Assuming this is all true, how do you even tackle something like this while preserving the concept of freedom? If the government goes after groups of people for "meddling in elections" - well, that's very vague, isn't it?

Maybe most people don't have a problem with the FBI looking into domain registrations, cross-checking credit card payments, obtaining warrants for Google Analytics / Namecheap / etc...but investigating random web developers for alleged "ties to Russia" sounds eerily similar to McCarthyism.

I’m beginning to think a free, international Internet isn’t compatible with democracy. The medium is the message and the message of the Internet might end up being autocracy and hyper-effective propaganda and disinformation. I’m not sure it practically can live up to what we hoped it would be—some kind of liberating, enlightening force. It may just not be that, and it may be that no amount of tinkering will fix it.

An uneducated populace isn't compatible with democracy. This is just yet another manifestation of that.

I don't think there will be a free, international internet much longer. Between the money that can be made by local internet companies and the dangers to the incumbent power structures, I'm sure we'll start seeing more and more china-like internet setups in the future.

The intelligence community knows the Russian actors are and where they are hitting from, for the most part. The issue is getting the political and business leadership to take it seriously and do something about it.

The current administration has not taken the problem as seriously as it is for a wide variety of internal and political reasons. Neither has Facebook done much about limiting or policing political ads.

The problem space is pretty clear, getting actors in the space to do something about it...

What I don't understand is what is the point blaming other forces/countries for exploiting something that is so easily exploitable. If you have a wide-open security holes in your system they will be exploited by everyone who can potentially benefit from this.

Other than Russia/China/<Villain of the week> there are many other actors who have incentives to meddle in the society, e.g.

- The US government

- Large Businesses

Example from the article:

"Reopenmississippi.com was registered on April 16 to In Pursuit of LLC, an Arlington, Va.-based conservative group with a number of former employees who currently work at the White House or in cabinet agencies (link: https://projects.propublica.org/trump-town/organizations/in-...). A 2016 story from USA Today says In Pursuit Of LLC is a for-profit communications agency launched by billionaire industrialist Charles Koch."

- T-shirt sellers?

"A number of other sites — such as reopennc.com — seem to exist merely to sell t-shirts, decals and yard signs with such slogans as “Know Your Rights,” “Live Free or Die,” and “Facts not Fear.” WHOIS records show the same Florida resident who registered this North Carolina site also registered one for New York — reopenny.com — just a few minutes later."

At this point it is so easy to anonymously set up these websites and protest groups that a bored high-school student can do it.

Instead of putting blame on this or that country, efforts should be focused on creating some kind of a online reputation system so that any content posted would contain a signature that ties it to the author. If the signature is missing then you know the source is likely untrustworthy. Pros: no need for censorship. anyone can still post anything online. Cons: users need to be educated about this feature. It has to be supported by major browsers as a first-party component.

Otherwise we see more ridiculous initiatives like this from GitLab where they ban hiring engineers from Russia on certain positions: "WIP: Support Engineer Job family country-of-residence block" (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/issues/5555).

EDIT: fixed typos

> WHOIS records show the same Florida resident who registered this North Carolina site also registered one for New York — reopenny.com — just a few minutes later."

At this point it is so easy to anonymously set up these websites and protest groups that a bored high-school student can do it.

Instead of putting blame on this or that country, efforts should be focused on creating some kind of a online reputation system so that any content posted would contain a signature that ties it to the author.

The person selling shirts isn't doing it anonymously if whois records reflect that person's ownership of sites targeting different states.

I don't see how a reputation system helps much, if Florida man hits a chord with people, his site is going to have high reputation, regardless of any facts or not. Unless you're suggesting a centralized arbiter of truthiness, but that has myriad problems too.

Unfortunately, I don't think people are going to realize trusting random people until they experience the poor results for themselves. This is a slow process.

> efforts should be focused on creating some kind of a online reputation system

Do you want private companies to check the reputation or the govt or should it be crowd sourced?

I don't know how you got from the article to your first paragraph. Maybe we shouldn't just to that conclusion. (It may in fact be true, but maybe, you know, evidence, rather than just assuming?)

Even if there's only weak evidence tying this particular astroturfing campaign to Russia, there is no reason whatsoever to expect that Russia has backed off their efforts more generally. They've had great success so far with few meaningful repercussions. When you find organized political astroturfing online (especially with an apparent aim to sow discord), Russia now has to be on the list of suspects even before there's any specific evidence tying it to Russia. The prior probability of Russian involvement is high enough that almost any shred of specific evidence is enough to put them near the top of the suspect list.

You should read the followup to all of the “meddling” uncover by the special counsel in the last year. I think you may be surprised!

I’m still surprised that Bloomberg spent $1.2 billion on his campaign and barely scraped a delegate. But Russia spends a few thousand on facebook ads and boom!

> I think you may be surprised!

This kind of vague aspersion is inappropriate. If you have a point, make it.

I mean, to quote the article itself:

"A Twitter account tied to Murphy’s email address promoted nothing but spammy paid surveys for years. And a Skype lookup on his phone number curiously returns a Russian profile under the name валентина сынах (translated as “Valentine Sons”)."

Not saying it's a smoking gun, but it's hardly as baseless as you're claiming.

Ah. I read (I thought) the article, but I apparently got fooled by an ad break, and thought I had reached the end. Still, even if true, that's Murphy. That's not the Dorr brothers, or the Koch site, or the Orange County Republicans. So, even if Murphy is a Russian cutout, much of the rest of this isn't. That leaves anonu's point as somewhat valid - they're still meddling, at least to some degree (and in fact, I kind of presume that they would continue to try to do so) - but his comment still seems like a bit of a reach for a response to the article. One of those registering has a maybe-to-plausible Russian link, so let's veer off and talk about Russian meddling? Yes, we do in fact need to talk about it (and more, find ways to stop it), but this article doesn't seem like the place.

That's simple: we're not "through" anything until those responsible are out of power. Until they are they'll continue to allow and support, publicly and privately, any and all meddling that benefits them. We'll see what "America's" response is this November.

The domestic supply of disinformation has always outpaced the foreign supply. That doesn't mean they both don't exist and can and do have an affect.

I am be very cynical, but as long as there is power to consolidate there will be a struggle for it.

This is a constant game being played on the populace. Not from Russia to the US. From those seeking to control to the controlled.

> openness, freedom, independence are just tools

tools are only are good as the user. I had a friend in high school that lost 2 fingers to a tablesaw. I don't anyone thought it was used against him.

There's some news about that.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/18/russian-media-...

I actually think that it wasn’t so much the fact of Russian interference, the us does similar things all over the world — it was that a domestic political party collaborated with them.

> What I cannot believe is how the USA still allows this

Mueller's prosecutors dropped their prosecution when the Russian company charged sent lawyers to court because, among other things, they did not want to have to present their evidence in court.

While the current administration is turning a blind eye and I wish they wouldn't, the Russian connection here was only discovered after many layers of digging, and is still just conjecture.

After a few more iterations, they will learn how to close the gaps and be more and more untraceable. I don't know how it is possible to combat that.