do here is we have a bunch of clones of common types of sites so that people can play around and get to know you by turin says you bought has hundreds of applications from advertising jobs to pumping up celebrity popularity it can also be used to spread and amplify a political message real or fake you have twitter on there yeah i mean there's a lot of different things you can do while he warns users against it turn is well aware his software can be used for so-called black cat purposes tasks that violate a platform's terms of service are illegal with you about you can actually create random usernames and passwords and you can use those to create accounts but if you need a bot to make that many accounts for you then there's a good chance that you're doing something twitter doesn't want to do once you have accounts you can use bots to do likes to do follow those shares to do read tweets all of the above. yeah absolutely and if you'd like i can show you

a more black cat example using entirely fictional accounts and the programs practice and he showed us how you bought might be used to spread this information on facebook through friend requests so this is a fake account that we have and let's say that we want to. get some idea out there let's say that we want people to believe that. or. another modified. so corgis are dogs right yes so this is some fake news they can just. going to post that on my wall and now i can run this and clicking this ad friend button. and that it is just going out there and it's clicking add friends at random exactly endlessly and looks like and what's going to happen is these people when they get that friend message they're going to come back to tire. profile and they're going to try to figure out what it is and when they do

that they're going to see that message boards are genetically modified and if the message is something that people are curious about we're going to start talking about it and possibly even believe it to be true and turn explained how bots can also be used to lure people to pages like heart of texas which were created by the russians to incite divisiveness in protests in the u.s. so instead of saying cordy's are genetically modified sausage is we might just post a link to the page or the group that we want to advertise for and there's a chance that they're going to click it and there's a chance that they're going to like it and if you want to enhance the appealing credibility of pages in dissin for mation there is a wide range of offerings from black cat bot operators turn doesn't sell the products but he showed us some examples of what's available online you have page likes at a dollar per thousand likes you can get facebook followers a dollar and

a half per thousand you can also buy twitter followers twitter likes to read tweets for thirty cents you can buy a thousand read tweet yeah you can have people share your you tube video and there's also facebook accounts for sale here yesterday we can purchase fully filled accounts the way personal photos cover avatars timeline posts for five dollars apiece we could have accounts that are friends with them already you can buy everything yeah pretty much in the words of one body builder that i spoke to it's like the wild west they said that they can do anything in terms of political political outreach political columns put all the advertising and it's really hard for them to get caught. and it wasn't just russians who skillfully used bots during the two thousand and sixteen presidential campaign so did extreme conservative white nationalist the so-called all right i think the all right was very successful at using these tools there's been a whole hand books written by the all right on. how to use social media to

manipulate public opinion there's and those are all born out of a lot of the traditions that we've seen in russia the handbooks posted to online forums encourage all right activists to do whatever it takes to attack the opposition. followers are prompted to steal people's online pictures and impersonate them. and there are instructions on how to use bots to spread fake stories and mislead journalists the all right has the playbook on this and they've shown no hesitancy to use the most manipulative nefarious tools to get their message across to people to better understand the scope of far right to simper mission in propaganda we travel to harvard law school to meet with your high bank or director of the brooklyn klein center for internet and society for this particular study we started rolling the tape for may of twenty fifteen all the way to election day bank learned his team identified about two million stories that mention one of the candidates and more than seventy thousand online news sites

ranging from blogs to mainstream media they then digitally mapped how often the stories we don't link to shared or tweeted on facebook and twitter each of these nos represents one biggest source. the way their color represents the attention of audiences to their bank lose analysis reveal two separate media ecosystems in america one grounded in the established mainstream media and the other insights dispensing propaganda from the far right breitbart right wing web site that was run by steve benen donald trump's campaign strategist and former white house advisor as a central place in the map the result is a remarkably clear image with a very distinct insular right wing and a fairly mixed race what role did the right play in this right wing media ecosystem it's fairly clear that they played a significant role in generating memes and ideas and framings but what's critical

here is that you have these major sites in the middle that offer translation service if you will sites like breitbart and the general eyes and normalize for the population and so when you look at the actual stories and you try to see how is breitbart talking about immigration it's in terms of terrorism in terms of bringing diseases into the country in terms of criminals so you have this extraordinary right framing but without the explicit white supremacy so that they become in some sense more accepted. you couldn't have had this right wing ecosystem without social media could you i think it would be hard certainly social media allowed all of these very extreme views and disparate groups to find each other and create more power and more influence could you tell whether there was more misinformation and

