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Network of Scottish X accounts go dark amid Iran blackout
- LadyCailin 9mo agohttps://archive.ph/9ziGM https://archive.ph/9ziGM
- SuperNinKenDo 9mo agoHow many? 3?
- OtherShrezzing 9mo ago>‘Jake’ claimed that a “top BBC anchor resigned on air and was immediately detained by security services” and that “crowds have surrounded the residence of the newly appointed ‘Governor General’ imposed by London”. >Meanwhile, ‘Fiona’ said that “protesters have seized Balmoral Estate” and “International markets are dumping UK assets as images of tanks in Edinburgh go viral”. >‘Lucy’ claimed that "farmers have used tractors to block the A1 at the English border”, while another account called ‘Kelly’ said that “army trucks are rolling down the Royal Mile. Soldiers in fatigues are guarding the Scottish Parliament”. Surely the number of Scottish people influenced by accounts making such outlandish claims is exactly zero.
- jaapz 9mo agoThe question is, is their purpose to influence scottish people, or iranian people?
- philbo 9mo agoIt's for the Scottish. It's in Iran's interests for Scotland to become independent because that would enforce change on the United Nations Security Council. The UK ceases to exist and loses its veto, then what happens on the UNSC after that is anyone's guess.
- janandonly 9mo agoThe UK is a lot more then Scotland + England. The Welsh, northern Irish and Isle of Manx would like to have a word with you, to name a few.
- logicchains 9mo ago[flagged]
- darrenf 9mo agoManx is the demonym for people from the Isle of Man. It's odd to see it written "Isle of Manx" in a list of other demonyms, but the word Manx itself is far from modern. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manx_people
- onei 9mo agoIt's the Isle of Man to the best of my knowledge, but the people, and language, are called Manx. Like the English are from England.
- MonkeyClub 9mo agoLet's not forget the Mancs are from England as well.
- squigg 9mo agoThe Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom
- arethuza 9mo agoThe Isle of Man isn't part of the UK? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man
- sebzim4500 9mo agoIf Russia kept the soviet UNSC seat when the Soviets collapsed then surely the UK keeps its seat if Scotland leaves.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- graemep 9mo agoNot Iranians - what would anyone gain by influencing Iranians' views of Scottish nationalism? My experience has been that people outside the west barely know Scotland exists and are not going to care about it anymore than the average Scot is likely to have strong feelings about Laos. It may be aimed at Scots but sometimes be done too blatantly so slips into the implausible. It may be aimed at influencing just those prone to conspiracy theories - who might be few but more likely to extreme actions.
- jbms 9mo agoAs a Scot, I would assume it's an attack on the UK by supporting attempts to break up the UK. That seems credible. Who's behind it, is speculative.
- graemep 9mo agoIf their objective is to damage the UK they can do that without breaking it up. For example, for example by fostering violent Scottish Nationalism, or even just sowing hatred between the Scots and the English, or between Scots who want to remain the UK and those who do not.. Its quite unusual for separatist movements to both remain peaceful themselves, and not to be violent suppressed. Even other western democracies have not managed, nor did one other part of the UK for a long time. My other nationality is Sri Lankan so I have seen how bad it can get. I do not think that will ever happen in the UK, but even a very small number of sufficiently nasty people can do a great deal of damage.
- pamcake 9mo agoPeople leave Iran for UK. The idea is that if UK seems less attractive and stable, fewer people will be strongly inclined to pursue it. It also normalizes chaos at home. I think there are parallels to draw to how Fox News tried to paint a picture of places in Europe being on fire and overtaken by gangs and radicals years before that became close to actual reality.
- RegW 9mo agoApparently X is entirely blocked in Iran unless using a VPN. Perhaps they mean to influence Iranians who activity circumvent internet restrictions :-)
- Imustaskforhelp 9mo agoDoesn't Iran have a literal Complete backout where even starlink is now blocked, I don't think its of any surprise in such case that X is blocked, no?
- 3rodents 9mo agoYou only need look at Musk’s Twitter and right wing media outlets to hear about the U.K’s no go zones for white people — which do not exist. Accounts professing to be from Scottish people are not trying to influence Scottish people, they’re trying to influence Americans into believing that Scotland has already fallen victim to what the fearmongers say is coming for America.
- energy123 9mo agoIt's part of their government's "Death to England" vision, which they describe as a "policy". Splitting up the UK is part of it. It's ineffective and bizarre, but this insular theocracy has a long track-record of such decision making.
