• loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Beginning to think that Americans on social media are feeble minded babies with no agency of their own swayed in whichever direction foreign shills and bots want to take them in.

    • Rinox@feddit.it
      ·
      1 year ago

      It's not just Americans. It's anyone who stays on social media for too long. You can actively defend for some time, but if you spend 4-5 hours a day on Facebook, you're bound to get trapped in this shit.

      Hell, even here on Lemmy there are instances full of nutjobs circlejerking over the political flavor of the week...

      • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
        ·
        edit-2
        1 year ago

        The bigger point is that the USA is pretty much the technological leader of the world and a frontrunner in information warfare. All the major social media companies have to have close ties with the US state department to be able to function at the scale at which they do. So why is it that Russo-Chinese bots and shills are running circles around Americans?

        • Shrike502@lemmygrad.ml
          ·
          1 year ago

          Projection, as always. Ever heard about google ads running pro-ukraine videos? Or perhaps about auto-callers, dialing numbers in Russia with pre-recorded anti-government messages?

          And that's even before we get into the NGOs

          • loathsome dongeater@lemmygrad.ml
            ·
            edit-2
            9 months ago

            Russiagate has always been copium for Western liberals who cannot accept the fact that reactionary tendencies are weaved into the fabric of their culture and institutions so they tell themselves bullshit like how their redneck racist uncle only voted for Trump and is anti-abortion because Putin seductively whispered some arcane incantation in his ear. In truth Russia's propaganda is not very effectual

            • In 2017 before RT was shut down in the UK, it accounted for 0.04 percent of the UK’s total TV audience.[1]
            • A New York University study published earlier this year found that the supposed Russian Twitter influence campaign ahead of the 2016 election which dominated headlines for years had had “no measurable impact in changing minds or influencing voter behavior”.[2]
            • An earlier study found that suspected Russian accounts showing up in Facebook’s news feed during that time amounted to “approximately 1 out of 23,000 pieces of content.”[3]
            • A study by Adelaide University found that despite headline after headline warning us about a massive wave of Russian bots manipulating online discourse after the invasion of Ukraine began last year, the overwhelming majority of fake accounts they examined (more than 90 percent) were pro-Ukraine accounts.[4]

            [1] https://www.newstatesman.com/comment/2022/02/rt-is-irrelevant-banning-it-would-just-give-putin-propaganda

            [2] https://archive.is/9NKXl

            [3] https://archive.is/6Xyld#selection-1327.271-1327.321

            [4] https://declassifiedaus.org/2022/11/03/strongmassive-anti-russian-bot-army-exposed-by-australian-researchers-strong/

            • COMHASH@lemmygrad.ml
              hexagon
              ·
              1 year ago

              It was all about a well planned hoax to prepare the westerners for a war against Russia. Trump only likes Putin, well he is anti woke as Putin is but Trump is just another comical puppet under MIC, even Putin told oliver Stone that fundamental anti Russia policy hasn't changed since Trump got elected. And Americans are not so much educated to understand Trump and Putin are 2 different persons. Putin and Xi shared pancakes and boat rides when Western propaganda started the Uyghur genocide propaganda. Russia has a strong sense of socialist nostalgia and anti Nazi feelings where as US don't have that.

          • UlyssesT
            ·
            edit-2
            18 days ago

            deleted by creator

    • Clippy [comrade/them, he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      https://redsails.org/masses-elites-and-rebels/ I was reading this essay that makes the argument that it's not that manufactured consent or invented reality but that that can't Fathom that another government could be doing well or much better than themselves

      So they just always accept smears their state media puts out despite the lack of evidence

    • KiG V2@lemmygrad.ml
      ·
      1 year ago

      Really though the majority of those shills and bots have been USian/Western. For example they found the vast majority of bots talking about Ukraine were pro-Ukraine. Yet again the Yankee commits wolfery on itself and then cries wolf.