Watching Rachel this evening on Russia’s focus on the US… she talked about how the Russians had US-sourced information about where to stick their needles. And she also talked about how they stoked the Bernie/Hillary wars.
Most of you will recall how those wars nearly tore this site apart.
So I have a question: were we targets?
I would ask the DK admins to identify users who fit this profile:
1) Russian IP addresses
2) Joined in 2016 or late 2015
3) Exhibited virulently pro-Bernie or anti-Hillary behavior
4a) Banned due to pro-Bernie or anti-Hillary extremism, or
4b) Gone silent since the election.
I do not think this list should be made public; we aren’t on a witch-hunt, it’s an investigation, and this isn’t a perfect list. But I think it would be worth knowing whether there were such people, and if so, approximately how many it took to turn this site into such a wasteland.
Other possible indicators:
a) If many of these users joined over a very short span of time
b) If many of these users copied the same memes or talking points at the same time
c) If login times were regular/periodic, as though automated
d) If login times consistently do not correspond to their IP’s local timezone times (e.g. always logging in at 3am local time)
e) If login times extended throughout the day (24 hours a day)
I don’t know what to do with this information. I think it would depend on what is found. But the first step is identifying the problem, nyet?