- philipwhiuk 9mo ago> Surely the number of Scottish people influenced by accounts making such outlandish claims is exactly zero. But perhaps they influence American foreign policy.
- twixfel 9mo agoI’m certain that a key pillar of Russian propaganda in the USA is to repeat the horseshit that Europe is some degenerate shithole/caliphate arresting people left right and centre for tweeting. See also the US’s total obsession with London and its supposed “no go zone” for white people. The irony is that the US is far less white than Europe is, so they really cannot point fingers at us. It’s worked fantastically at separating the US from all of its allies. We saw that at the Munich security conference last year. In reality we are their closest and truest friends and yet they’re relentlessly shitting all over us, even threatening to invade now. The only comfort is that the USA will inevitably reap what it is sowing.
- tdeck 9mo agoA lot of the racist and islamophobic talking points get exported from the US, then they seem to mull around in Europe for a while, and eventually the US right wing points at what the right is saying there (particularly in the UK) and reimports the rhetoric, often as if it's now solid evidence. It happened with anti-vax as well. I remember finding it very striking when I started hearing US anti-vaxxers refer to "the jab" in 2020. That's a term we never used in American English.
- 84729839278392 9mo ago[dead]
- red-iron-pine 9mo agoe.g. the 4chan meme about the Yuropean Caliphate, etc. etc.
- WickyNilliams 9mo ago
- graemep 9mo ago> Surely the number of Scottish people influenced by accounts making such outlandish claims is exactly zero. There are always some idiots who believe implausible claims. There are plenty of conspiracy theorists around who believe implausible things. These are also the most extreme posts so there may be more plausible ones.
- blitzar 9mo agoI see Elon and Trump quoting and citing this level of "reporting" as "facts" all the time.
- gilleain 9mo ago> "army trucks are rolling down the Royal Mile" Apart from anything else, where are they rolling 'down' from? The castle? I mean I know it's technically a castle, but it's not like there are a bunch of troops there just waiting to spring on Holyrood, no?
- arethuza 9mo agoParts of Edinburgh Castle are still used by the army - I doubt there are many trucks or squaddies based there though: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Castle#Military_role https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Castle#Military_role
- gilleain 9mo agoYeah, fair point. I was just not sure if they have enough troops to take the parliament in any meaningful sense (not that this stuff should really be taken seriously). Of course, if there are pipers involved, then everyone better watch out ...
- pjc50 9mo agoDATELINE 1PM - ARTILLERY FIRE HEARD OVER EDINBURGH Aka, the one o'clock gun, which locals ignore entirely as it's every single day but always surprises a tourist: https://www.edinburghcastle.scot/see-and-do/highlights/one-oclock-gun/ https://www.edinburghcastle.scot/see-and-do/highlights/one-o... . There is actually a small barracks on the site as well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redford_Barracks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redford_Barracks ; the city as a whole contains a few more barracks for various units, including a signals unit conveniently located near the main telephone exchange.
- Waterluvian 9mo agoMaybe it’s not meant to be signal. It’s meant to be noise that makes the signal increasingly hard to distinguish. You get used to there being bullshit and now you can’t tell precisely which unlikely but maybe plausible messages are true. It helps weaken the ability for the target to be able to engage in meaningful discourse.
- jmward01 9mo agoI hate to admit it but I failed the NPR real vs fake video quiz [1] and it is exactly because of this. There is so much fake noise out there that it is very hard to tell what is true. [1] https://www.npr.org/2025/11/30/nx-s1-5610951/fake-ai-videos-slop-quiz https://www.npr.org/2025/11/30/nx-s1-5610951/fake-ai-videos-...
- ChoGGi 9mo ago4/4 for me, but probably only because I knew about that tear gas incident, and that snake was way too loud and they don't tend to move like that unless it's sand.
- catapart 9mo agoThe tear gas was the only one that had me guessing. Knew the video was real, but wasn't sure it wasn't doctored just at the end with the throw. Overall, it read more real than fake, I was just sure they were going to try to "gotcha" me.
- pama 9mo agoThanks for sharing. I am curious which of the four quiz questions you failed—to me they looked relatively easy to tell apart, but I follow the progression of this tech very closely.
