| ▲ | Zigurd 2 hours ago |
| This is another piece of a mosaic that is going to reveal that grey zone warfare by Russia against the west has much larger scope than most people are aware of. The UK National Crime Agency uncovered a huge money laundering enterprise based on the kinds of crime that fly under the national security radar in most places. |
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| ▲ | throwaway48476 34 minutes ago | parent | next [-] |
| Most of the problem here is not gray zone warfare but just modern wow gold farmers engagement baiting for a $5 payout. |
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| ▲ | afavour 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Eh. I think this is just evidence that if you pay people to have divisive opinions (as X does) then that will incentivize divisive discourse. We’re seeing it come from developing nations because it’s worth their time economically. |
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| ▲ | lurk2 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| > This is another piece of a mosaic that is going to reveal that grey zone warfare by Russia against the west has much larger scope than most people are aware of. Are you people ever going to let this idea go? Almost all of this activity is coming out of India, Israel, and Nigeria. Russia isn’t mentioned once in the article. |
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| ▲ | energy123 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Russia hires people in Africa: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2020/mar/13/facebook-... | | |
| ▲ | lurk2 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | > The network was small: just 49 Facebook accounts, 85 Instagram accounts and 71 Twitter accounts in question. This is the pattern with all Russian influence operations; they’re always implied to be ominously large and end up being laughably small. American political polarization had nothing to do with the Russians; this is just the refrain of frustrated Democrats who refuse to acknowledge the consequences of ill-conceived policy. Israel has always had far more sway over American politics. | | |
| ▲ | energy123 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This sounds like being wilfully uninformed. Russia organized almost a dozen Black Lives Matter protests, one of them attended by Michael Moore. They ran about half of the largest US identity focused Facebook groups (Christian/Black/etc) during the 2020 US election. I gave you one small example, it's on you to look for the full picture rather than jump to an erroneous conclusion based on god knows what motivations. The problem in particular is not only the scale but that this propaganda is not solely directed at altering US policy towards Russia, it's also about stoking ethnic and religious tension to try to weaken the US and destroy its ability to be a unified cohesive country. If the US is fighting itself then it isn't fighting Russia after all. | | |
| ▲ | lurk2 an hour ago | parent | next [-] | | > They ran about half of the largest US identity focused Facebook groups (Christian/Black/etc) during the 2020 US election. Can you provide any citation for this and the approximate date when this was revealed? I’ve been hearing about this since 2015 and the last report I looked at was entirely unconvincing. > it's also about stoking ethnic and religious tension to try to weaken the US and destroy its ability to be a unified cohesive country. That is likely one of Russia’s goals; it is not likely that the Russians were the origin of these political cleavages. This was the problem with the entire Russian influence narrative; it was a post-hoc rationalization for why exceptionally bad ideas like diversity and multiculturalism were rejected by a subset of the population. In essence: “If they hadn’t been exposed to these Facebook posts, they never would have had these illiberal ideas put into their heads.” It was also impossible to take seriously because most of the elected officials promoting it were receiving campaign contributions from AIPAC. | | | |
| ▲ | seattle_spring an hour ago | parent | prev [-] | | > This sounds like being wilfully uninformed. Russia organized almost a dozen Black Lives Matter protests, one of them attended by Michael Moore. They ran about half of the largest US identity focused Facebook groups (Christian/Black/etc) during the 2020 US election Maybe it wasn't your intent, but your comment makes it sound like this was an issue with only a single side of the political spectrum. However... https://www.businessinsider.com/russians-organized-pro-anti-... > The Russians weaponized social media to organize political rallies, both in support of and against certain candidates, according to the indictment. Although the Russians organized some rallies in opposition to Trump's candidacy, most were supportive. Not to mention the recent exposure of the funding source of the fine folks over at Tenet Media. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway48476 29 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Tenet is a good example that they don't pay for specific words to be said, they pay to amplify outlets who are already saying what they want amplified. |
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| ▲ | throwaway48476 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | In my personal experience a lot of the people involved in Facebook Russian influence operations are post Soviet exodus diaspora boomers. They share the content produced by the troll farms. | | |
