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Comment by OtherShrezzing | Hacker News Reader

>‘Jake’ claimed that a “top BBC anchor resigned on air and was immediately detained by security services” and that “crowds have surrounded the residence of the newly appointed ‘Governor General’ imposed by London”.

>Meanwhile, ‘Fiona’ said that “protesters have seized Balmoral Estate” and “International markets are dumping UK assets as images of tanks in Edinburgh go viral”.

>‘Lucy’ claimed that "farmers have used tractors to block the A1 at the English border”, while another account called ‘Kelly’ said that “army trucks are rolling down the Royal Mile. Soldiers in fatigues are guarding the Scottish Parliament”.

Surely the number of Scottish people influenced by accounts making such outlandish claims is exactly zero.

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A lot of this stuff doesn't work by changing people's mind on topic X, but rather by saturating the informational environment so that people declare epistemological bankruptcy. For example, one thing that you can quite often hear from a Russian that has been confronted with something unpleasant is "well, who knows what's true". This is usually not a figure of speech, not some kind of washing down of facts, but rather an accurate representation of their mind.

Between being fooled and being uninformed the latter is much more pleasant.

> but rather by saturating the informational environment so that people declare epistemological bankruptcy.

"never use big words when a smaller one will suffice"

they want to, as Bannon said, "flood the zone". or as RAND Corp calls it, "the Russian Firehose of Falsehood"

This doesn't come close to replacing the meaning of the sentence you're complaining about.

Yes, exactly by grinding people down. Making it exhausting to discern the truth, until it's not worth the energy exertion to do so.

Also perhaps it is not meant to convince Scottish people of anything, but maybe to make English people hostile to Scotland and its people etc

Exactly this. Or just obfuscating the question so much that people give up asking the question.

I've always heard this as "Firehose of misinformation" but Wikipedia tells me it's "falsehood".

Nonetheless... look who innovated on it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

I hear that sentiment from a lot of right wing friends in US fwiw. IME here it's more a coded speech and / or an escape from difficult conversations. The coded speech part steers it towards general conspiracy topics, which are often a simple way to blanket discard everything "liberal".

An actual example: "What did you think about Bill Gates climate book?" (they'd read it) -> "He was associated with Epstein, he's a creep. I don't trust anything he says". Then, "What do you think about Trumps delaying and denying of Epstein associations" -> "There's so much back and forth, who knows what to believe."

To be clear I think your take is correct, its just I think that if the space were saturated in a direction that were more convenient towards their "team", they won't have much difficulty taking a clear stance.

It's quite possible a lot of this stuff just doesn't work, or only has an extremely slight effect. The internet is so full of nonsense, I'm not sure how much effect you can add by tossing some more on the top of the pile.

But, these sorts of bots are fairly cheap to run, and they have time on their side to try a bunch of different ideas.

Maybe it’s not meant to be signal. It’s meant to be noise that makes the signal increasingly hard to distinguish. You get used to there being bullshit and now you can’t tell precisely which unlikely but maybe plausible messages are true. It helps weaken the ability for the target to be able to engage in meaningful discourse.

I hate to admit it but I failed the NPR real vs fake video quiz [1] and it is exactly because of this. There is so much fake noise out there that it is very hard to tell what is true.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/11/30/nx-s1-5610951/fake-ai-videos-...

4/4 for me, but probably only because I knew about that tear gas incident, and that snake was way too loud and they don't tend to move like that unless it's sand.

The tear gas was the only one that had me guessing. Knew the video was real, but wasn't sure it wasn't doctored just at the end with the throw. Overall, it read more real than fake, I was just sure they were going to try to "gotcha" me.

Thanks for sharing. I am curious which of the four quiz questions you failed—to me they looked relatively easy to tell apart, but I follow the progression of this tech very closely.

Personally, I've mislabeled the one with the animal in the restaurant as AI generated. I might have clicked too quickly because it was looking like the animals trampolines video's. I've not really looked at the timestamps.

I'm generally good at detecting AI generated content but I might have a few false positives. :)

Thanks for sharing this. I got all 4, but none of which were so obvious that I had absolutely no doubt. I had to reason about all of them. And I'm absolutely confident that a LOT of perfectly reasonable people can potentially score zero on this test.

Same. Managed all 4. But the differences are tiny and I'm only 70% confident. Most of my judgement is based on human reactions to a changing situation.

Yeah, I have pretty much stopped analyzing the media itself for cues, and am evaluating the scene and the actors. Are they convincing? The behaviour of the cops in the first video were entirely unconvincing. I didn't consider the video quality, artifacts, lip sync issues, etc.

