How Russia used disinformation on social media to target voters

Russia's plot to wield social media sites to divide Americans and aid Donald Trump in the 2016 election was even more massive and sophisticated than previously understood, and efforts to disseminate disruptive messages are ongoing.

Those are the findings of two independent groups of researchers tasked by the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Committee. The reports, released Monday, concluded that posts from fake Russian accounts on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube led to more than 300 million engagements by Americans between 2015 and 2017.

Among the groups most heavily targeted by the Russians: African-Americans. The researchers found a cross-platform effort to target black Americans, often with memes about police brutality, and later feeding them voter suppression messages. Among the narratives shared with black audiences was a meme "I WON'T VOTE, WILL YOU?" Another said "Everybody SUCKS, We're Screwed 2016." Others urged blacks to vote for Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate.

The findings criticized social media companies for publicly minimizing the use of their platforms -- and for not sharing key data, such as the many comments generated as well as the posts' metadata, so they could better judge the impact.

"It appears that the platforms may have misrepresented or evaded in some of their statements to Congress," researchers from New Knowledge, a cybersecurity company, wrote. "It is unclear whether these answers were the result of faulty or lacking analysis, or a more deliberate evasion."

Researchers for New Knowledge as well as a second group from the University of Oxford and Graphika, a company that analyzes social networks, pored through more than 10 million Twitter posts from thousands of Russian fake accounts, more than 116,000 posts on Instagram and 61,000 on Facebook and more than 1,000 YouTube videos.

The power of the subconscious mind

Our subconscious mind is like a giant continent that man still hasn’t set his foot upon.

Those who have some knowledge of the human mind can point their lives where they want to go. Our subconscious mind stores information about the way we feel, think, act, and express ourselves. And we tend to experience most of life’s moments based on past experiences and the way they’ve affected us.

From the earliest times, man has been exerting efforts to unveil the secrets of how our mind works. Our ancestors found out that through certain techniques one can influence the workings of the mind. If life has been full of struggles and failures and you consider yourself unsuccessful, don’t worry… You can still improve your situation and live the life you want. But in training the subconscious mind, you need to cultivate the right attitude so that you can successfully wire your mind the way you want to from now on.

The way affirmations work is that you repeat to yourself a statement about something you want to to have more of or to change in yourself. What you need to know is that your affirmations should always be made in the present moment, not in the future nor in the past, but the present moment. You are in the present moment, so you have to live it now.

It is most effective not to repeat more affirmations than you can benefit from. This means that if you start practicing 10 different affirmations daily they won’t have much effect. To fully benefit from this, you should focus on just a few affirmations at most. Give yourself at least 5 minutes for each and every affirmation you want to implement into the process of training your subconscious mind.

To expand your consciousness, meditation is wonderful at impacting the different layers of the mind. It conditions the mind to function in new and more efficient ways. Meditation teaches you to bring your attention to the present moment without attachment and to enjoy it. When you meditate, you calm your mind and let it take a break from mundane tasks. It’s been observed that when a person meditates, undesirable emotions and attachments to them are reduced with time. Incorporating this highly effective subconscious mind training technique into your routine can enable you to realize the vast potential that you have. 15 minutes a day is a good way to break free from limiting beliefs. Meditation can be practiced throughout the whole day if desired, but if you want to make the best of it, do it right after you wake up or just before you go to bed.

It is also very important to form habits that will benefit you. Habits are a cornerstone to success… If you wish to learn how to train your subconscious mind, it serves you well to be aware and mindful of them. When you set yourself a goal to lead a healthy lifestyle or to be able to run a marathon, you should ask yourself the following questions: “What draws me back when I undertake a new task? How can I correct it?”

When you reflect on yourself, you can see where your weak spots are. This gives you the opportunity to move them out of your way and achieve your goals. Many people have the bad habit of criticizing themselves when they make the slightest mistake. In situations like these, people need to focus on what they’ve accomplished so far. Even the smallest accomplishment toward your goal should be put toward motivating you to go further. Waiting for that special moment in life to arrive means that sometimes it might not show up… Or sometimes you might miss it when it does. You shouldn’t always wait for things to go your way. Take your life into your own hands, because you’re its creator. Put the necessary efforts into whatever your goal is daily, and little by little, the circumstances in your life will begin to order themselves the way you want them to happen. Essentially, believing in yourself and growing the seeds of a successful mindset aligns you with the intentions of the Universe.

When you visualize your goals, you seal them in your mind and you are telling the Universe that this is what you want. The Universe then will slowly make sure that you get what you want. It becomes less likely for you to lose sight of where you want to go when you become constantly mindful of the direction. Just like meditation, this technique assists you in training your subconscious mind and it is effective early in the morning or before falling asleep. This requires evoking images in your mind of yourself fulfilling your dream. It means to make that image as real as possible… To feel the exact same emotion that you will feel when you reach your end goal. Make the images as vivid as possible, as if you are there and it’s happening right now. 10 minutes a day is a good way to begin practicing visualization.

Meditation, visualization, affirmation and developing healthy habits are powerful training techniques for the subconscious mind that can attract things in the Universe to you like a giant magnet.