
Russian Trolls Used Vaccine Debate to Sow Discord, Study Find - matt4077
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/08/23/health/russian-trolls-vaccines.html
======
adrianN
Has it been conclusively shown that these are actually _russian_ trolls or do
people just repeat that factoid? I feel like a lot of things get attributed to
the Russians with little more than "trust us" as proof.

~~~
DanBC
Yes, it is well established that this was Russian trolls. Some of the accounts
were the same ones that interfered with the US election.

~~~
adrianN
I didn't follow the US election thing in much detail. Was there proof that
those accounts where controlled by Russian trolls?

~~~
mmjaa
There is never any proof offered, only blatant assertions.

And its working very well as a propaganda point too - now, any time someone
questions the powers that be and the way they operate, well .. obviously that
person is a Russian troll.

The irony in how quickly Americans seem to have picked up this authoritarian
control mechanism (propaganda==truth) seems to have been lost on a lot of
people. Do they still teach Orwell in schools in America?

~~~
vincnetas
Current Russian government are pro at playing this "but there are no proof
offered" game. Lithuania, where i live, is pretty close to armed conflict in
Ukraine where Russian backed (no proofs here according to Russia) separatists
are fighting (as in war) to declare independent republics from Ukraine.

Crimea (part of Ukraine) was "liberated" by "little green men"[0] and then
coincidently decided to join Russian federation.

There is no secret that Russian government sponsors internet trolls to push
it's agenda [1]

I agree that someone might abuse "Russian troll" card but keep in mind that
Russian (government) is no saint here. Russians themselves are fine though.
And please don't start with "but Americans also do this and that". Im saying
here that Russian trolls are real. One use twitter, other use military
uniforms without insignia. Depending on situation ;)

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_(Ukrainian_cr...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_green_men_\(Ukrainian_crisis\))
[1]
[https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/15/594062887/...](https://www.npr.org/sections/parallels/2018/03/15/594062887/some-
russians-see-u-s-investigation-into-russian-election-meddling-as-a-soap-ope)

~~~
mmjaa
So, where is the evidence then? Like, actual evidence.

Not propaganda, which is what your links are really.

Real evidence. Something tangible, which leads to the conclusions being
promoted by the propaganda. I'm yet to see any. Like, there is literally ZERO
evidence preferred, every single time.

------
jaclaz
I don't know, but if something like:

>“Don’t get #vaccines. Illuminati are behind it.”

is actually given _any_ credibility and can actually contribute to form or
shift an opinion, there is then IMHO an underlying (bigger) problem with the
gullibility of the people.

~~~
orev
Yes, there is, and much of the issue comes from the way our brains work. We
have an entire branch of science dedicated to it: psychology. Knowing about it
doesn’t mean you can wave a magic wand and fix it though, so you need to
attack the problem at every level you can.

------
mandelbulb
>With colleagues at the University of Maryland and Johns Hopkins University,
Dr. Broniatowski looked at 899 vaccine-related tweets sent from mid-2014 to
late 2017.

If there were either hundreds or at least several tens of thousands tweets
like that, or if all of the tweets they've screened were highly popular, then
I could take that study seriously. As it is, however, this appears to be a
targeted evaluation failing to qualify the significance of those tweets'
impact.

------
detaro
source publication:
[http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/i/today/z_creative/WeaponizedHea...](http://media1.s-nbcnews.com/i/today/z_creative/WeaponizedHealthCommunicationDavid%20BFULLSTUDY.PDF)

via NBC: [https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/russian-trolls-
pushed...](https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/russian-trolls-pushed-
divisive-content-over-vaccines-researchers-say-n903286)

------
decasteve
I’d be inclined to flag this because the source is paywalled [0]. Is the
analysis accurate? Hard to tell from the excerpt.

[0]:
[https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2018....](https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304567)

------
sAbakumoff
IMHO if a society is susceptible to discord caused by debates around very,
very unambiguous topic, then this society indeed deserves D. Trump in the
office.

~~~
mmjaa
The irony is that Americans are quite happy to be manipulated through
Dialectic Materialism, communisms favourite philosophy...