- rnotaro 9mo agoPersonally, I've mislabeled the one with the animal in the restaurant as AI generated. I might have clicked too quickly because it was looking like the animals trampolines video's. I've not really looked at the timestamps. I'm generally good at detecting AI generated content but I might have a few false positives. :)
- pjc50 9mo ago> outlandish claims I dunno, have you seen US news recently?
- arethuza 9mo agoI'm just nervous about you-know-who realising that Scotland is in the Western Hemisphere!
- notahacker 9mo agotbf the US is a very different place where you'd have to at least double check rumours that the executive hadn't decided that tanks in cities were the best way to address crime in cities. The UK rumour people probably believe is more likely to be "English police suppress tweets of valued contributors to the Scottish nationalist movement"...
- arethuza 9mo ago"tanks in cities were the best way to address crime in cities" Given the amount of tanks the UK has I think it would have to be "tank in city" - mind you tanks have been used in Glasgow! ;-) https://euppublishingblog.com/2018/10/03/georgesquarebattle/ https://euppublishingblog.com/2018/10/03/georgesquarebattle/
- pjc50 9mo agoOr the Ruth Davidson rent-a-tank: https://news.channel4.com/election2015/04/29/update-4401/ https://news.channel4.com/election2015/04/29/update-4401/ (more seriously, let's not forget the deployment of the Parachute Regiment to Northern Ireland, although that was a while ago)
- notahacker 9mo agoI think last time we had a tank at a protest the protestors had rented it! https://www.vice.com/en/article/yer-das-gone-rogue-guido-fawkes-bloggers-drive-a-tank-into-broadcasting-house-to-petition-jeremy-clarksons-suspension-303/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/yer-das-gone-rogue-guido-faw... Northern Ireland is a big part of why the UK doesn't think the optics of deploying tanks are a show of strength and doesn't think it comes without a cost...
- arethuza 9mo agoSadly, the figure isn't zero - I know a few.
- H8crilA 9mo agoA lot of this stuff doesn't work by changing people's mind on topic X, but rather by saturating the informational environment so that people declare epistemological bankruptcy. For example, one thing that you can quite often hear from a Russian that has been confronted with something unpleasant is "well, who knows what's true". This is usually not a figure of speech, not some kind of washing down of facts, but rather an accurate representation of their mind. Between being fooled and being uninformed the latter is much more pleasant.
- broochcoach 9mo ago[dead]
- red-iron-pine 9mo ago> but rather by saturating the informational environment so that people declare epistemological bankruptcy. "never use big words when a smaller one will suffice" they want to, as Bannon said, "flood the zone". or as RAND Corp calls it, "the Russian Firehose of Falsehood"
- senordevnyc 9mo agoThis doesn't come close to replacing the meaning of the sentence you're complaining about.
- WickyNilliams 9mo agoYes, exactly by grinding people down. Making it exhausting to discern the truth, until it's not worth the energy exertion to do so. Also perhaps it is not meant to convince Scottish people of anything, but maybe to make English people hostile to Scotland and its people etc
- ricardo81 9mo agoExactly this. Or just obfuscating the question so much that people give up asking the question.
- 9mo ago
- dfxm12 9mo agoSurely the number of Scottish people influenced by accounts making such outlandish claims is exactly zero. The accounts appear to be suspended, so it is true that Scottish people are not being influenced by these accounts. In fact, the link in the story about tanks in Edinburgh goes nowhere. Combined with the links to suspended accounts, the article almost reads like it was written by a sock puppet...
- nmeofthestate 9mo agoSeems totally risible stuff. On Twitter, I've mostly seen this story shared by British nationalist accounts, presumably because they think it tarnishes the cause of Scottish independence by throwing support for it into question. Having said that, partisan people on social media are always happy to share stuff that they agree with regardless of the source. Presumably these accounts posted less loopy stuff sometimes and got retweets.
- vintermann 9mo agoI think these accounts may not be as political as many people think. It has been observed that foreign bot accounts often support both positions on contentious issues. Maybe they're just Russian cybercriminals chasing impulse likes and follows for the sake of building up their accounts' social currency? Once they've gotten enough real engagement that the algorithm thinks they're real people, they can pivot to something entirely unrelated to the political controversy they pushed. Change name, change style, suddenly the victim follows an account they don't remember but gives interesting advice on crypto investments. Now, I do certainly believe Russian cybercriminals do work for the government now and then in return for tolerance. But it may be less mustache-twirling chaos farming and more plain old scams.
