Originally Posted by Got Stripers
I hope we survive the "Trump Era".
No doubt, we will all die.
This thread started to discuss disinformation, phantom ghost writers, Russian backed social media efforts to not only interfere in our elections, but to influence the public's perspective of things Russia (you could probably add NK and China) feels are in their best interest globally. To Russia that's attacking anything democratic, but yet our Potus still has a hard time admitting Russian meddling even happened. Just kills me that he even goes so far as to state he believe's Putin is being honest when he tells him Russia didn't do it.
I recall that it started with a strange, inconclusive, article in which Russian cyber interference was not as heavily emphasized as you imply, but only a shadow part of the story. Nor did it get into Trump and his denials, or NK or China. Rather, the article covered the broad range of disinformation tactics, including CIA, NYT, Major US media outlets, which were all intentional efforts of disinformation. And it finally admitted that outlets, such as the very one publishing the article, Counterpunch itself, were partly responsible for unintentionally spreading disinformation because of their zeal to reveal and spread information to which the public is unaware.
The interesting detective story of Counterpunch's search for the identity of Alice Donovan couldn't implicate her as an agent of disinformation. Her stories were not false nor were they disinformation. Nor did they appear to promote Russian interests.
According to the article "None of her stories focus specifically on Russia. When they do mention Russia, it’s largely in the context of the Syrian war. Some are critical of Hillary Clinton. Others are critical of Donald Trump. Mostly the stories are about policy, not politics. None are especially earth-shaking. They are read, but not widely disseminated."
Her articles were all copies or rewrites of existing stories already disseminated in various media. She was guilty not of disinformation, but of plagiarizing and not identifying herself.
The article was an example of how disinformation could be spread, intentionally or unintentionally, even by the publisher of the article. But cyber space is only a new vehicle for trafficking disinformation which has been spread by every other means known to human societies. The article shows a cyber way. And why we have to be wary and circumspect.
You of course are well trained in the Trump tactic of misdirection and changing the subject is a predictable tactic,
I didn't change the subject. There was an important section in the article which related exactly to my post about Trump arming the Ukraine. A small piece of that section is "While the current US administration has stopped short of supplying Ukraine with lethal weapons, it has been a strong supporter of Ukraine with financial aid, and has slapped sanctions on Russia in protest at its actions. With Trump in the White House many in Kiev fear they could be abandoned."
I'm not going to accuse you of misdirection, or being trained by anti-Trumpists, but I wonder if you actually read the article.
is that because you don't perceive this new cyber warfare a problem?
It's a new form of an old problem. The old established media was and is filled with disinformation. The new online media surely is not going to escape the problem. The advantage of the new media is that opposing views, most of which are not funded by large financially interested entities, nor by government sponsorship, are readily available, and much more so than with the old, established, and highly politicized media.
Possibly it's because like Trump, if you admit that the Russians indeed did meddle and likely influence our 2016 election, then it somehow taints the Trump win?
Russians influencing the election is a canard that doesn't interest me. And as far as tainting an election, can you name a presidential election which was not "tainted" according to biased opinions. The object is to win, battered and scarred by opposing political rhetoric, then do what your electorate voted for. So far, Trump has been doing things I approve of. I don't care about his style or whatever someone wants to taint him with.
US policies that were in place and I suspect regardless of who won in 2016, probably wouldn't have changed all that much in the handling of the Ukraine or the Syria arenas, however I'll give you a Trump high five for the redirection; it was as predictable as many of your next responses likely are.
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