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disposal system, as the premier record puts it. As one of their own has said, there isn't even any such thing as a former KGB man. They think it's hilarious, and quite useful to them, how little institutional memory most of the rest of us have. Meanwhile, The
Washington Post told us just this week what sorts of things the UAE has been up to. But people have Pokemon to farm on Twitch, or some bullshit like that, so you can see the bind they're in, regarding maintaining vigilance or at least awareness. I'm not even one to go on and on about it all, trying to get anyone else to pay attention or read a little nonfiction or a little real news once in a while, but I just feel weird regarding how little 99% of people bother to have even a crumb of awareness (like "what's a Chekist?"), considering the threats and risks involved. Again, no time though, what with amusing themselves to death, I guess? Albums dropping on the Insta or some bullshit like that. They know
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remains unclear. The report’s authors find the existence of the network only as suggestive of coordinated editing, and conclude that there is evidence of "a particular strategy used by bad actors of splitting their edit histories between a number of accounts to evade detection". They stress a possible strategy of
752:) 13:06, 1 November 2022 (UTC) Good article. I've noticed that articles relating to Dubai are often full of praise for it, sometimes with references that are barely relevant to what is being said. I suspect that there are agents of many other countries involved, and some don't get as much attention as Russia's.
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apparently not immune from these activities. Russian agents have the motivation and opportunity, and allegedly the ability, to insert their disinformation here. We should continue to investigate and report this activity, using the tools of journalism and the tools now being developed by academic researchers.
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The
Russian government is now engaged in a brutal war in Ukraine, or as they call it, a "special military operation". They are widely reported as supporting this war and other controversial activities with a disinformation war, including inserting disinformation on social media sites. Knowledge is
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The authors identified article editors who were later banned by administrators or checkusers, generally via sockpuppet investigations. The beauty of this method is that outside researchers do not need to judge whether
Knowledge rules have been broken – an often difficult and contentious task. They
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more about cartoon/movie mafia dons than the much more dangerous real-life mafia dons that actually threaten real lives. Or maybe they just imagine that they "see their souls when they look into their eyes" (what souls?), or fawn over them as fellow stable geniuses or some bullshit like that. Who
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The report starts with a review of the current state of disinformation operations on the internet. The review may be especially useful to
Wikipedians who haven't followed recent changes in disinformation techniques. It then gives the basics of Knowledge operations, and factors that could make the
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together, attempted to connect with associates of Donald Trump, and are suspected of attempting to donate money to the Trump campaign via the NRA. In 2018, she was convicted of acting as an unregistered foreign agent of Russia while in the U.S. and served 18 months in federal prison before being
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Some of the media articles about this report seem to take the existence of this network as "proof" of
Russian government editing. In reality, it is clearly not that easy to draw such a conclusion. What they found was people inserting pro-Russian bias; whether this was commissioned by the Kremlin
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were up to in 1974. Anyone who thinks they ever stopped is ignorant (some willfully and most merely negligently). Of course once
Knowledge was invented, their playbook version builds were updated accordingly, as that would be self-evidently logical. It is all part of the history of their sewage
372:, or infiltration of Knowledge by Russian agents. While there are clearly limitations on using this methodology, it looks like a step forward in the search for a way to examine particularly contentious topics where hundreds of editors may be making thousands of edits across dozens of articles.
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Fifty now-blocked sockpuppets edited the article on Roman
Abramovich, thirty edited the Deripaska article, but less than ten edited the articles on Fridman, Khan, and Skoch. There is a overlapping pattern of edits by the same sockfarms (large groups of sockpuppets named together in sockpuppet
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tion industry, and in disrupting the
English-language Knowledge. After finally being banned on the English Knowledge, he created dozens of sockpuppets. Russavia, by almost all accounts, is not a citizen or resident of Russia, but his edits raise some concern and show some patterns.
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They identified 89 accounts that were banned, mostly for sockpuppeting. After eliminating three bots, they were left with 86 "suspicious" editors. These editors' editing history was examined, including edits made on other articles where two or more of them crossed paths,
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titled "Who
Whitewashed the Wiki of Alleged Russian Spy Maria Butina?" strongly suggesting that it was a specifically named editor, who was Maria Butina. Furthermore, there was an anonymous unregistered IP editor from the same university as Butina.
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site attractive to spreaders of disinformation. This section should be quite familiar to many
Wikipedians, but is followed by a more challenging section on how Knowledge fights disinformation. If you need to learn about
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I have edited articles I thought were written by foreign agents and interacted with some of the Knowledge editors mentioned below. The opinions expressed below are mine alone and do not necessarily reflect those of
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Fortunately we have the complementary methods of journalism which generally look at the cases of individuals or small groups. I believe that most Wikipedians who look at the following cases will conclude that
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So where do we stand now? Do Russian agents edit Knowledge articles? The academic approach to this question has so far given an answer of essentially
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should not be surprised by this report. I have documented similar allegations about paid editing by Russians and others several times, for example in
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Banned user Russavia edited two of the oligarch articles. He was a very active administrator on Wikimedia Commons, who specialized in promoting the
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only need to know that the editors have been banned, a fact reported in the article's edit history, with data gathering fairly easily automated.
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But we must note that no analysis of Knowledge edits can prove to the standards of a criminal court the identity of a Knowledge editor.
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to establish Russian online encyclopedias as alternatives to Knowledge. Its agents have the motivation and opportunity to spread
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deported to Russia. She received a hero's welcome on her return, became a television presenter, and was soon elected to the
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examines this question, and proposes a potentially useful method of assessing whether Russian agents have edited Knowledge.
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knows; this ain't my day job. At least a few people are standing watch and telling the rest of us.
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That article, and five other articles from reliable sources reporting similar facts, are listed at
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we have a method that has identified 86 editors, with many of them looking suspicious.
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Do Russian agents, paid directly by the government or by people close to President
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and used by other researchers in other studies of disinformation on Knowledge.
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A report from the Centre for Analysis of Social Media division of the
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The most interesting section is a case study of the article on the
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yes, there appear to be some Russian agents editing Knowledge.
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readers through his reporting on the BBC on disputes between
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International recognition of Abkhazia and South Ossetia
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From Russia with WikiLove: I can has Kremlin sockfarms?
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Suggestions of coordinated editing from 86 accounts
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728:Excellent article. Thanks as always
925:Knowledge Signpost archives 2022-10
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879:. November 14, 2022
426:American University
346:Russo-Ukrainian war
316:in 2021. I’ve also
900:Unknown parameter
697:Discuss this story
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546:Russo-Georgian War
488:Arkadiy Abramovich
439:Russian State Duma
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181:(see this issue's
45:← Back to Contents
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682:From the archives
642:News from the WMF
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460:Talk:Maria Butina
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619:31 October 2022
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704:transcluded
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859:0883490099
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