- red-iron-pine 9mo ago> Once they've gotten enough real engagement that the algorithm thinks they're real people, they can pivot to something entirely unrelated to the political controversy they pushed. Change name, change style, suddenly the victim follows an account they don't remember but gives interesting advice on crypto investments. bingo. you need a trail of real-looking accounts. not just for posting, too, but also to link to, or retweet, or like, etc., in ways that get algorithms to put stuff on the top of a feed. there may be only one actual account pushing the marketing or propaganda, but you need 5k more to upvote or share -- and those accounts can be just random AI slop or reposts of something. take the top replies of a popular post and shorten it, then post it a day or two later. or repost the most popular generic post of last month, etc.
- mrguyorama 9mo agoYou don't actually need real looking accounts. Almost all of this stuff is done with the most superficial and obvious accounts. You don't need any reputation at all because the sites do very little actual work to block literal nation state level information warfare campaigns (because that would cost money and reduce their metrics) You also don't need any reputation because the real humans who will be boosting your false narrative or "information" are the type that take someone else telling them "No, that's fake because <reason>" to be high quality evidence that it is "The real truth THEY don't want you to know" Like, these accounts will quite literally only be active from 9-5 Moscow time despite being "In the US", and yet that is apparently not a strong enough signal for companies to target them for review or bans?
- rozab 9mo agoIt's the firehouse technique. The films of Adam Curtis touch on this, I'd recommend HyperNormalisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood
- John23832 9mo agoIt's all stochastic. The goal is to get that one lunatic to do something, that sets off the response which drains resources and makes the powers at be less nimble. We live in a world of subtle war.
- cramsession 9mo agoWe are the target of this propaganda, and I don’t mean the Scottish independence stuff. The US and Israel are jamming the airwaves with anti-Iran propaganda to manufacture consent to attack Iran. Every day we’re being subjected to a ton of this stuff on every channel (including HN). It’s certainly not working on me, but I fear far too many of us are just taking these stories at face value.
- torben-friis 9mo agoOoh, this is a great idea. There’s probably a lot that can be detected by measuring usage drop. I wish the same analysis was attempted in my country.
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 9mo ago"At the time, disinformation analysis firm Cyabra claimed that as much as “26% of profiles discussing Scottish independence were fake”. Unsurprising given there is no true Scotsman.
- philipallstar 9mo agoThis made me stop and laugh for a minute.
- DonHopkins 9mo agoWhat we actually have here is a classic case of Yes False Scotsman.
- noelwelsh 9mo agoWhen I read wildly insane comments on a mildly contentious issue here on HN (e.g. as a very mild example, posts on electric cars always draw out someone who needs to state they drive 1000 miles a day and so electric cars will never work for anyone) I wonder how many sock puppets accounts there are here. There must be some. The radicalization of, e.g., Marc Andreessen was very useful to some group, so there is no reason they wouldn't try more of the same in this venue.
- rrr_oh_man 9mo ago> radicalization of, e.g., Marc Andreessen Can you share more? I read his book years ago, but haven't heard/read anything since.
- noelwelsh 9mo agoJust search and you'll find a million articles about his "dark enlightenment" (or whatever stupid name is used) views. I think "Chatham House" was the name of a private group chat he was in that helped this process along, and there are several articles about this.
- vintermann 9mo agoChatham house are famous for the rule that if you're invited, you agree that if you talk about what they talked about in their meetings, you must not say who said it. Most political manipulation of influential people isn't sophisticated at all, it's 3rd grade bullying level. For instance, getting invited to an exclusive meaning as proof of your importance/"seriousness". Brazen flattery, but it works. And the secrecy grooms them into betraying outsiders in favor of insiders. It's not such a big betrayal to give cover to powerful people's ugly opinions, but it's a start. And once you've done one bad thing with the gang, you're easier to persuade to do worse things with the gang. Again, really banal stuff. Remember in Snowden's biography, he mentioned being involved in a plot to get some diplomatic person to drunk drive, so they could swoop in and "help" him. That wasn't just targeted at the diplomat. It was also targeted at rookie CIA agent Ed: first do iffy things with us, so that you have firmly rationalized and justified it to yourself once we ask you to do uglier stuff.
- keybored 9mo ago> The account, which describes itself as “a proud Scottish lass” and “passionate about Scotland's independence & our right to self-determination”, is based in Europe (according to X’s location data). I get suspect everytime an online socialist overuses famous socialist terms (or supposed socialist terms) before segueing into a conjunction. “Of course I want the socialist utopia just as much as all of us, comrades, but...”
