Google “women killed in 2016” - you won’t believe the result

How many TRAs work for Google, would be a fairly obvious thing to ask.

Little update, since this issue's been mentioned on another thread.

There's now a been a fair bit of investigation of the behaviour of Russian "information war" accounts on social media.

Informative article:
How Russian bots appear in your timeline
www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-41982569

Twitter account @ SouthLoneStar ("Proud TEXAN and AMERICAN patriot") and @ TEN_GOP (pretending to be Tennessee Republican Party) both tweeted faked or misdescribed photos after the Westminster Bridge terrorist attack, making anti-Muslim comments. Now both identified as Russian bots.

So it's not just that the Russians were producing inflammatory fake news about the UK; they were pretending to be right-wing Americans while doing it. TEN_GOP had at least 136,000 followers and had managed to get itself retweeted by Trump.

thinkprogress.org/trump-retweet-a-fake-twitter-account-149f3f9c1360/

Sorry, very, very late to the party, but just wanted to say what an utterly brilliant piece of writing Laurie Penny's article is. She is absolutely wonderful.

Of course, Milo Yiannopoulos's entitled, young male entourage are the people Laurie Penny wrote her perceptive piece about last year. I was alerted to it by MN, and it's worth a look.

It chimes with some of the discussions on MN about Lily Madigan, too.

ON THE MILO BUS WITH THE LOST BOYS OF AMERICA’S NEW RIGHT
What happens when a movement of gamers recognizes they’re not players, but pawns?
psmag.com/news/on-the-milo-bus-with-the-lost-boys-of-americas-new-right

The Mercers have now dumped Milo, but I've just found this article from last month about their "culture war", which I think will ring a few bells.

Are the Mercers being taken for a ride by their favorite hate-mongering boy toy?
www.vanityfair.com/news/2017/10/mercers-money-milo-yiannopoulos-conservative

But the Mercers also think rather differently from their peer group, acting as angel investors for projects they hope will shift the cultural conversation.
[...]
In keeping with their goal to construct a parallel cultural universe, the Mercers, according to one person with direct knowledge of their fund-raising activities, were curious to see whether Yiannopoulos could create a media empire that could bring in younger voters, make money, and drive a wedge in the culture war. Despite his less-than-pure conservative history—the pedophilia comments, his boast that he engaged in prostitution, and a litany of other taboos—the Mercers would continue to support Yiannopoulos as long as he continued to enrage feminists, college campuses, and anyone with a whiff of good taste. Even a BuzzFeed report detailing his extensive ties to the white-nationalist and neo-Nazi movement would not shake the Mercers from Milo Inc. As that person told me, the Mercers knew full well something controversial could happen. “The Mercers are already immune to negative press,” he said. “They invested in Milo knowing that he would generate negative press...”
[...]
...Bob Mercer made his fortune at a hedge fund. And it’s clear how the Mercers’ political activities replicate the fundamental strategy of a hedge fund: invest in everything that has anything to do with cultural politics, from actual campaigns to troll armies ready to take over the Internet; junk anything that fails and accelerate anything that succeeds. It’s the same on an ideological level, too, as my source familiar with the Mercers’ investments summarized it.

I've just tried it myself in an incognito window, and the top two results cited have now gone but some of the other sex-related autocompletes are still being offered.

Today's fun:

YouTube's Search Autofill Surfaced Disturbing Child Sex Results
www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/charliewarzel/youtubes-search-autofill-is-surfacing-disturbing-child-sex

Dozens of users have reported that a YouTube search for "how to have" is auto-completing with pedophiliac phrases like "how to have sx with your kids" and "how to have sx kids."

On Sunday afternoon, BuzzFeed News attempted the search on multiple devices in an incognito browser window, which surfaced search results without taking into account past browsing history. In each instance, inputting the phrase "how to have" returned the same result: [screen grab]

@suzanne_moore
See what happens when you Google 'Women murdered in 2017.' Or even 'Cis women murdered in 2017.' h/t @alicatterall
Someone tell me what's happening here.......

As if to illustrate the connections, yesterday this happened. (Twitter is changing its verification system because readers were mistaking the blue tick for endorsement.)

Jason Kessler
@ TheMadDimension
I'm on the Russian Facebook VK now. We're moving to the free speech platforms. Sign up for an account and send me a friend request.
[vk link removed]

David Carroll
@ profcarroll
David Carroll 🦅 Retweeted Jason Kessler
As American Nazis get de-verified based on market forces they are migrating to Russian platforms with FSB backdoors and Kremlin censorship policies.
10:09 pm - 19 Nov 2017

Missymoo you can be a middle-of-the-road conservative, and be unaware of this social manipulation and utterly horrified by the rise of the far right.

