Copernicus
Industrial Grade Linguist
Twitter is back, and the person running it is a MAGA Republican. So are the fake accounts designed to promote Donald Trump, and so are the hostile foreign actors who use them to spread misinformation and misinformation about the candidates. A lot of information about American voters has been stolen in the past, including contact details (email, cell phone numbers, street addresses), and it can be used in attempts to manipulate public opinion. It is not that difficult to set up profiles on massive numbers of individuals in terms of their political and religious views. So specific audiences of people can be targeted for social media campaigns.
Here is a story of just one example of such a campaign. It is not known which state actor (if any) is behind the fake Twitter accounts--probably Russia, Iran, or China--but those countries could even be collaborating to help pump up the Trump-Vance campaign or hurt the Harris-Walz campaign. So far, I have not seen reports of any state-sponsored social media campaigns to do the opposite. There is no evidence that these efforts are in any direct way connected to the Trump campaign, although I'm sure he welcomes them.
Here is a story of just one example of such a campaign. It is not known which state actor (if any) is behind the fake Twitter accounts--probably Russia, Iran, or China--but those countries could even be collaborating to help pump up the Trump-Vance campaign or hurt the Harris-Walz campaign. So far, I have not seen reports of any state-sponsored social media campaigns to do the opposite. There is no evidence that these efforts are in any direct way connected to the Trump campaign, although I'm sure he welcomes them.
