[skinster]

The fact that RT, Russian sponsored propaganda of other varieties and you get so much hurt from NAFO and requires a whole propaganda response warms my heart like a HIMMARs rocket straight in to a logistics hub of the invaders.

RT is not The Grayzone. They are two separate media organisations, one in Russia and the other in the U.S.

RT is state-funded (like the BBC is) and The Grayzone is funded, apparently, by "Putins regime" but we are yet to see any evidence of this made-up bullshit, precisely because it is made-up bullshit. If you believe this, how come you can't prove it?

[JohnRawls]

RT is not The Grayzone. They are two separate media organisations, one in Russia and the other in the U.S.

RT is state-funded (like the BBC is) and The Grayzone is funded, apparently, by "Putins regime" but we are yet to see any evidence of this made-up bullshit, precisely because it is made-up bullshit. If you believe this, how come you can't prove it?

RT is run and supported by almost the same people that run greyzone. The difference is just that greyzone pretends to be "left" while having a mask.

[skinster]

RT is run and supported by almost the same people that run greyzone. The difference is just that greyzone pretends to be "left" while having a mask.

No, RT is a separate org to The Grayzone, the latter are independent journalists and the former are state-run media.

If what you were saying wasn't utter bollocks you'd have proved it by now. But you can't, so you think repeating the same thing over and over again might make it true.

It doesn't. It just makes you look like a silly liar.

[JohnRawls]

No, RT is a separate org to The Grayzone, the latter are independent journalists and the former are state-run media.

If what you were saying wasn't utter bollocks you'd have proved it by now. But you can't, so you think repeating the same thing over and over again might make it true.

It doesn't. It just makes you look like a silly liar.

Open wiki, look at the info and sources. Then google can help you also. Why do RT journalists and management migrate to greyzone and then back to RT? Why does owner of greyzone attend RT anniversaries and gets to meet Putin? Where are the money coming from Karl if they have ¬900 Patreon subscribers? The owner is married to a former RT "journalist" likely to be a KGB honeytrap. His messaging is also perfectly aligned with RT and Russian state propaganda in general, most of which has been debunked or proven fake. Lets not forget here, war was fake news before Russia actually attacked then it became NATOs fault.

[skinster]

Open wiki, look at the info and sources. Then google can help you also. Why do RT journalists and management migrate to greyzone and then back to RT? Why does owner of greyzone attend RT anniversaries and gets to meet Putin? Where are the money coming from Karl if they have ¬900 Patreon subscribers? The owner is married to a former RT "journalist" likely to be a KGB honeytrap. His messaging is also perfectly aligned with RT and Russian state propaganda in general, most of which has been debunked or proven fake. Lets not forget here, war was fake news before Russia actually attacked then it became NATOs fault.

For the fifth time, your (silly) opinions are not evidence for anything, except that you repeatedly have an inability to prove your (silly) claims.

First you bitched about The Grayzone staff because one of their journalists exposed the NAFO troll farm that you are a part of, as a useful idiot I might add, rather than amongst the leadership, and now you keep yammering on about RT despite their offices being closed down all over the West so that dorks who fear alternative points of view can get outside from under their beds..

Prove it or shut up because you're making yourself look like a right idiot, and while that's funny, it's boring too, and off-topic.

[JohnRawls]

For the fifth time, your (silly) opinions are not evidence for anything, except that you repeatedly have an inability to prove your (silly) claims.

First you bitched about The Grayzone staff because one of their journalists exposed the NAFO troll farm that you are a part of, as a useful idiot I might add, rather than amongst the leadership, and now you keep yammering on about RT despite their offices being closed down all over the West so that dorks who fear alternative points of view can get outside from under their beds..

Prove it or shut up because you're making yourself look like a right idiot, and while that's funny, it's boring too, and off-topic.

But that is not what most people here are saying Too bad I can't trigger #NAFOArticle5 on here

[skinster]

Who else said what? Are you mental?

Anyway, if you can't prove the dumb shit you say, maybe reconsider saying dumb shit.

