I can see how certain aspects of US politics are interesting to russian botnets (assuming they too are politically controlled to some extent, which I think is safe to say). Foreign policy is very much dependent on who is president, and US foregin policy is amatter of billions of dollars for Russia.<p>But gun laws? What's the reasoning behind that? It doesn't add up. On the contrary, it would rather seem like some group in the US (Say a large gun rights organization of some form) would <i>buy</i> these services from the russians. The Russian twitter troll factories don't work for free, and in this case there doesn't seem to be a reason why Russia would pay for this?<p>Edit: another poster pointed out: there is one thing russia would gain from and that's political division and instability. Next up: pay someone to have a very public and very late abortion, for example.
Note that while the headline says the bots are "pro-gun", the article says the bots flood Twitter with messages on <i>both</i> sides of an issue like this. The idea supposedly being to encourage political discord in general.
Are we even sure they're Russian bots? If so, are we sure that they're hired by the Kremlin and not the NRA or the Yanopopoulous Youth or something?
I always get a little skeptical about articles like this, and the motivation behind them. Are there Russian bots - perhaps, but they tend to sow discord. It wouldn't surprise me if some fraction of the anti-gun tweets are also bot driven.<p>But at the same time, I have gun owning friends, and they tend to circle the wagons when something like this happens. With 1 in 3 adults in the US owning a firearm, it doesn't take very many of them for there to be a lot of tweets against gun control.<p>To put their reaction in perspective, realize that since fame appears to be a motive in these shootings, the easiest way to stop this would likely be to pass a law to prevent the media from covering mass shootings, or at least the names and life stories of the shooters. And I think a lot of reactions here would be "we can't do that!", because of the first amendment.<p>That's how a lot of people feel about the second amendment.
There will come a time when we will disconnect the international and intercontinental internet connections until we've figured out how to keep democracy functioning in a connected world.<p>It may get to the point where activities such as these will be classed right along with acts of war, I have no idea what the solution is but clearly the downsides of our early days attempt at creating a 'hive mind' are starting to weigh pretty heavily.
If I were a left wing group, trying to sow dislike of guns, this is exactly what I would do. Fits with the trump/russian thing, and looks kooky to explain. Why would russians care about our gun laws?<p>/tinfoil
David Satter, "The Less You Know, the Better You Sleep"<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE7uXO8NEms" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WE7uXO8NEms</a>