Russian trolls used Tumblr to influence American voters
If you thought that Tumblr was just fan fiction and monochrome erotica GIFs , then you probably haven't been paying attention. The blogging platform has also, in recent years, become a hotbed of Russian activists seeking to disrupt American politics. That's the charge leveled at the platform by Buzzfeed and Professor Jonathan Albright, an authority on so-called fake news. The outlets teamed up to examine if Tumblr, like Facebook and Twitter , had been compromised by the notorious Internet Research Agency . The agency has been described as a professional trolling agency , using social media to wage an information war on foreign powers. Unlike on those other networks, however, it appears that the efforts were designed to drive a wedge in the African American community. According to research from Buzzfeed and Albright, Russia launched accounts that initially propagated false accounts concerning Hillary Clinton's attitude towards African Americans. Older footage, includi...