[JohnRawls]

^ @ "skinster" (lmao) you probably you should look for a doctor's help

[skinster]

He was referring to my screen name which he finds odd and it's something he commented on before. I wasn't sure how to respond to him, so didn't bother.

Lol that you're referring to him as "most people", but I can see why you would be reeking with desperation and clutching at any straws you could since you clearly can't prove the lies you tell.

[JohnRawls]

Careful @Szabo, you are exposing the evil @skinster's true colors by exposing her for who she really is: out of touch and delusional who does not have the facts and truth or reality on her side.

[skinster]

I will not lie, I do have a tendency to trigger the slava ukraini dorks. It's fun.

Anyway, this is all a strange way for you to distract from your silly claims about The Grayzone, but you do you.

[JohnRawls]

I will not lie, I do have a tendency to trigger the slava ukraini dorks. It's fun.

Anyway, this is all a strange way for you to distract from your silly claims about The Grayzone, but you do you.

What is there to distract from if it is true what I said.

[skinster]

It's not true, because you can't prove it. That's the point. *insertclownemoticonhere*

[QatzelOk]

What is there to distract from if it is true what I said.

The idea that the Grayzone and RT are the same outfit... is like saying that Hamilton 68 and the New York Times are the same people.

Yes, they might know each other because journalists have common links.

By the way, did you ever work for Hamilton 68 or one of the other official state lies organizations that corrupt western leaders exploit in order to pilage their own countries before they collapse into bankruptcy and violence?

[JohnRawls]

The idea that the Grayzone and RT are the same outfit... is like saying that Hamilton 68 and the New York Times are the same people.

Yes, they might know each other because journalists have common links.

By the way, did you ever work for Hamilton 68 or one of the other official state lies organizations that corrupt western leaders exploit in order to pilage their own countries before they collapse into bankruptcy and violence?

@skinster You both have no clue do you. RT anniversary attendance, you get directly paid for if you are from abroad. Meetings with Putin are stricktly coordinated and also usually you get paid for events. These "benefits" are totally out of reach for people who are not Russian propagandists or sponsored useful idiots.

It is like you guys have no clue what you are talking about or don't know how Russia operates at all.

[skinster]

The idea that the Grayzone and RT are the same outfit... is like saying that Hamilton 68 and the New York Times are the same people.

His initial claim was The Grayzone are funded by "Putins regime". I asked him to prove that but he only responds with more of his worthless opinion, which with each post, he keeps adding with new stuff that he's pulled out of his ass.

Worse, this is coming from someone who promotes the NAFO bot farms which are Western intel propaganda. The reason he's attacking The Grayzone is because they were amongst those who exposed what NAFO is. That's all that's going on here.

On that note:

Researchers Find Massive Anti-Russian ‘Bot Army’
An Australian university has unearthed millions of Tweets by fake accounts pushing disinformation on the Ukraine war, Peter Cronau reports. The sample size dwarfs other studies of covert propaganda about the war on social media.

A team of researchers at the University of Adelaide have found that as many as 80 percent of tweets about the 2022 Russia-Ukraine invasion in its early weeks were part of a covert propaganda campaign originating from automated fake “bot” accounts.

An anti-Russia propaganda campaign originating from a “bot army” of phony automated Twitter accounts flooded the internet at the start of the war.

The research shows that of the more than 5 million tweets studied, 90.2 percent (both bot and non-bot) came from accounts that were pro-Ukraine, with fewer than 7 percent of the accounts being classed as pro-Russian.

The university researchers also found these automated tweets had been purposely used to drive up fear amongst people targeted by them, boosting a high level of statistically measurable “angst” in the online discourse.

The research team analysed a massively unprecedented 5,203,746 tweets, sent with key hashtags, in the first two weeks of the Russian invasion of Ukraine from Feb. 24. The researchers looked at predominately English-language accounts. A calculated 1.8 million unique Twitter accounts in the dataset posted at least one English-language tweet.

The results were published in August in a research paper, titled “#IStandWithPutin versus #IStandWithUkraine: The interaction of bots and humans in discussion of the Russia/Ukraine war,” by the University of Adelaide’s School of Mathematical Science.