- philipallstar 9mo agoAnd the way we all collectively get to utopia is by forcing more money out of people to spend on me talking at fancy dinners
- graemep 9mo agoIts hardly surprising as we already know there are people who (for both commercial and political motives) have very fake social media accounts. This guy claims to have made $300k posting racist content posing as British: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-11-16/king-of-slop-how-anti-migrant-ai-content-made-one-sri-lankan-influencer-rich https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-11-16/kin... This is why my FB feed is full of misinformation, strawman arguments, sweeping conclusions and no nuance. it does not matter what they are arguing about of which side they are on, the stupidity is constant. Left and right, theists and atheists, pro and anti-immigration. Anything else you can think of. All things I am happy to have an interesting argument about, but what social media offers is engagement bait of one kind or another - from rage bait to feigned ignorance.
- alex1138 9mo agoI'm sure regulation would be more complex than "Feeds must be chronological and only what you're explicitly following" - hammer out the details - but yeah, basically, that It doesn't help matters when the initial founding was less than innocent https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1692122
- Earw0rm 9mo agoNetworks were full of this stuff before the bot armies were a glimmer in whoever's eye. I don't doubt bots are a factor in the sheer volume of it, but human nature on network debates was bad when it was only fairly smart, educated people, and it only got worse as the AOL-to-Facebook pipeline demographic became politicised. Glinner isn't a bot, just to pick one example of somebody who - irrespective of the merit or not of his argument - simply behaves like an asshole, constantly.
- afpx 9mo ago[flagged]
- c0n5pir4cy 9mo agoImportant thing to note - UKDefenceJournal only tracks a set of known Iran linked related accounts that could be tracked because of previous Internet blackouts in Iran. It would be interesting to see how this applies more widely to other sets of content and countries. From the original UKDJ article: > The original UK Defence Journal investigation stressed in an editor’s note that “this article does not claim that Scottish independence is a foreign plot, nor does it suggest that support for independence is illegitimate, inauthentic, or driven by anything other than sincere political conviction.” > The focus, we underlined, was not on genuine activists but on documented attempts by Iranian-linked actors to exploit authentic political debates for their own strategic purposes. Robertson’s reply arguably missed this distinction. The concern raised by analysts was not that independence itself is tainted, but that foreign actors are infiltrating the conversation, seeking to magnify division and undermine trust in democratic processes.
- RobertoG 9mo agoOne man information is another one bot. The Herald information comes from ukdefencejournal. They don't tell us exactly where the information comes from originally, despise talking about the company Cyabra later in another context. But the Jewish Telegraphic Agency tell us that the information about Iran also comes from Cyabra (1) Cyabra? The Tel-Aviv based company, with important customers as the USA State Department, informing us about Iran? What could possible go wrong? (1) - https://www.jta.org/2025/07/14/global/when-irans-internet-went-down-during-its-war-with-israel-so-did-bot-networks-spreading-disinformation-report https://www.jta.org/2025/07/14/global/when-irans-internet-we...).
- kelipso 9mo agoLol, I just about guessed this was what was going on. Anti-Iran influence operations are on an absolute tear right now.
- jbms 9mo agoNot a new thing. "a 2024 study by researchers at Clemson University has estimated that 4% of content relating to independence were linked to one Iranian-backed bot network of around 80 accounts." Speaking as a Scot, I would expect there are those who support attempts to break up the UK who care zero about Scotland. Who's ultimately behind it is speculative.
- wiseowise 9mo ago60% of the internet will disappear if the same would happen in Russia.
- 4ggr0 9mo agoUS would probably have a large impact as well, of course because lots of internet-users are from the US, but also because the US likes to astroturf as well. tiny example: https://web.archive.org/web/20160406094911/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160406094911/http://www.reddit..., Most addicted city (over 100k visits total) Eglin Air Force Base, FL let's not lose ourselves in cold-war propaganda too much and act like russians and chinese are the only ones astroturfing online.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- keybored 9mo agoRussia is a waning superpower with a low GDP but a powerful enough internal economy to wage a conventional invasion of a large European country. The US is a much richer country, the leading superpower, and an IT powerhouse. But for some reason the first thing that pops into people’s mind when they hear propaganda bots is “Russia”. (I would buy China, too. A huge country with a powerful economy.) That in itself looks like a programmed response. Of course Russia uses bots and propaganda. But the focus on Russia seems completely out of proportion.
