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The team behind a pro-Iran, Lego-themed viral-video campaign
https://archive.is/73hcR https://archive.is/73hcR
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- virgildotcodes 7mo agoIt was quite obvious, but this is a noteworthy example of just how much more effective propaganda will become with AI. These videos are blowing up on Twitter. I personally found the one about Pete Hegseth quite well made and the song actually catchy. Edit: Video link courtesy mirashii in this thread - https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/116348872322024778 https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/116348872322024778
- abdusco 7mo agoCare to share the link?
- mirashii 7mo agohttps://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/116348872322024778 https://mastodon.social/@blogdiva/116348872322024778
- blackcatsec 7mo agopeople were worried about deepfakes with AI but instead the propaganda is doing pretty well, and arguably better, when it's not a deepfake but instead silly, catchy, youthful, and is playing up existing beliefs. The invasion is deeply unpopular in the US, and these videos only serve to amp that up.
- baggy_trough 7mo agoInvasion?
- chaostheory 7mo agoGround troops are going to be deployed
- baggy_trough 7mo agoThat would be a precondition, yes.
- some_random 7mo agoDeepfakes were never necessary, people have been making incredible propaganda forever though the same few tactics. For instance, presenting footage out of context.
- ted_bunny 7mo agoThe deepfakes haven't gotten really good yet. Give it a year.
- OJFord 7mo agoI saw a video of some French politician's speech on Reddit; most commenters were praising the guy's English. It was AI dubbed...
- 8note 7mo agodeepfakes have been pre-subverted by having leaders that can't put coherent sentences together, or be trusted when they say literally anything. A trump deepfake will be just as reliable about trump policy as actually listening to him speak. maybe even more reliable than from the horse's mouth
- ted_bunny 7mo agoYou're right and it's not even hyperbole. Big sigh.
- simonw 7mo agoThat Hegseth one is an extraordinary piece of media. It's dense with Hegseth and Epstein lore, the song is catchy, the visuals are a significant cut above the normal AI slop aesthetic. If this is Iranian state backed propaganda (which seems very likely) it's light years ahead of those White House videos with footage of bombs mixed in with clips from action movies.
- guzfip 7mo agoThe White House seems to have made the mistake of hiring HOI4 modders for their propaganda team.
- adjejmxbdjdn 7mo agoThe Iranian propaganda videos are catchy but also emphasize all the cracks in U.S. society and the weak points of the U.S. leadership. Simultaneously it paints the Iranian regime as the defender not just of Iran, but victims of American aggression broadly. It doesn’t hurt that the White House keeps playing into this with their comments. The White House comments trivialize mass murder and killing. And it appeals to absolutely nobody but the man boys currently inhabiting the White House.
- themafia 7mo agoThis is not a popular war. I would not use it as a milestone.
- input_sh 7mo agoGiven the headline, they found out nothing about "the team".
- devcraft_ai 7mo ago[dead]
- hk1337 7mo ago[flagged]
- imdsm 7mo agoI watched "One Battle After Another" and it shows how deranged people are. I don't think its a new thing, I just think in any stable society, people who don't thrive eventually find a way to destroy the society in the hope whatever comes next will serve them better. In a society where hard work and intelligent gives you an advantage, it stands to reason that lazy, stupid people will need to play differently in order to win. I can't wait to read wikipedia in 30 years.
- fcarraldo 7mo agoI'm sorry, your takeaway from that film was that Sean Penn was the good guy?
- akramachamarei 7mo agoThis is a pretty obvious misinterpretation. Protagonist bad ≠ antagonist good. This isn't even the law of the excluded middle because there was only ever a statistical relationship between the morality of narrative opponents.
- delis-thumbs-7e 7mo ago> In a society where hard work and intelligent gives you an advantage Which society is this, Sweden? Xi Jinping is pretty smart and hard working, is China being demolished by lazy dumb twats? Because it seems to me its US that is overrun bu stupidity and sheer lazyness right now, but it seems to be because it rewards people like Musk, Trump etc.
- lynndotpy 7mo agoIsn't the film fiction? I haven't seen it but I would refrain from using a fiction film as something to measure "how deranged people are" by.
