A UCLA student journalist reported a story using a photo of a sign in front of a student housing home that said “No Blacks Allowed”.
Russian trolls picked up the photo, extensively edited, and then posted it on a Russia run propaganda group called Blacktivist, to emotionally target members of the group. The FB group had 360,000 “Likes”, which was more than the Black Lives Matter group itself. But Blacktivist was a fake group designed by Russian trolls to racially divide America.
An African American neighbor was photographed by a security camera posting the sign, and according to police, admitted to having posted the sign. (Hence the title of this post “double double double cross”.)
This incident illustrates the dangerous impact of the friction-less propaganda platform known as social media. Social media has become dangerous and reckless in its impacts.
It’s not the message, its the medium.
Watch the full 6 minute long video at the link. And note the executives of Facebook claiming automation will solve this problem. It will not for the reasons I outline here plus an explanation of why Facebook is stuck on stupid.
Source: How Russia Turned a Student Journalist’s Web Post Into Fake News