Viral “Manspreading” video is said to be staged Russian propaganda
euvsdisinfo.eu
euvsdisinfo.eu
I was suspicious of it being real (not because "activists" wont do any kind of shit these days, but because she would have easily got beaten up if it was real).
It took like a few searches to find that the video is indeed fake, and it was made as a viral video to boost the career of Anna Dovgalyuk, a ho-hum model/minor celebrity that does such BS.
She has done such viral videos in the past, e.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zwdmPnJDvp0
Note how the BS TFA doesn't provide this info (it just mentions some magazine who found one of the actors in the video), and jumps to the "Kremlin propaganda" with tons of handwaving and no evidence at all, as opposed to one of the tons of BS YouTube stuff produced every day to be viral.
Also the name of the site "EU VS DISINFO" points to a website created to cater to the paranoid crowd, if not itself the work of some state agent or another [1].
[1] Addition: Oh, as someone else points out in the comments, this is EU financed.
Great, i was getting worried the EU was just going to sit on it's arse. I am glad the EU is finally taking this issue seriously.
Lol you've no idea what you're talking about. The EU is not the US, that's why apart from the UK leaving the rest of us won't be eating chlorinated chicken.
>As a collection of many client states, A rather silly view, we have a shared market and our interests.
You're clearly confusing the EU with NATO, i guess from St Petersburg we all look "West" to you.
Lol, I'm a European, so...
The EU might not be the US, but it has seeded its global ambitions (and lots of its sovereignty) to the US after World War II.
>You're clearly confusing the EU with NATO, i guess from St Petersburg we all look "West" to you.
Yeah, because nobody outside St Petersburg can think EU governments are pushovers and lackeys of the US.
It's not like Europe (from the UK, to Germany, Italy, France, and so on) had a strong left that believed exactly that...
There was no such thing as European global ambition before WWII, not since the era of crusades. Every country had its own ambitions. And I believe there is a difference between being allied and being someone's lackey.
Thanks captain obvious. I am referring to the British, French, Netherlands, Belgium, and last but not least, German, ambitions, which in most cases were accompanied by actual colonial empires.
European powers (and most importantly, Britain and France), ceded their global role past WWII and the US took over. For lesser European countries it was even directly involved in who will get into government, what their foreign policy should be, and so on.
>And I believe there is a difference between being allied and being someone's lackey.
You can be allied if you are an equal. If you are a bunch of countries and another one is "leading" and has several times the economic, and 10 times the military and diplomatic power, you are not.
The video is promoted by RT, there is enough evidence for it (like, you know, links to a page on RT website containing the video). Even if it wasn't created as Kremlin propaganda, it is used as such now.
RT is a popular website.
Of course it will link to a viral video. It's no more "Kremlin Propaganda" than anything posted on BBC is automatically "British propaganda".
RT in comparison is amateur hour.
And yet RT a Putin propaganda station are promoting the video in the article, a video made by Krelim supporters..
You can call them amateur , you can't deny what they are trying to do.
Or that thinks that one state has the right to have their own broadcaster (UK/BBC) and another not (Russia/RT), or that they broadcasting thing based on their own national interests and world views is propaganda whereas for a broadcaster I agree with its "objective journalism".
I'm also not in the whole hysteria for Russia as some Bond villain behind everything, for things all sides do and that it does with 1/100 the resources (from Voice of America to financial support for all kinds of magazines, opposition parties and NGOs in Russia from US State Department sources, diplomatic pressure on their neighbouring countries and so on).
Especially when I can see through the whole top-bottom neo-Cold War strategy of "let's corner them, surround them with NATO client states, throw in some sanctions, get some sympathetic lackey in power, and get their resources for free, plus increased control in their Southern borders".
Of course people whose only source of news is American or European mainstream media will never hear about those things (and if they do, e.g. in someplace like Counterpunch they'll label it "Kremlin propaganda", as they are told).
I guess some people never learn from the previous "successes" against similar enemies-du-jour in bringing democracy and making Iraq, Libya, Syria, etc into the current hell-holes they are.
Yeah i love their chemtrails stuff....
edit: Lol Fox is as bad as RT coldtea.. your attempt at whataboutism is terrible.
Just because fox is crap doesn't mean RT isn't a Putin owned propaganda network.
In fact, I'm ALL for whataboutism -- or, as they used to call it back in the day, putting things in perspective...
You have to really be conditioned to never see the larger picture and to think your shit doesn't stink to even consider "whatabboutism" (that is, that a side accused of something might has a right to point back to the other's side's misdeeds) as bad...
I guess a Kanye video is also "Whitehouse propaganda" because he is a Trump supporter...
>And that this video is made in the wake of legalisation of domestic violence in Russia specifically to undermine feminist movement
"In the wake" as meaning "almost two years later"?
It's not illegal it's just showing who her paymasters are. but keep up the misdirection..
How does it "show who her paymasters are"?
What I meant by the "illegal" line was, being a Putin supporter describes like 50% of Russians, it's not some fringe activity. Even being a vocal Putin supporter in Russia (as opposed to mere voter) is not much different than someone like Kanye being pro Trump, or the tons of Hollywood/music people being vocal Hillary supporters.
