Hilary Clinton is responding to an earlier Russian attack on American.
Earlier this month, Russia posted propaganda on a Facebook page, titled LGBT United, that pretended to be for the LGBTQ community but was really a cover to spread false information and cause more division between American people.
Hilary Clinton spoke on the matter at the Cheltenham Literary Festival (probably while promoting her book What Happened).
“We know Russian agents used Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and even Pinterest to place targeted attack ads and negative stories intended not to hurt just me but to fan the flames of division in our society.
“Russians posed as Americans pretending to be LGBT and gun rights activists, even Muslims, saying things they knew would cause distress.”
She added: “The Russians are still playing on anything and everything they can to turn Americans against each other.
“In addition to hacking our elections, they are hacking our discourse and our unity. We are in the middle of a global struggle between liberal democracy and a rising tide of illiberalism and authoritarianism.
“This is a kind of new cold war and it is just getting started.”
Clinton’s words on the Russian “information war” is just the latest development in the ongoing investigation and situation.
It took some time for organizations to even realize that there were so many social media pages created for the soul purpose of spreading misinformation by the Russian government. In fact, LGBT United was just one in around 470 accounts and Pages that were linked and eventually taken down.
Jonathan Albright, a social media analyst and research director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, said:
“The tone of the posts [from the different pages] varies strikingly… the one seemingly managed by a lesbian is intimate, confidential and chatty, with complaints about parents and teachers not understanding the challenges of being young and gay.
“The English is nearly flawless. One popular post said simply, ‘Bi and proud!’ with a thumbs-up emoji attached to the end.”
He added: “The goal seemed less to inspire enthusiasm for one candidate than to dampen support for voting at all.”
Ironically, many of LGBTQ posts would be illegal on Russian social media under the country’s laws outlawing gay ‘propaganda’.
The page has since been taken off Facebook.
