The Russian Bot Who Wasn’t There

Facebook edition: Tipped off to ‘suspicious’ accounts supporting Bernie Sanders, Facebook hunted high and low for Russian trolls and Trump operatives, preferably colluding to promote Bernie, but came up empty…..

Yessiree, Bob, via The Wall Street Journal we learn that Facebook had been tipped off that suspicious accounts had been working to promote Sen Bernie Sanders in his quest for the Dem nomination. Naturally, suspicious minds leapt to the conclusion that it was Russian bots doing Trump’s bidding to promote the ‘weakest candidate’ and rushed off into cyberspace looking for evidence to fit the crime.

Trump Derangement Syndrome will do strange things to people, especially Democrat people, because, as usual, there was no evidence to be found – WSJ: “But the company was unable to substantiate claims that Trump supporters or Russian actors were involved in any inauthentic activity.”

Facebook spokesman Andy Stone said the company investigated a claim by an outside researcher over suspicious pro-Sanders content, among regular reports it generally receives from the research community.

At least two separate, independent online disinformation researchers have found within the last several months what they believe to be evidence of inauthentic pro-Sanders activity on Facebook that may have links to Russian operatives or Trump supporters, according to one of the people familiar with the matter. [Wishful thinking -Ed.]

“We investigate each credible claim we receive, just as we did in this instance when an outside researcher contacted us,” Mr. Stone said. “To date, we have not been able to substantiate the researcher’s claims and we have not been notified by the intelligence community.”

U.S. officials have also briefed Mr. Sanders that Russia is trying to support his campaign for the Democratic nomination, The Wall Street Journal previously reported. It couldn’t be learned whether Facebook’s internal probe is related to the briefing U.S. officials provided to Mr. Sanders.

That’s right: The slightest hint that Russian Trump-bots might be invading FaceBook had their techies all a-twitter – when you have TDS, you tend to see The Russian Bot who wasn’t there! Trump is ROFL somewhere at the thought of just how easy it is to troll these tech titans who take themselves so seriously. (And Putin is having a good chuckle about discombobulating western “intelligence” services without lifting a finger!)