Nate Cull
@smays the term 'bot' is a bit loose for these mass propaganda / harrassment troll farm accounts - they're only partly automated, I think - but Gamergate veterans (eg Zoe Quinn of Crash Override), Trump watchers (eg Josh Marshall at Talking Points Memo) and now various US Intelligence types are pointing them out.
Giveaways: poor English, tweet on Moscow time, massive no. of posts, themes track official Russian disinfo (eg, RT or Sputnik news), also track with Brietbart, Zero Hedge, Alex Jones.
Nate Cull
@smays For a realtime overview of what alleged Russian bots are tweeting, see the 'Hamilton 68' dashboard:
http://dashboard.securingdemocracy.org/
Note that the alt-right, Trump, and Russian network are entwined but semi-separate; reddit/4chan techbros have been farming alt-right antifeminist /racist propaganda bots like this for years. But their tempo and anger and fakiness stepped up HUGELY around 2014 - right when Russia lost Ukraine / annexed Crimea. I think RU maybe started weaponising 4chan around then.
Nate Cull
@smays Eg: as I figure it, Russia was REALLY pissed off at the USA for using Twitter to run 'Colour Revolution' populist anti-Russian regime change ops in Ukraine. Immediately decided to launch their own, all across the NATO world. Picked the alt-right, neo-Nazis, and Russia-sympathetic US cultural-conservative Evangelicals - and in UK, Brexit, and far right in EU - as their 'underdog' factions to back with mass propaganda amplifier attacks.
It all makes sense. It's Russia's Colour Revolutions.
Chirp! is a social network. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.1-beta0, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All Chirp! content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.