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Viral “Manspreading” video is said to be staged Russian propaganda
- ssijak 8y agoWhy is this on the front page of HN?
- isostatic 8y agoIt's a sad indictment of the tools we create being used to destroy the world we live in
- gammateam 8y agoBecause troll factories are a SaaS opportunity
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- pencilcode 8y agoWhy not? But of course if you prefer to be entertained by latest tech gadget that you absolutely must must must buy here it is https://www.bestproducts.com/tech/g864/cool-tech-products-you-need/ https://www.bestproducts.com/tech/g864/cool-tech-products-yo...
- Marazan 8y agoDo you honestly not understand why?
- guipsp 8y agoBecause I (and other people) found it interesting
- aedron 8y agoIndeed. Since we're here, this is just counter-propaganda. There are thousands of organizations doing similar things. The whole "Russia is creating strife on Facebook!" thing is ridiculous too if you think about it for just a few seconds.
- darawk 8y ago...Why wouldn't it be? Russian (and state-level generally) propaganda is a huge issue in tech right now.
- gsich 8y agoNot really
- mothsonasloth 8y agoThe West is weak now and to make matters worse our leaders are openly showing their weaknesses. Therefore Russia sees us as fair game (which I agree in) and is attacking us over the best medium; the internet. In my opinion its not going to be territorial wars that will dominate our future, but cultural wars. You might maintain your national borders but you will lose in the cultural war, whether that's political ideology, identity, civil morale. In a way the policies or slogans you hear like "One China", "New Russia", "Europe United" are cultural campaigns. Yes they might involve territory and resources but they all have different cultural identities packaged with them. In science fiction they have entertained this idea. If you look at Blade Runner you can see that the world has been dominated by a hybrid of Sino-American culture with rampant capitalism. Exciting but scary times ahead!
- mothsonasloth 8y agoGuess the Putinbots know I am on to them
- pencilcode 8y agoAnd that's how the public is duped into voting for incompetent corrupt, but manly!, politicians who promise they'll put things back in order!! Seed rage and you'll get politicians like Orban (Hungary), Bolsonaro (Brazil, on his way to power), and Trump. All Putin lookalikes who have their own oligarchies (call them friends) and everyone else is f*ed poor. And that is how nations/systems fail.
- chrisco255 8y agoKind of laughable to think that Trump is the oligarchist. What did that make Clinton, with her decades of American power and connections? By the way, I'm not sure that Russian propaganda had a sizable impact on the American election. From what I remember of the 2016 election, we were discussing Trump 24/7 because of one outrageous Tweet, debate, rally, or press conference after another. Another point the article makes is that both pro-Trump and anti-Trump propaganda was run by Russia. My guess is that Russia is either trying to sow the seeds of discord, or trying to test the waters to see how much influence they can garner. I definitely don't like it either way, and this sort of thing can obviously get worse from here, but it would seem to me that the biggest message is that a divided America might be an easier target for Russian disruption down the line.
- mmjaa 8y agoYeah, if we could harness the energy that Americans' use to run away and hide from Clinton's history, we'd have world peace, probably. /s Does nobody remember the wars this woman started, in her reach for power? Are we really going to ignore the victims of her involvement in American foreign policy? This is the danger of the whole "mah Russian Trolls!" narrative - the trolls might actually be telling the truth about a few things (i.e. America really is run by a hidden oligarchy of families networked throughout the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex), and .. because "mah Russia!", we end up reinforcing the very actors who need to be eradicated from the scene. This is very dodgy territory. I can only hope that the average citizens' heavy dependence on "being told what to think by an authoritarian figure on TV" is going to be weaned as this proceeds ..
- close04 8y agoSo... a fake and polarizing viral video on the internet? No way! It's as if someone noticed that staging something extremely divisive on topics that everyone has an opinion about gets clicks and attention.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoFor me it doesn't matter if it's fake or not, what counts are the reactions of some people. Every time I hear "she did very well" I get upset. As if violence become the new normal in making a change.
- cyborgx7 8y agoViolence was always an important factor in making change. Many times for very good change. This is not a new thing.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y agoLike when was the last time violence resulted in a very good change? Because I have plenty of examples where it went completely wrong, bringing only the death of millions. This way of thinking ("the end justifies the means") is one of the most dangerous concepts and the cause of suffering of many people in the world right now.
- quantummkv 8y agoFrench Revolution? Throwing out the monarchy wholesale was a pretty big change in those days. Don't forget the many revolutions by former colonies of European powers. They were violent, but bought about change. The good kind.
- dvfjsdhgfv 8y ago> French Revolution? Throwing out the monarchy wholesale was a pretty big change in those days. And it was the birth of a new tyranny, wasn't it? The "Reign of Terror" - that was the sad reality for those living in that period. > Don't forget the many revolutions by former colonies of European powers. They were violent, but bought about change. The good kind. For one, Gandhi demonstrated you don't need violence to make a good change. Yet most people still believe in violence as the primary means. Second, I'm appalled to see what happened to many if not most of these colonies. One tyranny was replaced by another. I'm not sure you can call it a good change.
- raffomania 8y agoI find it interesting that this is financed by the EU. My first reaction to this was a lot of skepticism - the article makes a lot of bold claims without backing any of them up. I was ready to write this off as another sleazy mud-throwing operation when I found the official EU site [0] describing the team and their goals - including "Effective communication and promotion of EU policies towards the Eastern Neighbourhood". The biased writing and this "promotion of policies" really make me think this is no better than the "fake news" everyone complains about. [0] https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/2116/-questions-and-answers-about-the-east-stratcom-task-force_en https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/21...