It's the firehouse technique. The films of Adam Curtis touch on this, I'd recommend HyperNormalisation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firehose_of_falsehood

The question is, is their purpose to influence scottish people, or iranian people?

Not Iranians - what would anyone gain by influencing Iranians' views of Scottish nationalism? My experience has been that people outside the west barely know Scotland exists and are not going to care about it anymore than the average Scot is likely to have strong feelings about Laos.

It may be aimed at Scots but sometimes be done too blatantly so slips into the implausible. It may be aimed at influencing just those prone to conspiracy theories - who might be few but more likely to extreme actions.

As a Scot, I would assume it's an attack on the UK by supporting attempts to break up the UK. That seems credible. Who's behind it, is speculative.

If their objective is to damage the UK they can do that without breaking it up. For example, for example by fostering violent Scottish Nationalism, or even just sowing hatred between the Scots and the English, or between Scots who want to remain the UK and those who do not..

Its quite unusual for separatist movements to both remain peaceful themselves, and not to be violent suppressed. Even other western democracies have not managed, nor did one other part of the UK for a long time.

My other nationality is Sri Lankan so I have seen how bad it can get. I do not think that will ever happen in the UK, but even a very small number of sufficiently nasty people can do a great deal of damage.

People leave Iran for UK. The idea is that if UK seems less attractive and stable, fewer people will be strongly inclined to pursue it. It also normalizes chaos at home.

I think there are parallels to draw to how Fox News tried to paint a picture of places in Europe being on fire and overtaken by gangs and radicals years before that became close to actual reality.

It's for the Scottish. It's in Iran's interests for Scotland to become independent because that would enforce change on the United Nations Security Council. The UK ceases to exist and loses its veto, then what happens on the UNSC after that is anyone's guess.

The UK is a lot more then Scotland + England. The Welsh, northern Irish and Isle of Manx would like to have a word with you, to name a few.

The Isle of Man is not part of the United Kingdom

The Isle of Man isn't part of the UK?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isle_of_Man

If Russia kept the soviet UNSC seat when the Soviets collapsed then surely the UK keeps its seat if Scotland leaves.

The UK doesn't cease to exist though, it just shrinks. Plus the USSR fragmenting and Russia (as the main constituent part, the nuclear power and the country the independent republics were happy to acknowledge as the continuation of the USSR) becoming the successor state is pretty well-established precedent for what happens when states fragment, whose legitimacy Russia probably doesn't want to contest too strongly...

General disruption in the UK would help the Iranian government a little, but I managed to click on one of the accounts before it was suspended, and its most popular tweets received very interaction (and were pretty banal statements of independence support indistinguishable from stuff thousands of completely normal Scottish people posted) I assume their attempts to seed wilder rumours were low effort and had very little success.

Russia was allowed to inherit the USSR seat on 3 conditions:

- It took on all the sovereign debt from the newly independent nations.

- It relinquished nukes that were left behind in Ukraine.

- The United Nations collectively agreed to it.

I don't think any of those things would happen in the UK's case. But of course it doesn't matter what you or I think. It only matters what _Iran_ thinks will happen if Scotland gains independence.

>The UK doesn't cease to exist though, it just shrinks.

Or as some wags have put it, when Northern Ireland unifies with the Republic of Ireland, and Scotland joins the EU as an independent state, the Rump UK (1) becomes the "Former United Kingdom of Wales and England" (2), or "FUK-Wangland" for short.

1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rump_state

2) See FYROM: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Macedonia#Naming_dispute

Russia didn't lose its veto when the USSR collapsed and neither would the UK lose it in such a case. If the UK was in danger of losing its veto it would never allow Scottish independence.

All that would happen would be Scotland would lose its influence over the veto.

It doesn’t matter whether independence is realized, what Iran wants is more time and effort spent on domestic disagreement, so less is available to support international engagement.

This is a tool of international competition and the U.S. and U.K. have been trying to do it to Iran (and others) for even longer than the reverse.

Apparently X is entirely blocked in Iran unless using a VPN.

Perhaps they mean to influence Iranians who activity circumvent internet restrictions :-)

Doesn't Iran have a literal Complete backout where even starlink is now blocked, I don't think its of any surprise in such case that X is blocked, no?

> Surely the number of Scottish people influenced by accounts making such outlandish claims is exactly zero.

But perhaps they influence American foreign policy.

I’m certain that a key pillar of Russian propaganda in the USA is to repeat the horseshit that Europe is some degenerate shithole/caliphate arresting people left right and centre for tweeting. See also the US’s total obsession with London and its supposed “no go zone” for white people. The irony is that the US is far less white than Europe is, so they really cannot point fingers at us. It’s worked fantastically at separating the US from all of its allies. We saw that at the Munich security conference last year.

