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In Russia we do have a social network for nerds that is quite popular (habr.com). It's not like Hacker News though. We also have several other social networks,

In Russia we do have a social network for nerds that is quite popular (habr.com). It's not like Hacker News though. We also have several other social networks, e.g. vk.com, which started as an exact clone of the first Facebook version (even layout and colors were the same). They're quite popular in Russia and former USSR republics. Although all platforms with user articles and user comments are somewhat poisoned by the US propaganda from US troll factories. I've already posted some comments on HN about this. E.g. if there's a single article about some Russian invention/Russian car/Russian plane/Russian website/Russian whatever on Facebook, YouTube, vk.com, habr.com, any other social network, there would be hundreds, even thousands, comments with uniform reponses like: - "It's garbage compared to the superior Western technology!" - "It would be 100x cheaper to build this in the West because of the lack of corruption!" - "It was stolen from the superior Western engineers and scientists. Wake up, sheeple: we, Russians, are not able to do anything, but to eat shitty soup with wooden spoon" This is highly annoying, but it's easy for US to fund such factories, given that US can print astronomical amount of money without providing any backing material/industry output, and there're millions of people in the former USSR republics with excellent knowledge of Russian and no job, willing to work for measly $100-200 per month. BTW, I'm also subscribed to some other countries social media (some SEA countries, India), and I guess US troll factories do their work there as well. Although it doesn't feel as targeted and intense as rusophobic propaganda that filled all the internet.

archagon 5y ago
Er, what US troll factories? I have never heard of this, and I can’t find any news articles about them. Sounds dubious.
- AnimalMuppet 5y ago
  I think anticodon is viewing posts critical of Russia as manufactured rather than organic. "There can't be enough people out there who actually think this to post all this stuff, so it must be a troll factory!" But I think that plenty of people do in fact view Russia negatively, and they speak their mind. (But then anticodon could think that the reason that they all think negative things about Russia is because of troll factories driving our news...) On the other hand, I would bet that both the RNC and DNC have operations that we would label as a troll factory if it occurred in another country. Certain companies do as well (we complain here about wildly overzealous policing of corporate images). But I don't think that's actually what anticodon is talking about. I think he's just seeing the mainstream press consensus (groupthink?) working its way through the filter of the population, and regarding that as a troll operation.
  - anticodon 5y ago
    US doesn't openly acknowledge existence of troll factories, but there're several institutions in the US created at least in the last ten years to "fight Russia presence on the Internet". They're associated with Pentagon and CIA. What would they do with all their huge budgets? Also, until 2 years ago, there were tons of identical comments posted under different nicknames on different social networks. E.g. under different unrelated videos on YouTube about new Russian ship or airplane, you'd see identical comments saying something: "It's shit, government should stop wasting money to build inferior technology and buy it from the West and money are better spent on retired people". I've even made tons of screenshots as evidence, with word for word identical comments under different videos from different nicknames. Sometimes there were even duplicates from different nicknames under the same video or article. Of course, technology became more sophisticated since then. And I'm not even starting about "legitimate" US propaganda translated non-stop by media outlets like Radio Freedom, and tons of other medias that operate on the territory of Russia, are funded from US budget (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) and the point of their existence is the same: to translate nonsense about Russia in Russian non-stop. E.g. gather all the crimes and translate them all day non-stop causing a depression in Russian listeners and viewers that nothing good happens in Russia, that it's all just a "Putin's GULAG". You go on the street and see new roads, new houses, expensive cars, happy people, no crime, clean streets. You open Radio Freedom or any other US-funded website or magazine, and it's all depression, sadness, violent crime... It's really annoying and I even think that people even have some kind of immunity now against this kind of US propaganda because we're bombarded with it non-stop since 1991.

archagon 5y ago

Er, what US troll factories? I have never heard of this, and I can’t find any news articles about them. Sounds dubious.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago
I think anticodon is viewing posts critical of Russia as manufactured rather than organic. "There can't be enough people out there who actually think this to post all this stuff, so it must be a troll factory!" But I think that plenty of people do in fact view Russia negatively, and they speak their mind. (But then anticodon could think that the reason that they all think negative things about Russia is because of troll factories driving our news...) On the other hand, I would bet that both the RNC and DNC have operations that we would label as a troll factory if it occurred in another country. Certain companies do as well (we complain here about wildly overzealous policing of corporate images). But I don't think that's actually what anticodon is talking about. I think he's just seeing the mainstream press consensus (groupthink?) working its way through the filter of the population, and regarding that as a troll operation.
- anticodon 5y ago
  US doesn't openly acknowledge existence of troll factories, but there're several institutions in the US created at least in the last ten years to "fight Russia presence on the Internet". They're associated with Pentagon and CIA. What would they do with all their huge budgets? Also, until 2 years ago, there were tons of identical comments posted under different nicknames on different social networks. E.g. under different unrelated videos on YouTube about new Russian ship or airplane, you'd see identical comments saying something: "It's shit, government should stop wasting money to build inferior technology and buy it from the West and money are better spent on retired people". I've even made tons of screenshots as evidence, with word for word identical comments under different videos from different nicknames. Sometimes there were even duplicates from different nicknames under the same video or article. Of course, technology became more sophisticated since then. And I'm not even starting about "legitimate" US propaganda translated non-stop by media outlets like Radio Freedom, and tons of other medias that operate on the territory of Russia, are funded from US budget (sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly) and the point of their existence is the same: to translate nonsense about Russia in Russian non-stop. E.g. gather all the crimes and translate them all day non-stop causing a depression in Russian listeners and viewers that nothing good happens in Russia, that it's all just a "Putin's GULAG". You go on the street and see new roads, new houses, expensive cars, happy people, no crime, clean streets. You open Radio Freedom or any other US-funded website or magazine, and it's all depression, sadness, violent crime... It's really annoying and I even think that people even have some kind of immunity now against this kind of US propaganda because we're bombarded with it non-stop since 1991.