I think this is a good opportunity to share the US House of Representatives' declassified report on Russian information operations surrounding the 2016 elections....
I think this is a good opportunity to share the US House of Representatives' declassified report on Russian information operations surrounding the 2016 elections.
I really recommend actually reading it. It became so political with the allegations that the Russians were trying to get Trump elected that now most people are simply aware that either Something Happened (if they lean left) or certain that Nothing Happened (if they lean right), whereas to me the more interesting takeaway - well, equally interesting, anyway - is just how much chaos was the goal, with no real purpose beyond making life in the West worse.
It’s truly, truly insane to me that the Russian government does genuinely appear to have the cartoon villain goal of “make the world worse, so that more of some finite supply of ‘not worse’ must...
It’s truly, truly insane to me that the Russian government does genuinely appear to have the cartoon villain goal of “make the world worse, so that more of some finite supply of ‘not worse’ must necessarily flow to Russia”. Like, even if that were somehow going to work it would still be literal evil, but in reality it’s both evil and absurd.
It’s exhausting, because people like Putin are clearly a special kind of competent and capable - if he wasn’t he’d be long dead - and they could still even be chasing money and power in a million ways that at least build up something. But no. Just destruction.
The new “About This Account” feature, which became available to X users on Friday, allows others to see where an account is based, when they joined the platform, how often they have changed their username, and how they downloaded the X app.
Upon rollout, rival factions began to inspect just where their online adversaries were really based on the combative social platform—with dozens of major MAGA and right-wing influencer accounts revealed to be based overseas.
...
Dozens of major accounts masquerading as “America First” or “MAGA” proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria.
In one example, the account MAGANationX—with nearly 400,000 followers and a bio reading “Patriot Voice for We The People”—is actually based in Eastern Europe.
...
An Ivanka Trump fan account, IvankaNews, has 1 million followers and frequently posts about the dangers of Islam, the threat of illegal immigration and support for Trump. That account is based in Nigeria.
...
The use of fake accounts to bolster the MAGA movement is something The Centre for Information Resilience, an independent, nonprofit research organization, flagged during the 2024 election.
With many of the MAGA influencer accounts revealed to originate in Eastern Europe or Russia, users are questioning the ongoing interference in American politics by foreign adversaries.
“Why are so many MAGA influencers from outside the U.S.? It’s almost as if they are working for foreign governments,” wrote influencer Ed Krassenstein.
I remember much of the fake news during the 2016 election turned out to Eastern European teenagers grinding Google's ad network. They mostly did anti-Clinton pieces, as it turned out those got...
Certain content creators are paid for tweets that drive engagement on the site formerly known as Twitter, which gives them a financial incentive to cash in on the divisive nature of U.S. politics.
For those in countries like Nigeria or Bangladesh, the American dollars paid by X for their work can be highly lucrative.
I remember much of the fake news during the 2016 election turned out to Eastern European teenagers grinding Google's ad network. They mostly did anti-Clinton pieces, as it turned out those got more page views than anti-Trump or pro-either. Apparently, pro-Trump posts now get more Twitter engagements than anti-Trump posts. Maybe that says something about the users who still remain there after all the controversies.
We're not allowed to have unauthorized mirrored copies of paywalled articles as topic links, @BeanBurrito, since that could open Tildes up to potential lawsuits. Canadian copyright law takes...
We're not allowed to have unauthorized mirrored copies of paywalled articles as topic links, @BeanBurrito, since that could open Tildes up to potential lawsuits. Canadian copyright law takes paywalls quite seriously, unfortunately, since they're considered "Technological Protective Measures" which circumvention of can be ruled as causing monetary damages (See: Blacklock’s Reporter v Canadian Vintners Association). However, I did find a fully legal alternative link. DailyBeast occasionally submits their own articles to MSN, which is unpaywalled and we can safely link to, so I changed the topic link to that version instead.
/Offtopic (plz label this comment as such, so it doesn't distract from the on-topic discussions)
I think this is a good opportunity to share the US House of Representatives' declassified report on Russian information operations surrounding the 2016 elections.
https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/final_russia_investigation_report.pdf
I really recommend actually reading it. It became so political with the allegations that the Russians were trying to get Trump elected that now most people are simply aware that either Something Happened (if they lean left) or certain that Nothing Happened (if they lean right), whereas to me the more interesting takeaway - well, equally interesting, anyway - is just how much chaos was the goal, with no real purpose beyond making life in the West worse.
It’s truly, truly insane to me that the Russian government does genuinely appear to have the cartoon villain goal of “make the world worse, so that more of some finite supply of ‘not worse’ must necessarily flow to Russia”. Like, even if that were somehow going to work it would still be literal evil, but in reality it’s both evil and absurd.
It’s exhausting, because people like Putin are clearly a special kind of competent and capable - if he wasn’t he’d be long dead - and they could still even be chasing money and power in a million ways that at least build up something. But no. Just destruction.
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I remember much of the fake news during the 2016 election turned out to Eastern European teenagers grinding Google's ad network. They mostly did anti-Clinton pieces, as it turned out those got more page views than anti-Trump or pro-either. Apparently, pro-Trump posts now get more Twitter engagements than anti-Trump posts. Maybe that says something about the users who still remain there after all the controversies.
We're not allowed to have unauthorized mirrored copies of paywalled articles as topic links, @BeanBurrito, since that could open Tildes up to potential lawsuits. Canadian copyright law takes paywalls quite seriously, unfortunately, since they're considered "Technological Protective Measures" which circumvention of can be ruled as causing monetary damages (See: Blacklock’s Reporter v Canadian Vintners Association). However, I did find a fully legal alternative link. DailyBeast occasionally submits their own articles to MSN, which is unpaywalled and we can safely link to, so I changed the topic link to that version instead.
/Offtopic (plz label this comment as such, so it doesn't distract from the on-topic discussions)