In reality we are their closest and truest friends and yet they’re relentlessly shitting all over us, even threatening to invade now. The only comfort is that the USA will inevitably reap what it is sowing.

A lot of the racist and islamophobic talking points get exported from the US, then they seem to mull around in Europe for a while, and eventually the US right wing points at what the right is saying there (particularly in the UK) and reimports the rhetoric, often as if it's now solid evidence.

It happened with anti-vax as well. I remember finding it very striking when I started hearing US anti-vaxxers refer to "the jab" in 2020. That's a term we never used in American English.

e.g. the 4chan meme about the Yuropean Caliphate, etc. etc.

Yeah this is one conspiracy I believe. There's this narrative at the moment that the UK is some dystopian hellhole where you'll get arrested for basically anything you post online. It's very pervasive to the point that fairly normal American people I follow online have repeated such things.

Now, the UK has plenty of problems, I do not deny that. But the situation is nothing like it is presented online.

My thinking is that this is meant to make people in the US feel that the rising authoritarianism isn't so bad in relative terms "well the UK is far worse!".

We are the target of this propaganda, and I don’t mean the Scottish independence stuff. The US and Israel are jamming the airwaves with anti-Iran propaganda to manufacture consent to attack Iran. Every day we’re being subjected to a ton of this stuff on every channel (including HN).

It’s certainly not working on me, but I fear far too many of us are just taking these stories at face value.

> outlandish claims

I dunno, have you seen US news recently?

I'm just nervous about you-know-who realising that Scotland is in the Western Hemisphere!

tbf the US is a very different place where you'd have to at least double check rumours that the executive hadn't decided that tanks in cities were the best way to address crime in cities.

The UK rumour people probably believe is more likely to be "English police suppress tweets of valued contributors to the Scottish nationalist movement"...

"tanks in cities were the best way to address crime in cities"

Given the amount of tanks the UK has I think it would have to be "tank in city" - mind you tanks have been used in Glasgow! ;-)

https://euppublishingblog.com/2018/10/03/georgesquarebattle/

Or the Ruth Davidson rent-a-tank: https://news.channel4.com/election2015/04/29/update-4401/

(more seriously, let's not forget the deployment of the Parachute Regiment to Northern Ireland, although that was a while ago)

I think last time we had a tank at a protest the protestors had rented it! https://www.vice.com/en/article/yer-das-gone-rogue-guido-faw...

Northern Ireland is a big part of why the UK doesn't think the optics of deploying tanks are a show of strength and doesn't think it comes without a cost...

That's not a tank - looks like an Abbot SPG? ;-)

Interesting! There's also a Wiki article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_George_Square

They cut the tanks up to make Irn-Bru!

Surely the number of Scottish people influenced by accounts making such outlandish claims is exactly zero.

The accounts appear to be suspended, so it is true that Scottish people are not being influenced by these accounts.

In fact, the link in the story about tanks in Edinburgh goes nowhere. Combined with the links to suspended accounts, the article almost reads like it was written by a sock puppet...

I think these accounts may not be as political as many people think. It has been observed that foreign bot accounts often support both positions on contentious issues.

Maybe they're just Russian cybercriminals chasing impulse likes and follows for the sake of building up their accounts' social currency? Once they've gotten enough real engagement that the algorithm thinks they're real people, they can pivot to something entirely unrelated to the political controversy they pushed. Change name, change style, suddenly the victim follows an account they don't remember but gives interesting advice on crypto investments.

Now, I do certainly believe Russian cybercriminals do work for the government now and then in return for tolerance. But it may be less mustache-twirling chaos farming and more plain old scams.

> Once they've gotten enough real engagement that the algorithm thinks they're real people, they can pivot to something entirely unrelated to the political controversy they pushed. Change name, change style, suddenly the victim follows an account they don't remember but gives interesting advice on crypto investments.

bingo.

you need a trail of real-looking accounts. not just for posting, too, but also to link to, or retweet, or like, etc., in ways that get algorithms to put stuff on the top of a feed.

there may be only one actual account pushing the marketing or propaganda, but you need 5k more to upvote or share -- and those accounts can be just random AI slop or reposts of something. take the top replies of a popular post and shorten it, then post it a day or two later. or repost the most popular generic post of last month, etc.

You don't actually need real looking accounts. Almost all of this stuff is done with the most superficial and obvious accounts.

