Newly Released Russian Ads Show Sophistication of Influence Campaign: Here’s What We’re Reading
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Here’s what we’re reading today.
1. Russian ads, now publicly released, show sophistication of influence campaign
“The ads that emerged, a sampling of the 3,000 that Russians bought during the 2016 presidential campaign and its aftermath, demonstrated in words and images a striking ability to mimic American political discourse at its most fractious. The targeting information also showed a shrewd understanding of how best to use Facebook to find and influence voters most likely to respond to the pitches.”
+1: Here are some of the facebook ads linked to a Russian troll farm – BuzzFeed News
+1: Thousands of New Yorkers took to the streets in anti-Trump march promoted by Russia-linked account – BuzzFeed News
+1: Why democracy failed in Russia – New Republic
2. Why Facebook and Twitter can’t be trusted to police themselves
“What these platforms fail to admit in their denials is that the problem lies with them. The reason that the Russian effort has been so successful isn’t that the Internet Research Agency is abusing fundamentally good platforms. Rather, it uses the platforms as they were designed to be used.”
– Politico
+1: Everything we learned about Russian election interference from Facebook, Twitter, and Google – Gizmodo
+1: Are Facebook, Twitter, and Google American companies? – The Atlantic
3. Federal government to raise immigration intake by 13% by 2020
“The plan will bring the country’s yearly immigration level to 0.9 per cent of the population, up slightly from its current 0.8 per cent level, in order to offset the economic effects of an aging population and low birth rate.
“In 2017, Canada has a population of 36.5 million people and will welcome an estimated 300,000 newcomers.”
4. It’s not a coincidence that innovative cities become very unequal
“‘When rich workers move closer together, they increase the demand for local amenities.’ The typical artifacts of gentrification–new coffee shops, yoga studios, better schools–are disproportionately valued by high-salary residents, so more move in as rental prices rise and lower-income residents leave. This ‘amplification effect’ accounts for two-thirds of the increase in segregation.”
5. The CIA just released thousands of files from Osama bin Laden’s compound
“some of the most important files included in the dump are pages from bin Laden’s personal diary, new information about al Qaeda’s relationship with Iran, and further insight into bin Laden’s connections to other parts of his terrorist organization, according to the think tank Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.”
