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Because the entire goal is to promote skepticism about the USA while remaining as mum as possible on Russia and China. In the case of Russia, it’s not a secret

Because the entire goal is to promote skepticism about the USA while remaining as mum as possible on Russia and China. In the case of Russia, it’s not a secret that they try to disrupt and divide the states via internal conflicts so they can take over if we decline because of it. Here is just one example: https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-backed-facebook-accounts-organized-events-on-all-sides-of-polarizing-issues-1509355801 https://www.wsj.com/articles/russian-backed-facebook-account... We also know that hundreds of thousands of foreign-sponsored accounts on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc, have been banned over the years. (Please fact check by googling!)

ClumsyPilot 5y ago
Eh, we are at a apoint where every self respecting political party has thousands of fake twitter accounts.
Lammy 5y ago
Meanwhile all you people stoking nationalist fervor keep the global population of generally-well-meaning humans divided and hating each other instead of uniting into a whole that demands a better life for everyone. Please stop.
freeflight 5y ago
> Here is just one example: Here's an example that in major parts contributed to a civil war going on to this day: The existence of a US military operation that manipulates social media trough sock-puppet accounts [0] was revealed around the same time Syrians were riled up to regime change trough.. social media [1]. Said social media presence kept announcing "Days of Rage" protests in Syria which initially no Syrian even showed up to. These operations predate anything noteworthy Russia did on the same front, as most of that only started in the wake of the Ukraine revolution, which also saw plenty of blatant US interference [2]. Back then Russia was diplomatically very vocal about how unprecedented the foreign interference in Ukraine was. What followed was St. Petersburg troll farms heavily targeting the US. > We also know that hundreds of thousands of foreign-sponsored accounts on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc, have been banned over the years. (Please fact check by googling!) How many domestic sponsored accounts have been banned? Zero, which means that on US based social media these kind of outfits are fighting with a heavy home game advantage [3], yet in most of these places that never comes up, it's always "Look out for the Russian/Chinese propagandist!", just like you are doing here. Which usually ends up targeting skeptical people not wholeheartedly endorsing the "Good vs Evil" narrative and not any actual propagandists. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope... [1] https://www.france24.com/en/20110203-syria-democracy-protests-facebook-twitter-friday-prayers-egypt https://www.france24.com/en/20110203-syria-democracy-protest... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-mccain-ukraine-protests-support-just-cause https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-mccain-uk... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit_has_removed_their_blog_post_identifying/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit...
- mike_d 5y ago
  > How many domestic sponsored accounts have been banned? The Smith–Mundt Act makes it illegal to distribute propaganda where it may be consumed by a primarily US audience. Also from just a practical investment perspective, creating a bunch of sock puppets on Reddit to try and influence the opinion of Putin doesn't make sense. r/Russia for example only has 150k subscribers and most of the posts are in English. You would need to ask WeChat, VK, Weibo, Douyin, and OK for transparency reports on how many state-sponsored accounts they have terminated.
  - freeflight 5y ago
    > The Smith–Mundt Act makes it illegal to distribute propaganda where it may be consumed by a primarily US audience. That hasn't been true for nearly a decade as the Smith-Mundt act was "modernized" in 2012 to allow for exactly that [0]. Even when it was in effect, I doubt anybody was seriously trying to abide by that. The closest thing to practically doing that would have been to completely skip on the English language, which I seriously doubt they did. I put that denial into the very same camp as the NSA denying spying on American citizens: They say it because they are supposed to say that and admitting to it would put them in a world of trouble trough open admission of guilt. > Also from just a practical investment perspective, creating a bunch of sock puppets on Reddit to try and influence the opinion of Putin doesn't make sense. It makes a lot of sense, not just to manufacture consent, but also trough the fact how the US is the literally largest culture exporter on the planet. US social media isn't just populated by Americans: Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and whatnot are by now overwhelmingly used by international audiences. Sure, there are countries that try to ban these platforms, but that doesn't stop the USG from still trying to get something going [1] > You would need to ask WeChat, VK, Weibo, Douyin, and OK for transparency reports on how many state-sponsored accounts they have terminated. But none of these are in any way widely used outside of their respective countries, their very limited reach and lack of language diversity, makes them inherently inferior to the globally dominating US social media platforms. Yet that's where the "opinion wars" are won, where the international Overton window is defined: On the global stage, not on comparatively obscure domestic platforms. [0] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitter-zunzuneo-stir-unrest https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitt...
stjohnswarts 5y ago
It's pretty easy to spot Russian/Chinese trolls on facebook. I've seen tons of it on conservative news feeds. Just find a ridiculous statement and trace back to the source. Usually they have public facing feeds to maximize propaganda and it's so blatantly obvious it usually makes me giggle.
- malandrew 5y ago
  They are just as blatant on liberal news feeds but don’t seem blatant to liberals just like the blatant ones on conservative feeds don’t seem blatant to conservatives.
modo_mario 5y ago
Russia has been pretty damn effective at this. (I took note of this when moderating r/europe on reddit when things started churning in ukraine) China on the other hand not so much. I might go trough the effort of finding them again but someone here shared some American studies that showed china initially didn't really have such a presence of bots and the like on twitter, fb, etc like Russia at that point (i think around 2016 or 2017) but there were notable networks of bots targeting chinese people with anti china stuff. A second study showed that i think 3 years later China had also gotten into this but that it was comparatively small scale and notably incompetent.

