- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
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I’m not terribly against stealing money from maga dumb idiots with too much money.
Probably a scam, but congrats on discovering the Russian disinformation strategy from 2016.
Not exactly a scam. I still browse Reddit, and the Jordan Peterson Memes sub has been popping up in Popular for a few weeks, it had been a completely obscure sub before. The posts are ALL about US politics too…on a meme sub for a Canadian ‘life coach’
Ender’s Game was prescient text, regardless of Orson Scott Card’s personal beliefs.
Locke and Demosthenes are now armies of manipulative bots (but often real humans), shaping political discourse throughout the world. The Internet gave mind control powers to people with money, ambition, or both. We saw it with the Bernie Sanders and Trump movements in 2016 on Reddit, all too clearly for those who lived through an era where bullshit detection was a critical skill.
I was once fairly defeatist on this subject: the bad guys won, got Trump elected, and kicked off a new era of 80s conservatism that demonized progressive values like environmental conservation, freedom of choice in a number of matters, and equality.
But now, I’m starting to see young people stand up to their boomer relatives at Thanksgiving and bring facts and logic to social media discussions. And I have regained some hope that we will once again find a way to make the progressive “line go up“. Our society seems to swing like a pendulum between the right and left, over decades, and it feels like the Trump era was a swing too violent for most of us. It’s time to swing back.
the Russian disinformation strategy
I’ll never understand why people attribute to the Russian government what was in the obvious best-interests of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.
If you asked who owns and operates the FOX News Channel, or Sinclair Media, or Clear Channel Radio, or any of the other dozen right-wing propaganda projects, I have to wonder how many people would reflexively insist “Russia” despite all of the money spilling in from the UK, Australia, Canada, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, and the O&G Industry.
I’ll never understand why people attribute to the Russian government what was in the obvious best-interests of the Republican Party and the conservative movement.
Maybe because there was a demonstrated and provable coordinated effort by the Russian government in the 2016 election to get Trump elected? Look up project lakhta. Russian election interference and the efforts of the domestic conservative movement can (and do) exist simultaneously.
What do you have against attributing actions to the Russian government that are demonstrably attributable to the Russian government?
Their values are aligned, theirs strategies are aligned, and so their efforts are aligned.
Because there have been literal articles and reports by the FBI that Russian interference in social media has been a thing since the 2016 election cycle.
That’s why it’s been attributed to the Russian government. Because the Russian government actually did a ton of stuff.
there have been literal articles and reports by the FBI that Russian interference
There have been literal articles and reports by the FBI of domestic white nationalist organizing and domestic financing. Significantly more money and manpower is documented as entirely domestically organized, although a sizeable amount is moving between NATO and other Five Eyes states. We’re talking on the scale of tens of billions moving between domestic financiers - like the Mercers, Thiel, the Kochs, etc - and domestic fascist media/organizing. That dwarfs Russian state interventions. Its orders of magnitude different.
That’s why it’s been attributed to the Russian government.
Why do you search for the speck in your neighbor’s eye when you have a plank within your own?
I remember, back in 2016, when the /r/The_Donald website just used a bunch of bots and other fake accounts to juice their content to the front page week after week.
And then the Mods tweaked the algorithm so you wouldn’t have a wall of Trump memes on the front page every day. /r/The_Donald folks spilled into other sites and started repeating the strategy, so Mods had to tweak the algorithm again. And there was this back and forth that dragged all the way into the general election, at which point the Admins finally decided to ban the sub. But they also had to ban a slew of leftist subs, to make things fair.
And now we have Hexbear, a site composed of purged Reddit-fuges. But Reddit is still full of Trumpies, for some curious reason.
Subvert the will and desires of the majority using money and shitty practices…how very GOP of them.
Subvert the will and desires of the majority
Come on, dude. This is Reddit, not a vote in parliament. The site’s entire business model revolves around astroturfing.
That’s pretty much US politics summed up, isn’t it? Ignore what they people say and throw money into it to get what you want.
Is that "Truth Social"😂?
yes it is
Remembering it’s an isolated Mastodon instance is hilarious and ironic.
I can’t believe that I’m hearing about this for the first time.
it is also a crime!
Does anyone else feel like setting up a scam site that claims to sell upvotes, and donates all the profit to the Harris/Walz campaign?
Won’t last long unless the votes actually come in.
“The libs are TOO FERVENT and keep downvoting us! Donate more!!!”
That’s why you tell them to only post on subs that are already a chud circle jerk like here. They upvote him and you take the money. If they don’t just say the libs have a downvotes bot focused on only them and you need more money to DDOS it for Trump. They will appreciate how important they are. Like any scam, the end goal is to find egotistical idiots and this is rich soil.