The size of the sample under study, of over 5-million tweets, dwarfs other recent studies of covert propaganda in social media surrounding the Ukraine war.

The little-reported Stanford University/Graphika research on Western disinformation, analysed by Declassified Australia in September, examined just under 300,000 tweets from 146 Twitter accounts.

The Meta/Facebook research on Russian disinformation reported widely by mainstream media, including by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) a fortnight later, looked at only 1,600 Facebook accounts.

Reports on the new research have appeared in only a few independent media sites, and on Russia’s RT. The ground-breaking study exposing a massive anti-Russia social media disinformation campaign has been effectively ignored by Western establishment media, showing how stories that don’t fit the desired pro-Western narrative are routinely buried.

Disinformation Blitz Krieg
The Adelaide University researchers unearthed a massive organised pro-Ukraine influence operation underway from the early stages of the conflict. Overall, the study found automated “bot” accounts to be the source of between 60 to 80 percent of all tweets in the dataset.

The published data shows that in the first week of the Ukraine-Russia war there was a huge mass of pro-Ukrainian hashtag bot activity. Approximately 3.5 million tweets using the hashtag #IStandWithUkraine were sent by bots in that first week.

In fact, it was like someone had flicked a switch at the start of the war as pro-Ukraine bot activity suddenly burst into life. In that first day of the war the #IStandWithUkraine hashtag was used in as many as 38,000 tweets each hour, rising to 50,000 tweets an hour by day three of the war.

By comparison, the data shows that in the first week there was an almost total absence of pro-Russian bot activity using the key hashtags. During that first week of the invasion, pro-Russian bots were sending off tweets using the #IStandWithPutin or #IStandWithRussia hashtags at a rate of only several hundred per hour.
(Graph inside article)

Given the apparent long-range planning for the invasion of Ukraine, cyber experts expressed surprise that Russian cyber and internet responses were so laggard. A researcher at the Centre for Security Studies in Switzerland, said: “The [pro-Russian] cyber operations we have seen do not show long preparation, and instead look rather haphazard.”

After being apparently left flatfooted, the #IStandWithPutin hashtag mainly from automated bots, eventually fired up a week after the start of the war. That hashtag started appearing in higher numbers on March 2, day 7 of the war. It reached 10,000 tweets per hour just twice over the next two days, still way behind the pro-Ukraine tweeting activity.

The #IStandWithRussia hashtag use was even smaller, reaching only 4,000 tweets per hour. After just two days of operation, the pro-Russian hashtag activity had dropped away almost completely. The study’s researchers noted the automated bot accounts “likely used by Russian authorities,” were “removed likely by pro-Ukrainian authorities.”

The reaction against these pro-Russian accounts had been swift. On March 5, after the #IStandWithPutin hashtag had trended on Twitter, the company announced it had banned over 100 accounts using the hashtag for violating its “platform manipulation and spam policy” and participating in “coordinated inauthentic behaviour.”

Later that month, the Ukraine Security Service (SBU) reportedly raided five “bot farms”’ operating inside the country. The Russia-linked bot operators were reportedly operating through 100,000 fake social media accounts spreading disinformation that was “intended to inspire panic among Ukrainian masses.”

Unfiltered Research
The landmark Adelaide University research differs from these earlier revelations in another most unique and spectacular way.

While the Stanford-Graphika and Meta research was produced by researchers who have long-term deep ties to the U.S. national security state, the Adelaide University researchers are remarkably independent. The academic team is from the university’s School of Mathematical Science.

Using mathematical calculations, they set out to predict and model people’s psychological traits based on their digital footprint.

Unlike the datasets selected and provided for the Stanford/Graphika and the Meta research, the data the Adelaide University team accessed did not come from accounts that had been detected for breaching guidelines and shut down by Meta or Twitter.

Joshua Watt is one of the lead researchers on the university team, and is a Master of Philosophy candidate in applied mathematics.

He told Declassified Australia that the dataset of 5 million tweets was accessed directly by the team from Twitter accounts on the internet using an academic license giving access to the Twitter API.

