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Comment by ache7 | Hacker News Reader

It is very sad that the authors of the article either believed in all these accusations against the Russians or are afraid to say that this is nonsense so that they are not accused of supporting the Russians.

I want to note that the Russian government also accuses its political opponents of being foreign agents, using the same rhetoric.

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It's well known that Russian trolls/bots use fake personas on social media in order to sow discord. Are you arguing that's not done at all, or that there is no evidence it's done in the article specific instance?

Here's an article examining how it's done in relation to anti-vaxx.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/

Don't all governments to this to any other democratic government? This practice is as old as democracy itself.

Since when is Russia a democracy? But yes, foreign propaganda has existed for a long time.

No, all democratic governments receive foreign propaganda from other governments, regardless of the others being democratic or not.

The OP was specifically arguing the Russians are innocent, which I think has been been shown they are not. If you want to expand the conversation into generally how world governments use disinformation to their advantage, go for it.

While it is true there are "Russian trolls" on the internet, (and it is true the every nation with a national intelligence operation does the same)

The problem occurs when EVERY opposition statement from "the other side" is dismissed as "your just a Russian troll as no real American would ...."

"Russian Troll" and "Russian Bot" have been become a modern day no true Scotsman fallacy used by people to dismiss anyone that dares disagree with them on public policy, or the role of government as being Russian disinformation

These trolls really exist on Russian social networks, trying to refute any news from the opposition media. And some people (Russian enthusiasts) count and list these bots. But your article does not prove it to me, because some Russians are afraid of vaccinations and there are crazy paranoids in Russian social networks that convince not to get vaccinated, including vaccines that are done by Russian medicine - what do you think this proves? That Russian bots are trying to weaken their own nation? For me, these are not bots, but religious fanatics, religions often reject medicine. You may have noticed that many religions have denied the existence of COVID this year.

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