What Tumblr did, unlike FB and Twitter (which have vastly more people working there), is that the way they released their data allows us to see exactly what these accounts were doing even though the accounts themselves are gone.
Browse enough of these posts and what is made plain is that the Russian influence campaign is indistinguishable from American left-wing and right-wing activity.
The strategy wasn’t to be the loudest people in the room, it was to be one of millions chattering in the crowd. This sort of activity is appealing because it’s not difficult to imitate and — more importantly — because online life is based around the activity of sharing things others made. “I saw this posted somewhere and had to share.” “Some neat points here.” Without the full context of a user’s identity, all you have is the one thing they said at one point in time, single units of sentiment that can be spread and shared without worry. It’s easy to meddle with politics abroad when you just have to download and re-upload a few things, or click reblog or retweet a few times, rather than come up with propaganda from scratch.
As I always said, the goal has always been to stoke anger, uncertainty and cynicism about liberal democracy and push us into our tribes (and to get the troll-in-chief into the White House who would work to the same goal).
Social media that has an easy reblog function is perfect for that goal – and we are all complicit in this, too, if we don’t use it responsibly.
Tumblr Is, Almost by Accident, Our Best Glimpse of How Russian Trolls Work
tinfoilparachute 