disinformation liberal side versus the right wing side yeah what this shows you is that a lot all that recreating a lot of facebook sharing all these sites truth leads gateway pundit that are fairly systematically generating false claims and conspiracy theories are very prominent in the don't really have a parallel to this on the propaganda theory or disempower mation theory says that if more outlets share the same information that that is translated to people as being more credible that's exactly right but credibility is gained from the fact that the same audience reads and recreates and facebook shares the same set of sites what does it say about a society that has two separate media eco systems and i think it presents a real challenge because of while the center and the center left and the left are almost still organized roughly around for additional media organizations and

science the right seems to have created for itself its own universe of. the sort of tribal knowledge production says where everything is just whatever my people say is true whatever those people say schools and courts outcomes. this is a profound break in our ability to have anything like reasoned policy and reasoned political engagement. what matters now is like how are we going to react to it how are we going to combat this because i believe that people who believe in reason and the truth and and facts. can we now and in the day keep in good is a partner at revolution messaging was the director of digital advertising for democrat bernie sanders two thousand and sixteen presidential campaign how important were the use of social media platforms to bernie sanders success in two thousand and sixteen very important only three percent of americans knew who he was

and. without social media i don't think people would know who he is now. so candidates such as bernie don't have to go through the traditional gatekeepers whether in the party or whether in the media and you're able to build popular support in a way that has never been done before but there are real challenges that social media platforms present to democracy aren't there you know europeans see populism as a bad thing in the u.s. i think if there is enough groundswell for for good things to happen the people can unite using these tools and accomplish them. that you use bots on facebook or twitter in the twenty sixteen election now i think that there is an interesting future in terms of people who want to get information from a campaign. that's going to get the information i think that's really useful in terms of spreading misinformation i think it's a bad thing and something that we stick seriously do you think the russian information campaign aimed to exacerbate social division in the united states

donald trump well or both both and you need to recognize that there are people who are disingenuous in mind whether it's russia other countries corporations in america and if they succeed in that then we're giving them a lot more power than mission. what did you think of the all rights efforts to use social media platforms to help trump in twenty six. disagree very strongly with with the albright. but they are using tactics that are successful in terms of propaganda in terms of lack conveying an emotional connection with their base now i'm someone who thinks that we shouldn't be distorting facts lying to people but we have to learn from what they were doing and do it better than the left doesn't have that playbook they're not using that and i hate to say it but i think that if the lesson did start using it that what we'd see was just even more noise and spam we've got to figure out how to address the issue of bots and the issue of fake news and all of this junk content that's spreading over social media without fighting

fire with fire so what do you think the solution is i think that the first thing that. we need to have done is to have some way of authenticating users knowing who is who on the platforms with the verify that the person that we're talking to is not using automation to bolster their their presence online and that's as simple as having a little marker on the page that says this profile is highly automated and what it also does for twitter for facebook or for another social media company is it tells them that hey because this is a highly automated profile we need to keep it out of our algorithm that determines trends. twitter google and facebook declined our request for interviews in the u.s. congress is considering legislation that would require them to make reasonable efforts to ensure that no foreign national buys ads to influence u.s. elections but the companies are spending millions on lobbying and say they can be trusted to regulate themselves efforts to hold them accountable for the spread of dissin from ation on their platform which may be more successful in europe the european countries have

a healthy resistance to big rich american tech companies write that they're not impressed they're constantly debating and pushing forward on stronger privacy protections or data protections they are very aggressive in competition policy and force and so i look to europe as the only place where you can have a healthy debate about the dangerous power of facebook and do the russians meanwhile have learned a great deal in recent years about how to use social media platforms to undermine democracy f.-ing that has been achieved by the kremlin and its actors is definitely marking and turning point america's standing in the world has been on the my in the election. so the next challenge now is europe and the question is will we lose our society to a fictional reality that is currently being architecture by russia or will we in fact making people more is into this information and better trained and equipped to be skeptical some of the fake news alternative thanks for coming out and come

together in common costs and stand up against it i think the core requirement is a lot more transparency and public accountability for what's going on i think the companies have much too much. ability to resist contain the information and not share it with any kind of public body that would review what they're doing how do you think this is going to play out are social media platforms going to be seen as a force for positive change or as an instrument contributing to democracy is the mice i think the solutions will be fought out based on who wins or who loses the next few election cycles i think that's true in europe and it's true in the u.s. so as long as trump and the republican party keep winning there is a strong feedback cycle and these techniques prove themselves then you can see real destabilization of the democratic system so we're going to need

a broad spectrum of approaches to deal with the problem but at the end of the day you need the population to actually decide that it doesn't want to believe in the nonsense it's about winning elections and then changing the incentives to use these dissin from asian systems. be a. on july fourteenth. two thousand and sixteen. this is a day in nice change people's lives. to meet it has killed at least sixty. the french muslim families who lost their loved ones. truck attack a nice. if

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it's a long journey from heineman. to school in the dominican republic crossing national borders and cultural barriers to tell his son that not attending. discovering filmmaking talent from around the. find a latin america as a young man he will stop at nothing to see. the crossing on al-jazeera. this is al-jazeera. hello i'm rob matheson and this is the news our live from doha coming up in the next sixty minutes a tense beginning for the nato summit in brussels donald trump confronts his allies

. first pictures image of the rescue tying boys a day after the final five come out of the cave. thousands take to the streets in zimbabwe to call for free and fair elections. and england and croatia battle it out for a place in the world cup final. in the run up to the nato summit many observers wondered would donald trump offer rhetorical support to the alliance or would he be ratchet up the tension between america and its allies that was on display at last month's g. seven summit in canada well they didn't take the u.s. president long to all for an answer from brussels diplomatic editor james bays reports. never has the u.s. commitment to its nato allies look to the shaky is this even before the summit had

started president trump used his breakfast with nato secretary general to attack his allies focusing on one in particular germany is totally controlled by russia because they were getting from sixty to seventy percent of their energy from russia and a new pipeline and you tell me if that's appropriate because i think it's not and i think it's a very bad thing for nato and i don't think it should have happened and i think we have to talk to germany about it the secretary general look taken aback maybe it's the law and my major but the president kept up his extraordinary attack but germany as far as i'm concerned this captive to russia because it's getting so much energy from russia so we're supposed to protect germany's. energy from russia chancellor merkel who's just survived a bruising political battle at home had this response to this fresh assault. and tired though it's months i have myself witnessed that parts of germany were

controlled by the soviet union and i am very happy that today we are unified in freedom as the federal republic of germany and that's why we can say that we make our own policies and we make our own decisions despite that comment she looked as though the ferocity of trump's words that affected her she was hardly smiling as she interacted with the others. the president and the chancellor of boarded each other out walking at different ends of the procession then what's known as the family photo at a time of family feud as helicopters flew overhead the tension was high the leaders clearly aware the current divisions are among the most serious this alliance has faced in its almost seventy years of existence. finally when chancellor merkel and president trump actually met the language was much more conciliatory than earlier. versions. perhaps the president decided to back down he's been known in the past to

avoid confrontation in face to face meetings or the two decided to declare a truce for now either way damage has been done to us germany relations and to the image of unity they wanted to reject james bays al-jazeera at nato headquarters in brussels well donald trump is also calling on nato allies to raise their defense spending to four percent of their gross domestic product that's up from the alliance's official target of two percent dominic cain is in berlin with german reaction to trump's comments. the general tenor of president trump's remarks regarding germany's contributions to defense spending in so far as its role as a nato member country have been negative for some considerable time not just as president but also as candidates and he railed against what he considered to be the insufficient amount of money being spent by the german government the point to make

here is that for the german government they have committed to raising their defense spending to the correct ratio in the nato summit in wales and twenty fourteen but both main parties that vied for the chancellorship in last year's general election very clear that they were not going to reach that kind of target in the life of this parliament frankel americal when she heard the president transfer marks she chose to speak to reporters saying effectively that is somebody who'd grown up in communist east germany she was very grateful now to live in a free country not dictated to by other countries where germany could plow its own pharo politically that's something she thing that she has returned to the question will be what sort of fall out there will be long regarding the relationship to kuli between germany and the united states this summit is a very important occasion for the twenty nine member countries question as i say is what will emerge from it. greece has to expel two russian diplomats for interfering

in its internal affairs athens is accusing moscow of trying to undermine a recent deal over the name of its northern neighbor macedonia john psaropoulos reports diplomatic expulsions are a slap in the face in the midst of an otherwise cordial relationship they haven't happened since the cold war unofficial information suggests the greek government is upset over moscow's efforts to undermine greece's recent agreement with former yugoslav macedonia that agreement settled the name issue that's been separating the two for a quarter century and opens the door for that country's entry to nato as north macedonia but nato has pushed to absorb the balkans has annoyed moscow. whole region of southeast europe is a big question mark for russia in the past few years it clearly doesn't have the relations it had during the communist era situation needs to be resolved soon various states want to be nato and the e.u. this is not pleasing to russia nato and policies in greece bulgarian at their back

and countries are not leading people to believe that nato and will benefit their economy and society. sentimental most greeks harbor friendly feelings towards their fellow orthodox russians and consider that true hostility between the two people is all but impossible but politically greece belongs to the west and the line including imposing sanctions on russia for its annexation of crimea four years ago so even though greece and russia have no tangible common interests here as elsewhere russia tries to exploit cultural bonds to create divisions in the western alliances harass us soft power is off the doxy there is the island of course all. the center of the core file antisense be needin if you go to. city or four times been a year you can see. russia and say no one's going around it but aids we think the icon of this sense been done. it is something common for for or for but

this speaks to the souls of the p.p. it is this kind of influence this soft power that last year. the orthodox world of greece moscow has watched helplessly as all its previous allies in eastern europe have entered the western orbit béla reuss ukraine and the balkans of the last bits of europe left up for grabs russia intends to fight for them jumps are open last al-jazeera athens divers in thailand who helped bring twelve schoolboys in their football coach to safety from a flooded cave called the rescue a miracle the first pictures of emerge of the boys recovering in hospital and their dramatic rescue from chiang rai step vasant reports. they're looking surprisingly healthy considering the ordeal the rescued boys are being isolated from their parents to reduce the risk of infection in hospital. i do sack

wanks jan gave his son a big thumbs up when he saw him he was one of the first to stop looking for his son who when he disappeared almost three weeks ago. i didn't feel confident that my boy can do this even though he knows how to swim but i'm not sure if he's a good swimmer he only got basic swimming lessons at school but i'm very happy and proud he came out safely he can't wait to hold his son but understands it might take a few more days. the first thing i want to do is hug him all parents have the same feeling i want to see the face of my child and embrace him and ask him how he feels and how he's doing the five hour long hazardous journey out of the narrow floodgate system has taken its toll on the children and their coach the commander of the time navy seal divers who played a vital role in the rescue says they were very called mast. the boys got special full face masks with oxygen circulating all the time the divers carried them out

and they were wearing wet suits to keep them warm we made them relaxed and calm and slowly moved them out but they were very cold. the complexity of the rescue operation became clear when trucks full of equipment drove away hours after the last cave rescue was completed twenty tons of oxygen tanks ropes lights and food supplies have been fairly underground cleanup has started after a rescue operation unprecedented for its scale and complexity it's been called an extraordinary example of human frank and resilience family one cave and the rescue of the wild boars soccer team will now go down in history as the moment where the impossible was made possible. to him while their families school friends and everyone else in thailand celebrated their safe return to footballers will have to stay in hospital for at least a week to recover hoping that the first talk with their parents will be sooner than

that that fast and al-jazeera john right thailand. haiti's prime minister told his resisting calls to resign over widespread protests that have been four days of unrest over the government's plan to raise fuel prices in the impoverished nation the government has scrapped the hike in prices but that's done little to dampen the outrage stores were looted and protesters set up barricades burning vehicles in the streets at least four people have been killed others on has the latest from the haitian capital port au prince the proposed rate hike on gasoline caused great outrage in this country primarily because it affected almost all sectors of this country rate increase of thirty eight percent on gasoline forty seven percent on diesel mostly would affect the middle class that have cars and also business owners that use trucks and and cars to move their products through the country but there was also more than

