Russian trolls targeted ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ online to amplify discontent: report

The Hill ^ | 10/02/2018 | Morgan Gstalter

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

Russian hackers reportedly targeted the release of Disney's "Star Wars: The Last Jedi" in 2017 to politicize the franchise and drum up discontent.

A new academic paper released this week from researcher Mort Bay at the University of Southern California found evidence online of "deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments."

Russian operators have exploited social media accounts to push political agendas, most notably during the 2016 presidential election, Bay wrote.

[linear]

There is a good takedown of this linked on NRO I believe. Turns out only 16 of the thousands of tweets can be attributed to Russian bots. Utterly misleading headline.

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

Saying Russians cast the Last Jedi as a bad movie is like saying Russians cast Hillary as a bad candidate.

Touche! Even Claire McCaskill told Hillary to shut up and stay away.

[Salman]

IIRC, plenty of people said the second trilogy sucked (or was "too political") without Lucas having hissy fits and descending into conspiracy theories.

[Little Ray]

Or, maybe SW:TLJ was simply a crappy movie that utterly destroyed the Starwars franchise?

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

And this is based on an “academic” paper. Res ipsa loquitur.

[Telepathic Intruder]

Uh huh, sure. If you don't like Star Wars you're in collusion with Russia. Probably a Trump voter.

[MNDude]

The Russians have been with propaganda to bring down wonderful movies since Waterworld with Kevin Costner!

[Zathras]

LOL...what nonsense.
The movie was so bad with a plot written by a 6 year old, all it was missing to totally crater it was more Ewoks.

[Snickering Hound]

[Paradox]

The reaction by the Left about Trump winning the election is EXACTLY what the trolls wanted. They keep playing right into their hands...

[Rinnwald]

Capitalist running dogs like dees “Star Wars” moovees. To destroy truth, justees, and dee American way, we must make dem unpopular. Also, must make Superman reely stupid.

[jiggyboy]

Some Russian trolls are easily spotted on twitter. Lots of numbers in the handle, only a few followers, a huge retweet to original-tweet ratio, many of those tweets are just GIFs or memes, and many of the text tweets are seemingly randomly picked from a hat, i.e., “but what about Trump / Hillary?”, “you blue/red stater are so predictable”, “you mad?”, etc.

[montag813]

Obviously was DC Comics trolls/bots if anyone. Russians? Absurd.

[WKUHilltopper]

Naaa...it couldn’t be the movie is full of childish PC crap and is nothing more than ridiculous tripe...it’s the Russians. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

[DakotaGator]

Russian trolls targeted ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’ online to amplify discontent: report

It's far worse than that. Russian trolls made "Star Wars: The Last Jedi"! Is nothing safe from these godless communists ;-)

[Bommer]

Homestly, they didn’t have too. It sucked on its own merit and a nothin new rehash of all the other SW movies. What’s the next excuse on why Solo sucked? Chinese?

[rightwingcrazy]

Russian troll.

[minnesota_bound]

Hollywood: “It is a vast Russian conspiracy!”

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

Hollywood: It is a vast Russian conspiracy!

Some younger readers may not fully appreciate the subtle reference to the HUAC investigation of Hollywood 60 years ago.

[thoughtomator]

The SEC ought to look into this garbage, as it’s clearly intended to influence Disney’s stock by painting a false picture of why a SJW-washed Star Wars franchise once worth billions is failing.