That's what I meant by it not being primarily a left/right issue.

FWIW, I wouldn't expect Russia to be behaving very differently if it still proclaimed a far left ideology. Sure, there would be some variations but... essentially it would have the same aim of regaining Russian power in the world, and be pursuing it in similar ways.

'On a more serious note, the TV Rain report quoted a former employee about IRA’s work: “There was a goal—to influence opinions, to lead to a discussion.… There was a strategy document. It was necessary to know all the main problems of the United States of America. Tax problems, the problem of gays, sexual minorities, weapons.”'

From here: www.thenation.com/article/russian-trolling-of-us-social-media-may-have-been-much-greater-than-we-thought/

Also about Russian troll farms, www.nbcnews.com/news/all/russian-troll-describes-work-infamous-misinformation-factory-n821486 and www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html?mcubz=1&_r=1

If I can de lurk, great thread OP thank you.

It's working out nicely for pharma companies too? An extremely useful long term earner.

One has to admire the Machiavellian nature of this one. It is taking up time. I'm wondering how that could be mitigated with a simple organisation and action. It's also compromising so many politicians and campaigning organisations.

Idiotic that when NI women have no access to abortion, UC is impoverishing women predominantly and brexit shite takes away our EU rights, we have to divert energies to men in dresses.

That, as you say perking is probably the point.

This thread now comes at number 10 on a search just now.

Yeah, hackmum, that nasty vid about Carole Cadwalladr is .

"And then, just a few hours later, I clicked a link on Twitter. It was from Leave.EU’s official account – the Ukip-allied Brexit campaign headed by Nigel Farage. 'WATCH @carolecadwalla takes a hit as the Russian conspiracy deepens.'

"Leave.EU is now the subject of two Electoral Commission investigations into potentially illegal sources of funding, the first of which followed an article I wrote in March. They’ve been calling me crazy for months and I thought this would be more of the same. But it wasn’t. The video was a clip from the film Airplane!, in which a “hysterical” woman is told to calm down and then hit, repeatedly, around the head. The woman – my face photoshopped in – was me. And, as the Russian national anthem played, a line of people queued up to take their turn. The last person in the line had a gun.

"So far, so weird. Here was a registered political organisation that had gained the support of millions of law-abiding, well-meaning people, promoting violence against women and threatening a journalist. It was a “joke”. A joke underpinned by violent menace. From an organisation that has also made no secret of its links to the Russian state. Leave.EU’s Twitter account retweets Russia Today and the Russian embassy as a matter of course."

I'm utterly convinced it's the left wing. They are using the guise of equality and political correctness to limit speech and dissent. Anyone who disagrees is a bigot or a "right winger". It's just a slur on any opposition.
Look at Berkeley when Ben shapiro a conservative speaker was doing a talk, it cost thousands because of Antifa scum limiting free speech.
We are treading a dangerous path here where we are going to lose freedom.
Progressive "Rights" are becoming a way to remove actual rights and freedoms.

this is left wing ideology, nothing to do with traditional conservative views.
Ask yourself why left wing "philanthropists" like george soros are pouring millions into promoting trans agenda along with other left wing causes.
Left wingers have being trying to trash the very structure of society with attacks on traditionally held values.

If you change it to "number of" or "numbers of" women murdered in 2016 the results are what you would expect.

I am in Brazil and used google (in incognito) for this.

When I researched in English, I got the same results you all did. However, when I translated it to Portuguese (mulheres assassinadas em 2016) I saw no mention of trans women. I did not click on any articles, so it is of course possible that by women, they have added transwomen.

And I really am sorry that sounds like green-inked conspiraloon shit.

Just like the far-right manipulation of search terms, it's a real shock seeing it all down in one place. But actually this has been slowly building up over a few years... we just didn't have an eye on it.

I also realise I've been unclear. I'm not suggesting a billionaire has sat down and said, "I'm going to promote this controversial transactivist in order to help my business deal go through." It's that groups are creating and funding ecosystems that help with their own aims, regardless of whether a given issue is a priority for them or just something they're not unhappy to see as fodder. If as a happy side effect, paralysing women's rights activists by tying them up with trans issues means they're not campaigning for regulation (gasp) for minimum pay (double gasp), where's the bad?

So we can't now say how many women died in 2016?!

