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Makes 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

Makes 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 ago
The 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 ago
  which 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 ago
  It 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.
neoromantique 9mo ago
>Makes sense. Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK. Do they? Since Independent Scotland is very likely to rejoin EU it seems to me Russia & co would be interested in keeping it on the sinking ship that is post-brexit UK(economy wise).
- deleted 9mo ago
  [deleted]
- mrec 9mo ago
  I don't think that's a given, or even necessarily a strong likelihood. A majority of Scotland's trade is with the rest of the UK, unlike the Brexit situation where a shrinking minority of the UK's trade was with the rest of the EU, the only EU member for which this was the case. Scotland is accustomed to deficit spending and to large subsidies from the rUK, neither of which would be epecially palatable to EU finances. And while I certainly think it's fair to describe the UK economy as a sinking ship, I also think that blaming that on Brexit is, to put it politely, "starting with your conclusion". UK growth has been higher than France, Germany or Italy since 2016. Brexit has obviously had impacts, but they haven't all been negative (the City in particular has zero enthusiasm to fall back into any EU alignment) and I think the COVID lockdown shambles and the Homerically inept current government have been bigger factors. I found this a decent recent overview on the common analytical takes, if you're interested: https://julianhjessop.substack.com/p/what-the-nber-gets-wrong-on-the-economic https://julianhjessop.substack.com/p/what-the-nber-gets-wron...
  - neoromantique 9mo ago
    Given that a sentiment for independence of Scotland has only really became an actual topic people discuss semi-seriously after the Brexit, I think it is fair to assume that there is a quite high likelihood of it, and there are quite some EU states that get preferential treatment budget wise, no reason to assume that Scotland cannot become that. Covid has been global, lockdowns have been everywhere, UK is not unique and did not even have the worst of it in terms of lockdown strictness. While "averaged out" UK economy post-brexit/pre-covid might not look that much worse than EU, if you look into specifics the picture gets far uglier with entire economy sectors going bankrupt, all in all it was a spectacular self inflicted damage that will be felt for decades to come, especially now that US is becoming a hostile actor.
iso1631 9mo ago
Assuming everyone on a BBC comment section is from the UK, that's 90% not Scottish and 10% Scottish In 2024 the SNP got 30% of the vote, the big unionist parties having more than 2 votes for every 1 nationalist.
HPsquared 9mo ago
A survey of online posts is usually not representative of a population at large, either within the online community or the society as a whole. There are so many biasing and selection effects at work, even before talking about anything deliberate which is probably also going on.
- breppp 9mo ago
  Usually over-representative of the unemployed, angry, lonely and obsessed
  - arethuza 9mo ago
    I'd go for "retired, angry, lonely and obsessed" Edit: I'm 60 in case anyone thinks I'm being ageist
    - HPsquared 9mo ago
      That spells out "ORAL" which is very fitting for a vocal minority.
GJim 9mo ago
> Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK. Famously, Alex Salmond (at the time, the leader of the Scottish National Party) was given a regular programme on Russia Today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alex_Salmond_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alex_Salmond_Show Say what you want about Scottish independence (its for the Scots to decide), but a break up of the UK would serve Kremlin interests no end.
- arethuza 9mo ago
  I actually think that the process around Scottish independence actually demonstrates that the UK is actually relatively sane - a part of the country wanted to consider independence, the government at the time said "OK you can have a referendum", the referendum was held and Scotland voted to stay in the UK. I was, and still am, a support of Scottish independence but I how the whole thing was handled reflects pretty well on the UK as a whole.
  - GJim 9mo ago
    I'll certainly give you that. We have a (reasonably!) healthy democracy in Blighty, despite our grumblings. Though it's fair to say that had the referendum been held more recently, Russian interference would have been orders of magnitude more severe. I'm not sure what the solution is to protect against such interference. (That is, interference in the worlds democracies, not just ours).
    - mschuster91 9mo ago
      > I'm not sure what the solution is to protect against such interference. (That is, interference in the worlds democracies, not just ours). Do to them what they do to us. Make "FAFO" a thing again. We once upon a time stopped supporting the Russian opposition and it cost us dearly. As for "what can we do now" - for every attributed or even suspected action of interference by Russia, Ukraine gets handed another few billion dollars worth of ammunition. When something gets attributed to Iran, give some nice toy to Israel. When something gets attributed to China, how about some missiles for Taiwan. We don't need to engage in wars ourselves, but we can put serious impedances against their plans. The only ones I can't think of a solution are the North Koreans because they're so isolated and have the unique advantage that for anything we do they can shoot ballistics onto South Korea.
rayiner 9mo ago
> Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK. But so do Scottish people.
- master-lincoln 9mo ago
  Obviously, but how is that relevant in the context here with the Iran internet blackout?
- 6LLvveMx2koXfwn 9mo ago
  Presumably only some Scottish people have an interest in undermining the UK? Latest (2024) results from YouGov suggest yes/no is 34/49 to the question 'Should Scotland be an independent country?' [1] 1. https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Internal_IndyRef_Results_240813.pdf https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Internal_Ind...
  - laurencerowe 9mo ago
    More recent results from YouGov (November 2025) put yes/no at 39/41 [1] while other polling companies put yes in the lead [2]. [1] https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/Internal_ScotlandResults_251105.pdf https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/docume... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_Scottish_independence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_Scottish_in...
    - john-h-k 9mo ago
      Out of the 26 polls since the GE, 13 are pro indy 13 aren’t. But it’s worth noting that 9 of the 13 pro-indy polls were commissioned by strongly pro-Indy groups (The National, The Herald, STV News), which seems like it could have some selection bias.
      - Shortness8 9mo ago
        The Herald[1] and STV News (neutral as a broadcaster) are not strong Pro-Indy groups. The National certainly is. DOI: Scotsman not in favour of independence. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Herald_(Glasgow)#Political_stance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Herald_(Glasgow)#Political...
jameshart 9mo ago
Presumably BBC comments also contain comments from English people who might not follow the same 45/55 split on Scottish indeoendence as Scottish people do?
gghhzzgghhzz 9mo ago
The problem with this argument is that it is very simplistic. And a very simple way of de-legitimising any anti-establishment position, and protecting the status quo. We can look at independence movements in Europe, Brexit, Trump, republicanism in the UK, any sort of heterodox economic or foreign policy. Even if you disagree with these positions, it is helpful to you to steelman your position and your arguments. And just dismissing them as Putin's work drops you into a trap. It's arguably one reason why Trump got re-elected. People spent his entire first term assuming he'd be exposed in some complicated Russian plot and put in jail; rather than thinking hard about why he got elected in the first place. Same thing happened to some degree with the Brexit vote.
ErroneousBosh 9mo ago
> Makes sense. Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK. They also strongly support Unionism, because it also undermines the UK.