So, that doesn't "show who her paymasters are" at all...
EDIT: nice job completely rewriting your post so that the replies no longer make any sense
I asked that question because your response implied that "Putin supporter = proof she did the video for Kremlin", whereas half of Russians are Putin supporters.
Being a Putin supporter is perfectly common. It's not any kind of proof like having found she was in some illegal gang or such, the guy is the elected official of the country. Of course he has supporters, and of course some will make viral videos. That doesn't mean anybody that (a) is a Putin supporter (that's like 50+ million people there) (b) makes viral videos, makes them for Kremlin purposes.
"Both things are pretty bad though" - maybe a sovereign country can have its own leadership, and replace them when they feel like it, without some holier-than-thou foreigners telling them that's "pretty bad" and equating voting for their leader with "beating your wife"?
>EDIT: nice job completely rewriting your post so that the replies no longer make any sense
Conspiracy theorist much? I rewrote my post because I though it will be misinterpreted (as it was), and I wanted to put it in another way. I did so in the span of like 5 minutes after posting it. I only saw that somebody had already replied to the first version much later (now) that I got back in.
>without some holier-than-thou foreigners
Why did you assume I'm a foreigner?
Lots of viral videos are professionally produced. You put money to further your audience/career. She had already done a similar video, and I've seen more impressive stuff from 20-something vloggers. Was her earlier video (agaisnt upskirt pictures) propaganda too? Or how about she is just an attention seeking activist that follow various BS trendy topics, to build her career?
Of course we have to believe that the Kremlin is both like some bond villain that produced a viral video (and a rather insignificant one) to further its causes (rigorous handwaving about what those are and how they possible relate to the video, from fueling cultural conflict in the West, to justifying a law that passed 2 years ago), but also that they're bad at it, and can't even get their actors to not admit it was real to the first journalist that asks them. Or perhaps they wanted to be found out - if one adds that as a premise, there's no need for any further rational examination).
>Consider that the Russian government needs to pay people to simply post positive comments about it.
Does it "need to"? So, if you're local in Russia, you don't know tons of people who really like the Russian government? Or, who did very much liked them when they did a complete U-turn on the economy and unemployment from disaster to almost-good in their first terms?
Or does it merely pay some, which is different than "needs to"? How about any modern government just does the same, and has people promoting its opinions on the web and in social media? Perhaps this is much older, and as old as print media themselves (mockingbird anyone?)
>Why did you assume I'm a foreigner?
Because being on HN it was the statistically safer guess?
Why did 3 different people in this thread assume I'm Russian, if not a Kremlin troll (because, of course, who would ever have the gall to have a differing opinion on such matters -- it's not like western countries ever had a Left that was anti-imperialist and anti-globalist and not the current Whole-foods liberals that pass for one, is it?)
That said, there's a lot of this stuff being produced in western countries, including the EU. It just so happens that the plague of neoconservatism + political division has become state policy in Russia, so it makes sense for EU institutions (whose objective is political unity and inclusive welfare-oriented policy) would link it to the Russian state.
It's just hard to delineate between "legitimate" provocations from hostile operations. FB optimize for this stuff by default, because it provokes shares and clicks. Media does it for click-bait. People do it for fun an politics.
I guess that's why it works.
FB and media sites are especially egregious offenders, but are symptomatic of the modern internet as a whole. I'm not really sure how we change this - the web is based around user interaction and sharing, and people will always prioritize that which they care about, which encourages more extreme views in any discussions among more general groups.
Dividing into sub-communities can reduce discord and increase legitimate discussion and less-extreme views, as moderate community members will not be suborned by unrelated topics they care about, but why join the sub-communities? Also, as seen on some Subreddits, this can instead lead to an echo-chamber, with dissident views discouraged.
Perhaps forums with a ranking system unlike current like/upvote, share, freshness, and number-of-response based systems could assist - Having longer-lasting, even permanent, threads for each topic might encourage novel discussion over rehashing the same arguments repeatedly, while prioritizing long-form replies could at least provide more grounds for debating views, but none of that fixes the essential problem of moderate apathy.
I wonder if moving to a more mercenary web could help - while it feels as though it would be losing something essential, if there were a cost to responding and payment for valuable contributions, moderate feedback could be encouraged financially, rather than by passion alone. You would still need an essentially different ranking system, especially to prevent response repetition, else I suspect you would see the opposite of the desired result - people posting extreme views to get a quick buck.
Additional elements would likely be necessary to create a network entirely successful in encouraging discussion from a full spectrum of views (while repetition may be deadly to discussion, stagnation is also fearsome), but it's a starting point for consideration. I'll have to think on this more later - I might give building a prototype a try.
This digressed fairly significantly from the original topic, but I'd be interested in thoughts regarding diversification of views on the internet.
Don't forget the many revolutions by former colonies of European powers. They were violent, but bought about change. The good kind.
And it was the birth of a new tyranny, wasn't it? The "Reign of Terror" - that was the sad reality for those living in that period.
> Don't forget the many revolutions by former colonies of European powers. They were violent, but bought about change. The good kind.
