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I thought social media manipulation was well known for a long time, just one example: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook-troll-farms-

I thought social media manipulation was well known for a long time, just one example: https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook-troll-farms-report-us-2020-election/ https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/09/16/1035851/facebook... Quote: As of October 2019, around 15,000 Facebook pages with a majority US audience were being run out of Kosovo and Macedonia, known bad actors during the 2016 election. Collectively, those troll-farm pages—which the report treats as a single page for comparison purposes—reached 140 million US users monthly and 360 million global users weekly. Walmart’s page reached the second-largest US audience at 100 million. The troll farm pages also combined to form: - the largest Christian American page on Facebook, 20 times larger than the next largest—reaching 75 million US users monthly, 95% of whom had never followed any of the pages. - the largest African-American page on Facebook, three times larger than the next largest—reaching 30 million US users monthly, 85% of whom had never followed any of the pages. - the second-largest Native American page on Facebook, reaching 400,000 users monthly, 90% of whom had never followed any of the pages. - the fifth-largest women’s page on Facebook, reaching 60 million US users monthly, 90% of whom had never followed any of the pages.

mardifoufs 5y ago
Didn't most of those kosovar/macedonian operated fake news farms turn out to be just random private citizens from those countries taking advantage of the situation instead of a massive Russian-run operation? If russia actually ran tons of pages and controlled the narrative we would've known by now using the same tools used to unmask the balkan troll farms. I'm sure some were intelligence operations but do we have proof that those really had any big influence on public discourse? Unless you are saying that russia could do the same in the future, which I agree is possible but we would still ultimately end up knowning about it. The anti nuclear movement in europe is pretty grassroots and the fact is that we don't have any proof of substantial russian influence on that subject even if everyone is much more on the lookout (as your links indicate)
- AYBABTME 5y ago
  What are the odds that enough of them would spontaneously self organize in an unexpectedly coordinated attack, randomly located within the same region, in a long term persistent manner... just for fun?
TapWaterBandit 5y ago
Anti-nuclear sentiment long preceded social media and has far more to do with visceral images coming from traditional media sources around events like Cherynobyl, 3 Mile Island, Fukushima, etc. It makes no sense to blame anti-nuclear sentiment on Russia. The evidence just isn't there, they happen to heavily benefit from it but the anti-nuclear sentiment but are not the primary cause. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement

mardifoufs 5y ago

Didn't most of those kosovar/macedonian operated fake news farms turn out to be just random private citizens from those countries taking advantage of the situation instead of a massive Russian-run operation? If russia actually ran tons of pages and controlled the narrative we would've known by now using the same tools used to unmask the balkan troll farms. I'm sure some were intelligence operations but do we have proof that those really had any big influence on public discourse? Unless you are saying that russia could do the same in the future, which I agree is possible but we would still ultimately end up knowning about it. The anti nuclear movement in europe is pretty grassroots and the fact is that we don't have any proof of substantial russian influence on that subject even if everyone is much more on the lookout (as your links indicate)

AYBABTME 5y ago
What are the odds that enough of them would spontaneously self organize in an unexpectedly coordinated attack, randomly located within the same region, in a long term persistent manner... just for fun?

TapWaterBandit 5y ago

Anti-nuclear sentiment long preceded social media and has far more to do with visceral images coming from traditional media sources around events like Cherynobyl, 3 Mile Island, Fukushima, etc. It makes no sense to blame anti-nuclear sentiment on Russia. The evidence just isn't there, they happen to heavily benefit from it but the anti-nuclear sentiment but are not the primary cause. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-nuclear_movement