Russian bots promote pro-gun messages after Florida school shooting

[mountaineer]

Gee, will Mueller go after them?

Russian bots promote pro-gun messages after Florida school shooting
By Gianluca Mezzofiore, CNN
Updated 2:51 PM ET, Fri February 16, 2018

 (CNN)Russia-linked bots are promoting pro-gun messages on Twitter in an attempt to sow discord in the aftermath of the Florida school shooting, monitoring groups say.

Hashtags, topics, and URLs related to the shooting overwhelmingly feature in the tweets pushed by these automated Twitter accounts in the past 48 hours, according to Hamilton 68, a tool launched by the Alliance for Securing Democracy to track what it describes as "Russian propaganda and disinformation efforts online."  ...

Among the hashtags and topics related to the shooting are #falseflag, #fbi, #gunreformnow, #fbigate, #parklandschoolshooting, the name of the shooter -- Nikolas Cruz -- and Florida.    ...

More at CNN

[mountaineer]

    Erin Griffith
    02.15.18
    02:00 pm
Pro-Gun Russian Bots Flood Twitter After Parkland Shooting

Each new breaking news situation is an opportunity for trolls to grab attention, provoke emotions, and spread propaganda. The Russian government knows this. Fake-news manufacturing teenagers in Macedonia know this. Twitter bot creators know this. And thanks to data-gathering operations from groups like the Alliance for Securing Democracy and RoBhat Labs, the world knows this.

In the wake of Wednesday’s Parkland, Florida school shooting, which resulted in 17 deaths, troll and bot-tracking sites reported an immediate uptick in related tweets from political propaganda bots and Russia-linked Twitter accounts. Hamilton 68, a website created by Alliance for Securing Democracy, tracks Twitter activity from accounts it has identified as linked to Russian influence campaigns. As of morning, shooting-related terms dominated the site’s trending hashtags and topics, including Parkland, guncontrolnow, Florida, guncontrol, and Nikolas Cruz, the name of the alleged shooter. Popular trending topics among the bot network include shooter, NRA, shooting, Nikolas, Florida, and teacher.

On RoBhat Labs' Botcheck.me, a website created by two Berkeley students to track 1500 political propaganda bots, all of the top two-word phrases used in the last 24 hours—excluding President Trump's name—are related to the tragedy: School shooting, gun control, high school, Florida school.   ...   More at WIRED.com