3 ms·

This book doesn’t cover the UK specifically, but it does detail Russia’s well-publicized strategy of promoting reactionary media narratives to destabilize the U

This book doesn’t cover the UK specifically, but it does detail Russia’s well-publicized strategy of promoting reactionary media narratives to destabilize the United States and the EU. I feel like at some point, people will need to start taking this seriously, instead of continuing to act like people suddenly just started telling insane racist lies on the internet for no reason. https://icct.nl/publication/russia-and-far-right-insights-ten-european-countries https://icct.nl/publication/russia-and-far-right-insights-te...

specproc 6mo ago
I always wonder why people zoom in on Russia, when there's so much America involved. Trump and Musk are constantly targeting London and Khan on social media, but sure, it's the Russians driving this.
- dhosek 6mo ago
  It seems to me like a lot of the American stuff is people directly or indirectly under Russian influence or part of an international network of extreme-right politics of which Putin is the most powerful figure.
  - specproc 6mo ago
    Is Putin the most powerful figure? It seems Bibi holds the most sway over Trump this month. Don't get me wrong, I've no love for Putin, but framing the Trump project as Russian misses the huge amount of American money and effort behind him. Is Musk a Russian agent? The Heritage Foundation? Fox? There's a huge, all-American infrastructure behind Trump 2.0. I'm sure plenty of countries did their very best to get that guy in the Whitehouse, but I don't buy that Putin is the main character here.
    - Arodex 6mo ago
      Musk repeats verbatim Russian talking points about Ukraine. When he parrots the same ideas down to the exact same words in the exact same order, what doubt is there?
      - selivanovp 6mo ago
        >Musk repeats verbatim Russian talking points about Ukraine. Have it crossed your mind that they're just closer to truth than what Western propaganda spreads about Ukraine conflict and why it started and keep going?
        Arodex 6mo ago
        Yes, it has crossed my mind. I examined their claims and they are blatant lies. And you, has it crossed your mind that Putin and his supporters are lying?
        throw0101c 6mo ago
        > Have it crossed your mind that they're just closer to truth than what Western propaganda spreads about Ukraine conflict and why it started and keep going? It started because Putin wants the 'good old days' of the Soviet Union back, and he does not consider Ukrainians their own people, but just a bunch of folks that have forgotten they are really Russian/Soviet. The 'official' Rusian reason is/was because Ukraine was run by Nazis (never mind that Zelenskyy is Jewish).
    - throw0101c 6mo ago
      > Is Putin the most powerful figure? It seems Bibi holds the most sway over Trump this month. Power and influence can be considered two different things. As for holding sway over Trump: it's often generally anyone that can flatter his ego and/or put money in his pockets. (Or for his swaying himself: whatever will get the most headlines, the most people talking about him.) Trump is not complicated: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad
- tencentshill 6mo ago
  And now you have moved the argument away from Russia. Pulling a thread off-topic like that is one of their simplest strategies. It begs for engagement.
  - specproc 6mo ago
    The two most high profile actors publicly laying into London are American. Surely Ockham's razor applies here?
    - SanjayMehta 6mo ago
      "They're both Russian agents." Just a matter of time before you start hearing this again. They already tried this once using the Steele dossier.
      - Arodex 6mo ago
