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> Facebook has removed 70 Facebook accounts, 138 Facebook Pages, and 65 Instagram accounts run by the Russian government-connected troll farm and election inter

by gabept 8y ago

> Facebook has removed 70 Facebook accounts, 138 Facebook Pages, and 65 Instagram accounts run by the Russian government-connected troll farm and election interference squad the Internet Research Agency This looks like a fairly small amount of accounts.

cryptoz 8y ago
Yes, it is likely there are hundreds of thousands of accounts, not just a few dozen. Over time, we'll see. Twitter and all the rest have also come out with "it was just a few accounts, see, we've even gone and deleted them". But it's not that few. Edit: Also, those few accounts pack a punch. > 1.08 million users followed at least one of the Facebook Pages, and 493,000 users followed at least one of the Instagram accounts. The accounts had spent a combined $167,000 on ads since the start of 2015 That's a lot of influence and a fair bit of money spent on so few accounts. And across the whole Internet Research Agency as discussed by Facebook, > 126 million people had seen the propaganda group’s Facebook posts and another 20 million had seen its Instagram posts. Wow - that is a lot of people!
- baursak 8y ago
  Is there any specific reason you said hundreds of thousands of accounts, and not tens of thousands, millions, or dozens?
  - cryptoz 8y ago
    Just an order of magnitude guess. It could be tens of thousands, it could be millions, I'm just an outsider looking in. But it seems clear that it is at least a couple orders of magnitude more than just the 70 they found and publicized so far.
    - patrickaljord 8y ago
      This is not how it works. The goal of these accounts was to build a following to be able to influence more people. A page with a couple of hundreds likes or followers will have much more impact than a million accounts with no followers. Building audiences to influence people is hard and takes time. It is much more probable that there are around 70 accounts than millions. Sorry to be that blunt but do you know anything about this matter?
      - cryptoz 8y ago
        Well that's rude. > The goal of these accounts was to build a following to be able to influence more people. A page with a couple of hundreds likes or followers will have much more impact than a million accounts with no followers. Of course. I do not mean to suggest that every single account that the Russians created was a success or has millions of followers. I am positing that they likely created many many accounts, and I would presume many of those accounts gained few followers and exerted little influence (edit: although, some influence is some influence; even 1 follower can be meaningful). > It is much more probable that there are around 70 accounts than millions. I disagree - I think it is much more probable that there are hundreds of thousands of accounts. I certainly don't think there would be millions (who brought that up anyway? wasn't me) as that seems too high to be real. It's just a guess, though. > Sorry to be that blunt but do you know anything about this matter? Yes, I do. You're not being blunt, you're being rude.
      - wjn0 8y ago
        Do you know anything about this matter? The scope of this is still largely unknown, unless you have some information the rest of us don't. Influence can be local. Generic-looking pages (i.e. not locale specific in the content they post) or accounts are often followed by people only from a specific small city and surrounding areas (10^4 people, say). Is it so hard to believe that accounts such as these were used by the IRA?
        AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        It seems to me intuitively obvious that an account with 10^4 followers has less influence than an account with 10^7 followers. (Sure, if you have 1000 accounts with 10^4 followers, it adds up...) Removing the big accounts (probably) isn't going to remove the IRA's presence on Facebook. It's going to take a big chunk out of their influence, though. (Unless they have other accounts with big followings that weren't removed.)
        bitumen 8y ago
        You know the old saw, “quantity has a quality all of its own.” I’d add that these guys could have done both. They could have high follower count identities, medium, and low. They can have highly active accounts, and “sleepers” and everything in between. It would be unwise to make too many assumptions based on limited press releases from Facebook. It’s more sensible to think about what they could have done, and then move on from there. They could have had tiers of accounts, all for different purposes. They could have used a ton of low accounts to simulate a grassroots response, to openly troll and be banned, and all kinds of things. They’d have cultivated more and less popular, and obvious accounts as well. If they were smart they’d have a whole layer of accounts designed just to be caught, and give a misleading impression of their competence and methodology.
  - StanislavPetrov 8y ago
    How dare you dismiss the possibility that there are billions or trillions of Russian accounts? Clearly you underestimate the limitless power of arch-villain Putin.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
hbosch 8y ago
Small # of accounts, but massive amounts of followers/viewers. Kylie Jenner has a "fairly small amount of accounts" (ie one) on Twitter, but a single tweet can send a company's stock into the red[0]. 0. http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/22/technology/snapchat-update-kylie-jenner/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/22/technology/snapchat-update-k...
- gabept 8y ago
  Would you know of a single Russian account like that?
- dmix 8y ago
  Don't these 'troll' accounts mostly have fake followers though? What reach could 76 accounts with mostly fake followers/likes really have on the world? They most certainly arent anywhere near Kylie Jenner level so Im not sure what that has to do with this. But I guess no one involved (media, FB) wants this story to be any less newsworthy so I doubt we'll ever have an answer...

