'Russian trolls' promoted California independence

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"Calexit" is short for "California exit" - the idea that the US state could break away from the rest of the nation - and the election-night trend seemed to be driven by liberal activists wary that heavily Democratic California would be governed by Trump.

But BBC Trending has found evidence that the hashtag had some outside help, from accounts run by people based in Russia.

As a result of US Senate hearings into possible Russian influence on the election, Twitter recently released a list of accounts banned from the network because of ties to the Internet Research Agency, a St Petersburg-based "troll factory".

One of the accounts on the list, @CalifroniaRep (the misspelling is deliberate), was a backer of the #Calexit campaign. Trending has seen a partial list of the now-deleted @CalifroniaRep tweets, including dozens which used the #Calexit hashtag. The Twitter account was also linked to other social media accounts advocating the secession of California from the United States.

There are also indications that the election night #Calexit trend - the hashtag was mentioned 100,000 times in the course of a few hours - was artificially driven by automated bots or fake accounts. Several of the most retweeted messages under the hashtag were posted by accounts with just a few hundred followers. And some of those tweets were retweeted thousands of times, an unlikely - though not impossible - occurrence.

In the hours after it became clear that Trump would win the election, one #Calexit tweet by a California teenager was the most retweeted message using the hashtag:


Although this tweet was repeated 10,000 times, nearly 2,000 of those accounts have since disappeared from Twitter, indicating that they were potentially automated bots, fake accounts, or otherwise violated the network's terms and conditions.

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hal
Although this tweet was repeated 10,000 times, nearly 2,000 of those accounts have since disappeared from Twitter, indicating that they were potentially automated bots, fake accounts, or otherwise violated the network's terms and conditions.[/i]

Or perhaps they took the first Calexit they came to…

"we will bury you".

Russia... chess masters.
China... masters of the long game.

Really you can't make this crap up. Anyone who worked in the field during the cold war knows this stuff. I wonder when the end game will take place ? I wonder what the results will be ? I hope my children survive. I hope humanity survives...

March 07, 2017
"The leader of the California independence movement lives in Russia"
www.pri.org/stories/2017-03-07/leader-california-independence-movement-lives-russia

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In tha 360. [url=Zee Maps Now requires a subscription/payment to work]MRF User Map[/url]

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cbelt3
"we will bury you".

Russia... chess masters.
China... masters of the long game.

Really you can't make this crap up. Anyone who worked in the field during the cold war knows this stuff. I wonder when the end game will take place ? I wonder what the results will be ? I hope my children survive. I hope humanity survives...

I think it's high time we gather some of our best linguists, preservationists, and ornithologists and create time capsules intended to assist the evolving civilization of our avian brethren that will no doubt follow after should homo sapiens extinguish itself.

I'm beginning to see why bad grammar and misspellings are rampant on social media. Not native English speakers!

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