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PropOrNot ID Service 🇺🇸 Profile picture
PropOrNot ID Service 🇺🇸
@propornot
Identifying propaganda as a service, since 2016! We investigate & help counter Russian efforts to influence the US using propaganda, fake news, & social media.
3 subscribers
Sep 20, 2018 • 9 tweets • 8 min read
THREAD: Let's talk about an interesting bot that was set up as part of a larger Russian attack on us, but recently changed its stripes:

It goes by @propornotapp, was created using infrastructure in Belgium, & has recently started following accounts we interact with. /1 It previously went by "CensoredByPropOrNot" & was an obvious attempt to legitimize Russian propaganda, delegitimize our efforts, & delegitimize related efforts broadly.

This is what it looked like before its recent rebrand: /2 web.archive.org/web/2017041509…
Aug 23, 2018 • 11 tweets • 11 min read
BREAKING: Twitter just suspended a whole bunch of high-reach Russian propaganda accounts, some using infrastructure in Mexico. We've been tracking them too, with @ushadrons @josh_emerson & more. Example:

@militaryearth - 4,686 tweets 425k followers
web.archive.org/web/2018081005…
/1 They systematically reused known Internet Research Agency content, which allowed us to positively ID them, although we were able to ID them as probably-Russian via technical means as well, like this:

@_MilitaryStrong - 2,816 tweets 96.8k followers
/2
Aug 13, 2018 • 5 tweets • 5 min read
FAKE ACCOUNT ALERT: Be aware that the @_peterstrzok account going viral now is almost certainly NOT actually run by the real Peter Strzok. It was created using infrastructure in Pakistan.

This is an example of how foreign actors can hijack/sabotage American political discourse. @_peterstrzok This tweet is gathering likes & retweets very quickly, which makes sense considering how timely it feels - but it actually just points to the dangerous vulnerability of our public sphere. Hostile foreign govs can hack our news cycle all too easily:
Aug 8, 2018 • 15 tweets • 6 min read
THREAD: Let's look at how subtle Russian propaganda can be, using the framing/premises/assumptions of this seemingly-interesting but actually terrible Meduza article about Russian hackers as an example.

Follow along, if you could please. The Devil is in the details. /1 The piece starts with a total crock of BS. Russian propaganda always blames Russia's victims, & this piece does the same thing. In practice, Russia had been illegally occupying Georgian territory since 1991 & their GRU-led proxy forces executed their plan to attack Aug 5th. /2
Jul 20, 2018 • 11 tweets • 4 min read
We had something to do with this 😎❤️🇺🇸

The full story of how Russian intelligence used Crimson Hexagon to create a cross-platform social media intelligence-gathering system called Mediaimpuls has yet to be told... But it's going to be. Background: civilfund.ru/article/2740 The Kremlin wanted a system that could gather intelligence on the entire global public sphere - hence "Mediaimpuls". But, they had trouble getting direct access to Facebook. They tried a whole bunch of tricks to make that happen. Let's look at the history of Russia/FB real quick:
Jul 19, 2018 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
We often ask accounts that parrot Kremlin talking points to prove that they're run by Americans - by posting a video of themselves (no face), holding a hand-written note containing their account name & today's date, at a geolocatable landmark.

It works. Go thou & do likewise. If an account is acting like a hostile propaganda troll account & can't authenticate itself by posting a video establishing its location in the US, it's reasonable to infer that it is in fact a hostile propaganda troll account, & treat it accordingly.

This helps clarify matters.
Jul 14, 2018 • 20 tweets • 11 min read
THREAD: There's a small but telling detail in Mueller's new indictment of the #12Russians.

It mentions "Alice Donovan", a GRU persona that also published articles in the old far-left magazine Counterpunch... Which we highlighted as a Russian propaganda outlet in Nov 2016. /1 The @washingtonpost previously reported, on Christmas 2017, that the GRU was creating entirely fake "journalist" personas to pitch propaganda articles at credulous/complicit useful idiots & assets in the US.

