South 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.

Which led Twitter to release a feature allowing you to see which country accounts were originally made which confirmed a lot of suspicions about Indian/Pakistan accounts positing politics stuff because it goes viral and pays.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.

On 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.

Makes sense for the UK since if you post the same content as a citizen you could end up with the police at your door.

The same on Facebook, and its a very profitable:

https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-11-16/kin...

X 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.

It's pretty amazing corporate america was able to find a revenue scheme based on Russian disinformation campaigns, init.

I 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/kin...

>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.

Just to be clear, this is an article about e.g. "a noodle merchant and content creator from Indonesia, who in some cases was just stealing content from real Albertans" to make a quick buck as a side gig while selling noodles in Indonesia.

It's very interesting westerners find this story a good jumping off point to double down warning their fellow patriots of the monstrously-conceived Russian generational subversive plot to sap and impurify all of America's precious bodily fluids.

If any HNers are missing the connection, be sure to consult the plasterboard in my isolated forest shed full of scribbled index cards and old newspaper clippings with pieces of string and Indonesian noodles connecting everything.

> 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.

In 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?

Of credit, that's arguable. But a famous example is Nancy Pelosi suggesting that pro-Palestine protests in 2024 were funded by Putin.

>Who of credit has claimed otherwise

By my rough estimation a third to a half of these people: https://news.ycombinator.com/leaders

Public opinion does sometimes change the direction of a country. For Russia it's probably most relevant in a few eastern European countries, but there's a normality effect - it is probably easier for someone like Órban to dissent from EU on Ukraine the more there is minority dissent in other EU countries.

Either way, it doesn't have to actually work, the propagandist only has to think it's worth it to try.

Its not about Americans. Russians already owned them and got them to do what they want. Its about Europeans that are much closer to their representatives.

Rather like the Raytheon adverts in DC airport, the aim of all this nonsense is to alter the worldview of the small number of people who make the actual decisions. It does seem to have some effect - the Trump administration withdrew support from Ukraine.

> 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.

There 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