4 ms·

I think that blaming Russians for everything is doing more harm than good. Sometimes it's not Russia, sometimes it's just ideological opponents, conspiracy theo

by Hitton 7y ago

I think that blaming Russians for everything is doing more harm than good. Sometimes it's not Russia, sometimes it's just ideological opponents, conspiracy theorists or 4channers who like to watch the world burn, sometimes all of them at the same time (think Pizzagate).

jessaustin 7y ago
Pizzagate was so dumb. Just imagine, the possibility that lots of powerful elite dudes would be implicated in a carefully organized long-running practice of pedophilia. So conspiratorial! Definitely not realistic...
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  It is incredible that Alex Jones was correct in the end. It just refuses to go into my head. And it was also correct about connections to the highest echelons of political power and educational facilities. We should start asking more suggestive questions about that. "Hey Apple? How many children did you get for banning Jones?" Not that I believe he is a particular sane or selfless individual or that anything else he espouses is in any way correct, far from it. But if deplatforming comes to bite them in the ass, I welcome the hit below the belt at this point. Because they deserve it for their own greed. I think we just found the popular whore house for people in high positions who don't take laws too serious. There are a lot of questions unanswered.
- draw_down 7y ago
  Sure, but what bothers me about it is the pizza thing; that’s actually what’s farfetched about it. Pizza is probably the most popular food in the country, references to it are everywhere. Attributing significance to that is finding patterns in the clouds.
- mistermann 7y ago
  The Epstein story, and more specifically the official reaction to it, seems to me to have had quite a significant widespread impact on a lot of people's ability to fathom the possibility that organized crime actually is possible, despite widespread popularity of the obviously incorrect "it is literally impossible for that many people to keep quite, lol" meme. I have a feeling though that to make any real difference, it would take several of these in fairly quick succession, but hopefully I'm wrong about that.
- leetcrew 7y ago
  the problem with conspiracy theories isn't that they never turn out to be true; it's that they are usually not the most plausible explanation of the available facts. "a broken clock is still right twice a day".
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    It's not productive to generalize about conspiracy theories. It has been 2.5 years, and RussiaRussiaRussia ain't been right yet. Meanwhile the Orange Menace's poll numbers are as high as they've been since this theory was popularized.
raxxorrax 7y ago
True, and sometimes people would just prefer a random person from these groups, that are fashionable targets to blame to evils of the world on, to Hillary Clinton. The Russian story was probably just a story induced by the intelligence community to discredit a presidential candidate. Here we seem to have even less evidence compared to WMD in Iraq
- simonh 7y ago
  When he's actually faced with the evidence even Trump has accepted that there clearly was direct Russian interference in the last election. Even the social media platforms it happened on have confirmed it and provided evidence. The problem is as soon as the evidence is out of view, or he just starts to forget about it, or it becomes expedient he's back to calling it fake news again.
  - raxxorrax 7y ago
    Ok, I will bite. I just doubt the relevancy of the Russian propaganda story. If propaganda has been induced in social networks, there should be evidence about that. Also estimates about the reach of these measures. Again, I would be surprised if there hadn't been such efforts at all, but to counter them, it should be imperative to identify and reveal the messages in question. Since that hasn't happened at all, I just think people voted differently for their own reasons. The media had ample criticism of Trump for months on end. All that should have been outplayed by a secret Russian media campaign, for which there still isn't evidence besides of statements of intelligence agencies? Very doubtful in my opinion, especially since effords to create this narrative have been revealed. On the other hand it would be quite understandable that people might get a little angry if they are told they just hold opinions because of Russia while subjected to all those nagging categorical imperatives that were common in the race before the election. The Russian story just doesn't make sense in the end, not because they wouldn't want to have that level of influence or from a lack of trying. But you could also have the view that executive organs have misbehaved in front of their own constitution. That is far more probable in my opinion.
    - 7y ago
michannne 7y ago
A lot of people forget how valuable free time can actually be. There are some huge personal projects I did during my time in college when I had tons of free time, and this between playing video games, hanging with friends, travelling. You have so much freedom to explore and learn new things, read books, learn a language or two, explore the world. 4chan, while now it is mainly composed of lurkers or people browsing intermittently throughout the day, is still like a hub for people like this, who have a lot of free time on their hands. There are also a ton of variants of 4chan, namely in Europe and Russia. With this outlook, I am not at all surprised of a small group of Russians pooling their efforts into meddling with a US election, their actions catching the eye of a trigger-happy Russian official and receiving funding or support from said official.
CoolGuySteve 7y ago
The thing that bothers me the most about framing this as "foreign influence" is that there's nothing stopping people from coming to the US (or paying someone already in the US) and writing whatever they want on the internet using their first amendment rights as a US person. The problem is bigger than that.
- mistermann 7y ago
  The thing that bothers me the most about framing this as "foreign influence" is that precisely no one knows even remotely accurately how much foreign influence is taking place in Western countries, but this meme has been repeated 24 x 7 for years now, typically with hat tips to "evidence" (which is usually just a narrative based theory based on some inconclusive circumstantial evidence, if you follow the thread of evidence through the articles), that the majority of the population seems not just completely convinced that it is an epidemic, but they will passionately argue against anyone who asks where's the beef. If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed. Perception is reality. "Foreign influencers are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to inflame hot button issues in the United States. They don’t do this to win arguments; they want to see us divided." I can think of a few domestic groups who seem to have been engaged in this very behavior, to great success, for many decades now.
  - GVIrish 7y ago
    > The thing that bothers me the most about framing this as "foreign influence" is that precisely no one knows even remotely accurately how much foreign influence is taking place in Western countries, but this meme has been repeated 24 x 7 for years now, typically with hat tips to "evidence" (which is usually just a narrative based theory based on some inconclusive circumstantial evidence, if you follow the thread of evidence through the articles), that the majority of the population seems not just completely convinced that it is an epidemic, but they will passionately argue against anyone who asks where's the beef. But that's the thing, if people don't really know how much trolling, extremism, and disinformation is real vs. manufactured, Russian intelligence services have achieved their goal. People will argue over nothing, accuse others of being bots, and imagine new conspiracy theories based on the idea that foreign hands are meddling in things. The goal is to sow chaos, so if people respond with hysteria, that still achieves the goal. Understanding and not reflexively reacting to trolling, regardless of the source, is what can blunt the influence of the behavior. If people are not even aware of the deliberate trolling attempts, it's less likely they'll be able to counter it, or at least ignore it.
GVIrish 7y ago
> I think that blaming Russians for everything is doing more harm than good. How is the pdf in any way blaming Russians for everything? The fact is that Russian intelligence services and affiliates are running disinformation operations against Americans and others. Disinformation and propaganda efforts are part of Russia's Gerasimov Doctrine, which seeks to make use of a spectrum of unconventional methods to achieve geopolitical aims without necessarily using direct military action. It's fake news, it's amplification, it's human intelligence, it's online trolling, it's hacking, it's covert action. Obviously trolling, hacking, and what not happen naturally on their own. But Russian intelligence services seek to amplify extremism and discord whenever possible. And they've been exploiting political and social strike for many, many decades.

