#voting interference

Well! That's quite an opinion! Let's look at their blog, I'm sure we'll see a long history of posts there, showing us that this person is not a bot or a troll account specifically made for election interference?

...Oh?

What's this? Literally only one post?

Oh! But that post is dated to August 2013! Clearly this must be an old blog, it's not like Tumblr has a feature that lets you date posts to anytime you want- oh? They do?

The warning comes after a tumultuous few weeks in U.S. politics that have forced Russia, Iran and China to revise some of the details of their propaganda playbook. What hasn’t changed, intelligence officials said, is the determination of these nations to seed the internet with false and incendiary claims about American democracy to undermine faith in the election.

Default PFP. Not everyone who has a default PFP is a bot or troll, and a few bots/trolls actually do have custom PFPs, but enough bots/trolls have default PFPs that it's always worth looking for additional signs you're dealing with a bot/troll when you see one.

(If you're a real honest-go-goodness Tumblr blogger and you have a default PFP, then I strongly recommend you change it because many people will block you on sight.)

Default colors/layout. Again, bots and trolls don't usually put a lot of effort into customizing their blogs. Some of them fiddle around with the basic settings, but they're very unlikely to upload custom graphics and put too much effort into customizing the colors. Same as above, not everyone who has a default blog theme is a bot or troll, but enough of them do that it's worth looking for other signs of suspicious activity.

Soundbitey content. Bots/trolls don't really engage with the content of the posts they interact with. They post very generic soundbitey responses, like "You have Trump Derangement Syndrome. See a therapist," "Fuck you, I'm not voting for Genocide Joe/Kamala the Cop," "America is run by lobbies. Voting is a scam," or "Republicans and Democrats both hate us, that's why I'm voting third party." Basically, if it sounds like a regurgitated line, you may be dealing with a bot or a troll.

Lack of personal content. Bot/troll blogs may have only one post, or might just have a bunch of reblogs with nothing of substances added to them. I'm going to point out here that I've also been seeing blogs do this with pro-Biden/pro-Harris content, so I'm not sure that all of these blogs are necessarily trying to interfere with the election, or if they're trying to get attention so they can try and advertise something else down the line. Some of these blogs also post or like porn, so I suspect a lot of them are actually pornbots trying to capitalize on politics.

Here's some examples of replies from bot/troll accounts:

whodathydro is a great example of an extremely obvious bot/troll. When we go to their blog, we can see that it hasn't been customized in any way, and there's not even a single post on it.

I've also got screencaps of one-post blogs over here that you can check out. (The first one has actually gussied up their blog a little, but it clearly hasn't been used in any way an genuine blogger would use their blog - no personal content, no engagement, nothing.)

The extent of Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election is well-documented and yet still not fully understood. Russian agents were responsible for stealing and releasing emails from the Democratic National Committee. Russia used Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms to spread disinformation and sow discord among the American public. This was done to benefit then-candidate Donald Trump.

...

The NBC News analysis found that Russians working with the infamous Internet Research Agency — the Kremlin-linked propaganda outfit with close ties to Putin — tweeted out Jill Stein’s name at least 1,000 times, on a network of fake accounts whose online reach is thought to be in the tens of millions.

...

The environmental activist and erstwhile presidential candidate was in frequent communication with individuals inside Russia, and she herself made a trip to Moscow in 2015 to attend, among other things, a dinner hosted by Russian propaganda network RT, where she sat alongside future Trump campaign aide Michael Flynn and Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Russia is using fake videos and phony social media accounts to target Vice President Kamala Harris as the U.S. presidential election draws closer, according to a new report from Microsoft.

Here's the summary: Elon Musk is funding a PAC that's running ads that seem to offer voting voting registration assistance. Whether it actually gives you assistance depends on which state you live in.

If you live in a "safe" state, you will actually be taken to a real voter registration page. But if you live in a battleground state?

Rather than be directed to their state's voter registration page, they instead are directed to a highly detailed personal information form, prompted to enter their address, cellphone number and age.

If they agree to submit all that, the system still does not steer them to a voter registration page. Instead, it shows them a "thank you" page.

So that person who wanted help registering to vote? In the end, they got no help at all registering. But they did hand over priceless personal data to a political operation.

If you need to register to vote, visit: