In spring 2014, a funny story crossed our social media feeds. A petition on whitehouse.gov called for “sending Alaska back to Russia,” and it quickly amassed tens of thousands of signatures. The media ran a number of amused stories on the event, and it was quickly forgotten.The petition seemed odd to us, and so we looked at which accounts were promoting it on social media. We discovered that thousands of Russian-language bots had been repetitively tweeting links to the petition for weeks before it caught journalists’ attention.Those were the days. Now, instead of pranking petitions, Russian influence networks online are … Continue reading Trolling for Trump: How Russia Is Trying to Destroy Our Democracy