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Intriguing.. however I don't believe that spreading FUD about anti-vax will make any country start to buy Sputnik-V..Germany and France didn't buy it in the beg

Intriguing.. however I don't believe that spreading FUD about anti-vax will make any country start to buy Sputnik-V..Germany and France didn't buy it in the beginning, and they won't do it now - or at least while it didn't get approved in the respective countries, which Russian is trying pretty hard in Brazil at least.

detaro 5y ago
It damages overall trust in the state, which might very well be in someones interest. And also potentially causes downstream political changes. This noise also spreads internationally, so bad press in let's say UK, France and Germany might very well lead to "look, in the places they make those vaccines they don't trust them, why should we have them then?!" in countries where it is an open question.
jfengel 5y ago
Russian troll farms appear to be mostly about creating dissension and confusion, rather than turning a profit. It's a more long term strategy without immediate dividends. Or so it seems. It's always hard to tell. But that would make more sense in this case than trying to market their vaccine, and more consistent with past behavior.
- pelasaco 5y ago
  that I agree with you. Destabilization, confusion specially in France and German, Countries with lower vaccine acceptance among the population. Vaccine now is their "black lives matter" in the sense that it will definitely be used to divide the population. Brazil however has a high vaccine acceptance, around 95% of the population want to be vaccinated, therefore Brazil has a huge market for vaccine (internal market and as distribution hub for south America) and in that case, I see how market their vaccine would make sense, specially now that there is a strong lobby there trying to get it approved by the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa) https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-health-regulator-anvisas-technical-staff-recommend-against-importing-2021-04-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-health-regulat... https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-health-regulator-technical-staff-recommend-conditions-any-approval-2021-06-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-health-regulat...
  - jfengel 5y ago
    I hadn't realized that. Their moderately popular President is a vaccine denier and I assumed that translated to the popular in about the same way as the US (whose previous President appears to be a model for Bolsonaro).
    - djrogers 5y ago
      > I assumed that translated to the popular in about the same way as the US Not quite sure what your suggesting here - I’m having some trouble following your logic. You seem to be implying that the US vaccination rate problems are because Trump was anti-vax, but that’s not remotely accurate. In fact, during the last presidential campaign it was the opposition who were skeptical of a ‘trump vaccine’. Trump also got the shot, and encouraged people to get it too - he saw the vaccines as part of his presidential legacy.
      - raphlinus 5y ago
        Let's go to the data, as clearly perceptions can be skewed. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0247642 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... Relevant quote from the abstract: "Our data demonstrate that Donald Trump, before his profile was suspended, was the main driver of vaccine misinformation on Twitter."
      - jfengel 5y ago
        That's the weird part. He could be so much more successful at making vaccines his legacy. Make a PSA for Fox News: "Joe Biden is trying to steal vaccine for blue states. Demand my vaccine!" The vaccination rate in the US would double over night. Instead, he spent so much time insisting that the virus was a hoax, or unimportant, that most people (including his supporters) think of him as anti-vaccine. There's an incredibly straight line between electoral support for him and vaccination rates: https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covid-19-vaccination-rates-is-growing/ https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covi... He really could have been the hero he imagines that he is. It would be so easy.
- Applejinx 5y ago
  It's a really good strategy, in fact. I think it's extremely clever, though possibly not wise. It's just warfare. Nothing so unusual about it, and historically not reserved to just Russians. Maybe that 'whataboutism' factor will sway them to permit me to suggest, here, that this is a window into a well-established Russian tactic, and it's the clarity of that window which has led to their mad scramble to suppress this information: including but not limited to the manipulation of Hacker News information management systems. This is directly beneficial to them: the manipulation of COVID opinion not only turns enemy citizens against each other, but directly keeps a deadly and damaging virus alive and mutating in the wild. That is an immediate dividend when you're doing it on the territory of your geopolitical enemy. Nothing new about this. And nothing 'without dividend' about it, either. It's pretty direct warfare through nontraditional methods, understandable if war is what you're waging. The traditional Russian way to handle this sort of thing is to get your message out across the widest possible range of mouthpieces. You are not taking sides, you are heightening the chaos and setting everybody up to mistrust everybody else. It's called the 'Zone' and is a well documented technique. Harmful to anything but an authoritarian system (and, I think, prone to worsen conditions even for that) but obviously effective.
  - jfengel 5y ago
    I wish I had some grasp of how effective it was. It seems to work by exacerbating existing differences. I don't believe it could create dissension where none existed. It just provides easy support for what people already wish to believe. We'd been creating this division all by ourselves. It's presumably cheap, so it doesn't really matter if it moves the needle by .1 percentage point, or 1 point, or 10 points. It's good bang for the buck. But unfortunately, I suspect that even if they stopped, it wouldn't be noticeably better here.
josephorjoe 5y ago
i suspect the goal is not to increase preference for a particular vaccine but to suppress vaccination rates in a region by creating confusion.
guilhas 5y ago
Well Sputnik v looks more effective and with less side effects than, widely used in EU, Astrazeneca No FUD necessary

detaro 5y ago

It damages overall trust in the state, which might very well be in someones interest. And also potentially causes downstream political changes. This noise also spreads internationally, so bad press in let's say UK, France and Germany might very well lead to "look, in the places they make those vaccines they don't trust them, why should we have them then?!" in countries where it is an open question.