The “Application Programming Interface” is a data communication software tool that allows researchers to directly retrieve and analyse Twitter data.

The fake tweets and automated bot accounts had not been detected and removed by Twitter before being analysed by the researchers, although some were possibly removed in Twitter’s March sweep.

Watt told Declassified Australia that in fact many of the bot accounts behind the 5 million tweets studied are likely to be still up and running.

Declassified Australia contacted Twitter to ask what action they may have taken to remove the fake bot accounts identified in the University of Adelaide research. They had not responded by the time of going to press.

Critical Tool in Info War
This new research paper confirms mounting fears that social media has covertly become what the researchers call “a critical tool in information warfare playing a large role in the Russian invasion of Ukraine.”

The Adelaide University researchers tried their best to be noncommittal in describing the activities of the fake Twitter accounts, although they had found the vast majority – over 90 percent – were anti-Russian messages. They stated: “Both sides in the Ukrainian conflict use the online information environment to influence geopolitical dynamics and sway public opinion.”

They found the two main participating sides in the propaganda war have their own particular goals and style. “Russian social media pushes narratives around their motivation, and Ukrainian social media aims to foster and maintain external support from Western countries, as well as promote their military efforts while undermining the perception of the Russian military.”

While the research findings concentrated on automated Twitter bots, there were also findings on the use of hashtags by non-bot tweeters. They found significant information flows from non-bot pro-Russian accounts, but no significant flows from non-bot pro-Ukraine accounts.

As well as being far more active, the pro-Ukraine side was found to be far more advanced in its use of automated bots. The pro-Ukrainian side used more “astroturf bots” than the pro-Russians. Astroturf bots are hyper-active political bots that continuously follow many other accounts to increase followers of that account.

Social Media Role in Boosting Fear
Crucially, the University of Adelaide researchers also investigated the psychological influence the fake automated bot accounts had on the online conversation during those early weeks of the war.

These conversations in a target audience may develop over time into support or opposition towards governments and policies – but they may also have more instant effects influencing the target audiences’ immediate decisions.

The study found that it was the tweets from the fake “bot” accounts that most drove an increase in conversations surrounding “angst” amongst people targeted by them. They found these automated bot accounts increased “the use of words in the angst category which contains words related to fear and worry, such as ‘shame,’ ‘terrorist,’ ‘threat, ‘panic.’”

By combining the “angst” messaging with messages about “motion” and geographical locations, the researchers found “the bot accounts are influencing more discussion surrounding moving/fleeing/going or staying.” The researchers believe this effect may well have been to influence Ukrainians even away from the conflict zones to flee from their homes.

The research shows that fake automated social media “bot” accounts do manipulate public opinion by shaping the discourse, sometimes in very specific ways. The results provide a chilling indication of the very real malign effects that mass social media disinformation campaigns can have on an innocent civilian population.

Origins of Twitter Bot Accounts
The researchers report that the overwhelming level of Twitter disinformation that was anti-Russian was from bots “likely [organised] by pro-Ukrainian authorities.”

The researchers asserted no further findings about the origin of the 5 million tweets, but did find that some bots “are pushing campaigns specific to certain countries [unnamed], and hence sharing content aligned with those timezones.” The data does show that the peak time for a selection of pro-Ukrainian bot activity occurred between 6pm and 9pm across U.S. time zones.

Some indication of the origin and the targeting of the messages could be deduced from the specific languages used in the 5 million tweets. Over 3.5 million tweets, or 67 percent, were in the English language, with fewer that 2 percent in Russian and Ukrainian.

In May 2022, the National Security Agency (NSA) director and U.S. cyber command chief, General Paul Nakasone, revealed that the Cyber Command had been conducting offensive Information Operations in support of Ukraine.

“We’ve conducted a series of operations across the full spectrum: offensive, defensive, [and] information operations,” Nakasone said.

Nakasone said the U.S. has been conducting operations aimed at dismantling Russian propaganda. He said the operations were lawful, conducted through policy determined by the U.S. Defense Department and with civilian oversight.