- 7mo ago
- chaostheory 7mo agoNo one cares about who made these videos in the US. The bigger issue is why are we engaging in a ground war in Iran when it doesn’t really serve US interests? Everyone on both political spectrums in the US can see why it benefits Saudi Arabia and Israel, but not the US. We’re using precious resources like missiles that we will need in the Pacific theater in next 1-2 years
- harrall 7mo agoBecause it wasn’t planned that far. The administration probably thought it would go like Venezuela. A Middle East historian would have told you Iran has building for all our war for decades because it trusts none of its neighbors. A second problem is that the US knew for a while that we were weak at asymmetric warfare but we didn’t fix it. There was a war game in 2002 (the Millennium Challenge, which was actually set in the Strait of Hormuz) that, though the red team did very much cheat, it did hint at a major weakness that wasn’t resolved. There are US defense companies today that actually specialize in that but they weren’t given the same attention (but boy are they now).
- chaostheory 7mo agoWhich defense companies?
- harrall 7mo agoAnduril is the biggest one. They are based in Costa Mesa, CA and are building a bigger R&D facility in "Space Beach" (Long Beach, CA) and a manufacturing facility near Columbus, Ohio. Afterwards, you have smaller companies like Shield AI (San Diego, CA), Saronic Technologies (Austin, TX) and some other smaller ones.
- etc-hosts 7mo agoWhen one side complains no fair the other side is cheating, you've probably already lost. Relevant The Far Side cartoon: https://static0.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/far-side-fire-arrows-comic.jpg https://static0.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2025/...
- dvh 7mo agoI'm much more impressed by Chinese state-made eagles vs. cats video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dGY0_pgkv8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5dGY0_pgkv8
- spaghetdefects 7mo agoThat one is so good.
- Havoc 7mo agoThat's crazy. Who is the camel at the end supposed to represent? The springbok is presumably south africa i.e. BRICS so someone else in that alliance
- livinglist 7mo agoI think it just represents people/entities who conduct business internationally, since camels used to be a major transportation method on the Silk Road.
- riffraff 7mo agoI thought that's supposed to be an Oryx (Qatar) while the camels are Saudi/UAE, but who knows.
- Havoc 7mo agoHmm. That makes contextual sense though the animation is definitely more springbok than oryx
- morkalork 7mo agoHere's another one featuring some camels, the Japanese prime minister and "Meowatollah": https://old.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/1s5m1vj/chinese_propaganda_on_the_iran_war_is_like_a/ https://old.reddit.com/r/Destiny/comments/1s5m1vj/chinese_pr...
- wiseowise 7mo agoWho is Europe here?
- KellyCriterion 7mo agoIs this one group? Today I saw an analyst from Pakistan and he also had some of these "trump-lego-snippets" in the video, was wondering why someone would put so much effort in a video against trump, but it seems he copied it somewhere (from this group e.g.)
- dbvn 7mo agoHate to admit it... but the video goes hard
- josefritzishere 7mo agoThe production values were great. I can't deny it.
- sschueller 7mo agoI would be interested to know how these are made on a technical level. Is it a combination of several tools and are they local or some service (I would think LEGO minifigs would trigger some copyright issue)? I also assume you need to do certain things to keep the consistency and somehow sync the music with the video?
- dfir-lab 7mo ago[flagged]
- delis-thumbs-7e 7mo agoIs it even propaganda if you just read aloud your enemy’s wikipedia? I think Bubba refers to someone else than Clinton and Iran’s regime is despotic assholes, but apart from that pretty accurate depiction.
- stefantalpalaru 7mo ago[dead]
- YZF 7mo agopropaganda (noun) information or ideas that are spread by an organized group or government to influence people’s opinions, esp. by not giving all the facts or by secretly emphasizing only one way of looking at the facts or another definition: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a particular cause, doctrine, or point of view.
- vkou 7mo agoSo, in short, almost anything of substance that is disseminated over mass and social media?
- YZF 7mo agoIf its aim is to influence opinion then yes. It doesn't matter if it's true or not true. It's the goal that matters. One can influence opinions with a subset of truths.
- deleted 7mo ago[deleted]
- delis-thumbs-7e 7mo agoSure, that’s one definition, I was only asking rhetorically. But if you look deeper into the social scientific and historical literature on the term, it’s a bit contested. I personally would see propaganda as something far more insidious than simply “all mass media”, like your definitions from apparently some online dictionaries seem to suggest. I think there’s a difference between Triumph of the Will, a toothpaste commercial and ironic AI-generated music video about the leaders of the country attacking you. I’m not sure what that difference is - this would actually be a legit subject for proper academic research - but I would maybe rather try to analyse the desired goals of the makers and spreaders of the said media than just use some far too broad definition that turns the whole world virtually meaningless. I think there’s some nuance here.
- ece 7mo agoPuppet regime has competition. Now do Putin.
