Once they got good at that, they had a saleable product, as well as a worldview that treats online discussion as a resource strata to be exploited and shepherded, not nurtured.
Here's a comment thread about "Gallowboob" which documents all this to a T: https://snew.notabug.io/r/interestingasfuck/comments/gitwbo/...
I remember taking over a top 10 channel on Efnet because the owner went on holidays and forgot to get someone to keep their account active.
A guys takes over some subreddits... unless you're a Reddit admin who cares? There's so much content on the web just avoid the stuff you don't like.
Russia doesn't care if Black Lives Matter or not. They promoted inflammatory postings on both sides of the issue simply because chaos and weaking public trust is a goal for them. Sure, you might not care about the issue and don't visit those subreddits, but it still affects you because the community you live in.
Realistic example: someone makes a comment about something nice his boyfriend did. Someone else replies "sounds pretty gay, dude." Could one of these supermods understand that this is a normal and silly thing for queers of a certain age to say to each other? Maybe. I wouldn't count on it. They can't go and dig into each poster's history to see that they post in the same communities and often swap silly comments. The volume in their mod inbox is just too high.
That account could just be the tip of the spear of an entire department of information warfare specialists.
This is why the old tongue in cheek wisdom "On the Internet, no one knows you're a {dog,child,FBI Agent,Special Information Warfare Directorate Agent,Nymphomaniacal Grandma} " never stopped being relevant. User-Agents!=Users.
Don't get into the habit, lest the ones who don't run circles around you.
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20200107185156/https://www.reddi...
[1] https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/volunteers-found-iran...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Defense_Authorization...
Also, countries don't post, people do. It is a well documented fact that Russian had a full time time operating thousands of fake accounts. Russians are posting those messages and spreading memes, but it it is in their official capacity of Russian agents that they do it.
I'm not worried about random Russian citizen posting their thoughts.
I realize it's a popular, even government approved conspiracy theory, but it seems more like psychological projection (the US is absolutely doing such things, and has been long before the internet existed -for example[1]) rather than anything for which there is actual evidence.
Whether or not Russian agents are posting official FUD on Reddit is kind of irrelevant. The idea that anything on Reddit (or twitter for that matter) matters at all is what is so bloody funny about it.
What aren't you willing to dismiss by invoking the magic words "conspiracy theory?" Is this just a joke?
https://intelligence.house.gov/social-media-content/
Reddit, along with twitter and Facebook, were hugely influential in the election, if you you think it is "bloody funny."
Lol, well, I'm definitely willing to dismiss the idea that reddit, twitter and facebook are why Trump is president if that's what you mean. I suppose Obama won the 2008 election because of some dank memes posted in 4chan, and Bush won in 2000 because of funny things some weeb posted on Usenet.
As far as why people continue to say it: as I said, it's projection. The US has done 1000x worse than whatever imagined ridiculously effective Reddit posts the Rooskies have done. The fact that adult humans with day jobs who are somehow able to feed themselves without choking to death on their tongues are able to believe in such nonsense will never ever cease to amuse me.
If you actually believe such things, you really need to learn how to count.
However, you can't reduce Russia intelligence operations to that kind of satire when it's been a concerted active operation for several years now.
This is an interesting read: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html