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Comment by tlogan | Hacker News Reader

Do we really need Russian involvement for this? Are we not capable of achieving it on our own? It feels like an insult to our society .

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Our society, like all societies, has many imperfect people within it. A malign influence that amplifies our weaknesses can still be criticized and resisted. Yes, a society made up of infallible individuals would not be susceptible, but let’s deal with the reality we have?

Russia loads the gun, Americans engrossed in conspiracy culture pull the trigger.

Yea, the poor innocent US government, who only /looks/ bad because of things Russia says on social media.

The CIA spikes the Kool-Aid, Americans engrossed in false neo liberal culture drink it readily.

its not about if we need or want it.. its that an aggressive offensive actor IS doing it. this is an assault on your country. Its deliberately teasing out the worse aspects of your society so that you attack yourselves.

Dis/Misinformation on the web has to be the #1 education subject for the world. Not scams from Nigerian princes, but the bullshit that is now being amplified by tools like AI.

Disinformation and misinformation are spread by all sides and campaigns at every level.

Take, for example, when we were told that crime is down in San Francisco. Really? Do they think we don’t actually live here and see what’s happening.

"Everyone does it" is a copout when one group of people is doing it 10x more than the other.

Classic whataboutism. Whether or not someone else lies doesn’t mean that this particular lie isn’t very concerning.

>Disinformation and misinformation are spread by all sides and campaigns at every level.

No it's not. Systemic and characteristic are words that you can only apply to one side here.

You think that just because you never saw the other side of the coin. Russian "troll farms" were created as a response to the same activity commited by USA and UK in Russian speaking side of internet for years. It took more than a decade for Russian government to realize what's happening and who does these things and with what instruments.

So show us. We have metric tons of evidence of Russian troll farms working to destabilize the west, from leaked documents, video footage, phone calls.........

Surely there must be similar evidence for western activities.

Ahh yes, subjective anecdotes are obviously the correct epistemological foundation for public policy.

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