5-"of the posts also hint at a broader effort to sow discord and chaos within the Democratic presidential primary...Recent posts that have received widespread dissemination include racially inflammatory memes and messaging involving Harris, O’Rourke and Warren. In Warren’s case,
6-"a false narrative surfaced alleging that a blackface doll appeared on a kitchen cabinet in the background of the senator’s New Year’s Eve Instagram livestream. Not all of the activity is organized. Much of it appears to be organic, a reflection of the politically polarizing
7-"nature of some of the candidates. But there are clear signs of a coordinated effort of undetermined size that shares similar characteristics with the computational propaganda attacks launched by online trolls at Russia’s Internet Research Agency in the 2016 presidential
8-"election, which special counsel Robert Mueller accused of aiming to undermine the political process and elevate Donald Trump. “It looks like the 2020 presidential primary is going to be the next battleground to divide and confuse Americans,” said Brett Horvath, one of the
9-"founders of Guardians.ai, a tech company that works with a consortium of data scientists, academics and technologists to disrupt cyberattacks and protect pro-democracy groups from information warfare. “As it relates to information warfare in the 2020 cycle, we’re
10-"not on the verge of it — we’re already in the third inning.”...Over a recent 30-day period, between 2 and 15 percent of all Twitter mentions of the four candidates emanated in some way from within that cluster of accounts, according to the Guardians.ai findings.
11-"In that timeframe, all four candidates collectively had 6.8 million mentions on Twitter...Researchers and others interviewed for this story say they cannot conclusively point to the actors behind the coordinated activity. It’s unclear if they are rogue hackers, political
12-"activists or, as some contend, foreign state actors such as Russia, since it bears the hallmarks of past foreign attacks. One of the objectives of the activity, they say, is to divide the left by making the Democratic presidential primary as chaotic and toxic as possible."
13-"The proliferation of fake news, rapidly changing techniques by malicious actors and an underprepared field of Democratic candidates could make for a highly volatile primary election season." ~Excerpts Politico 2/20/19
