How deep does Russiagate go? According to an NSA-linked research firm, Russian trolls penetrated American democracy by promoting dildos on Instagram. The Pearl Harbor-like attack on the US homeland has left Twitter shaking.
The Internet Research Agency (IRA), a St. Petersburg-based troll farm allegedly financed by the Kremlin and accused of meddling in the 2016 presidential election, promoted “LGBT-positive sex toys” on Instagram as part of its nefarious plot to “sow discord” in the US, according to a new report detailing the infinite terrors of Russian disinformation.
New Knowledge, the private research firm caught manufacturing a fictitious “Russian troll” army to swing Alabama’s 2017 Senate race, disclosed the unsettling – but also delightfully titillating – detail in its 100-page report about the “tactics and tropes” used by the IRA. This is the smoking dildo that ‘woke’ #Resisters have been yearning for.
However, it’s not clear how deep this explosive sex-toy conspiracy goes: New Knowledge suggests the adult merchandise may have “provided the IRA with a source of revenue” – but no sales data exist. Ryan Mac, BuzzFeed’s tech reporter, wrote that “while it’s currently unknown if the IRA was actually selling sex toys, the fact that they were promoting them shows the org’s desire to build credibility in the LGBT community.”
Others expressed concern that the Kremlin may have found a new, exceptionally sneaky way to collect ‘kompromat.’
Regrettably, some Twitter commentators have refused to take these new revelations seriously, which obviously just plays into the lubed-up hands of Moscow.
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