You obviously didn't read the article...it says there is more than one report.
If I had a dollar for every person on this forum that responded to a post about an article without actually reading the article...I'd be able to rent a floor at Trump Tower for a day.
It appears that you didn't read the article, since the War on the Rocks piece is from November 6th and gives no evidence that Russia is doing any such thing. Like all claims that Russia hacked the DNC, the Clinton campaign's emails, or the election it rests on anonymous evidence-free claims from "experts" and "officials." Unfortunately, that doesn't constitute evidence.
No if you read the article you would have easily seen that the main report the article is even written about is from the group, Foreign Policy Research Institute, and PropOrNot is a secondary source. You would have also read:
The researchers used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages. Identifying website codes sometimes revealed common ownership. In other cases, exact phrases or sentences were echoed by sites and social-media accounts in rapid succession, signaling membership in connected networks controlled by a single entity.
And you would have read this part about how this type of activity had already been studied by others:
The findings about the mechanics of Russian propaganda operations largely track previous research by the Rand Corp. and George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs.
So, either you DIDN'T read the article...or you are just ignoring the facts in it.
No, it's clear that the War on the Rocks report and the PropOrNot list are treated as equal in the WaPo story, neither being primary or secondary. But again, the War on the Rocks piece is old, being prior to the election, and rests on evidence-free assertions from nameless "experts." And the War on the Rocks piece did not go so far as to give a list of Russian-backed websites like PropOrNot did.
And when I say I want their methodology on exactly how they came to the conclusion that these websites were in the employ of a foreign government saying that they used "internet analytics tools" just begs the question. What tools? What was the common code? What's the evidence that the common code has anything to do with Russia? When "exact phrases" are being used by different organizations or people how are they differentiating between a story going viral spontaneously and people working with the Russian government? What's the criteria to determine whether the speed at which a story spreads is spontaneous or whether it's coordinated? Who are these people? What are their qualifications? What are their biases?
Then write them an email. Ask them. I guess you ignored the point where their research came to the same conclusions as Rand Corp and George Washington university?
You also notice these places are trying to be fairly anonymous for fear of being the target of Russian hacks as revenge?
The point is that by purposefully remaining anonymous these people could be anybody and their motivations could be anything. Nobody with a brain takes evidence-free assertions from anonymous people seriously. As for fear of retribution, I'm pretty sure if Russia wanted to hack these frauds they wouldn't exactly need to know their names. Maybe they'd just use "internet analytics" to do it.
Furthermore, nobody's questioning that multiple organizations have determined that Russians have hacked the U.S. That's clearly been the case for months. The point is that this "huge" story does nothing to shed more light on the subject by providing new evidence, merely repeating the same evidence-free assertions from anonymous nobodies that we've been hearing for months. There are two problems with this story: 1) It offers no evidence to back up any claims being made, but is instead being promoted as if it is evidence in and of itself; and, 2) PropOrNot's list, the problems with which I have already pointed out.
