Russian troll on the SDMB?

[Ludovic]

@robby

Why wouldn’t the SDMB be a target, especially if it is targeted by the equivalent of a drive-by troll? The SDMB shows up all the time on Google searches for me, and could easily pop up on a troll’s radar.

On website rankings conducted by Ranking.com, the SDMB comes in at #800 (out of the hundreds of millions of websites on the internet).

In addition, some of these do not have a large social media component so let’s say that the SDMB is the 500th biggest social media platform in the world (which is sort of weird to think about but whatever.)

It’s well known that the Russians have at least a minimal social media disinformation team. Let’s say it’s 10 people. If I were them, I’d task 5 of them to fully dedicate to the top 10 sites. The other 5 could try to drive by on all the other ones. It isn’t inconceivable that a drive by poster could hit at least 5 message boards a day, if not more, given an 8 hour day, 2 days a week off, and having to jump through verification processes. At 100 sites apiece it would only take 20 days to hit them all. Even if you assume that they’ll hit some of the lower ranked sites as well, and also spend more time on the top 100 sites than they do at the SDMB, it is still utterly conceivable that they could hit the SDMB in 100 days.

Not to mention the aforementioned hypothesis that some of them are simply dedicated disinformation partisans or even professionals who do this in their off hours as a busman’s holiday.

[Ludovic]

But I am surprised that the SDMB ranks so high. I knew it ranked very high on message boards*, but had assumed it was somewhere in the four digits overall on the web since message board traffic has been static for years if not declining.

*I knew that intellectually from reading the rankings, but it didn’t hit home until I saw Randall cite it multiple times on What If?

[Drunky_Smurf]

If it weren’t for all those damned Russians voting in the election then Goddess Hillary would have won like God wanted her to.

[SteveG1]

@samclem

Alas, I’ve just banned dave. Rather than a Russian troll, it was just your garden variety comment spammer from India. Posts are gone.

We actually did have a Russian troll on here. Some kind of Russian journalist in the US posting against The Democrats. I don’t think he was hired to do it. Just my opinion. He did come back three times as a sock.

I liked the Russians better when they were just crazy people doing insane things on YouTube

[SteveG1]

@Jackmannii

Well, Obama still has time to add to his record totals.

You left out ALL that did not match your “narrative” there…

Who is being deported?

President Obama directed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to focus on criminals, not families, during his November 2014 executive action on immigration.

According to their website, “ICE has continued to increase its focus on identifying, arresting, and removing convicted criminals in prisons and jails, and also at-large arrests in the interior.”

In fiscal year 2015, 91 percent of people removed from inside the U.S. were previously convicted of a crime.

The administration made the first priority “threats to national security, border security, and public safety.” That includes gang members, convicted felons or charged with “aggravated felony” and anyone apprehended at the border trying to enter the country illegally.

In 2015, 81 percent, or 113,385, of the removals were the priority one removals.

Priority two includes “misdemeanants and new immigration violators.”

That includes “aliens convicted of three or more misdemeanor offenses, other than minor traffic” violations, as well as those convicted of domestic violence, sexual abuse, burglary, DUIs or drug trafficking.

Who is not being deported?

With the focus on criminals and not families, the administration has moved away from those living and working in the U.S. without a criminal history.

“Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids. We’ll prioritize, just like law enforcement does every day,” Obama said in November 2014 when announcing his executive action on immigration.

And while he tried to provide relief and a way “out of the shadows” for those without criminal histories with his immigration action, that was eventually stricken down by the Supreme Court not issuing a decision on the case, thereby upholding the lower courts action.

But by refocusing on criminals most families who are living and following the law are not targets for deportations.

[Waymore]

@robby

Fine, how about the Washington Post?

From the story linked to above:

Are you asking if the Post is more credible? Yes, it is.

Are you asking if Russian internet trolls and fake news stories played an important roll in the election? No, it didn’t. It’s all ex post facto bullshit used to outrage Dems and deligitimize Trump.

