How a world of fake profiles exploited Facebook to tout Roger Stone and Donald Trump – Yahoo News

Roger Stone spent a half-century honing his skills as a political operator and building a reputation as a stop-at-nothing dirty trickster, in support of a range of big-name politicians and causes, including Donald Trump and Richard Nixon.

Now, a report from the cybersecurity firm Graphika suggests that Stone who in recent years has become one of Fort Lauderdales best-known residents was able to translate his real-world approach to the online world, exploiting the social media platform Facebook as he pursued goals that included promoting Trump and himself.

A closer look at the document shows how the Sunshine State emerged as an epicenter for the disinformation network, which set out to meddle in Florida politics and beyond.

Last month, the social media giant took down a network of 54 Facebook accounts, 50 pages and four from Instagram, another social media site it owns. A map showed 15 locations of the accounts were in Florida, mostly along the coast from Vero Beach to Miami; a handful were elsewhere.

The disinformation network jumped into Florida politics, posting from an inauthentic account named Rob Kanter against Senate Bill 10, Graphika said. That legislation, which created a reservoir south of Lake Okeechobee, was fiercely opposed by Big Sugar. The bill passed in 2017, despite efforts on social media to defeat it.

Another example cited by Graphika: When a judge issued an order blocking Trumps order barring citizens from seven majority-Muslim countries from entering the United States in 2017, a Stone Cold Truth post accused the judge of letting terrorists in the U.S. to kill your family. It published his work address and phone numbers and invited people to call or email him.

Some pages associated with Stone promoted Stone, and often his books. Some attempted to influence legislation and criticized enemies including Hillary Clinton sometimes with negative messages. Some used fake names and were illustrated with faces found on the internet.

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Our investigation linked this network to Roger Stone and his associates, Facebook said. Some had links to the far-right group Proud Boys, Facebook said.

The report tied one example of online harassment by the network to a Sarah Jameson Facebook account, which purported to be a woman living in Plantation.

Roger Shuler, who writes an online blog called Legal Schnauzer, said he received a barrage of profanity-laden emails from some claiming to be a Sarah Jameson in 2015 and 2016. The person emailing was upset over Shuler critical posts about then-U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions and federal Judge Bill Pryor.

Shuler said he looked up Jamesons Facebook page and found a Roger Stone shrine. It seemed bizarre enough for him to write on his blog about the account with only 18 friends and posts promoting Stone.

I definitely had suspicions that it was a fake account or a false identity, Shuler said. It was kind of like a fan-girl page. Not much in-depth information. Whoever it was seemed to like Roger Stone for some reason.

It made me wonder: Roger Stone is known for dirty tricks. Was he involved in some of this? Shuler added.

Graphika, which says it uses artificial intelligence to analyze social media, said Facebook provided it with information to analyze before the takedown. The Graphika report was entitled Facebooks Roger Stone Takedown: Facebook Removes Inauthentic Network Attributed to Political Operative.

The accounts that were taken down, which included Stones Facebook and Instagram accounts, were most active from 2015 to 2017, especially around the time of the presidential election. Some were active as recently as this spring and advocated for a presidential pardon for Stone.

Graphika said many of the accounts carried discernible markers of inauthenticity, such as using profile pictures of other individuals.

For example, the accounts called Luciana Ramos (ostensibly based in Florida), Adrienne Leeann (no location given), and Jake Charles (ostensibly in Kahului, Hawaii), had profile pictures taken from, respectively, actress Christian Serratos in the Walking Dead series, a teenager whose story featured in the Des Moines Register in July 2016 (the account uploaded its profile picture five days after the story was published), and a Getty Images stock shot of surfing, Graphika wrote.

For people whove watched Stone over the years, the reports findings seem par for the course. For those who arent familiar with his long and colorful some would say sordid history, its a startling compilation.

Most werent major online presences, Graphika reported. Most pages had fewer than 5,000 followers and fewer than 200, although Stone had 60,000 followers each on Facebook and Instagram and 141,000 followers for his Stone Cold Truth page, Graphika said.

Stones social media activity had been limited.

In July 2019, while he was awaiting trial, a federal judge cut off Stone from social media sites Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who presided over the case against Stone in Washington, D.C., acted after Stone posted a picture of her on Instagram with an image that to many looked like the crosshairs of a gun next to her head.

Stone couldnt be reached for comment Thursday.

Stone told the Miami Herald that he planned to take action, saying Graphika are the con men I will be suing. Because he earns a substantial amount of income from the promotion of my books and my other products on Facebook I have damages and will be bringing appropriate legal action. He said it was completely totally and categorically false that he associated with inauthentic accounts.

A Graphika spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment Thursday.

For decades, Stone was known mainly to people in the political and media worlds.

He burst into broader public consciousness when his support for Trumps presidential campaign involved him in the special counsels investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, his eventual indictment and conviction on federal charges, and finally Trumps commuting the prison sentence of his longtime associate.

On July 10, Trump commuted Stones sentence, just days before he was supposed to begin serving a 40-month prison term for lying to Congress, witness tampering and obstructing the U.S. House investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, which meddled in the 2016 election.

Stone has consistently denied wrongdoing and said the prosecution was motivated by politics.

Trumps decision, which was criticized by many in the legal and political worlds, rewarded a longtime loyalist, who had promised that I will never roll on Donald Trump, regardless of any pressure applied to him.

2020 the Sun Sentinel (Fort Lauderdale, Fla.)

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