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I've said for a while that I think this sort of thing is a much better explanation for trends we see than moustache-twirling foreign dictators "spreading dissen
by vintermann 4mo ago
I've said for a while that I think this sort of thing is a much better explanation for trends we see than moustache-twirling foreign dictators "spreading dissent" for the heck of it.
Yes, they exist and yes, they have troll factories, but they usually promote narratives with some immediate benefit to themselves. When they do promote irrelevant stuff, I think it's just to build social media clout for their actual messages. The payload so to say.
In particular, when Russian trolls promote both sides in some divisive foreign domestic issue, it's not to "spread chaos", but to gain a foot in the door to promote their actual messages, which are things like, "Sanctions on Russian leaders are pointless and counterproductive", "Assad didn't gas anyone", "Actual nazis have the Ukrainian leadership's balls in a vice" etc.
- ifwinterco 4mo agoThere's a meme that most "nationalist" Twitter/X posters in the UK are actually from South Asia, and only doing it because for people in low-income countries the Twitter payments are a viable source of income. I'm not on Twitter anymore thankfully, but when I was there seemed to be a lot of truth to this. It even got to the point of there being successful witch hunts outing quite large/popular accounts as being Indian people pretending to be British
- TZubiri 4mo agoX famously implemented a feature that revelaed where the posters were from. Sure you can use a VPN, but Musk changed the rules all of a sudden and exposed a lot of accounts posting about issues from other countries. Twitter may have a lot of faults, but they're ahead of Facebook on this one.
- drysine 4mo ago[flagged]
- ifwinterco 4mo agoI think the difference is Elon is actually a Twitter addict and he's genuinely on there every day engaging with this stuff, so he probably saw the memes. I get the sense Zuckerberg is a lot more disconnected from everyday Facebook and Insta content
- TZubiri 4mo agoWhich is actually healthier, like a drug dealer that doesn't consume his own product
- trumpdong 4mo agoHealthier for him, unhealthier for society that is forced to suffer the effects of mass consumption of his product.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- Forgeties79 4mo agoNothing we have seen since musk‘s acquisition of Twitter indicates that his close proximity/high usage has led to better results for society.
- suslik 4mo agoHealthier - perhaps, although I do prefer when my dealers use the same product they sell to me.
- gambiting 4mo agoI mean I'm not sure it's a meme - this guy literally got rich doing it, to a point where he's selling "self guide" courses on how to do this: 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...
- vintermann 4mo agoPeople selling get rich guides did not get rich using the method they describe. But I don't doubt a lot of people try, with or without guides to help them.
- gambiting 4mo agoWell I think both things can be true. I imagine he made a lot of money doing it, then eventually that well dried up for whatever reason, so he started selling courses (which are worthless because his method clearly doesn't work or he would just keep doing it)
- delta_p_delta_x 4mo agoYou know what? I ain't even mad. 300k is life-changing money in Sri Lanka.
- ifwinterco 4mo agoDefinitely a real thing, I meant it was a meme in the sense that at one point almost everyone was getting accused of being Indian (and subsequently having to refute it) in a partly humorous but also partly serious way
- firen777 4mo agoSimilarly: https://nypost.com/2026/04/21/us-news/top-maga-influencer-emily-hart-revealed-to-be-ai-created-by-a-guy-in-india/ https://nypost.com/2026/04/21/us-news/top-maga-influencer-em... Some highlights: > The move made him a mint — and Sam was soon raking in thousands of dollars a month. > “I was spending maybe 30 to 50 minutes of my day, and I was making good money for a medical student,” he recalled. > He said he also attempted to make a liberal counterpart for Hart on Instagram, but “Democrats know that it’s AI slop, so they don’t engage as much,” he said. The effort-to-profit ratio is so insane that you almost can't blame them for turning the internet into such toxic wasteland.
- miki123211 4mo agoOn the other hand... on the internet, everybody is an American (or a Brit). There are many people who don't live in a country where English is spoken natively, but who speak it well enough to lurk on the English internet. Those people are exposed to American and British politics and start to form opinions. It's not unusual for us to have our own takes on what happens in these countries.
- vintermann 4mo agoBut we don't pretend to be something we're not.
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- cyanydeez 4mo agoIt's pretty amazing corporate america was able to find a revenue scheme based on Russian disinformation campaigns, init.
- dmix 4mo agoWhich led Twitter to release a feature allowing you to see which country accounts were originally made which confirmed a lot of suspicions about Indian/Pakistan accounts positing politics stuff because it goes viral and pays. Other sites would benefit from that sort of feature to at least set the bar higher.
- giarc 4mo agoDidn't they almost immediately retract that after it became clear so many of the GOP adjacent accounts were based offshore?
- trumpdong 4mo agoThey did.