- sofixa 9mo agoDuring the Prigozhin uprising / coup attempt, internet was cut off in parts of Russia, and there was a noticeable slowdown in comments on multiple popular subreddits. I don't know if any studies have been done to evaluate this empirically though
- ErroneousBosh 9mo agoI can confirm that when I blocked a huge swathe of mobile broadband providers in Russia and Israel, something like 95% of the spam on the forum I run stopped instantly. It seemed like a messy and obvious approach - sign up with a clearly bot-generated gmail account, hit the activation link sent by email an average of 100ms, and immediately post in every thread something along the lines of "WHEN WE'VE FINISHED IN KHARKIV / GAZA WE'LL BRING THE GAS CHAMBERS TO ENGLAND", all in under about ten seconds. I don't think it's Russians or Israelis behind it, necessarily, but that's where the annoying noise has been coming from.
- ricardo81 9mo agoMakes sense. Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK. It seems to me most social platforms (not just big tech, smaller UGC sections like the BBC) have many puppet accounts that are triggered by certain content. Anecdotally looking at BBC comment sections of Scottish content, the "highest rated" comments are almost unilaterally pro-British/anti Scottish National Party which deviates a long way from historical voting preferences. The SNP have performed very well in Scottish and Westminster elections and the weakest barometer for them is/was the 45%/55% vote split in the Scottish independence referendum 12 years ago. I think if anyone took a "sentiment score" of what's there vs how people generally think or behave there'd be a large deviance. More generally, any platform seems to have systemised abuse and this pattern goes all the way back to generic content management systems being abused in the early 2000s. I do wonder, are these accounts being accessed via proxy? i.e. someone claiming to be from the UK and having a residential IP- if the platform doesn't care about the location of access, maybe start checking for latency?
- jbms 9mo agoThe SNP have won a lot of seats through the voting system because the other parties split the non-independence vote. The SNP have never had a majority of votes, even with an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats.
- ricardo81 9mo agowhich voting system? There's one for Holyrood and one for Westminster. IIRC it's been a long time since anyone has commanded a >50% of the vote share.
- pjc50 9mo agoIt has been quite a long time since a Westminster party has won with a vote share of over 50%, and the SNP vote share at Holyrood is higher than those of parties that win Westminster elections. The Westminster electoral system (nb to non-Brits: all the UK constituent bodies run different voting systems for no good reason) delivers majorities at the cost of legitimacy.
- 9mo ago
- api 9mo agoI really wish Reddit would turn on a feature to show where the account came from. Of course the troll farms would just use VPNs. Man if Russia went dark like half of all politics X and Reddit would probably go dark. I bet it would be both ends of the horseshoe.
- myrmidon 9mo agoWhat pockets of reddit do you suspect of being heavily Russia-influenced? My experience of reddit is that it is wildly anti-Russian since the invasion, sometimes to an almost cartoonish degree (e.g. r/worldnews).
- api 9mo agoProbably the explicitly anti west left and the racist, fascist, and trad right. The groups you’d want to push to destabilize the West.
- wewxjfq 9mo agoI think Russia did, successfully for quite some time, attempt to direct anger towards the countries supporting Ukraine. Russia would drop a bomb on Ukraine and 90% of the comment section would hate the West for it. The goal was to fuel defeatism and infighting. The latter they encouraged from the start. Reading Reddit, you would have thought Germany had attacked Ukraine from the western flank. In the days and weeks before every major pending Ukraine decision in the US, you could see a noticeable uptick of Russian-friendly talking points. Before the US election, a suspicious amount of Redditors claimed that Trump would give Ukraine more weapons than Biden. These days, they are encouraging the Europe is weak rhetoric. If a toy drone gets spotted somewhere, the only acceptable response is nuking Moscow and EU should disband if they don't dare - that inane take to me is also trolling.
- RegW 9mo ago10+ years ago I had a job which involved developing/testing geo-restricted software in another country. Eventually each VPN exit point would get marked up as such, and I would have to switch to another. So if posts were marked with the country of origin or VPN, that might be enough for most people to evaluate the intent of the post. Of course things have changed. There might not be so many IPv4 addresses around to trade, but IPv6 has probably changed that. And it's probably hard to know how long an address was used by a VPN before being traded back to a telco.
