The list of names is fascinating and deeply disturbing.
After months of silence, Tumblr Friday released a list of 84 usernames and their aliases that it says were connected to "state-sponsored disinformation and propaganda campaigns." It's the first time the company has publicly acknowledged what journalists and researchers have known now for months: Russian trolls also used Tumblr to spread their divisive memes and gifs, reportedly to the tune of hundreds of thousands of interactions.
Tumblr Finally Breaks Its Silence on Russian Propaganda
Oh, but, these Russian propagandists weren’t just trying to get Hair Fuhrer elected. Emphasis added:
Albright, who has amassed a trove of IRA-linked (Internet Research Agency) content from across the web, stumbled on the Tumblr posts while he was analyzing Russia's trolling Facebook and Twitter content. He noticed a large percentage of posts on those sites linked to Tumblr. In particular, he found an account called 4mysquad that he says, "brought out a universe of propaganda."
"It was huge," Albright says. "It was one of the biggest components of trying to reach young black youth in urban communities."
Fomenting race war in America would go a long way toward creating chaos in America and an America in chaos is a greatly weakened America. Emphasis added:
Tumblr's list of usernames, which includes 4mysquad, bears out both that influence and focus. Among the accounts are names like bleepthepolice, blacknproud, blackness-by-your-side, and black-to-the-bones. One particularly disturbing post Albright unearthed from 4mysquad featured a GIF of a black girl being sexually assaulted by a police officer. The description for the video said that the officer in question was a member of NYPD; he was in fact a police officer in South Africa.
Earlier this month, Reddit revealed it too had deleted hundreds of accounts with ties to the Internet Research Agency. A WIRED investigation found more than a thousand links to Russian propaganda websites are still live on Reddit, and unearthed two suspicious accounts that Reddit immediately shut down.
Read the full article. It’s interesting, informative and troubling. Again, here’s that link:
Tumblr Finally Breaks Its Silence on Russian Propaganda