This is just the Democrat version of worrying about people voting multiple times. There will be talk of anti-fake news legislation in due time.

Why wouldn’t the SDMB be a target, especially if it is targeted by the equivalent of a drive-by troll? The SDMB shows up all the time on Google searches for me, and could easily pop up on a troll’s radar.

On website rankings conducted by Ranking.com, the SDMB comes in at #800 (out of the hundreds of millions of websites on the internet).

For comparison, the NY Times website comes in at #107, the LA Times comes in at #174, the Houston Chronicle comes in at #301, and the Chicago Tribune comes in at #558. The four cities served by these newspapers make up the four largest cities in the U.S. For additional comparison, my local metropolitan newspaper (the Hartford Courant) comes in much lower than the SDMB, at just #1,436.

I see online posts all the time in response to news stories on various newspaper websites (including those listed here), that look like they were posted by internet trolls. It doesn’t seem beyond the realm of possibility that we could attract some here as well.

The newspaper business is dying, and these boards have no measureable impact on the nation’s politics. I doubt trolls are targeting these boards, and they’re wasting their time if they do.

[Czarcasm]

And yet you stick around.

[Waymore]

@Czarcasm

And yet you stick around.

I’m not a troll, Russian or otherwise, and this site is good for the old schadenfreude. I’ll be here until I finally banish the notion liberals are gracious in defeat or have any interest in diversity of thought. Shouldn’t take much longer.

[elucidator]

Obama was gracious, gracious as a sumbitch! Kept reaching across, trying to put together a basis for cooperation. Pubbies pretty much spit in his eye, didn’t they?

Now, its different, of course. Now the Pubbie have a mandate, they are entitled to seize this country by the ears and yank it in their direction. Because the people have spoken! I will just trust that you can see the problem with that, without me pointing it out to you.

[nightshadea]

didn’t RT once have an anchor quit on the air because she couldn’t say the bs that they wanted her to when putin wanted the Ukraine ?

[Nawth_Chucka]

@Waymore

I’m not a troll, Russian or otherwise, and this site is good for the old schadenfreude. I’ll be here until I finally banish the notion liberals are gracious in defeat or have any interest in diversity of thought. Shouldn’t take much longer.

Think you’re going to un-brainwash the libruls, eh? ‘He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster…’ and all that rot.

[BigT]

Schadenfreude for complete strangers is not a very admirable quality.

And, whether you call yourself troll or not, you do seem to be here just to poke fun, not to actually participate. I’d characterize it like the YouTube commenters that keep watching the shows they constantly complain about.

[Frankenstein_Monster]

Oh you poor, helpless, defenseless Americans. Your proud democracy, utterly destroyed, reduced to rubble by people posting mean Hillary Clinton comments on Facebook.

This calls for retaliation. Let’s all go and post mean Putin comments on Правда.Ру and ВКонтакте! In perfect Russian, of course! Make them helplessly vote for Natalia Poklonskaya in the 2018 presidential elections!

[Corry_El]

I’m not familiar with the person being bashed, but on various other message boards I’ve know contributors who turned out to be Russians (in Russia), voicing opinions mirroring Russian official propaganda, but these were apparently their actual opinions. And they apparently had an actual interest in the general subject matter of those message boards, or just a hobby interest in trolling…on what basis do you decide somebody ‘must’ be getting paid? Same with Chinese hyper nationalists. And then there’s ethnic Russian/Chinese kids in their basements in the US imitating them. What’s the multiple by which unpaid internet knuckleheads outnumber paid trolls? It’s gotta be a big number, any kind of troll.

[dropzone]

Why do we have to do it in perfect Russian? They don’t post in perfect American.

[Count_Blucher]

@Waymore

I’ll be here until I finally banish the notion liberals are gracious in defeat or have any interest in diversity of thought. Shouldn’t take much longer.

Did you want a party…?