by Hitton 7y ago

jessaustin 7y ago

Pizzagate was so dumb. Just imagine, the possibility that lots of powerful elite dudes would be implicated in a carefully organized long-running practice of pedophilia. So conspiratorial! Definitely not realistic...

raxxorrax 7y ago
It is incredible that Alex Jones was correct in the end. It just refuses to go into my head. And it was also correct about connections to the highest echelons of political power and educational facilities. We should start asking more suggestive questions about that. "Hey Apple? How many children did you get for banning Jones?" Not that I believe he is a particular sane or selfless individual or that anything else he espouses is in any way correct, far from it. But if deplatforming comes to bite them in the ass, I welcome the hit below the belt at this point. Because they deserve it for their own greed. I think we just found the popular whore house for people in high positions who don't take laws too serious. There are a lot of questions unanswered.
draw_down 7y ago
Sure, but what bothers me about it is the pizza thing; that’s actually what’s farfetched about it. Pizza is probably the most popular food in the country, references to it are everywhere. Attributing significance to that is finding patterns in the clouds.
mistermann 7y ago
The Epstein story, and more specifically the official reaction to it, seems to me to have had quite a significant widespread impact on a lot of people's ability to fathom the possibility that organized crime actually is possible, despite widespread popularity of the obviously incorrect "it is literally impossible for that many people to keep quite, lol" meme. I have a feeling though that to make any real difference, it would take several of these in fairly quick succession, but hopefully I'm wrong about that.
leetcrew 7y ago
the problem with conspiracy theories isn't that they never turn out to be true; it's that they are usually not the most plausible explanation of the available facts. "a broken clock is still right twice a day".
- jessaustin 7y ago
  It's not productive to generalize about conspiracy theories. It has been 2.5 years, and RussiaRussiaRussia ain't been right yet. Meanwhile the Orange Menace's poll numbers are as high as they've been since this theory was popularized.