        You don't need the Steele dossier to see trump and his entourage are manipulated by Russian agents. Fact: Michael Flynn talked with the Russian ambassador. Fact: Flynn lied about the content of his call. Not to journalists, but to FBI agents. Fact: Trump dismissed Comey to stop the investigations around Flynn. He said it openly, on camera. Fact: Trump pardoned Flynn. Fact: Trump is pushing for the prosecution of Comey - a case so weak it has already been rejected before going to trial. Fact: FBI agents have been demoted and punished for nothing else than working on the Russian dossier. Including respected career agents currently working on e.g. Iranian operations in the USA. Their only crime has been to be assigned to the Russian dossier, something they didn't choose. You absolutely don't need the Steele dossier to see something's wrong - except to deflect from the obvious.
- pseudohadamard 6mo ago
  Another big driver, which TFA mentions, is that outrage drives both clicks and repeat visits. There are lots and lots of people in it purely for the money, including Americans. It's nothing political, it's purely the profit motive. Then the reward functions on FB and YT direct people towards content that appalls or outrages, disturbing videos, conspiracy theories, bigotry. For FB the ideal user is one who's been sucked into a vortex of conspiracy theories and spends all their time on FB. When I say it's apolitical I mean the con artists know exactly who to target, which is the right, because you can feed them anything and they'll keep coming back for more. It's far harder with the left, they'll say "this is all bullshit" and move on quickly, there's no money to be made there. There was a great interview a few years back with a California-based troll who said he targeted the right because that's where you got the responses: "We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out". "Nothing personal, it's just business".
carlosjobim 6mo ago
Sunshine is the best disinfectant. When you start hiding your problems and blaming those who expose them, you are on a spiral which only goes down. It doesn't matter if your enemy also wants to promote this. If you follow this line of thought, you have to support the government of China censoring the Tiananmen Square massacre. Because their enemies in the West have for decades been talking about it.
- mbgerring 6mo ago
  We’re talking about people making things up from whole cloth, such as asserting that Haitian immigrants steal and eat dogs from white Americans in the suburbs, among many, many such examples. San Francisco has also been a target of this kind of propaganda for the entire time I’ve lived here. I agree that social problems should be exposed. One such social problem is widespread, entirely fabricated stories of crime and violence, accepted uncritically by people who don’t live in the supposedly affected areas, driving division and political discourse that lead to real-world harm. There is an enormous amount of evidence that this propaganda, mainly spread through social media, is a product of a foreign government strategy to interfere in the internal politics of “enemy” nations. If this is true, it should be exposed and shut down.
  - mothballed 6mo ago
    [flagged]
    - defrost 6mo ago
      We're all aware of the roadside kill peccadilloes of the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, but that's hardly cause to paint them all as a third world family.
    - fhdkweig 6mo ago
      > I wonder if Trump was mixing up Haitians with some other groups. This started from a specific accusation from one neighbor blaming a missing cat on a Haitian neighbor, claiming to see it hanging dead from a tree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_pet-eating_hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_pet-eating_hoax
amelius 6mo ago
It's pretty weird that on the one hand they don't acknowledge that propaganda actually works, yet on the other hand let ad-tech exist because "where would we be without it?"