You don't need any reputation at all because the sites do very little actual work to block literal nation state level information warfare campaigns (because that would cost money and reduce their metrics)

You also don't need any reputation because the real humans who will be boosting your false narrative or "information" are the type that take someone else telling them "No, that's fake because <reason>" to be high quality evidence that it is "The real truth THEY don't want you to know"

Like, these accounts will quite literally only be active from 9-5 Moscow time despite being "In the US", and yet that is apparently not a strong enough signal for companies to target them for review or bans?

"The real truth THEY don't want you to know" works best when it actually is something you don't trust people will judge as BS on their own.

> It has been observed that foreign bot accounts often support both positions on contentious issues.

Absolutely

>Maybe they're just Russian cybercriminals chasing impulse likes and follows for the sake of building up their accounts' social currency?

No, you've misunderstood. Pushing both sides isn't evidence that they aren't literally posting as information warfare. The Kremlin goal is not really any party wins in particular (though they have preferences), but to weaken a country by ensuring it spends more effort on internal struggles.

Both Iran and Russia (as well as many other nations) have known information warfare arms that actively post with the intent of stirring up shit. They really don't try to legitimize those accounts because the don't actually need the con to be hidden, because nobody fucking checks, because microblogging platforms like X are full of people who have self selected to be especially credulous, especially bad at interrogating a source of information for quality, and really really bad at recognizing how many times they have fallen for outright false info.

> Both Iran and Russia (as well as many other nations) have known information warfare arms that actively post with the intent of stirring up shit.

So we have been told. What if these are just repurposed cybercriminals, spammers and fraudsters? To me, it makes perfect sense that fraudsters try to convince their own corrupt authoritarian government, "no, we're spreading chaos and distrust, it's great for our country actually! You should protect us and pay us!" when they don't give a rat's ass whether the "distrust propaganda" is useful or not, they're just pumping their scams.

The thing I'm arguing against is mainly that this thing works and can be stopped with aggressive censorship. I don't think that's true even if Putin and co. totally buy into the "spreading distrust" narrative. It wouldn't be the first time our spooks and their spooks agreed on a bizarre view of the world.

It's all stochastic.

The goal is to get that one lunatic to do something, that sets off the response which drains resources and makes the powers at be less nimble.

We live in a world of subtle war.

> "army trucks are rolling down the Royal Mile"

Apart from anything else, where are they rolling 'down' from? The castle? I mean I know it's technically a castle, but it's not like there are a bunch of troops there just waiting to spring on Holyrood, no?

Parts of Edinburgh Castle are still used by the army - I doubt there are many trucks or squaddies based there though:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edinburgh_Castle#Military_role

Yeah, fair point. I was just not sure if they have enough troops to take the parliament in any meaningful sense (not that this stuff should really be taken seriously).

Of course, if there are pipers involved, then everyone better watch out ...

DATELINE 1PM - ARTILLERY FIRE HEARD OVER EDINBURGH

Aka, the one o'clock gun, which locals ignore entirely as it's every single day but always surprises a tourist: https://www.edinburghcastle.scot/see-and-do/highlights/one-o... . There is actually a small barracks on the site as well, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redford_Barracks ; the city as a whole contains a few more barracks for various units, including a signals unit conveniently located near the main telephone exchange.

Redford Barracks is quite a bit out from the centre of Edinburgh - hardly "on the site"?

.. correct, a good old fashioned non-AI mis-googling error. The castle barracks is the "New Barracks", so called because it was built in 1799, and I saw the blocky stonework construction and went "close enough". Sources are a bit vague on how currently used it is. https://edinburghtourist.co.uk/questions/who-lives-edinburgh...

I see Elon and Trump quoting and citing this level of "reporting" as "facts" all the time.

Sadly, the figure isn't zero - I know a few.

Seems totally risible stuff. On Twitter, I've mostly seen this story shared by British nationalist accounts, presumably because they think it tarnishes the cause of Scottish independence by throwing support for it into question.

Having said that, partisan people on social media are always happy to share stuff that they agree with regardless of the source. Presumably these accounts posted less loopy stuff sometimes and got retweets.

You only need look at Musk’s Twitter and right wing media outlets to hear about the U.K’s no go zones for white people — which do not exist. Accounts professing to be from Scottish people are not trying to influence Scottish people, they’re trying to influence Americans into believing that Scotland has already fallen victim to what the fearmongers say is coming for America.

It's part of their government's "Death to England" vision, which they describe as a "policy". Splitting up the UK is part of it. It's ineffective and bizarre, but this insular theocracy has a long track-record of such decision making.

> Surely the number of Scottish people influenced by accounts making such outlandish claims is exactly zero.

There are always some idiots who believe implausible claims. There are plenty of conspiracy theorists around who believe implausible things.

These are also the most extreme posts so there may be more plausible ones.

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