- coldtea 8y ago"Kremlin Propaganda", no. But TFA is indeed playing into the anti-Russia climate with sub-par journalism. I was suspicious of it being real (not because "activists" wont do any kind of shit these days, but because she would have easily got beaten up if it was real). It took like a few searches to find that the video is indeed fake, and it was made as a viral video to boost the career of Anna Dovgalyuk, a ho-hum model/minor celebrity that does such BS. She has done such viral videos in the past, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwdmPnJDvp0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwdmPnJDvp0 Note how the BS TFA doesn't provide this info (it just mentions some magazine who found one of the actors in the video), and jumps to the "Kremlin propaganda" with tons of handwaving and no evidence at all, as opposed to one of the tons of BS YouTube stuff produced every day to be viral. Also the name of the site "EU VS DISINFO" points to a website created to cater to the paranoid crowd, if not itself the work of some state agent or another [1]. [1] Addition: Oh, as someone else points out in the comments, this is EU financed.
- lawlessone 8y ago>this is EU financed. Great, i was getting worried the EU was just going to sit on it's arse. I am glad the EU is finally taking this issue seriously.
- coldtea 8y agoSit on its arse? Of course not. As a collection of many client states, the EU will do whatever the US tells it to do to help stir up the old Cold War climate.
- lawlessone 8y ago>the EU will do whatever the US tells it to Lol you've no idea what you're talking about. The EU is not the US, that's why apart from the UK leaving the rest of us won't be eating chlorinated chicken. >As a collection of many client states, A rather silly view, we have a shared market and our interests. You're clearly confusing the EU with NATO, i guess from St Petersburg we all look "West" to you.
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- nkkollaw 8y agoWhen there is such thing as having to combat men being able to sit how they want, you know society has hit the bottom.
- lawlessone 8y agoits fake
- nkkollaw 8y agoThe article is fake, "manspreading" is an actual thing. I was referring to that, not the article.
- KozmoNau7 8y agoHow do you know it's an actual thing? E: Not the "sitting with legs relatively wide, for comfort", but rather the version that gets complained about online, the one where people are deliberately blocking seats from other people.
- bogomipz 8y agoRide the train in NYC for any length of time and you are practically guaranteed to see it. The phrase entered popular lexicon years ago now in NYC, it's definitely not new. Search the Gothamist website it's well-worn meme by now. Other news sources as well as even the MTA themselves have commented on the phenomenon: https://www.npr.org/2014/11/23/366084646/mta-targets-man-spreading-and-other-subway-faux-pas https://www.npr.org/2014/11/23/366084646/mta-targets-man-spr... I think it't more of a gender neutral bad behavior thing in that it seems that people who do this will do it regardless of whether its a man or a woman sitting next to them.
- KozmoNau7 8y agoYes, the "manspreading" is certainly real, if you mean some people (mostly men) sitting in demonstrably relaxed or "macho" ways. That is not what I questioned. Though it is nowhere near as bad as some people online seem to claim. The extreme online vitriol about it certainly seems to be at least partially made up.
- netcan 8y ago..Provoking a clash of extreme views.. It's just hard to delineate between "legitimate" provocations from hostile operations. FB optimize for this stuff by default, because it provokes shares and clicks. Media does it for click-bait. People do it for fun an politics. I guess that's why it works.
- larkeith 8y agoWarning: Stream-of-consciousness rambling ahead. FB and media sites are especially egregious offenders, but are symptomatic of the modern internet as a whole. I'm not really sure how we change this - the web is based around user interaction and sharing, and people will always prioritize that which they care about, which encourages more extreme views in any discussions among more general groups. Dividing into sub-communities can reduce discord and increase legitimate discussion and less-extreme views, as moderate community members will not be suborned by unrelated topics they care about, but why join the sub-communities? Also, as seen on some Subreddits, this can instead lead to an echo-chamber, with dissident views discouraged. Perhaps forums with a ranking system unlike current like/upvote, share, freshness, and number-of-response based systems could assist - Having longer-lasting, even permanent, threads for each topic might encourage novel discussion over rehashing the same arguments repeatedly, while prioritizing long-form replies could at least provide more grounds for debating views, but none of that fixes the essential problem of moderate apathy. I wonder if moving to a more mercenary web could help - while it feels as though it would be losing something essential, if there were a cost to responding and payment for valuable contributions, moderate feedback could be encouraged financially, rather than by passion alone. You would still need an essentially different ranking system, especially to prevent response repetition, else I suspect you would see the opposite of the desired result - people posting extreme views to get a quick buck. Additional elements would likely be necessary to create a network entirely successful in encouraging discussion from a full spectrum of views (while repetition may be deadly to discussion, stagnation is also fearsome), but it's a starting point for consideration. I'll have to think on this more later - I might give building a prototype a try. This digressed fairly significantly from the original topic, but I'd be interested in thoughts regarding diversification of views on the internet.
- throw2016 8y agoThis is like saying fake pick up videos on youtube are funded by the CIA. This is a witch hunt and an insult to informed discussion. There are attention seeking groups like Femen who are known for staging stunts. This group has a fake upskirt video, now this mansplaining video and presumably they will keep trying. If it works out you get tons of media interviews, attention, become a media personality and spin it into some serious income.
- 0xfeeddeadbeef 8y agoIt's Russia: that woman would be beaten into a pulp by now if it was real.
- edoloughlin 8y agoIf this is indeed propaganda then, based on the discussion on this page alone, it has achieved it's objective perfectly, which is to sew confusion and argument from polarised perspectives over misleading, trivial nonsense.
- anon7429 8y agoNot "sew," it's not ripped clothing; "sow" as in the seeds of revolution.
- edoloughlin 8y agoHmm, unnoticed autocorrect...
- anon7429 8y agoRussia, Russia, Russia... right sentiment (PC, radical feminism and other SJW nonsense), wrong means to an end... causing more harm than good. Sad.