jbms 9mo ago

The 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 ago
which 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 ago
It 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.

neoromantique 9mo ago

>Makes sense. Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK. Do they? Since Independent Scotland is very likely to rejoin EU it seems to me Russia & co would be interested in keeping it on the sinking ship that is post-brexit UK(economy wise).

deleted 9mo ago
[deleted]
mrec 9mo ago
I don't think that's a given, or even necessarily a strong likelihood. A majority of Scotland's trade is with the rest of the UK, unlike the Brexit situation where a shrinking minority of the UK's trade was with the rest of the EU, the only EU member for which this was the case. Scotland is accustomed to deficit spending and to large subsidies from the rUK, neither of which would be epecially palatable to EU finances. And while I certainly think it's fair to describe the UK economy as a sinking ship, I also think that blaming that on Brexit is, to put it politely, "starting with your conclusion". UK growth has been higher than France, Germany or Italy since 2016. Brexit has obviously had impacts, but they haven't all been negative (the City in particular has zero enthusiasm to fall back into any EU alignment) and I think the COVID lockdown shambles and the Homerically inept current government have been bigger factors. I found this a decent recent overview on the common analytical takes, if you're interested: https://julianhjessop.substack.com/p/what-the-nber-gets-wrong-on-the-economic https://julianhjessop.substack.com/p/what-the-nber-gets-wron...
- neoromantique 9mo ago
  Given that a sentiment for independence of Scotland has only really became an actual topic people discuss semi-seriously after the Brexit, I think it is fair to assume that there is a quite high likelihood of it, and there are quite some EU states that get preferential treatment budget wise, no reason to assume that Scotland cannot become that. Covid has been global, lockdowns have been everywhere, UK is not unique and did not even have the worst of it in terms of lockdown strictness. While "averaged out" UK economy post-brexit/pre-covid might not look that much worse than EU, if you look into specifics the picture gets far uglier with entire economy sectors going bankrupt, all in all it was a spectacular self inflicted damage that will be felt for decades to come, especially now that US is becoming a hostile actor.

iso1631 9mo ago

Assuming everyone on a BBC comment section is from the UK, that's 90% not Scottish and 10% Scottish In 2024 the SNP got 30% of the vote, the big unionist parties having more than 2 votes for every 1 nationalist.