a fifty percent proposed increase on kerosene that affects an overwhelming majority of the poorest people in this country they use kerosene rely on kerosene to power their homes with electricity so that is why you saw so much anger at this and that's why you saw the government quickly backtrack and and at least temporarily suspend these rate hikes but you're still seeing great pressure on this government people are still very upset and he just told us that this gasoline and kerosene rate increase was just the last straw that threw everyone over the edge in their anger they say there is also clear dissatisfaction with this government and dissatisfaction over things like infrastructure problems in the country unemployment and an economy that continues to struggle here. zimbabwe's main opposition party and thousands of its supporters have gathered in the capital harare calling for free and fair elections the country will head to the polls on

july the thirtieth the first vote without longtime ruler robert mugabe but the electoral commission has already been accused of failing to prevent rigging on ghost ballots has more from harare. opposition leaders on the march in the capital say the voters role has a lot of ghost voters on it they say they have proof some names have been duplicated and several addresses and id numbers on the register don't exist they calling on the independent electoral commission to allow them to personally inspect ballot papers before elections to prevent vote rigging wind. was. very. very. election organizers say it is possible for some people to have the same first last name and date of birth and for security reasons it's illegal for political parties

to inspect the ballot papers before elections should we continue to try and build consensus. given that what have exercised we've done has failed to build consensus in the first place perhaps we should just stick to our very strict constitutional mandate and exclude everyone these are things that we're going to sit down as a commission and discuss. a voting day at the end of the month will be the first without deposed president robert mugabe on the ballot except for the explosion at president was really in pull away last month campaigning has been incident free so far police say the run up to this election has been listed violence than in previous years and few cases of intimidation have been reported so far the ruling funny paper denies opposition allegations is planning. to manipulate voting members by time during the battle to fight international observers who were banned by robert mugabe have arrived for the first time in sixteen years the european union

says the disagreement between the electoral commission and opposition parties can be resolved. very different from something while. some provided for in some countries are. in different places is that when. we have. the ability part the main opposition leader nelson chamisa says if nothing is done to resolve the stalemate his party will announce their own final results will vote counting is complete a move some say could jeopardize the credibility of the polls. there are reports of an agreement between the syrian government forces and rebels in the city the syrian state news agency says rebels will hand over their weapons and people who are trapped will be allowed to leave the syrian government's widened its offensive to recover southwestern territories including an enclave held by isis

a linked fighters russian warplanes are backing the assault on yarmuk bases which borders the israeli occupied golan heights and jordan rebels from the free syrian army are also battling eisel fighters in the area the syrian government has recovered a large parts of the province from the rebels u.n. spokesman stefan do judge it says the situation for the civilians is dire as they continue to flee the region. up to ten thousand people were reportedly displaced towards the dar and could nutra county countryside judith's fighting in the your basin up to two hundred thirty four thousand five hundred people remain internally displaced in daraa and in the extra governorates and south in the country this includes the majority who are in camps including extra as well as some thirty thousand to thirty five thousand who have moved into areas that have recently changed control while with the advance of regime forces across that comes fears for

the safety of hundreds of journalists and acts of opposition activists who are now surrounded as following events from beirut. the syrian government says almost eighty percent of dead is under its control more towns and villages continue to surrender agreeing to so-called reconciliation deals that pave the way for a return to government rule tens of thousands of the displaced syrians have since returned home but the united nations says some two hundred thousand people continue to seek safety close to the border with the israeli occupied golan heights some there are media activists and journalists who are considered by the government to be terrorists for their involvement in opposition activities kohli's are appealing for help. some two hundred seventy journalists are trapped in the borders are closed they face imminent danger and their lives are at risk they fear they will be killed or arrested we also be given site exit we've lost contact with

many of them some of those opposition media workers are under siege in the rebel controlled southern half city since sunday army soldiers and their allies encircled the opposition and clave in the provincial capital government opponents are to be given safe passage to rebel controlled areas in the north that condition was among the terms of friday's ceasefire deal between the rebels and the russian military. which was negotiating on behalf of the syrian government the opposition says the transfer to adlib will happen once the rest of the deal is implemented many syrians are afraid to live under president bashar al assad to rule syrian human rights activists have documented twenty one cases of executions and dozens of arrests since government troops moved into opposition areas during their almost three week offensive and. we have seen this happen before in aleppo in eastern even in the

homes district of the regime executes people despite assurances that it is no different we have the names of the victims and eyewitness accounts they kill children and the elderly on the basis that their sons or relatives participated in the fight against the regime. the takeover of their art is another win for assad who now controls around sixty percent of the country but these victories are doing little to foster peace and security for all.