- dmix 4mo agoNo they released the feature. The more controversial part was X also announced they’d start a large ban campaign to kill off foreign accounts posting stuff low quality politics memes like this just for money. This got push back as a bunch of big accounts claiming it would create false positive bans and they had legitimate interest in the topics despite not being American etc. I didn’t follow it closely after that but I believe it still led to some foreign accounts being banned, just not at the scale Nikita Bier wanted. “Just ban them” is admittedly more complicated than it sounds once you think about it. Ie what about Canadians who post about American politics all the time. Or is it just low quality Indian accounts. How do you measure quality. Etc
- throwthrowuknow 4mo agoMakes sense for the UK since if you post the same content as a citizen you could end up with the police at your door.
- graemep 4mo agoNot most of it - at least on Facebook where there is a LOT posted by people from South Asia and racist/extreme nationalist posters - far more than on Twitter the last time I compared my feeds. For one thing most of it on Facebook is dogwhistle racism not direct. A lot more does not meet the legal standards for creating records. Very little gets reported so no on investigates. You "could" end up with police at your door, but even if reported most of these things do not meet the requirements for being recorded: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/non-crime-hate-incidents-code-of-practice/non-crime-hate-incidents-code-of-practice-on-the-recording-and-retention-of-personal-data-accessible https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/non-crime-hate-in...
- graemep 4mo agoThe same on Facebook, and its a very profitable: 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...
- Bluescreenbuddy 4mo agoSouth Asia and africa. There's a reason he bought twitter and let any bozo buy verification. The money they make goes a long way in low income countries.
- jitix 4mo agoIs the solution that global wages are normalized? I’m not an economist but it seems that a lot of things boil down to “X is cheaper in country A” or “Y is more costly in country B” creating arbitrage opportunities for players operating in grey area. Again, I’m not an economist and am just speculating as a layman who understands math, but without wage normalization it seems the other option would be to only have per-country regulated social media. So Canadian social platforms are only accessible to users with Canadian IDs, US to US ID holders, and Indian ID holders can only access Indian social networks. And so on and so forth.. but then we become China.
- Paracompact 4mo agoWho of credit has claimed otherwise, that dictators spread dissent as an end rather than as a means?
- vintermann 4mo agoOf credit, that's arguable. But a famous example is Nancy Pelosi suggesting that pro-Palestine protests in 2024 were funded by Putin.
- cucumber3732842 4mo ago>Who of credit has claimed otherwise By my rough estimation a third to a half of these people: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders
- close04 4mo agoThose people are people with high HN karma, a lot of it for posting or submitting technical discussions. Is that enough to give that much weight to their opinion on political topics?
- cucumber3732842 4mo ago>Those people are people with high HN karma, a lot of it for posting or submitting technical discussions. Click on a few of those names and see what kind of topics they wade into. I wish you were right. You're not gonna get high karma by having high quality technical discussion. First off no human can likely know enough depth on enough topics to contribute to very many of them. Second off, such commentary only gets praise from the narrow band of people who are capable of assessing it. Like all "scored" social-ish media this stuff is a numbers game. The way you "win" as these people have is by gaming the scoring system. Post stuff that appeals to the demographics of the site and with a low common denominator so anyone can "approve" of it. And if you click on through you'll find that's what they do. >Is that enough to give that much weight to their opinion on political topics? I assure you that a great many of them take great offense when you suggest that they are not experts in whatever they are speaking at a given minute. My personal favorites are the one that appeals to authority by cherry picking links (thereby moving the discussion from one of attacking his opinion to one of attacking his sources, a tried and true troll/propagandist/etc tactic) when you disagree with him and the one tries to portray being involved in politics as though it confers legitimacy. That said, some of the power users around here are in fact reasonable and seemingly free of obvious ill will.
- throe939494848 4mo ago> when Russian trolls promote both sides Perhaps projection? It is perfectly valid to have different opinions. "Russian trolls" are not some sort of uniform centralized group, that gets directions what to "promote". Some people just have opinions, and do stuff out of conviction, not to get reward.
- a2128 4mo agoThere is a uniform centralized group that operated for a decade under the name of Internet Research Agency, and almost certainly something like it continues to operate to this day. These had paid employees who got directions on what to promote with the goal of manipulating the public debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
- throwaway27448 4mo agoI imagine Israel's various hasbara operation dwarfs its relevance and funding by multiple orders of magnitude. I don't see much evidence it plays a role outside of being useful to blame for inconvenient discourse.
- vintermann 4mo agoSure, but that's a good example. They obviously push pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian and probably a good deal of outright anti-Muslim positions. But do you think they push random divisive issues, unrelated to their own interests, just to destabilize countries they don't like? I think the evidence for that is much weaker.
- trumpdong 4mo agoThat wouldn't really make sense for Israel. They don't want America to be destabilised. They want it stable and supporting them. Same for European countries. They want Palestine and Iran unstable, but they've already achieved that through other means.