- password54321 9mo agoI sometimes wonder how much your own beliefs change consuming some content online even if you consciously disagree with it. Like a slight subconscious erosion that you don't even realise is happening until you have been radicalised. Ironically I think people who are more honest or empathetic might be more susceptible to this as they try and take in other people's view points without crudely dismissing it.
- lowdownbutter 9mo agoYes, that's what social media is - a battle ground for nudging opinions.
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- Timon3 9mo agoThis is 100% a real factor in shaping opinions. Every piece of information we encounter affects us - that's how we're built & how we can learn. But this also makes us easy to influence by consistently repeating lies, like we've seen with the "Flood the zone" technique, as well as basically the whole rise of the right over the last decade. It's all lies and misinformation, but it works because of how we're built & because there are not enough counter operations.
- internationalis 9mo ago[dead]
- deanc 9mo agoIt goes without saying that social media is causing irreparable harm to the fabric of our society. To use an analogy: if the village idiot went to the town square and shouted hate speech, he'd be laughed at or dealt with. Now anyone has a platform to go to the town square, except it's the world, and shout hate speech. And unlike before there will be hateful people, some of them unrecognisable from real people, who will support the village idiot. They will help amplify his voice and validate him and legitimise him. We have to find a way to stop this. The only thing I can think of is require you to attach your real identity to social media accounts, and regulate the living daylights out of it to hold the networks accountable if their owners don't want to do the right thing. Free speech isn't free.
- willvarfar 9mo agoI agree that social media is a net negative, but want to also point out that before social media it was the mainstream press and TV have been shaping society for decades. Things like buying a used car from Nixon or fighting in Vietnam etc are all mainstream press impact.
- deanc 9mo agoI like to think that contrary to this modern idea of media bias that the “mainstream” media as you label it has been a net benefit to society. Journalists used to challenge authority in democracies and bring out truth. It’s a lot more difficult now due to social media polluting the information space.
- amiga386 9mo agoAll together, everyone! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE "This sharing of biased and false news has become all too common on social media" ... say the local TV presenters parroting an identical script from the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns or operates 193 TV stations in the USA, covering 40% of US households You'd be mad to think that consolidated control of information, the endgame of "mainstream" media, is of benefit to society. "Mainstream" media is financed either directly by very rich individuals, who then use their control of the thing they own (even just by controlling its hiring policies, to give like-minded people a voice) to spam their own agenda on the populace, or a generic money-making enterprise that then deals with less-affluent people who want to spam the populace (advertisers).
- drob518 9mo agoOn the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog. Or a bot. Or an Iranian disinformation agent. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet%2C_nobody_knows_you're_a_dog https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Internet%2C_nobody_know...
- aebtebeten 9mo agoDecades before the internet, in 1948, Linebarger's textbook on Psychological Warfare notes, in its section on propaganda analysis, that: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm#:~:text=The%20formula%20works%20best,job%20of%20high%20magnitude%2e https://www.gutenberg.org/files/48612/48612-h/48612-h.htm#:~... > The [STASM] formula works best in the treatment of monitored materials of which the source is known. First point to note is the character of the source. There are several choices on this: the true source (who really got it out?) and the ostensible source (whose name is signed to it?); also, the first-use source (who used it the first time?) and the second-use source (who claims merely to be using it as a quotation?). Take the statement: "Harry said to me, he said, 'I never told anybody that Al's wife was a retired strip-teaser.' Mind you, I don't pretend to believe Harry, but that's what he said, all right." What are the possible true sources for the statement of fact or libel concerning Al's unnamed wife? What are the alternatives on ostensible sources? First use? Second use? The common sense needed to analyze this statement is of the same order as the process involved in analyzing the statement: "Reliable sources in Paris state that the visit of the American labor delegation has produced sensational repercussions in Moscow, and that Moscow, upon the basis of the American attitude, is determined to press for unification of the entire German labor movement." > It is soon evident that the mere attribution of source is a job of high magnitude. I'm not sure what we were using 2 watts worth of cerebellum for before sophisticated language, but afterwards source attribution sounds like it'd sure soak up the cycles... (he also has technical terms for what we now call a "sock puppet")
- nmeofthestate 9mo ago"‘Lucy’ claimed that "farmers have used tractors to block the A1 at the English border”, while another account called ‘Kelly’ said that “army trucks are rolling down the Royal Mile. Soldiers in fatigues are guarding the Scottish Parliament”." Very convincing stuff. We must fast-track the shutdown of X in the UK to stop this ultra-persuasive disinfo from brainwashing our citizens.