raxxorrax 7y ago

True, and sometimes people would just prefer a random person from these groups, that are fashionable targets to blame to evils of the world on, to Hillary Clinton. The Russian story was probably just a story induced by the intelligence community to discredit a presidential candidate. Here we seem to have even less evidence compared to WMD in Iraq

simonh 7y ago
When he's actually faced with the evidence even Trump has accepted that there clearly was direct Russian interference in the last election. Even the social media platforms it happened on have confirmed it and provided evidence. The problem is as soon as the evidence is out of view, or he just starts to forget about it, or it becomes expedient he's back to calling it fake news again.
- raxxorrax 7y ago
  Ok, I will bite. I just doubt the relevancy of the Russian propaganda story. If propaganda has been induced in social networks, there should be evidence about that. Also estimates about the reach of these measures. Again, I would be surprised if there hadn't been such efforts at all, but to counter them, it should be imperative to identify and reveal the messages in question. Since that hasn't happened at all, I just think people voted differently for their own reasons. The media had ample criticism of Trump for months on end. All that should have been outplayed by a secret Russian media campaign, for which there still isn't evidence besides of statements of intelligence agencies? Very doubtful in my opinion, especially since effords to create this narrative have been revealed. On the other hand it would be quite understandable that people might get a little angry if they are told they just hold opinions because of Russia while subjected to all those nagging categorical imperatives that were common in the race before the election. The Russian story just doesn't make sense in the end, not because they wouldn't want to have that level of influence or from a lack of trying. But you could also have the view that executive organs have misbehaved in front of their own constitution. That is far more probable in my opinion.
  - 7y ago

michannne 7y ago

A lot of people forget how valuable free time can actually be. There are some huge personal projects I did during my time in college when I had tons of free time, and this between playing video games, hanging with friends, travelling. You have so much freedom to explore and learn new things, read books, learn a language or two, explore the world. 4chan, while now it is mainly composed of lurkers or people browsing intermittently throughout the day, is still like a hub for people like this, who have a lot of free time on their hands. There are also a ton of variants of 4chan, namely in Europe and Russia. With this outlook, I am not at all surprised of a small group of Russians pooling their efforts into meddling with a US election, their actions catching the eye of a trigger-happy Russian official and receiving funding or support from said official.

CoolGuySteve 7y ago

The thing that bothers me the most about framing this as "foreign influence" is that there's nothing stopping people from coming to the US (or paying someone already in the US) and writing whatever they want on the internet using their first amendment rights as a US person. The problem is bigger than that.

mistermann 7y ago
The thing that bothers me the most about framing this as "foreign influence" is that precisely no one knows even remotely accurately how much foreign influence is taking place in Western countries, but this meme has been repeated 24 x 7 for years now, typically with hat tips to "evidence" (which is usually just a narrative based theory based on some inconclusive circumstantial evidence, if you follow the thread of evidence through the articles), that the majority of the population seems not just completely convinced that it is an epidemic, but they will passionately argue against anyone who asks where's the beef. If you tell a big enough lie and tell it frequently enough, it will be believed. Perception is reality. "Foreign influencers are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to inflame hot button issues in the United States. They don’t do this to win arguments; they want to see us divided." I can think of a few domestic groups who seem to have been engaged in this very behavior, to great success, for many decades now.
- GVIrish 7y ago
  > The thing that bothers me the most about framing this as "foreign influence" is that precisely no one knows even remotely accurately how much foreign influence is taking place in Western countries, but this meme has been repeated 24 x 7 for years now, typically with hat tips to "evidence" (which is usually just a narrative based theory based on some inconclusive circumstantial evidence, if you follow the thread of evidence through the articles), that the majority of the population seems not just completely convinced that it is an epidemic, but they will passionately argue against anyone who asks where's the beef. But that's the thing, if people don't really know how much trolling, extremism, and disinformation is real vs. manufactured, Russian intelligence services have achieved their goal. People will argue over nothing, accuse others of being bots, and imagine new conspiracy theories based on the idea that foreign hands are meddling in things. The goal is to sow chaos, so if people respond with hysteria, that still achieves the goal. Understanding and not reflexively reacting to trolling, regardless of the source, is what can blunt the influence of the behavior. If people are not even aware of the deliberate trolling attempts, it's less likely they'll be able to counter it, or at least ignore it.

GVIrish 7y ago

> I think that blaming Russians for everything is doing more harm than good. How is the pdf in any way blaming Russians for everything? The fact is that Russian intelligence services and affiliates are running disinformation operations against Americans and others. Disinformation and propaganda efforts are part of Russia's Gerasimov Doctrine, which seeks to make use of a spectrum of unconventional methods to achieve geopolitical aims without necessarily using direct military action. It's fake news, it's amplification, it's human intelligence, it's online trolling, it's hacking, it's covert action. Obviously trolling, hacking, and what not happen naturally on their own. But Russian intelligence services seek to amplify extremism and discord whenever possible. And they've been exploiting political and social strike for many, many decades.