Maddness

WTF

The Boston Antifa people were trolls from Oregon. Most Twitter 'Antifa' accounts are trolls IME.

thinkprogress.org/boston-antifa-russia-tweet-adb3b2ab4918/

Unfortunately there isn't really any distinction between the violent male TRAs and people merely taking the piss out of them.

Right. Who's funding this.

So there are multiple groups with overlapping interests.

The Russian regime aims to paralyse and destabilize the US, UK and other countries which might get in its way. It does this by attempting to widen division and internal strife. Putin and friends would also like other governments to be supportive of their kleptocracy (no meanie sanctions against individuals) and of Russian actions eg invasion of the Ukraine. Nationalism, homophobia and racism in various flavours are popular motivating themes in Russia. Russia has plenty of dosh to throw at this - but actually troll farms and botnets are much cheaper than old-fashioned methods of influence.

Another group is the so called alt-right. Basically Nazis with new technology. They tend to have a pick'n'mix from the usual Nazi basket: anti-Semitic now also anti-Islamic, extremely racist, immensely misogynist. Good supply of keyboard warriors. Obviously common or garden MRAs find happy resonance in some of this stable's output. In general, keep an eye on Milo Yiannopolous, Steve Bannon, Richard Spencer.

You might think the alt-right are guys in their parents' basements, but in fact they overlap with the next group, economically very right-wing. These can be US-style libertarians who have an idealogical belief there should be no government regulation - specially no regulations that inconveniently stop them exploiting poorer people. They can be disaster capitalists, who love a good hurricane or Brexit or tech revolution, as it disrupts the existing order and allows them to swoop in and make a quick buck or re-write the rules in their favour while everyone else is trying to catch their breath. Many of this group are, surprise surprise, extremely rich. They're happy to throw money about.

Special cases of the above are US billionaires Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah. Mercer père is also ideologically racist and from the tech industry. He funds Breitbart, which employed Bannon before possibly during Bannon's stint in the White House .

Then there there's the so-called religious right in the US. They're engaged in a continuous fight against abortion rights and many aren't too keen on women having access to contraception or men being prosecuted for rape (unless it's the Wrong Sort of Man, obvs).

Then there's the tech giants. Don't know where the balance is between them trying to take charge of the world for idealogical aims, and trying to take charge of the world to make lots of money. I'm sure it will vary. They have reyther deep pockets.

I'm sure I've left some out.

Many of these groups have clustered around the Brexit referendum and Trump presidency, as OPPORTUNITIES for their agenda. The disruption and (in Trump's case) malleability of key players are wonderful for them. They cover their tracks by deflecting all scrutiny as "sour grapes your team didn't win." In the UK, keep an eye on Farage, Arron Banks and friends, Carswell, perhaps the Chandler brothers.

Although I've talked about right wing groups, I'd expect there to be Russian and other funding of ostensibly left-wing groups towards some of the same aims. So that's something to be aware of in coming years. Similarly I haven't tried to see how Islamist extremism fits into this, but it's certainly in a symbiotic relationship with the Western ultra-nationalists and religious right.

Promoting anti-woman transactivism fits in very nicely with the agenda of lots of these groups. The Russians like the division and the distraction from their own activities; the neo-Nazis like the misogyny; the cut-price MRAs like that too; the billionaires like the disruption; and the tech firms like the clickbait. The religios right... they may be on the horns of a dilemma about who to hate most...

That's a whistlestop tour, and just my take. I could be wrong or have missed important chunks, and I know the broad-brush characterisations leave a lot to be desired. And I hate sounding like a conspiracy theorist.

But basically, this is why Russian-owned botnets were retweeting alleged rapist Julian Assange's prolific tweets promoting Catalan separatism.

If you're fighting within a single cause, eg women's rights, the Assange-Catalan thing looks like random nonsense. It's only when you stand back and take the whole view that it suddenly makes sense.

I don't think this is SEO per se, it's just that the much of the media and establishment have bought the false narrative that trans people are under attack. Plus their lobby group is very efficient. When a transgender murderer rapist kills themself they'll hold a vigil outside the prison.

When a woman is murdered by her husband, there's silence.

These groups and newspapers like the Independent (which is, incidentally, owned by a Russian) will make a big headline about a transgender person being murdered in Brazil or some such, but a woman being killed by her husband isn't even news (different if she's 19 and pretty, but a 45 year old woman doesn't even flicker).

It's not a conspiracy so much as effective lobbying.

The police and others have bought in to the transgender lobbying, they talk about it constantly. We have to stamp out 'transgender hate'. But domestic violence? That's just something you live with. Like road deaths. Unavoidable side-effect, if you will.