For one, Gandhi demonstrated you don't need violence to make a good change. Yet most people still believe in violence as the primary means. Second, I'm appalled to see what happened to many if not most of these colonies. One tyranny was replaced by another. I'm not sure you can call it a good change.
edit: added comma
Since we're here, this is just counter-propaganda. There are thousands of organizations doing similar things. The whole "Russia is creating strife on Facebook!" thing is ridiculous too if you think about it for just a few seconds.
By the way, I'm not sure that Russian propaganda had a sizable impact on the American election. From what I remember of the 2016 election, we were discussing Trump 24/7 because of one outrageous Tweet, debate, rally, or press conference after another.
Another point the article makes is that both pro-Trump and anti-Trump propaganda was run by Russia. My guess is that Russia is either trying to sow the seeds of discord, or trying to test the waters to see how much influence they can garner. I definitely don't like it either way, and this sort of thing can obviously get worse from here, but it would seem to me that the biggest message is that a divided America might be an easier target for Russian disruption down the line.
Does nobody remember the wars this woman started, in her reach for power? Are we really going to ignore the victims of her involvement in American foreign policy?
This is the danger of the whole "mah Russian Trolls!" narrative - the trolls might actually be telling the truth about a few things (i.e. America really is run by a hidden oligarchy of families networked throughout the military-industrial-pharmaceutical complex), and .. because "mah Russia!", we end up reinforcing the very actors who need to be eradicated from the scene.
This is very dodgy territory. I can only hope that the average citizens' heavy dependence on "being told what to think by an authoritarian figure on TV" is going to be weaned as this proceeds ..
That's what we're seeing here, by the way.
And I think that's a good thing, personally. Not sure that I'd agree that Youtube is the best source of it, but yeah - its high time the Western world learned to think for itself, anyway. Maybe this is progress?
Politics, science (I mean, go look at people talking about chemtrails or flat earth), whatever. There was a paper about this that made the front page of HN a few weeks back. Was a good read if you can find it.
I'm with you though. It's all a bit of a mess. Perhaps politicians have always been such self serving, blowhard scumbags - but until the internet and quick, global discussion was so ubiquitous we just didn't notice en mass.
dont get me wrong, i'm against trump. but you have to accept hillary f*ed up big time.
The Clintons are super rich, $240 million net worth, despite a life of "public service". I wonder how that works out?
It's like Robin Williams said, "Politicians are like babies, they should be changed frequently...and for the same reason."
It was high time the Clinton dynasty ended.
>Clinton dynasty ended.
2 people isn't a dynasty.
Besides holding the presidency from '93 to '01, the Clintons moved on to the Senate, where Hillary sat for 8 years, before joining Obama as Secretary of State for 4 years. The Clintons have had deep influence in the Democrat party for the last several decades.
And in some cases destroying open source is a welcome side effect.
Therefore Russia sees us as fair game (which I agree in) and is attacking us over the best medium; the internet.
In my opinion its not going to be territorial wars that will dominate our future, but cultural wars.
You might maintain your national borders but you will lose in the cultural war, whether that's political ideology, identity, civil morale.
In a way the policies or slogans you hear like "One China", "New Russia", "Europe United" are cultural campaigns. Yes they might involve territory and resources but they all have different cultural identities packaged with them.
In science fiction they have entertained this idea. If you look at Blade Runner you can see that the world has been dominated by a hybrid of Sino-American culture with rampant capitalism.
Exciting but scary times ahead!
It's as if someone noticed that staging something extremely divisive on topics that everyone has an opinion about gets clicks and attention.
E: Not the "sitting with legs relatively wide, for comfort", but rather the version that gets complained about online, the one where people are deliberately blocking seats from other people.
The phrase entered popular lexicon years ago now in NYC, it's definitely not new. Search the Gothamist website it's well-worn meme by now. Other news sources as well as even the MTA themselves have commented on the phenomenon:
https://www.npr.org/2014/11/23/366084646/mta-targets-man-spr...
I think it't more of a gender neutral bad behavior thing in that it seems that people who do this will do it regardless of whether its a man or a woman sitting next to them.
That is not what I questioned. Though it is nowhere near as bad as some people online seem to claim.
The extreme online vitriol about it certainly seems to be at least partially made up.
The practice is most certainly pervasive in NYC. I would call that as bad as people claim. Most of the online documentation of the phenomenon is more behavior shaming though and not anything approaching "vitriolic", this ridiculous bit of theater being an exception of course.
My first reaction to this was a lot of skepticism - the article makes a lot of bold claims without backing any of them up. I was ready to write this off as another sleazy mud-throwing operation when I found the official EU site [0] describing the team and their goals - including "Effective communication and promotion of EU policies towards the Eastern Neighbourhood". The biased writing and this "promotion of policies" really make me think this is no better than the "fake news" everyone complains about.
[0] https://eeas.europa.eu/headquarters/headquarters-homepage/21...
There are attention seeking groups like Femen who are known for staging stunts. This group has a fake upskirt video, now this mansplaining video and presumably they will keep trying.
If it works out you get tons of media interviews, attention, become a media personality and spin it into some serious income.