Nakasone said the U.S. seeks to tell the truth when conducting an information operation, unlike Russia.

U.S. Cyber Command had deployed to Ukraine a “hunt forward” cyber team in December to help shore up Ukraine’s cyber defences and networks against active threats in anticipation of the invasion.

A newly formed European Union cyber rapid response team consisting of 12 experts joined the Cyber Command team to look for active cyber threats inside Ukrainian networks and to strengthen the country’s cyber defences.

The U.S. has invested $40 million since 2017 in helping Ukraine buttress its information technology sector. According to U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman, the investments have helped Ukrainians “keep their internet on and information flowing, even in the midst of a brutal Russian invasion.”

Wars & Lies in Our Pockets
With the rise of the internet, war and armed conflict will never be the same. Analysts have noted that the Russian invasion of Ukraine has ushered in a “new digital era of military, political and economic conflict” being manipulated by “laptop generals and bot armies.”

“In all dimensions of this conflict, digital technology plays a key role – as a tool for cyberattacks and digital protest, and as an accelerator for flows of information and disinformation,” wrote analysts at the Heinrich Boll Stiftung in Brussels. “Propaganda has been a part of war since the beginning of history, but never before could it be so widely spread beyond an actual conflict area and targeted to so many different audiences.”

Joshua Watt, one of the lead researchers on the University of Adelaide team that conducted the landmark study, summed it up: “In the past, wars have been primarily fought physically, with armies, air force and navy operations being the primary forms of combat. However, social media has created a new environment where public opinion can be manipulated at a very large scale.”

“CNN brought once-distant wars into our living rooms,” another analyst stated, “but TikTok and YouTube and Twitter have put them in our pockets.”

We are all carrying around with us a powerful source of information and news media – and also, most certainly, disinformation that’s coming relentlessly at us from influence operations run by “bad actors” whose aim is to deceive.

Peter Cronau is an award-winning investigative journalist, writer, and film-maker. His documentaries have appeared on ABC TV’s Four Corners and Radio National’s Background Briefing. He is an editor and cofounder of DECLASSIFIED AUSTRALIA. He is co-editor of the recent book A Secret Australia – Revealed by the WikiLeaks Exposés.
https://consortiumnews.com/2022/11/06/r ... -bot-army/

[JohnRawls]

His initial claim was The Grayzone are funded by "Putins regime". I asked him to prove that but he only responds with more of his worthless opinion, which with each post, he keeps adding with new stuff that he's pulled out of his ass.

Worse, this is coming from someone who promotes the NAFO bot farms which are Western intel propaganda. The reason he's attacking The Grayzone is because they were amongst those who exposed what NAFO is. That's all that's going on here.

On that note:

I love it, use more resources against NAFO. You are fighting windmills at this point and that is why I love it.

[skinster]

What resources against NAFO? NAFO will disappear like the other pro-war bot farms that did during the wars on Syria and Libya.

Anyway, I was just pointing out how you're a liar, JR since the Grayzone are not funded by the Russian government and you are unable to prove it.

[JohnRawls]

What resources against NAFO? NAFO will disappear like the other pro-war bot farms that did during the wars on Syria and Libya.

Anyway, I was just pointing out how you're a liar, JR since the Grayzone are not funded by the Russian government and you are unable to prove it.

For a liar, as you call me, my prediction and analysis mostly come true or are true. While yours is mostly false. Most people just don't trust you skinster since you clown around like saying that the war won't happen which it did then blaming it on Ukraine and so on. You of course are not the only one that does it but you manage to support almost every evil in the world in the last couple of years. Even more funny is that you call yourself anti-imperialist while support imperialism which I really, really can't comprehend in my mind. I have a sort of logic error right now with that.

And Ukraine is just one of the numerous examples. The more fun one was the Iran protest of women being oppressed which you called a CIA plot.

[skinster]

You are a liar as you're unable to prove your claim the Russian government, or "Putins regime" to use your words, fund The Grayzone, that I've repeatedly asked you to do. Instead, as I said earlier, you just add more of your crappy opinion, which can be seen in the above post.