Is this Russia’s internet?
So here goes, I’m writing an article for the first time in my life! I wish this was a reason to get excited, however something is forcing me, no, calling me to do this. To raise awareness. To fight back.
The recent political situation across the world, as you may have noticed, is one embroiled in chaos, uncertainty and a loss of what was normal. I look to my left and right, and I see fighting, division, tension all rising. Bigotry is open, intolerance expected, and I only see things getting worse.
It didn’t used to be like this, was it really only 3 years ago we had one of the greatest world leaders of all time triumphantly guiding the world into a new era of openness, diversity, hope? Sometimes I wake up at night, and I almost feel like we are back in this time, only for a sudden sharp impact that hits me deep in my chest that no, this is reality. In this reality there is one king ruling America and the world — that King is Vladimir Putin.
How did this happen?
How did the American people lead the world to such an impossibly bleak situation, with seemingly no way out of it, when it was just yesterday that they were leading us into a brave new world of global unity? How did they divide the American people so severely down the middle almost overnight. Masses upon masses of people, all saying the same stuff over and over — “Hillary should be in Jail! Hillary is corrupt, the whole thing is corrupt, the media are lying to us” — they all read from the same script. Almost word for word.
Where was this coming from?
I saw media, everywhere, so confident in Hilary’s victory, I actually started watching Trump’s buffoonery stumble through one bad event after another. This hopeless billionaire pretending to hear his people, but there was no way any sane person was buying this. There was just something not genuine about it all, but, and I shall take this shame with me to my grave (which is why I’m writing this now!) — I sat back and laughed.
“Let him carry on, you will never change the mind of those people no matter how hard you try. They are insular, single minded, selfish” and so I trusted the people to do the right thing, and elect a leader that would carry the work from Obama on to a whole new level.
Then, as you are probably all aware by now, the night came and went. It felt like time had stopped still. The lights in the world were all turned off, and in their place a deep, fiery heat consuming everything in its path. But the people would never have done this to themselves, they couldn’t have. How could they vote for the Devil himself?
It was then I started to notice something on social media, I remember it so vividly today. I logged in to twitter one day, and received a notification (from a now banned account) — I did not save the message at the time, but it was a twitter account, looked normal enough except for many numbers on the end — must be a birthday or something important. Celebrating the day, giving me links to an infowars article. I clicked, and down the rabbit hole I went.
I could actually feel myself being sucked in at one point to the madness that surrounds these victims of propaganda. So THIS is what had been happening — right under our very noses. Social media “bots” sending out feelers, invitations, spamming accounts with malicious, dishonest representations of what can only be called outright lies. I watched the coming months as more and more, with my third eye open, I could see Twitter, Facebook, youtube — they were all compromised with some of the most chilling anti American/pro Russian propaganda, and it was all autonomous.
You can’t argue with a bot, you can’t reason with a bot, a bot will never sleep, it will never think to itself “hey, this is wrong”
The final straw for me was when I saw this.
THIS is why we are where we are. THIS is why we are so divided. THIS is why we must FIGHT BACK NOW, DEMAND Silicon Valley COME TOGETHER AND FIGHT THIS SCOURGE. THIS MENACE THAT IS TEARING AWAY AT THE FABRICS OF SOCIETY. We were defeated by out own greatest achievements, let us, for the sake of our children say NO MORE. The fightback begins today, I hope you can join me in DEMANDING TWITTER REMOVE RUSSIAN PROPAGANDA BOTS. DEMAND FACEBOOK END FAKE NEWS, help us trust the world again.
What I hope to do with this new account is to help you identify Russian Propaganda Bots — how they operate, what they are commanded to do. Some of them are very difficult to spot and highly sophisticated and engaging. Some are very low tech and fail to conceal their origins (incredibly, you can see location tags on tweets from Russia!), but equally as dangerous to the future of humankind. We cannot wait for the so called tech giants to do something anymore — Join me and fight back, so that one day we can turn to our children and we can stand tall and tell them about the time we brought down Vladimir Putin.
Steff Maxson
