Russia and Trump: another chapter in the investigations
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The investigation IGNORE INTO whether Trump got help from the Russian government, opens another chapter with the disclosure of a report from a cybersecurity company
Another chapter is added to the novel between Trump and Russia. Last Monday, the New York Times published a report, carried out by the cybersecurity company New Knowledge, where it states that Russia had manipulated different social media in order to promote the Donald Trump campaign during 2016.
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This time, the target was African-American people, who were identified by the searches. Thus, those investigating issues related to Malcolm X or the Black Panther party began to appear advertising in favor of Trump. The use of social media ranged from Facebook, Instagram or Twitter, to Reddit, YouTube or Google+.
One of the accounts of Instagram had by user @army_of_jesus_, which published images or memes that highlight the Christian faith, and how it was going to be recovered thanks to Trump. Currently, the account does not exist.
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How did they do it?
The Russian company, called "Internet Research Agency" (IRA), and in which its president is close to Vladimir Putin, aimed to create all kinds of false accounts to promote the Trump campaign.
In the official report, entitled "The Tactics and Tropes of the Internet Research Agency", it is explained that "73 Instagram accounts and different IRA affiliate pages were part of an operation of ads that consisted of 3519 ads (video and still images). The ads were used to take users to likes, follow Instagram accounts, join events and visit websites".
Thus, people were set as targets depending on sex age and depending on their searches. In the same way they used "Black Live Matters", a popular social movement that became popular due to the mistreatment of the American police with African-Americans. With this slogan, different accounts were created on social media accounts and even a web domain.
In this way, "Black Matters was a property among 30 Facebook pages that addressed the black community. (…) An individual who followed or liked one of the IRA Pages addressed to the black community was exposed to the content of dozens more, as well as to authentic and curated content that was ideologically or thematically aligned with the searches".
Finally and considering the aforementioned, the study reveals that the final objective could be divided in two. On the one hand, to grow the public in all its accounts aimed at African-Americans, so that users who followed one of their accounts followed others and, therefore, are exposed to repetitive messages. The second was to position their pages within the African-American community so that they were references of legitimate communities.
What does Trump say?
The president of the United States resorted to his Twitter account to express his anger. In addition, he accused the social media of favoring the Democrats. He even accused Twitter of putting obstacles in the way of people who wanted to follow him on this plataform.
Facebook, Twitter and Google are so biased toward the Dems it is ridiculous! Twitter, in fact, has made it much more difficult for people to join @realDonaldTrump. They have removed many names & greatly slowed the level and speed of increase. They have acknowledged-done NOTHING!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) 18 de diciembre de 2018
A new chapter
With these new investigations, suspicions grow that effectively the Trump government had some connection with Russia to boost its presidential campaign. Recently, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was sentenced to 3 years in prison despite being collaborating with the Russian case and the presidential campaign. Thanks to Cohen, the "political synergy" between Trump and the Kremlin was discovered.
With this, several analysts foresee that the Russian investigation will reach its climax in 2019, taking IGNORE INTO account the research currently carried out by Robert Mueller, appointed for the case on May 17, 2017, to monitor "any link that the Russian government has had. with Trump's election campaign", as The New York Times mentions.
LatinAmerican Post | Laura Viviana Guevara Muñoz
Translated from "Rusia y Trump: otro capítulo en las investigaciones"