| ▲ | lurk2 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Interesting. The extent of Russian influence I noticed peaked in the Spring of 2016. Lots of self-professed fascists were converting to East Orthodox Christianity and subscribing to the idea that Russia, Iran, North Korea, and China formed some of the last governments on earth not controlled by a Rothschild-owned central bank. I know of a few defectors who ended up there; one was an American that went by the name of “Texas,” while another one was a Canadian who moved there to be a farmer in hopes of protecting his family from what he saw as degenerate values being propagated by the Canadian education system. Texas was supposedly murdered by Russian soldiers while operating with Kremlin-aligned militias in the Donbas region. The Canadian is still living in Russia and has a YouTube channel. I suspected a regular rotation of Kremlin agents were on /pol/ during the Syrian Civil War. Russian sentiment was generally far more positive prior to the invasion. It’s possible this was all organic and just collapsed as people saw what they did to Ukraine; I really have no idea. Frog Twitter for their part pivoted on Russia quite quickly in the early 2020s, around the time Thiel was buying out podcasts. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway48476 44 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Moving to Russia is an extreme outlier. These people exist but there's only a dozen or so. Numbers are not much different than the late Soviet era. In the 1920s thousands of Americans moved to Russia to build communism. Many also came back disillusioned, or died in a gulag. On the other hand there's hundreds of thousands of diaspora Russians, and they're very pro russian. Richard Spencer's ex wife is a good example of this. Overall this is a much bigger impact than the dozen converts or a few thousand half hearted Harper's. Obviously before the war Russia was less publicly objectionable. In Syria everyone just hated ISIS. The /pol/ effect is nostalgia for worlds that no longer exist and we're not personally experienced. It's political flavored nostalgia instead of Pokémon collecting. In terms of American twitter Russiagate and making Russia a red/blue partisan issue has been the most disastrous. It's simple contrarianism. |
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| ▲ | CamperBob2 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | It would be silly if the Russians weren't stirring shit up in the enemy camp. That's what the Russians do. It's too difficult to improve their own country, their own lives, and their own prospects, so they focus on the next-best strategy for the acquisition of power, which is dragging everybody else down to their level. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway48476 16 minutes ago | parent [-] | | It wouldn't be difficult to improve Russia. Just the kelptocracy makes it impossible. "Why go to the moon when we have craters (potholes) here in samara" -some kid on tiktok. |
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| ▲ | prmph 2 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | You think IP addresses can't be spoofed rather easily? What political interest does a Nigerian have in swaying US opinion? | | |
| ▲ | lurk2 42 minutes ago | parent [-] | | > What political interest does a Nigerian have in swaying US opinion? They’re grifters; their interest in American politics is commercial. Indians were targeting Trump supporters with fake news for ad revenue as early as 2015; this is a continuation of that model. | | |
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| ▲ | add-sub-mul-div 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | You're literally posting in the comments of an article that's about the ease of hiding geographical origin. | | |
| ▲ | lurk2 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | There were a number of accounts that got doxxed in the last year that were demonstrated to have Indian owners. Engagement farms have been doing this since Trump’s first term; the goal is primarily ad revenue, not political influence. I didn’t see any that were Israeli but everyone knew those accounts were there. It’s possible the Russians have contracted influence campaigns out to Indian and Israeli firms, but the simpler explanation is just that India is continuing its long and storied history of using telecomm networks to scam unwitting boomers while Israel is continuing its long and storied history of being the worst greatest ally of all time. |
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| ▲ | anonymars 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Indeed. Can I interest you in the good old USA project? https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/pr/justice-department-d... See exhibit 8 and such: https://www.justice.gov/opa/media/1366201/dl Or 10 which specifically talks about Twitter https://www.justice.gov/archives/opa/media/1366191/dl |
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| ▲ | lurk2 29 minutes ago | parent [-] | | Interesting read. Thank you for sharing. Was there ever any evidence that they hit their projected metrics? A million followers after a year seems ambitious. |
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