Tragedy struck in Parkland, Florida, on Wednesday, and Russian bots weren't far behind.
As people took to Twitter in search of any scrap of information to emerge out of the school shooting that left 17 dead, they were likely confronted with what has become a troubling online reality: trolls and bots swarming a conversation for reasons unknown.
SEE ALSO:Why social media companies won’t kill off botsAnd according to Alliance for Securing Democracy, a group that claims to track "Russia-linked influence networks on Twitter," a chunk of said trolls and bots attempting to shape the narrative surrounding the attack had ties to Russia.
A graph on the organization's website Thursday afternoon demonstrated what it claimed was the increased frequency of Russian-linked accounts tweeting about "parklandshooting," "guncontrol," "floridaschoolshooting," and other hashtags related to the shooting.
Why are Russia-linked accounts — which have been credibly accused of promoting race-based violence in the U.S. — tweeting both about gun control and the alleged shooter? It's not exactly clear. However, as Wired points out, it fits nicely into the known Russian troll farm strategy of attempted destabilization through manufactured conflict.
Credit: Alliance for Securing Democracy/gettyLike, for example, when Facebook pages tied to the Russia-based Internet Research Agency, which is focused on influencing social media conversations, advocated shooting Black Lives Matter activists.
Importantly, Alliance for Securing Democracy does not name the 600 accounts it claims to be tracking. This obviously makes it almost impossible to independently verify the group's findings, but it says there's a good reason for not pointing fingers — namely, ASD doesn't want to argue about every single account.
"We prefer to focus on the behavior of the overall network rather than get dragged into hundreds of individual debates over which troll fits which role," the about page explains.
Of course, being dragged into hundreds of debates may be the exact goal the bots have in mind. Or maybe not. Regardless, it's clear the trolls and bots are attempting to latch onto this national tragedy for purposes unknown and it's safe to assume they'll do so again the next time innocent lives are lost. Which, at the rate things are going in this country, will probably happen sooner rather than later.
So the next time you're browsing Twitter in the immediate aftermath of the senseless death of American schoolchildren, keep an eye out for Russian trolls — they certainly have their eyes on you.
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