- 4mo ago
- throwaway27448 4mo ago> which are things like, "Sanctions on Russian leaders are pointless and counterproductive", "Assad didn't gas anyone", "Actual nazis have the Ukrainian leadership's balls in a vice" etc. What would be the point of that? Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support. For instance here in the us, only around 3% of americans vote based on foreign policy. Does it really matter which narrative the masses believe? I would think it would be people in power worth persuading, and there are much more direct ways of buying politicians and career government workers. Propagandizing their own people I get, but what you're outlining just doesn't make sense. "Spreading chaos" does because it draws resources away from their interests to domestic discord.
- watwut 4mo ago> Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support Up until Iran, wars in America had large general support. Americans liked wars and their support for leadership went up when those wards started. And Americans politicians who wanted those wars put a lot of work into making people support wars. Russians supported invasion of Ukraine. And Putin made sure they will. Even Germans prior WWI and WWII supported and wanted war. Ironically, especially young wanting to prove their masculinity.
- lava_pidgeon 4mo agoIn case of Germany nope. Germans were not against the wars but there was not a huge support case. Especially WWI it was only a nationalistic educated minority who supported the war. Most people were not so keen to die
- watwut 4mo ago> Especially WWI it was only a nationalistic educated minority who supported the war. Definitely not minority. There were hawks "attack now" and doves claiming "we are not ready we get ready and attack". Moreover, large parts of Germans population did not accepted defeat of WWI, thought the peace was betrayal and wanted a redo. In 1914, the "spirit for the war" was high. > Most people were not so keen to die It just so happen that young men and former soldiers were the keenest on WWII. Of course they were not keen to die, but they were massively keen on proving they are manly men who will kill their enemies. They wanted to prove they are as good as their heroes from WWI.
- energy123 4mo agoThat's what you think they ought to be doing as a rational actor, but there is a body of counter-evidence suggesting that their intent is to cause chaos as a dual goal. I would point you towards the various hybrid warfare attacks on civic society especially across Europe, such as infrastructure sabotage, bomb threats to election centers, and hiring petty criminals to attack religious sites or paint hateful graffiti. My interpretation of this strategy is that it's an attempt to undermine social cohesion, create sectarian politics, which fragments the society, draws its attention inwards and makes it impossible to pursue any specific coherent direction.
- pjc50 4mo ago> hiring petty criminals to attack religious sites or paint hateful graffiti. This turns out to have been alarmingly effective. All it needs is someone willing to hand cash to bored teenagers, and their vandalism can be redirected from bus shelters to critical infrastructure.
- expedition32 4mo agoIn the 1930s there were people arguing Hitler didn't really want war. Maybe it is time for us to stop sane-plaining Americans and just take them at their word?
- mcdonje 4mo agoThey definitely play both sides to spread chaos. That's been extremely effective for them in reducing American power and influence. Getting their messaging out there is also a goal.
- vincnetas 4mo agoIts been discussed for long time already how russian methods work : The ex-KGB defector you're thinking of is Yuri Bezmenov (also known by his alias Tomas Schuman). The strategy he described is called "Ideological Subversion" (also referred to as "Active Measures" or "Psychological Warfare") Their time scale is measured in decades. 1. Demoralization Undermining the moral and cultural foundations of a society — making people lose faith in their own country, values, and institutions ~15–30 years (one generation) 2. Destabilization Exploiting the demoralized state to create social, political, and economic instability — polarizing the population ~2–5 years 3. Crisis Pushing the destabilized society into a full-blown crisis, creating a situation where people demand radical change ~6 weeks 4. Normalization After the crisis leads to a power shift, the new order is "normalized" — a totalitarian system is established and accepted as the new normal Ongoing
- deleted 4mo ago[deleted]
- vitalyan1234 4mo ago>1. Demoralization Undermining the moral and cultural foundations of a society — making people lose faith in their own country, values, and institutions ~15–30 years (one generation) took Putin less than 10 years to do that to Russia. the collapse is postponed while the regime's eunuchs and dogs are fed, of course, but God wills it, that might not be the case for much longer.
- themgt 4mo ago[flagged]
- 4mo ago
- grey-area 4mo agoA divided and weakened EU is the biggest priority of Putin’s Russia after reconstituting the USSR. Brexit and other forms of dissension spread in Europe by Russian agents (from bombings in Berlin to poisoning dissidents in London) are definitely deliberate and war by other means, not some sort of sideshow. Separatist movements have and will be used to weaken enemies and figures like Farage and Orban are still doing Russia’s work. I would not be at all surprised to find that dissent/separatism in countries opposed to Russia is funded by Putin. Dissent and chaos are an important part of the Russian playbook, not an afterthought.
- seventytwo 4mo agoWhy not both?