Comment by qiskit | Hacker News Reader

Comment by qiskit | Hacker News Reader

I agree with most points in the blog except for the last point which struck me as a bit of misinformation itself.

> P.S. Yet another form of misinformation is political lies of the sort that we’ve been seeing most notoriously from Russian propaganda lately.

Considering that most russian media is banned/censored in the west, it's highly unlikely that we are seeing much russian propaganda. Instead, the political misinformation we've been seeing are western propaganda. Across all social media and all news platforms, it's been 24/7 western propaganda. Even here, we've had daily western propaganda. I don't remember a single russian propaganda post hitting the frontpage.

I don't think anyone can seriously claim the political misinformation we are experience are russian propaganda. It's most definitely anti-russian western propaganda. If I'm wrong, I'd love to see examples of social media or news stations/papers/etc that are running russian propaganda. Obviously russians in russia are being bombarded with russian propaganda. I doubt anyone in NY or columbia is.

> Considering that most russian media is banned/censored in the west, it's highly unlikely that we are seeing much russian propaganda.

Russian propaganda has always been distributed through channels that beyond Russian media. In the US, specifically, Russia has substantial influence with the American Left whose survival of the fall of the USSR into kleptocratic capitalist Russia is an...interesting arc, and has cultivated newer channels through the American far right (particularly White nationalist groups) as well. While there is almost certainly ongoing direct active influence through both groups, even beyond that plenty in both actively seek out Russian media (which, even though most has shut down operations in the west) is trivial to access from the West if you are actively seeking it out and repeat narratives received through it.

At this point, true facts are considered russian propoganda when the press secretary has an agenda of full fiction.

Hunter Biden’s lost laptop confirmed real by the New York Times this week. A video that was on it of him sitting nearly naked in a hotel room, smoking crack rocks, and telling a hooker how his last laptop was stolen by Russians and they were trying to blackmail him - completely skipped over.

When asked about the absolutely real laptop, she deflected to say it’s proven that Russians have been spreading misinformation.

The media double standard is infuriating.

In other news: coke is now pepsi. Citizens are expected to remember this when ordering.

You linked to an editorial in the wall street journal in another thread, but it seems like you didn’t actually read the times piece. The times confirmed that some of the emails in the email dump from the alleged laptop are authentic, that’s it. Which IIRC they reported back in 2020.

The times article doesn’t even discuss the video you’re referring to, and it doesn’t confirm that the laptop actually belonged to Biden. Maybe those things are true, maybe not, but as far as I can tell there’s no new information here.

This is what’s linked by the WSJ: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/16/us/politics/hunter-biden-...

> Which IIRC they reported back in 2020.

I don’t know if they did, but did they do it before or after the election?

Because before the election, both SV and MSM were trying to shut the story down as “misinformation”. Only later (after the election) did I notice that it was quietly confirmed, but that was more convenient for Biden wasn’t it?

Russian propaganda works in a different way than western one. They know that they cant compete with western news behemots like CNN, BBC,... so they go alternative ways -- trying to get their message viral trough alternative channels like social networks. It's hard to notice by design, mostly because their goals is to conquer the west in a way -- they could not simply just say that "hey please break apart into small nations isolate on your own, then we can conquer you one by one". Because this is the core thing Putin wants to reach, and its hidden in plain sight, just read his main propagada philosopher's book summary: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foundations_of_Geopolitics

And some examples on how they do it:

1. https://euvsdisinfo.eu/viral-manspreading-video-is-staged-kr...

2. https://mobile.twitter.com/redfishstream

They have got multiple modus operandi, the largest one is whataboutism, which is actually an old KGB disinformation tactic: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism#History . A great example is this tweet which was created on the day Russia attacked Ukraine: https://mobile.twitter.com/redfishstream/status/149689293121... (this went viral, was on the Reddit front page)The other one is to have a barrage of fake news (but it always contains a grain of truth), see how Russian officials reacted to the bombing of the maternity ward in Mariupo: First it was denied. They they said it was empty. Then that it was a base for the Azov batallion. Then that the photos were showing "crisis actors", it was staged. Then that the Azov batallion bombed it. And so on...

You can see the effect on Russian people, they do not trust their state at all. For example no one inside Russia believed in their vaccines causing one of the worst Covid infections.

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