- 113 9mo agoIt's about half a dozen accounts, it could just be the very strange hobby of a single person in Iran. I don't know why all the other comments are acting like this is evidence of a huge misinformation campaign by Russia.
- NoGravitas 9mo agoBecause the story itself is part of a propaganda operation, intended to manufacture support for US/Israeli attacks on Iran. And it's working.
- ericmay 9mo agoAs someone who doesn’t use these products (FB, TikTok, Twitter, &c) I think it’s very clearly time to require proof of citizenship and formal ID verification to at least post content. I’m not suggesting all of the Internet needs to go that way, but for large social media platforms I don’t see why not. You can argue that journalists need anonymity but I’m confident we can find a workaround or solution there. I understand there’s this hacker spirit of doing things anonymous and I get it, and agree with it, but these platforms are the most mainstream things imaginable and they are way past the point of having gotten out of control. You can’t have MAGA/Hamas/Iran/Antifa/Russia/Cuba/China/India/Pakistan all participating in shaping public opinion and sowing disinformation without contest. I’m surprised that western countries have been somewhat resilient to all of this BS by and large (nothing is collapsing, just degrading), but for how long?
- ricochet11 9mo agoMaybe they can work out some ZKproofs of ID thing and it becomes more palatable. I know there’s people in the crypto world trying to solve problems like that. At the moment kyc results in private data later being stolen or sold - and buying stolen ids to register is too easy. But maybe oneday we can prove who we are (or prove unique human) without needing to trust the authority of the site owner at the same time
- ericmay 9mo agoI think that's a good idea for the verification mechanism so we don't expose data unnecessary. But I think it should have to be your literal name, city of residence, place of employment, &c *. on your posts. No hiding. People should know who they're talking to or who they're dealing with. There's some interesting discussion to be had about people who have something to lose moderating their opinion, a group of people who don't care about their reputation attacking people online and offline, &c. but those items can be worked and talked though I think. Alternatively, if you don't want to do that just don't use the platforms. As someone who doesn't, it sucks that I have to sit here and watch people get radicalized or become confused about reality and then go and affect my daily life with their lunacy. It's annoying. * I'm open-minded on the details, just using these as examples or discussion items.
- cramsession 9mo ago[flagged]
- NoGravitas 9mo agoBot accounts based in Langley and Eglin AFB are, by definition, not bot accounts.
- simianwords 9mo agoLots of reasons to be skeptical about this article - I can’t find any of the accounts - geolocation feature is hard to crack so they must have been identified as Iranian when this feature was released - these don’t seem to be high profile accounts
- tencentshill 9mo agoGood job being skeptical, it's a good first instinct to have with any media. However, reading the actual article is a good choice as well. - They link to several of the accounts (now suspended) in the article. - The geolocation was easily spoofed with a VPN, as stated in the article. - They never claim these account have any significant standing, only that they have "thousands of followers", likely in aggregate. The news here is that they were previously known to be Iranian-linked. This blackout is further evidence, because they all stopped posting when Iran went offline.
- LightBug1 9mo agoAhh, quality content on X confirmed once again. I heard on the grapevine that X is consistently number 1 on the app stores for News content ... X ... the home of Truth ... and where the team would get rid of bots and bot networks once and for all !!! Elon ... you're a fucking genius ...
- CrzyLngPwd 9mo agoI wonder, when the USA closes down the internet, how many Iranian X accounts will go dark.
- scoofy 9mo agoI think folks attempting to build a unicorn could just do what nextdoor did -- require a modicum of proof of life -- but for clones of twitter, reddit, etc. The idea that I might get in a fight with a robot or some state agent on -- gasp -- Hacker News... it makes me want to pull my hair out. I would happily receive a postcard with code once every few years to quasi-prove my location.
- TheAlchemist 9mo agoNot surprising at all. Wasn't most of pro-Trump content during 2016 election campaign actually generated by some kids in Macedonia who figured out how lucrative fake and sensationalized news can be ? Social media is increasingly the poison of the society.
- aussieguy1234 9mo agoI guess one side effect of shutting down the internet is the government troll accounts can no longer post.
- terramauthe 9mo agoWait until people find out this is true of separatist movements in every country.