specproc 6mo ago

I always wonder why people zoom in on Russia, when there's so much America involved. Trump and Musk are constantly targeting London and Khan on social media, but sure, it's the Russians driving this.

dhosek 6mo ago
It seems to me like a lot of the American stuff is people directly or indirectly under Russian influence or part of an international network of extreme-right politics of which Putin is the most powerful figure.
- specproc 6mo ago
  Is Putin the most powerful figure? It seems Bibi holds the most sway over Trump this month. Don't get me wrong, I've no love for Putin, but framing the Trump project as Russian misses the huge amount of American money and effort behind him. Is Musk a Russian agent? The Heritage Foundation? Fox? There's a huge, all-American infrastructure behind Trump 2.0. I'm sure plenty of countries did their very best to get that guy in the Whitehouse, but I don't buy that Putin is the main character here.
  - Arodex 6mo ago
    Musk repeats verbatim Russian talking points about Ukraine. When he parrots the same ideas down to the exact same words in the exact same order, what doubt is there?
    - selivanovp 6mo ago
      >Musk repeats verbatim Russian talking points about Ukraine. Have it crossed your mind that they're just closer to truth than what Western propaganda spreads about Ukraine conflict and why it started and keep going?
      - Arodex 6mo ago
        Yes, it has crossed my mind. I examined their claims and they are blatant lies. And you, has it crossed your mind that Putin and his supporters are lying?
      - throw0101c 6mo ago
        > Have it crossed your mind that they're just closer to truth than what Western propaganda spreads about Ukraine conflict and why it started and keep going? It started because Putin wants the 'good old days' of the Soviet Union back, and he does not consider Ukrainians their own people, but just a bunch of folks that have forgotten they are really Russian/Soviet. The 'official' Rusian reason is/was because Ukraine was run by Nazis (never mind that Zelenskyy is Jewish).
  - throw0101c 6mo ago
    > Is Putin the most powerful figure? It seems Bibi holds the most sway over Trump this month. Power and influence can be considered two different things. As for holding sway over Trump: it's often generally anyone that can flatter his ego and/or put money in his pockets. (Or for his swaying himself: whatever will get the most headlines, the most people talking about him.) Trump is not complicated: * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_triad
tencentshill 6mo ago
And now you have moved the argument away from Russia. Pulling a thread off-topic like that is one of their simplest strategies. It begs for engagement.
- specproc 6mo ago
  The two most high profile actors publicly laying into London are American. Surely Ockham's razor applies here?
  - SanjayMehta 6mo ago
    "They're both Russian agents." Just a matter of time before you start hearing this again. They already tried this once using the Steele dossier.
    - Arodex 6mo ago
      You don't need the Steele dossier to see trump and his entourage are manipulated by Russian agents. Fact: Michael Flynn talked with the Russian ambassador. Fact: Flynn lied about the content of his call. Not to journalists, but to FBI agents. Fact: Trump dismissed Comey to stop the investigations around Flynn. He said it openly, on camera. Fact: Trump pardoned Flynn. Fact: Trump is pushing for the prosecution of Comey - a case so weak it has already been rejected before going to trial. Fact: FBI agents have been demoted and punished for nothing else than working on the Russian dossier. Including respected career agents currently working on e.g. Iranian operations in the USA. Their only crime has been to be assigned to the Russian dossier, something they didn't choose. You absolutely don't need the Steele dossier to see something's wrong - except to deflect from the obvious.
pseudohadamard 6mo ago
Another big driver, which TFA mentions, is that outrage drives both clicks and repeat visits. There are lots and lots of people in it purely for the money, including Americans. It's nothing political, it's purely the profit motive. Then the reward functions on FB and YT direct people towards content that appalls or outrages, disturbing videos, conspiracy theories, bigotry. For FB the ideal user is one who's been sucked into a vortex of conspiracy theories and spends all their time on FB. When I say it's apolitical I mean the con artists know exactly who to target, which is the right, because you can feed them anything and they'll keep coming back for more. It's far harder with the left, they'll say "this is all bullshit" and move on quickly, there's no money to be made there. There was a great interview a few years back with a California-based troll who said he targeted the right because that's where you got the responses: "We've tried to do similar things to liberals. It just never worked, it never takes off. You'll get debunked within the first two comments and then the whole thing just kind of fizzles out". "Nothing personal, it's just business".

carlosjobim 6mo ago

Sunshine is the best disinfectant. When you start hiding your problems and blaming those who expose them, you are on a spiral which only goes down. It doesn't matter if your enemy also wants to promote this. If you follow this line of thought, you have to support the government of China censoring the Tiananmen Square massacre. Because their enemies in the West have for decades been talking about it.

mbgerring 6mo ago
We’re talking about people making things up from whole cloth, such as asserting that Haitian immigrants steal and eat dogs from white Americans in the suburbs, among many, many such examples. San Francisco has also been a target of this kind of propaganda for the entire time I’ve lived here. I agree that social problems should be exposed. One such social problem is widespread, entirely fabricated stories of crime and violence, accepted uncritically by people who don’t live in the supposedly affected areas, driving division and political discourse that lead to real-world harm. There is an enormous amount of evidence that this propaganda, mainly spread through social media, is a product of a foreign government strategy to interfere in the internal politics of “enemy” nations. If this is true, it should be exposed and shut down.
- mothballed 6mo ago
  [flagged]
  - defrost 6mo ago
    We're all aware of the roadside kill peccadilloes of the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services, but that's hardly cause to paint them all as a third world family.
  - fhdkweig 6mo ago
    > I wonder if Trump was mixing up Haitians with some other groups. This started from a specific accusation from one neighbor blaming a missing cat on a Haitian neighbor, claiming to see it hanging dead from a tree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_pet-eating_hoax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Springfield_pet-eating_hoax

amelius 6mo ago

It's pretty weird that on the one hand they don't acknowledge that propaganda actually works, yet on the other hand let ad-tech exist because "where would we be without it?"