ClumsyPilot 5y ago

Eh, we are at a apoint where every self respecting political party has thousands of fake twitter accounts.

Lammy 5y ago

Meanwhile all you people stoking nationalist fervor keep the global population of generally-well-meaning humans divided and hating each other instead of uniting into a whole that demands a better life for everyone. Please stop.

freeflight 5y ago

> Here is just one example: Here's an example that in major parts contributed to a civil war going on to this day: The existence of a US military operation that manipulates social media trough sock-puppet accounts [0] was revealed around the same time Syrians were riled up to regime change trough.. social media [1]. Said social media presence kept announcing "Days of Rage" protests in Syria which initially no Syrian even showed up to. These operations predate anything noteworthy Russia did on the same front, as most of that only started in the wake of the Ukraine revolution, which also saw plenty of blatant US interference [2]. Back then Russia was diplomatically very vocal about how unprecedented the foreign interference in Ukraine was. What followed was St. Petersburg troll farms heavily targeting the US. > We also know that hundreds of thousands of foreign-sponsored accounts on Twitter, Reddit, Facebook, etc, have been banned over the years. (Please fact check by googling!) How many domestic sponsored accounts have been banned? Zero, which means that on US based social media these kind of outfits are fighting with a heavy home game advantage [3], yet in most of these places that never comes up, it's always "Look out for the Russian/Chinese propagandist!", just like you are doing here. Which usually ends up targeting skeptical people not wholeheartedly endorsing the "Good vs Evil" narrative and not any actual propagandists. [0] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope... [1] https://www.france24.com/en/20110203-syria-democracy-protests-facebook-twitter-friday-prayers-egypt https://www.france24.com/en/20110203-syria-democracy-protest... [2] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-mccain-ukraine-protests-support-just-cause https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/dec/15/john-mccain-uk... [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit_has_removed_their_blog_post_identifying/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Blackout2015/comments/4ylml3/reddit...

mike_d 5y ago
> How many domestic sponsored accounts have been banned? The Smith–Mundt Act makes it illegal to distribute propaganda where it may be consumed by a primarily US audience. Also from just a practical investment perspective, creating a bunch of sock puppets on Reddit to try and influence the opinion of Putin doesn't make sense. r/Russia for example only has 150k subscribers and most of the posts are in English. You would need to ask WeChat, VK, Weibo, Douyin, and OK for transparency reports on how many state-sponsored accounts they have terminated.
- freeflight 5y ago
  > The Smith–Mundt Act makes it illegal to distribute propaganda where it may be consumed by a primarily US audience. That hasn't been true for nearly a decade as the Smith-Mundt act was "modernized" in 2012 to allow for exactly that [0]. Even when it was in effect, I doubt anybody was seriously trying to abide by that. The closest thing to practically doing that would have been to completely skip on the English language, which I seriously doubt they did. I put that denial into the very same camp as the NSA denying spying on American citizens: They say it because they are supposed to say that and admitting to it would put them in a world of trouble trough open admission of guilt. > Also from just a practical investment perspective, creating a bunch of sock puppets on Reddit to try and influence the opinion of Putin doesn't make sense. It makes a lot of sense, not just to manufacture consent, but also trough the fact how the US is the literally largest culture exporter on the planet. US social media isn't just populated by Americans: Facebook, Reddit, Twitter and whatnot are by now overwhelmingly used by international audiences. Sure, there are countries that try to ban these platforms, but that doesn't stop the USG from still trying to get something going [1] > You would need to ask WeChat, VK, Weibo, Douyin, and OK for transparency reports on how many state-sponsored accounts they have terminated. But none of these are in any way widely used outside of their respective countries, their very limited reach and lack of language diversity, makes them inherently inferior to the globally dominating US social media platforms. Yet that's where the "opinion wars" are won, where the international Overton window is defined: On the global stage, not on comparatively obscure domestic platforms. [0] https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-ban-spreads-government-made-news-to-americans/ https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... [1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitter-zunzuneo-stir-unrest https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitt...

stjohnswarts 5y ago

It's pretty easy to spot Russian/Chinese trolls on facebook. I've seen tons of it on conservative news feeds. Just find a ridiculous statement and trace back to the source. Usually they have public facing feeds to maximize propaganda and it's so blatantly obvious it usually makes me giggle.

malandrew 5y ago
They are just as blatant on liberal news feeds but don’t seem blatant to liberals just like the blatant ones on conservative feeds don’t seem blatant to conservatives.

modo_mario 5y ago

Russia has been pretty damn effective at this. (I took note of this when moderating r/europe on reddit when things started churning in ukraine) China on the other hand not so much. I might go trough the effort of finding them again but someone here shared some American studies that showed china initially didn't really have such a presence of bots and the like on twitter, fb, etc like Russia at that point (i think around 2016 or 2017) but there were notable networks of bots targeting chinese people with anti china stuff. A second study showed that i think 3 years later China had also gotten into this but that it was comparatively small scale and notably incompetent.