\
ou’re missing my point.
ABC News doesn’t randomly pick moldy oldies and recycle them on social media.
Operators who set up fake news sites disguised as real news organizations do. Indeed, this fits the pattern of Russian originated fake news right to the tee. ABC News was one of the legitimate fronts that the Russians used in 2016, even!
The Russian campaign works (obviously, as Robert Mueller pointed out, this needs to be discussed in the present tense), by identifying influencers who are themselves receptive to a particular type of message. They count on the target taking it at face value, being outraged (manufactured outrage is the coin of the realm on cable TV news, talk radio, and the infotainment media, regardless of ideology). They also count on thier influencers spreading the poison through their own social media accounts and on forums like this, thus multiplying their ability to plant their message (with no investment at all).
You’re spreading this story for them. Quite innocently, of course.
HOw many thousands of people saw the same Tweet that you did? And how many of them endorsed it unofficially by sharing it with others????
Just look at this thread.
Not one of the like minded folks who saw the OP even thought to question whether it was true or not.
Like you, and millions of other innocent people, they took it at face value and posted their outrage.
If enough people do that, right wing trash tabloids often crib the story and repeat it, also without verifying or fact checking anything.
Not one of them said to themselves’ “ hey, wait a minute, this is way over the top!”
It took me less than three minutes to figure out that this was fake.
All you had to do was google the title, the subject, or the names, and see what comes up.
If nothing comes up, it’s fake.
If the only other stories are from people like Gateway Pundit, PJ Media, Breitbart, WND, and the rest, it’s probably fake. None of these people fact check anything.
As a basic precaution, I NEVER click on embedded links on social media, nor do I ever share anything. If I see something the piques my curiosity, I search the embedded link via a search engine (to keep the Trojans the might vacuum my contacts list from doing so). The Russians, and other people who use this technique are not interested in me. I am unlikely to spread their message.
And the message is an appeal to xenophobia, by recycling the idea that the Chinese eat human flesh, a notion that goes all the way back to Fu Manchu (a fictional character created by and Englishman in the 1920’s).
Nobody did anything wrong, nefarious, or evil. No one, except the people who created this fraud. Innocent people took it at face value and spread it.
This is how the Russian campaign works.
It’s clearly still ongoing. And as we all know, Trump is all on board with it.
