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I'm all with you on government regulations. They're not a solution for any problem and there have be other ways to solve problems. Like giving everyone more opp
by SXX 4y ago
I'm all with you on government regulations. They're not a solution for any problem and there have be other ways to solve problems. Like giving everyone more opportunities to get good education without being in debt for the rest of your life.
At the same time as person who do hold damn russian passport and see propoganda working well for warmongering I wish everyone took this issue more seriously.
> Ah, now we're getting somewhere. So this is formalizing the drumming-up-hysteria-about-Russia shenanigans we've seen in recent years.
Like it or not, but Russia is a country with a lot of experience of maintaining bot networks and has almost unlimited budget to spread whatever misinformation they think useful for them. Fortunately corruption take its toll, but even with majority of budgets stolen they can still maintain hundreds of thousands fake social accounts. And Twitter is actually full of them.
With modern diffusion models and LLMs (and especially now when tech like ChatGPT exists) they can easily deploy such accounts in any region and make them use any language. Propoganda at scale never been easier.
And it doesn't cost much to run either. Few mobile phone farms, bunch of automation software, few VPN services and 500 students working part time can generate as much of online activity as population of a small country. Propoganda at scale never been cheaper.
PS: Unfortunately maintaining giant bot networks is much easier and cheaper than maintaining functional military.
- einpoklum 4y ago> Russia is a country with a lot of experience of maintaining bot networks Twitter begs to differ: https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jan/12/twitter-files-democrats-were-warned-russian-bot-th/ https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/jan/12/twitter-fil... or rather, Twitter agreed with your claim while under the previous ownership, even though internally they know that wasn't the case. Now, does the state of Russia operate significant bot networks elsewhere? Possibly. But I have so far only heard about their existing from sources fed by the US government, or allied with it, rather than independent ones. > Russia is a country don't conflate the country with the state please. > Russia... has almost unlimited budget to spread whatever misinformation they think useful for them. Surely, you jest. Russia is extremely weak in propagandizing. And its budgets for spreading its views are nothing compared to even just the US as a state, and if you count private corporations, and the effect of Europe, then the imbalance is even more severe. PS - None of this is to say that the Russian regime is admirable, peace-loving, international-law-abiding etc. (which it isn't.)