HPsquared 9mo ago

A survey of online posts is usually not representative of a population at large, either within the online community or the society as a whole. There are so many biasing and selection effects at work, even before talking about anything deliberate which is probably also going on.

breppp 9mo ago
Usually over-representative of the unemployed, angry, lonely and obsessed
- arethuza 9mo ago
  I'd go for "retired, angry, lonely and obsessed" Edit: I'm 60 in case anyone thinks I'm being ageist
  - HPsquared 9mo ago
    That spells out "ORAL" which is very fitting for a vocal minority.

GJim 9mo ago

> Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK. Famously, Alex Salmond (at the time, the leader of the Scottish National Party) was given a regular programme on Russia Today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alex_Salmond_Show https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alex_Salmond_Show Say what you want about Scottish independence (its for the Scots to decide), but a break up of the UK would serve Kremlin interests no end.

arethuza 9mo ago
I actually think that the process around Scottish independence actually demonstrates that the UK is actually relatively sane - a part of the country wanted to consider independence, the government at the time said "OK you can have a referendum", the referendum was held and Scotland voted to stay in the UK. I was, and still am, a support of Scottish independence but I how the whole thing was handled reflects pretty well on the UK as a whole.
- GJim 9mo ago
  I'll certainly give you that. We have a (reasonably!) healthy democracy in Blighty, despite our grumblings. Though it's fair to say that had the referendum been held more recently, Russian interference would have been orders of magnitude more severe. I'm not sure what the solution is to protect against such interference. (That is, interference in the worlds democracies, not just ours).
  - mschuster91 9mo ago
    > I'm not sure what the solution is to protect against such interference. (That is, interference in the worlds democracies, not just ours). Do to them what they do to us. Make "FAFO" a thing again. We once upon a time stopped supporting the Russian opposition and it cost us dearly. As for "what can we do now" - for every attributed or even suspected action of interference by Russia, Ukraine gets handed another few billion dollars worth of ammunition. When something gets attributed to Iran, give some nice toy to Israel. When something gets attributed to China, how about some missiles for Taiwan. We don't need to engage in wars ourselves, but we can put serious impedances against their plans. The only ones I can't think of a solution are the North Koreans because they're so isolated and have the unique advantage that for anything we do they can shoot ballistics onto South Korea.

rayiner 9mo ago

> Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK. But so do Scottish people.

master-lincoln 9mo ago
Obviously, but how is that relevant in the context here with the Iran internet blackout?
6LLvveMx2koXfwn 9mo ago
Presumably only some Scottish people have an interest in undermining the UK? Latest (2024) results from YouGov suggest yes/no is 34/49 to the question 'Should Scotland be an independent country?' [1] 1. https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Internal_IndyRef_Results_240813.pdf https://d3nkl3psvxxpe9.cloudfront.net/documents/Internal_Ind...
- laurencerowe 9mo ago
  More recent results from YouGov (November 2025) put yes/no at 39/41 [1] while other polling companies put yes in the lead [2]. [1] https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/documents/Internal_ScotlandResults_251105.pdf https://ygo-assets-websites-editorial-emea.yougov.net/docume... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_Scottish_independence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opinion_polling_on_Scottish_in...
  - john-h-k 9mo ago
    Out of the 26 polls since the GE, 13 are pro indy 13 aren’t. But it’s worth noting that 9 of the 13 pro-indy polls were commissioned by strongly pro-Indy groups (The National, The Herald, STV News), which seems like it could have some selection bias.
    - Shortness8 9mo ago
      The Herald[1] and STV News (neutral as a broadcaster) are not strong Pro-Indy groups. The National certainly is. DOI: Scotsman not in favour of independence. 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Herald_(Glasgow)#Political_stance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Herald_(Glasgow)#Political...

jameshart 9mo ago

Presumably BBC comments also contain comments from English people who might not follow the same 45/55 split on Scottish indeoendence as Scottish people do?

gghhzzgghhzz 9mo ago

The problem with this argument is that it is very simplistic. And a very simple way of de-legitimising any anti-establishment position, and protecting the status quo. We can look at independence movements in Europe, Brexit, Trump, republicanism in the UK, any sort of heterodox economic or foreign policy. Even if you disagree with these positions, it is helpful to you to steelman your position and your arguments. And just dismissing them as Putin's work drops you into a trap. It's arguably one reason why Trump got re-elected. People spent his entire first term assuming he'd be exposed in some complicated Russian plot and put in jail; rather than thinking hard about why he got elected in the first place. Same thing happened to some degree with the Brexit vote.

ErroneousBosh 9mo ago

> Makes sense. Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK. They also strongly support Unionism, because it also undermines the UK.