They’d fit right at home on r/Asmongold. That place has become a KotakuInAction offshoot in recent months. So much right wing, anti-woke and anti-trans content gets posted there that I’m surprised the admins haven’t quarantined or banned it.
so i’m not very familiar with asmongolds content, but I know someone who keeps posting his videos into a group chat I’m in together with anti-woke “why are there minorities in my video games” comments.
is that the type of content asmongold produces or is my acquaintance just extremely dense?
I’ve watched asmongold a bit on and off over the years, and I don’t think that he himself is really right wing (unless that changed recently), more just a no-filter, full-on basement dweller but mostly apolitical. Can’t say it’s really surprising if some of the audience has the 4chan vibe though. Never participated/cared about the chat or the subreddit though.
Ngl I don’t know why he’s here but I fuck with his vibe
Same I like him
Eww far right social media filled with racism,anti sentiment,islamphobia etc etc
“It is unambiguous clear that our message is toxic and the majority of people reject our ideology and us with it. Therefore, the most logical solution is to create an artificial narrative via manipulation and vote-buying that makes it appear that people like us.” -these people probably
Or… I run a reddit botnet, and Christmas is coming up. What’s the easiest group of rubes to fleece?
That’s what they’ve been doing for decades. And unfortunately they’ve been very successful at it.
Capitalism™
Well, it worked with the news.
It also worked with Reddit. The Palestine discourse there is utterly repulsive and gleefully genocidal.
Is it really that bad? I haven’t been on Reddit in over a year.
worldnews is absolutely surreal and awful. Country specific subreddits are also getting worse and worse.
It’s hilariously ironic that I got banned from worldnews four years ago for criticizing the Saudi regime and how they use millennia-old scripture as justification to treat women horribly. Apparently that’s ‘bigotry.’
Everything I hear about the toxicity of worldnews these days is baffling.
Well, Saudi Arabia is an ally in all but name to Israel. Also both countries have excellent ties to large swaths of US politics.
Holy shit you’re not wrong. I just browsed the top of the week on World News for a good twenty minutes and there wasn’t a single post about the thousands of civilians that have been killed. I didn’t see a single pro Palestine post and anybody talking about the literal war crimes being committed over there we’re just downvoted. I think I agree with your word choice of “surreal.” It feels like straight up propaganda and they are all falling for it. Every post about Israel was just saying something about how they’re taking out the terrorists.
I really wish I’d just taken your word for it. That’s depressing.
This is what they do in real life too though. They know the US is mostly liberal (based on the popular vote) so they have to abuse money and historical power to manipulate the votes into their favor.
“Ignore morality and get shit done”, aka The Ends Justify The Means
- God or something, probably?
There absolutely no way this isn’t an ad for upvote buying services lol this is so insane and transparent and the worst part is it’ll work
The all caps gave it away
Thats exactly what I believe. I know there is no limits to stupidity, but don’t you use bots to make it seem legit? Who would go around saying, “hey guys we’re losing. We should use BOTS. We should buy BOTS ACCOUNT AND UPVOTES from BOTSFORSALE.org”
How to milk the conservatives.
I mean, it’s an ad but it’s also thought-provoking and interesting. Before now we all knew what was happening we just didn’t know the details also kind of interesting to see proof it’s a conversation starter. I think I would have preferred it if the author would have redacted the URL though.
Have to respect someone getting in on grifting conservatives without even endorsing their views in the process.
In this case they do very much help those views though. Either they create the appearance of public appeal, which draws more people to these views, or they manage to disrupt spaces that formerly fostered a different political culture.
If we look at Twitter we see the second aspect particularly strongly.
Honestly, there’s and endless sea of grift attempts going on at all times. You don’t think people selling fake gold Trump coins, etc give one damn about his politics, do you? They’re just trying to wring every penny out of the die hards
Last presidential election here in Brazil there were some some traffic light salesman selling towels with the presidential candidates. And they walked around with a score board showing which one had sold more. And they sold a lot more because people didn’t want to see their beloved candidate on the losing side.
Man, the cash I could make with flexible ethics.
Right? I was going to sell 5g blockers online when the pandemic started, but I have some semblance of a conscience… Also my wife threatened to leave me if I did.
Keen observation skills. I wouldn’t have caught on, I’m sad to say.
It screams Steve Bannon.
You’re telling me I could be getting paid for this shit?
Yes, but you have to be dead inside.
Way ahead of you
“How dare the left accuse us of fascism, they’re the fascists! Now c’mon everyone, let’s conspire to fake vote totals so we can assert authority we didn’t earn.”
