Triggered … Russian meddling efforts extended to Pokémon Go … as if the CIA could do anything with Tetris.
This is a reminder that #TrumpRussia had many participants and many avenues of opportunity so collusion wasn’t identical to coordination.
Trump’s victory, surprising in many ways to even Mr. Bigly himself, also explains the unintended consequence of the waggable dog actually catching the chased car.
Since the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Russian oligarchy has played the long game, and messing with US democracy is a feature that never ended and in fact has gotten more lucrative, or at least more profitable, hence the obsession with lifting sanctions.
Ultimately it’s never about the ephemera of gaming or twitter-bots as it has been with the financial networks that underpin the criminal overlaps between Trump’s creditors and the compromises US politicians made to their greed.
According to CNN, a Tumblr page linked to Russia's far-reaching Internet Research Agency was found to have promoted a contest for Pokémon Go players in July of 2016, and which seemingly sought to mimic aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement in order to engage users sympathetic to that cause.
According to CNN, the Tumblr page encouraged Pokémon Go players to seek out the augmented-reality creatures near the sites of famous instances of police brutality, and to change their user names to those of the police brutality victims. The page also linked to Do Not Shoot Us, a campaign designed to mimic aspects of Black Lives Matter, and which maintained an active presence on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube.
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According to CNN, the Tumblr page associated with this latest scheme included a post showing a Pokémon called “Eric Garner.” The character was presumably named for a Staten Island man who died after he was put in a choke hold by a New York Police Department officer who sought to arrest Garner for selling loose cigarettes near his home.
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Russian political psychwar hit its dastardly apogee when Putin’s posse violated all that is holy by exploiting Pokémon Go.
Yes, really. Pokémon Go, the augmented reality craze that transformed our mundane 3D world into a video game treasure hunt. Russian operators created a “contest” for Pokémon Go players that urged them “to find and train Pokémon near locations where alleged incidents of police brutality had taken place.”
In one scenario, players were instructed to capture Pokémon near gyms that had been crime scenes and then to email screenshots of their captures and claim the prize of an Amazon gift certificate.
Even though none of the little creatures were directly harmed by the stunt, somewhere in Pokémon World the apolitical trinity of Pikachu, Eevee, and Squirtle can be heard sobbing and squeaking.