- titanomachy 7mo agoI watched some of the videos. I think that the New Yorker does its readers a disservice by not pointing out that they also contain blatant lies, just like the propaganda they're supposedly countering. For example the "Victory Chronicles" video really misrepresents how much damage Iranian drones were able to do in Dubai and Saudi Arabia.
- altmanaltman 7mo agoIts a regime that killed 10s of thousands of its own people for protesting. Ofc its all blatant lies, cute legos or not. There's literally no good sides to this war (anymore)
- elzbardico 7mo agoAgain, are you sure of it?
- UltraSane 7mo agoI'm sure that the Shia Theocracy that runs Iran is a very bad government and is willing to and has killed many Iranians to stay in power.
- Mythli 7mo agoSo u have been there? That country was safe, had a decent standard of living and high life expectancy and that despite the sanctions. Without sanctions & active support I guess it might have surpassed UAE. It seems to me, the US government that makes the citiziens of other countries as miserable as possible and despite these attempts Iran managed just fine.
- UltraSane 7mo agoThe Islamic Revolutionary Guards are extremely bloodthirsty. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981%E2%80%931982_Iran_massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1981%E2%80%931982_Iran_massacr... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahshahr_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahshahr_massacre https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_murders_of_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chain_murders_of_Iran https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_executions_of_Iranian_political_prisoners https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1988_executions_of_Iranian_pol... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres
- rawgabbit 7mo agoUnrelated. I found this China propaganda video depicting its interpretation of the Iran war entertaining. It talks about the “flowing valley of gold” the Hormuz Strait, the “white eagle alliance” the USA, and “white eagle gold tickets” the petrodollar. https://youtu.be/As0rplNJTZI https://youtu.be/As0rplNJTZI
- stuaxo 7mo agoWho is "the chamber of commerce" in this?
- bulletsvshumans 7mo agoI presume U.S. Western allies
- rawgabbit 7mo agoI believe it is everyone China is marketing the Belt and Road initiative to.
- elzbardico 7mo agoThere's also an Anime style one, more martial and militant in style. https://www.instagram.com/kutub.production/ https://www.instagram.com/kutub.production/
- bad_haircut72 7mo agoLego must be so mad hahaha
- wiseowise 7mo agoDanish company making kids constructors is used by trolls and state aligned to push their unhinged propaganda. I would be mad too. There’s something real evil in using Lego for this, like using cute animals.
- maplethorpe 7mo agoLego has the resources to take on the AI labs infringing their copyright, but they're instead choosing to ignore it. From where I'm standing, it doesn't seem like they care very much.
- alsetmusic 7mo agoA better article, I think: "Iran Is Winning the AI Slop Propaganda War" [0] 404 Media is journalist-owned if you want to contribute to consistently good journalism. I am not affiliated. 0. https://www.404media.co/iran-is-winning-the-ai-slop-propaganda-war/ https://www.404media.co/iran-is-winning-the-ai-slop-propagan...
- bombcar 7mo agoIf Iran was the axis of evil they'd use Megabloks
- elwray 7mo agoI hope we never get there but what do you think could push Israel into using Nukes?
- ErroneousBosh 7mo agoAny serious attempt to stop the extermination in Gaza.
- sharperguy 7mo agoA serious existential threat to the country from a targetable state actor.
- mrtksn 7mo agoRisk to Netanyahu's career or wellbeing can do the trick because as we have seen lately Israel is willing to risk Israel's future and the Jewish communities safety across the world. It's not even as a part of grand strategy or anything, they are pushing to make criticizing Netanyahu a taboo. I used to admire Israel as the only sane country in the middle east with great culture for entrepreneurship even if they had elements of atrocities(these could be fixed through civil progress in sane countries). I'm genuinely sad to see it has turned into a genocidal theocratic lunacy like the rest of the middle east and theocratic lunatics can do anything. If the calculus skewed by arrogance and religious delusions is on the positive for the ruling class, they will use a nuke.
- confiq 7mo agoIsraeli here. I would not be surprised if Bibi uses an N-bomb just to keep his chair.
- rixed 7mo agoAm I the only one to believe that they used Lego, a company strongly associated with Denmark, to prime Europeans into associating Iran with Greenland?
- mhitza 7mo ago> A spokesperson for the group says, “Let’s face it—if truth isn’t flashy, it’s kinda lonely.” Was the spokeperson human or just chatgpt?
- spwa4 6mo agoWhat one wonders when seeing this ... when choosing between Iran and the US, are there really people dumb enough to pretend Iran winning is good for anyone? What am I saying? Of course there are.