It mentioned "Alice Donovan" as an example. /2 washingtonpost.com/world/national…
Apr 20, 2018 • 19 tweets • 10 min read
THREAD: The British government & @SkyNews have recently called out notorious & appropriately-named Russian propagandist Ian "Shilling" (@Ian56789), & he is playing the victim as hard as he can with the help of the usual suspects, like Wikileaks, etc: /1 theguardian.com/world/2018/apr… Useful idiots are even more dangerous than overt Russian state propaganda outlets, because their lies can seem more "authentic" to key audiences than lies directly from, say, Russia Today.

Ian Shilling, furiously shilling for the Kremlin, is a great example of how this works. /2
Mar 21, 2018 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
...In which one of Putin's stooges declares that Putin can "help solve" problems that Putin created in the first place.

Remember: Putin supports Kim Jong Un, Assad, Khamenei, & the Taliban, is actively invading Ukraine, helped create ISIL, & just threatened to nuke Florida. Putin is helping Kim Jong Un violate sanctions through smuggling, conduct cyberattacks against the US & our allies, & Putin helped North Korea develop the missiles & nukes that they now threaten us with - & Trump thinks Russia will "help solve" N. Korea?! usnews.com/opinion/world-…
Mar 17, 2018 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The "Internet Research Agency", a massive Russian-propaganda troll farm that Mueller recently indicted, was based in St. Petersburg.

The guy who illegally pretexted data for Cambridge Analytica, "Dr Specter" Korgan, was a "professor" in St Petersburg. theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/… Timeframe fits: Cambridge Analytica briefed "Lukoil" personnel (presumably mostly Russian propagandists/spies, perhaps with a few actual senior Lukoil folks mixed in) about their plan to influence elections in the US, in July 2014... Just as Russia was ramping up troll-farm ops.
Feb 21, 2018 • 22 tweets • 10 min read
THREAD: Let's talk about what @Twitter/@Jack SHOULD do about Russian propaganda on their platform.

First, they should STOP DISAPPEARING Russian propaganda. Instead, they should unhide, highlight, freeze, filter, & educate their users about content detected thus far, like so: /1 The current @Twitter approach is to flush its Russian propaganda problem down the memory hole, by suspending detected accounts... While vaguely notifying users that they interacted with it, but not showing what it was. This is BAD. /2
Feb 9, 2018 • 7 tweets • 3 min read
Very entice... So dangle... Such shiny...

To be clear, what this article describes is almost certainly a Russian intelligence dangle intended to mislead, confuse, & distract the US IC. That the "German hacker" refused to ID itself suggests it's a cutout. theintercept.com/2018/02/09/don… This is in keeping with Russia's MO on this stuff. Why wouldn't they dangle shiny BS in the hope of wasting US IC time? If they can get a bunch of smart analysts with Master's degrees to spend 6 months on this, that's a win for them. See how it works?
Dec 25, 2017 • 11 tweets • 7 min read
THREAD: @washingtonpost drops a MASSIVE Christmas present of an article about Russian propaganda operations. It includes an example of the sophisticated personas that Russian intelligence developed to spread propaganda inside the US: /1 washingtonpost.com/world/national… Note how this technique - Russia creating entirely fake "journalists" to pitch articles to credulous/complicit useful idiots & assets in the US - has not been previously discussed in Congressional hearings, Facebook/Twitter's Russian propaganda audience counts, etc. /2
Oct 30, 2017 • 32 tweets • 10 min read
#IndictmentEve history THREAD: Roger Stone says he was pressuring Trump to run for Pres in 1988. So was the KGB. /1 theguardian.com/us-news/2016/d… The 1st publicly documented contact between Trump & Soviet-bloc intel was in 1977, from declassified secret Czech spy archives abt Trump /2
Oct 9, 2017 • 18 tweets • 6 min read
Iceberg-Tip Watch: Google has now acknowledged ~$100k of 🇷🇺 propaganda ads so far, + FB's >$150k, + Twitter's >$270k washingtonpost.com/news/the-switc… These $ figures also don't include all the impressions garnered by covertly-produced NON-AD Russian propaganda content (aka most of it).