by gabept 8y ago

cryptoz 8y ago

Yes, it is likely there are hundreds of thousands of accounts, not just a few dozen. Over time, we'll see. Twitter and all the rest have also come out with "it was just a few accounts, see, we've even gone and deleted them". But it's not that few. Edit: Also, those few accounts pack a punch. > 1.08 million users followed at least one of the Facebook Pages, and 493,000 users followed at least one of the Instagram accounts. The accounts had spent a combined $167,000 on ads since the start of 2015 That's a lot of influence and a fair bit of money spent on so few accounts. And across the whole Internet Research Agency as discussed by Facebook, > 126 million people had seen the propaganda group’s Facebook posts and another 20 million had seen its Instagram posts. Wow - that is a lot of people!

baursak 8y ago
Is there any specific reason you said hundreds of thousands of accounts, and not tens of thousands, millions, or dozens?
- cryptoz 8y ago
  Just an order of magnitude guess. It could be tens of thousands, it could be millions, I'm just an outsider looking in. But it seems clear that it is at least a couple orders of magnitude more than just the 70 they found and publicized so far.
  - patrickaljord 8y ago
    This is not how it works. The goal of these accounts was to build a following to be able to influence more people. A page with a couple of hundreds likes or followers will have much more impact than a million accounts with no followers. Building audiences to influence people is hard and takes time. It is much more probable that there are around 70 accounts than millions. Sorry to be that blunt but do you know anything about this matter?
    - cryptoz 8y ago
      Well that's rude. > The goal of these accounts was to build a following to be able to influence more people. A page with a couple of hundreds likes or followers will have much more impact than a million accounts with no followers. Of course. I do not mean to suggest that every single account that the Russians created was a success or has millions of followers. I am positing that they likely created many many accounts, and I would presume many of those accounts gained few followers and exerted little influence (edit: although, some influence is some influence; even 1 follower can be meaningful). > It is much more probable that there are around 70 accounts than millions. I disagree - I think it is much more probable that there are hundreds of thousands of accounts. I certainly don't think there would be millions (who brought that up anyway? wasn't me) as that seems too high to be real. It's just a guess, though. > Sorry to be that blunt but do you know anything about this matter? Yes, I do. You're not being blunt, you're being rude.
    - wjn0 8y ago
      Do you know anything about this matter? The scope of this is still largely unknown, unless you have some information the rest of us don't. Influence can be local. Generic-looking pages (i.e. not locale specific in the content they post) or accounts are often followed by people only from a specific small city and surrounding areas (10^4 people, say). Is it so hard to believe that accounts such as these were used by the IRA?
      - AnimalMuppet 8y ago
        It seems to me intuitively obvious that an account with 10^4 followers has less influence than an account with 10^7 followers. (Sure, if you have 1000 accounts with 10^4 followers, it adds up...) Removing the big accounts (probably) isn't going to remove the IRA's presence on Facebook. It's going to take a big chunk out of their influence, though. (Unless they have other accounts with big followings that weren't removed.)
        bitumen 8y ago
        You know the old saw, “quantity has a quality all of its own.” I’d add that these guys could have done both. They could have high follower count identities, medium, and low. They can have highly active accounts, and “sleepers” and everything in between. It would be unwise to make too many assumptions based on limited press releases from Facebook. It’s more sensible to think about what they could have done, and then move on from there. They could have had tiers of accounts, all for different purposes. They could have used a ton of low accounts to simulate a grassroots response, to openly troll and be banned, and all kinds of things. They’d have cultivated more and less popular, and obvious accounts as well. If they were smart they’d have a whole layer of accounts designed just to be caught, and give a misleading impression of their competence and methodology.
- StanislavPetrov 8y ago
  How dare you dismiss the possibility that there are billions or trillions of Russian accounts? Clearly you underestimate the limitless power of arch-villain Putin.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

hbosch 8y ago

Small # of accounts, but massive amounts of followers/viewers. Kylie Jenner has a "fairly small amount of accounts" (ie one) on Twitter, but a single tweet can send a company's stock into the red[0]. 0. http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/22/technology/snapchat-update-kylie-jenner/index.html http://money.cnn.com/2018/02/22/technology/snapchat-update-k...

gabept 8y ago
Would you know of a single Russian account like that?
dmix 8y ago
Don't these 'troll' accounts mostly have fake followers though? What reach could 76 accounts with mostly fake followers/likes really have on the world? They most certainly arent anywhere near Kylie Jenner level so Im not sure what that has to do with this. But I guess no one involved (media, FB) wants this story to be any less newsworthy so I doubt we'll ever have an answer...