Russian trolls infiltrate the pipeline debate
May 4, 2018
A few years ago Matt Damon made a movie critical of fracking, which just happened to be funded by a state media company owned by Abu Dhabi — an OPEC member and one of the world’s primary oil exporters. Abu Dhabi would have gained much from the curtailment of fracking in the U.S.
Now Russian trolls are getting in on the act. McClatchy recently reported that the same Russian cyber-manipulation campaign that interfered with the U.S. election in 2016 had a “hidden hand” in Florida protests against a natural gas pipeline called Saban Trail. As they did in the election meddling, Russian trolls created fake accounts, deployed bots, and used other methods to amplify discord.
“The social media propaganda,” McClatchy writes, “was part of a broad Kremlin campaign to disrupt the booming American energy industry..."
Read entire article on the Richmond Times Dispatch (VA).
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