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Comment by metadat | Hacker News Reader

Why is this surprising or newsworthy? Putin is the villain.. straight up.

Edit: thx for the drive-by downvote feedback, would appreciate if you'd engage directly if I'm missing something

I think what you're missing is that "who's the villain" has no relevance whatsoever to "who the bots side with". They're orthogonal axes.

A play by play approach of US that it did in Syria https://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2016/02/22/is-there-ac...

Note that this person from NATO who wrote this nytimes article asking to arm ISIS with anti-aircraft is now the content director of reddit.

Good? NATO is on the right side of this.

The US didn't force Russians to shoot... checks notes sorry, no, brutally torture and execute civilians and level entire towns. They did that all on their own.

I read the abstract but not the paper. If it's accurate, it is an incredibly surprising result. We already know the Russians are pros at manipulating social media for the purposes of HUMINT, propaganda, etc. If they only represent 7% of bots, that means that:

1. Another actor, possibly a nation-state, is putting even more resources than Russia is into shaping the narrative,

2. Russia isn't actually trying very hard manipulate the narrative this time around.

Both these scenarios are new and somewhat frightening. If #1 - what is the motivation? Who is doing it? If #2 - why would they abandon a previously successful strategy? Where did they redirect those resources to? Are they up to something even worse?

None of this discussion requires you to be pro-Putin, which is what you seemed to imply. Your comment is being down-voted because it criticizes while lacking any sort of imagination or insight.

Or 3. Western media got a lot better at filtering out Russian disinformation and propaganda, once the put their minds to it.

I'm not sure I entirely believe that. The Russians aren't amateurs.

Actually I do think that's possibly what is happening here.

As you say the Russians aren't amateurs, but at the same time they've massively overstepped their mark this time and have galvanised action against them that possibly didn't particularly have the will before, since they poured a lot of money into platforms that would promote Russia's propaganda (hard and soft).

It seems that currently no amount of money can whitewash what they're doing. Of course that might change again in the future.

https://www.sun-sentinel.com/opinion/fl-op-viewpoint-aregood...

"We're forever scarred by the Vietnam War, and the lies "

https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cg...

I wasn't born during the vietnam war but there was an article that I read recently on how the media deceived the public about deaths and "trust in american media was lost permanently"

The propaganda in this war from all three sides is exceedingly high. We will find out the US propaganda in 10 years or so.

There is only one country that invaded a sovereign nation.

No amount of "propaganda" will remove that fact.

> We already know the Russians are pros at manipulating social media

How do we know this?

https://about.fb.com/news/2017/10/hard-questions-russian-ads...

Running an ad campaign is considered being a pro at manipulating social media? What did the campaign actually achieve?

If their goal was to sow fear and uncertainty, they achieved it. If it was to get people to vote for Trump, they absolutely achieved that as well, although it's unclear if he would have won without it.

My goal was to make it rain today and I achieved it.

It is very obvious what you are trying to do. That's not an argument and you know it.

I would argue that the greatest thing the Russians ever did was convince the West they were pros at manipulating social media.

The FBI literally interfered with the 2020 US election because they were that afraid of the Russians. Russia didn't even have to do anything, the FBI did it all for them out of an unearned reputation.

I think you're missing the most likely possibility:

3. Russia is operating pro-Ukrainian bots to influence pro-Ukrainian people.

The bots pretend to be pro-Ukrainian but then try to influence the public opinion in the ways that are useful to Russia.

Why is a scenario that needs the requires the most assumptions the most likely?

The scenarios 1 and 2 also require a lot of assumptions, you just take them for granted.

I don't agree that my scenario requires more assumptions that scenarios 1 and 2.

I think Russia doesn't care much about narrative war in Western countries, they are not going to "win" in that theater anyway. Their propaganda is more focused on their own citizens and third world/non-aligned nations. However, it serves certain political groups to exaggerate how much Russian propaganda there is in the West (in order to justify censorship).

As for who is spreading pro-Ukrainian propaganda, I would guess either Ukraine (most obvious motive) or USA or UK (have the intelligence agencies/know-how). Possibly also a countries like Saudi Arabia or Azerbaijan that benefit economically from the war?

Here we go again. Finding the villain of the year. This year it is Putin, Trump last year, etc pushed by the media and its propaganda.

Anything that goes against it like this paper is upsetting those who believe what the media says and does and doesn't question their views or stories either.

It can spread from bots on either side and with that you need to question both views on who is spreading their propaganda to distort reality to suit their target audience.

2005, Modi was the villian and banned from US https://www.wsj.com/articles/why-narendra-modi-was-banned-fr...

Followed by Saddam, then it was Assad, then it was Gaddafi Then it was little rocket man. 2019 it was Xi. 2020 it was Trump.

2022 it's Putin.

I am taking bets on who the propaganda is going to nominate in 2023. Nominees are: Saudi Arabia MBS, Iran Ali Kamanei, Imran Khan, Modi (again), North Korea (again), Solomon Islands (because they snubbed US and denied entry to US ships)

https://www.stripes.com/theaters/asia_pacific/2022-08-25/sol...

Maybe it’s because Putin’s army is committing genocide in Ukraine and it’s not propaganda and just the truth?.

Australian media has already been seething nonstop about the Solomons for months now. A certain switch was flicked in March and now they're very, very corrupt and antidemocratic: so much so that we require daily reminders.

I see a pattern there )

Obviously the villain in this case is the one that surrounded a country with military force and tried to invade it and burning it to the ground in some areas.

Don't forget about all those displaced families too.

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