jfengel 5y ago

Russian troll farms appear to be mostly about creating dissension and confusion, rather than turning a profit. It's a more long term strategy without immediate dividends. Or so it seems. It's always hard to tell. But that would make more sense in this case than trying to market their vaccine, and more consistent with past behavior.

pelasaco 5y ago
that I agree with you. Destabilization, confusion specially in France and German, Countries with lower vaccine acceptance among the population. Vaccine now is their "black lives matter" in the sense that it will definitely be used to divide the population. Brazil however has a high vaccine acceptance, around 95% of the population want to be vaccinated, therefore Brazil has a huge market for vaccine (internal market and as distribution hub for south America) and in that case, I see how market their vaccine would make sense, specially now that there is a strong lobby there trying to get it approved by the Brazilian Health Regulatory Agency (Anvisa) https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-health-regulator-anvisas-technical-staff-recommend-against-importing-2021-04-26/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-health-regulat... https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-health-regulator-technical-staff-recommend-conditions-any-approval-2021-06-04/ https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/brazil-health-regulat...
- jfengel 5y ago
  I hadn't realized that. Their moderately popular President is a vaccine denier and I assumed that translated to the popular in about the same way as the US (whose previous President appears to be a model for Bolsonaro).
  - djrogers 5y ago
    > I assumed that translated to the popular in about the same way as the US Not quite sure what your suggesting here - I’m having some trouble following your logic. You seem to be implying that the US vaccination rate problems are because Trump was anti-vax, but that’s not remotely accurate. In fact, during the last presidential campaign it was the opposition who were skeptical of a ‘trump vaccine’. Trump also got the shot, and encouraged people to get it too - he saw the vaccines as part of his presidential legacy.
    - raphlinus 5y ago
      Let's go to the data, as clearly perceptions can be skewed. https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0247642 https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal... Relevant quote from the abstract: "Our data demonstrate that Donald Trump, before his profile was suspended, was the main driver of vaccine misinformation on Twitter."
    - jfengel 5y ago
      That's the weird part. He could be so much more successful at making vaccines his legacy. Make a PSA for Fox News: "Joe Biden is trying to steal vaccine for blue states. Demand my vaccine!" The vaccination rate in the US would double over night. Instead, he spent so much time insisting that the virus was a hoax, or unimportant, that most people (including his supporters) think of him as anti-vaccine. There's an incredibly straight line between electoral support for him and vaccination rates: https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covid-19-vaccination-rates-is-growing/ https://www.kff.org/policy-watch/the-red-blue-divide-in-covi... He really could have been the hero he imagines that he is. It would be so easy.
Applejinx 5y ago
It's a really good strategy, in fact. I think it's extremely clever, though possibly not wise. It's just warfare. Nothing so unusual about it, and historically not reserved to just Russians. Maybe that 'whataboutism' factor will sway them to permit me to suggest, here, that this is a window into a well-established Russian tactic, and it's the clarity of that window which has led to their mad scramble to suppress this information: including but not limited to the manipulation of Hacker News information management systems. This is directly beneficial to them: the manipulation of COVID opinion not only turns enemy citizens against each other, but directly keeps a deadly and damaging virus alive and mutating in the wild. That is an immediate dividend when you're doing it on the territory of your geopolitical enemy. Nothing new about this. And nothing 'without dividend' about it, either. It's pretty direct warfare through nontraditional methods, understandable if war is what you're waging. The traditional Russian way to handle this sort of thing is to get your message out across the widest possible range of mouthpieces. You are not taking sides, you are heightening the chaos and setting everybody up to mistrust everybody else. It's called the 'Zone' and is a well documented technique. Harmful to anything but an authoritarian system (and, I think, prone to worsen conditions even for that) but obviously effective.
- jfengel 5y ago
  I wish I had some grasp of how effective it was. It seems to work by exacerbating existing differences. I don't believe it could create dissension where none existed. It just provides easy support for what people already wish to believe. We'd been creating this division all by ourselves. It's presumably cheap, so it doesn't really matter if it moves the needle by .1 percentage point, or 1 point, or 10 points. It's good bang for the buck. But unfortunately, I suspect that even if they stopped, it wouldn't be noticeably better here.

josephorjoe 5y ago

i suspect the goal is not to increase preference for a particular vaccine but to suppress vaccination rates in a region by creating confusion.

guilhas 5y ago

Well Sputnik v looks more effective and with less side effects than, widely used in EU, Astrazeneca No FUD necessary