caustictickingoftheclock:

i’ve seen a couple people today reblogging posts by IRA accounts, and basically insinuating that something sketchy is going on because ‘could a russian spy blog make a post this concerned with social justice?’

first of all, the answer is yes. these aren’t bots, they’re real human people paid to discover what appeals to people on this site and capitalise on it (so their coherence and proper grammar doesn’t mean they aren’t IRA accounts, just that they aren’t bots). if all they posted was the disinformation they want to spread, no one would follow them. 

there’s a number of reasons you might think tumblr deleted the wrong blog. i’m not saying this couldn’t have happened (god knows this site is a mess), but here’s why a lot of these reasons don’t check out: 

• you may have seen these accounts sharing a bunch of fairly normal posts, both informational and humorous. again, they’re just imitating regular bloggers on this site. it’s not hard to learn what’s popular and share it.
• you may have seen them make sj-related posts. they were probably still trying to imitate regular users, but they’re also framing the info to suit their needs. take this post, which explains the issue really well: an IRA account made a post about a popular topic (hidden figures) but framed it so as to inspire anger. this is a good way of making people share without thinking. making sj posts is useful for the IRA because a, it lets these people influence what and how you think about sj issues and b, the language of sj is a language you know and, in a way, trust (in the same way those old racists on fb we’re always making fun of know and trust the language of us patriotism), so you’re more likely to share sketchy posts if they’re couched in sj language.
• you may have seen tumblr users you’re fairly sure aren’t IRA employees acting in the same way: encouraging anger or manipulating people to provoke emotional reactions. the fact is that these strategies are shitty and you should be wary of them, no matter who is using them. the ubiquity of emotional manipulation on this site probably made it really easy for the IRA to use it undetected. this is why we should push back against anything from ‘watch (x demographic) ignore this lol’ to ‘SAY THEIR NAME’ (in reply to headlines which don’t use people’s names because that’s not how newspaper articles work). these attitudes are meant to tug on your emotions (shame, anger, sadness), and if you let them do that you are way more likely to spread bs or unsourced claims. if you know a post is legit but it has some anger/fear-mongering bs attached, reblog a version without that bs or find a different post with the same info.
• another thing you might have seen non-IRA people do (or done yourself, i know i used to all the time) is spreading info that is…not always fake, but maybe presented really inaccurately. i’m sure you can think off the top of your head of an informational post (not necessarily sj-related) that was widely spread and then thoroughly debunked or at least corrected. this is another problem with the way we use social media that the IRA was able to exploit. if you’re not sure something is true, don’t share it. if you doubt the source’s objectivity, don’t share it. if it’s unsourced but turns out to be true, please post the sources you find. 
• finally, tumblr is pretty big on ingroup/outgroup mentality. people who ensconce themselves in a corner of tumblr (ace-in/exclusionists, anarchists, whatever) tend to form groups based on opinions, meaning anyone who vocally shares these opinions is in the group and has a disporportionate amount of our trust, whereas those explicitly outside the group we are a lot more sceptical towards. this lets people use social signalling to earn unwarranted trust and spread misinformation or their baised af opinions, so it’s also something to watch out for. evaluate posts based on the content, not just on who is posting them.

anyway, i think a lot of us (and i am absolutely including myself) need to do some thinking about how we share stuff on this site. i feel like the culture on tumblr (like on many other social media) makes it easy to spread misinformation, so we need to reexamine that culture and work on not letting certain social signals override out scepticism