Watched Over 100 Covert Russian Propaganda Videos on YouTube, Here’s What I Saw | Hacker News Reader

Watched Over 100 Covert Russian Propaganda Videos on YouTube, Here’s What I Saw

arcdigital.media

20 pointsrbanffy10 comments

Buried at the end of this article:

> "Most of the 116 videos I watched generated very few views. The average video had less than 10 views, although a handful had more than that."

> Russia should use its special services within the borders of the United States to fuel instability and separatism, for instance, provoke "Afro-American racists". Russia should "introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

Although it's quite likely that the significance of this book is overestimated because of confirmation bias.

I’m so often at a loss for ideas about how to make this better. This is a really big problem for US democracy that deliberately targets a large attack surface on the underbelly of the US consciousness, one that has been ripened by a declining internal political climate and the increasingly outrage-oriented lean of US media.

Tech companies are exploited for these purposes, and have trouble dealing with that exploitation for myriad reasons. The activity equals eyeballs equals revenue. The end users aren’t educated to be skeptical of content of indiscernible provenance. Consumer web product development is too optimistic and mostly presumes good faith and good actors.

I don’t really know where I was going with this but it’s a big frustrating problem with no easy solution. How do I pitch in?

The US does it all the time to much grater effect.

I still haven’t seen any of these so called Russian accounts with more than a handful of subscribers and a few 1000s views collectively.

The channel in question had over 100 videos and less than 10,000 views in total many of which based on the timeline were in the 24 hours after the exposure of this channel as a Russian propaganda machine.

I would say ther RT has been probably more effective than all of the Facebook and YouTube channels combined but even their effectiveness is fairly limited and good luck closing a press outlet.

And blocked by Google. Censorship for the win.

Given (Google translate from another site)

"The page "Williams and Calvin" at the time of writing the news was only about 260 subscribers, and video records on average, there are 5 to 140 views. The number of hits in most of last year's records, including those relating to Hillary Clinton, does not exceed 20."

and one assumes some of those would be spam.

The real value and the only interesting thing here is watching an attempt at propaganda by the Russians. Another learning opportunity lost.

[edit] "...both Williams and Kalvin claim their hometown is Owerri in Nigeria."

Are we sure they are just not part of the fake news, lets make money game? Their accent is so strong I find it unlikely the Russians would have tried this. Seems more like the US is trying a propaganda scam on a failed advertising revenue scam.

Infowars for black people, a brilliant money raising 'idea'.

The problem, being from Nigeria they fit the part, but without having ties to Russia they didn't have the skill set. No sense of culture in the US they didn't realise how much the accent and correct grammar would be an issue.

Or did they, and they gave it a good old go anyway using entrepreneurial spirit.

These days you could do it and sell it to the Russians as a marketing idea, but when they started in 2016 it wouldn't have occurred to them.

So the theory is that the Russians have attempted to influence the election.

On the other hand, sources like CNN, MSNBC, Hollywood mouthpieces (especially at awards time), the NFL, etc. are constantly spewing politically-oriented propaganda as well.

The American public has to sift through all this noise. It's not easy, but it's the only thing to do.

Cui bono - is it beyond the realms of possibility that this was arranged to provide a handy means of discrediting a Trump victory? Or is this a plot twist too far?

I don't know if the Russians were able to help Trump win but I find it disturbing how how many Americans have embraced Putin and Russia even though they are actively trying to destabilize US democracy in anyway they can. It doesn't help that Trump goes out of his way to either praise Putin and not even act on the sanctions he signed. Very disturbing to see him openly support a threat to our very democracy. America is ripe for chaos and the Russians know it. You only have to look at history to see how they operate and the amount of shit they can cause.

I'm in the UK, and over here TV's Channel 4 are trailing a programme that will be shown this week on Trump and Russia, but barring a bombshell - which they are not claiming to have - I'm not expecting to see anything new. Surely if anyone had a shred of proper evidence the media etc would be all over it? The fact that this topic has been desperately crawled over by those out to destroy Trump - and there seem to be plenty - for months makes me suspect they still have nothing of substance - just hearsay, insinuation and sometimes outright smear and fabrication, like the laughably weak golden shower story - remember that tawdry effort?

Your comments on subversion raise a smile. I suspect if you were debating with students of foreign affairs anywhere outside the US and brought up the point of how terrible it is and how dare Russia meddle in US affairs you may well get laughed out of the room - the US are clearly virtuosos when it comes to destabilising peaceful democratic regimes when it suits them, so your position is fatally undermined to the point of absurd hypocrisy.

And I am also disturbed by how many American have embraced Black Lives Matter and Antifa who are also routinely work towards the destabilization of America.

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