The 2016 presedential election was synoyms with fake news. A vast amount of news articles, posting and reports on social media timelines may have been distributed from computer bots programmed with a political agenda. The FBI counter intelligence division has been investigating whether news sites like BrightBart benefited from or took part with Russian opertives during the 2016 election. The issue arises from how sophisticated and quickly the bots can push out content and news article that would help Donald Trump and would hurt Hilary Clinton in the process according the report from McClatchy reporters Peter Stone and Greg Gordon. The investigation is determining whether the bots simulating genuine political activity such as publishing news articles on social media in order to generate interest in both the election and for a particular candidate had an effect on the election's outcome. An example of this case is on October 17, 2016 which was the homestretch of the election, Hilary Clinton had hit her highest poll position by 49% and Donald Trump holding on to his lowest poll number at 41.9% as he has suffered from his Hollywood leak regarding sexist comments about women. The polls would drastically change when a leak involving Hilary Clinton and her email controversary was published. Donald Trump's poll numbers would then skyrocket.There is nothing wrong with voters hearing new information and perhaps changing their minds but the investigation is looking at how Russia may have distorted that informaton as the bots pushed links to stories about Clinton's on email and defamatory false information such as the PizzaGate scandal that involved a story about Clinton overseeing a criminal enterpirse at a Pizza parlor in Washington.The bots targeted millions of Twitter posts that caried links to conservative sites such as BrightBart which was being run by Donald Trump's chief strategist Steve Bannon up until August before the investigation began in July. BrightBart has now reported high traffic numbers which may have influenced form the bots. It is one thing to believe the worst about your political opponents its worse to believe the worst about them to only find out you were fooled as part of a foreign campaign in order to distort the election.
2 Comments
4/24/2017 01:46:36 pm
I'm not sure I follow on where Russia intervened - the idea is a terrifying one, to be sure, but by the tone of your blog post it sounds like you say Russia was involved in leaking Hillary's email scandal, and the Twitter bots that spread that news like wildfire? If that's true - if Russia had a hand in leaking that information that, ultimately, sabotaged her campaign, then it really does speak volumes about how messed up our current election cycle is, that another country could have so large a hand in ensuring the failure of one candidate over another. That being said, the news about Breitbart is concerning, and I think a large part of that has to do with Trump constantly rattling off that name, along as Fox News, as the source for a lot of his information, which is /another/ troubling fact, given Breitbart's alt-right leanings and how racist and sexist it has continually proven itself to be. I agree wholeheartedly - the fact that the facts can be twisted so terribly in order to influence voters is awful, and our current administration seems far too willing to do just that in order to stay in power.
Reply
5/16/2017 09:52:11 am
I'd like to start by saying I am completely against Trump and I think he's a monster. Having said that, It is my personal opinion that the notion of the Russians sabotaging Clinton's campaign is a complete and utter hoax. I'm very politically active, and I've read the articles that "support" these claims. If anything sabotaged Hillary's campaign, it was herself. I knew from the beginning she would never beat Trump because her Campaign strategies were complete and utter garbage. So many people found her to be extremely disingenuous. Additionally, the D.N.C. was found to have, for lack of a better word, rigged the election against Bernie Sanders and for Hillary Clinton. Bernie had a large group of passionate followers. I am very confident he would have won. Both Bernie and Trump were campaigning for *Change*. Hillary was just campaigning: "Look how mean the other guy is, vote for me, kids!"
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorFirst generation computer scientist that loves football. Archives
May 2017
Categories |