Yes Russia did have some accounts and bought ads on US social media some years ago, but analysis showed it had marginal effect. They are outsiders on US run social media platforms. The real power is in the hands of those running the social media platforms that can suppress or send viral what they want with a few adjustments. That certainly happened and continues still now aided by AI.
There were several, but the Hamilton 68 hoax is one where censors claimed many accounts were Russian bots but were actually mostly American. Twitter found a relatively small amount of the identified accounts to be actually tied to Russia. https://search.brave.com/search?q=hamilton+68+hoax
Many people probably only remember all the news from MSM about the Russian bots but never saw this reveal that it was a hoax as it was not reported much in the MSM.
Oh thank you for the sweet compliment. However, I am probably older than you and have studied psychological operations and cognitive warfare for many years. I am not sure of what point you are trying to make about Russia by sending a US state media article about China.
Idc how old you are or what you studied if you can’t make a point with evidence. You can’t even read well since the title and article clearly mention it includes Russian influence operations.
“ Russian anti-Ukraine network spoofed Washington Post and Fox News
Separately, Meta said on Tuesday that it was continuing to take down fake accounts and ban fraudulent websites connected to a Russian influence operation aimed at eroding support for Ukraine.”
My point is obvious; that you think Russian influence operations were some one-off from years ago is a naive uneducated farce. They are over a decade long and continuous, somehow missed by all your age and studying.
I generally do not engage with people who call me a child nor spend much time on state propaganda designed to garner support for more censorship and war with other countries, but I will point out some glaring flaws in this narrative.
Try to create a fake Facebook account. If it is not shutdown in a day or two, try to gain a significant following. Then try posting information favorable to Russia or China and test how many people actually receive it through the Facebook filters. Now try scaling this by creating many fake accounts. I can tell you with high certainty, that you and even a small army of people will not be able to reach many people or have much persuasion influence.
The second problem here is attribution. The claim is that these were Russian or Chinese accounts. Any of us savy with the internet know how easy it is to proxy our traffic through foreign IP addresses and leave the right fingerprints. If Russian or Chinese state actors created these accounts, you would have no way of knowing who or where they are.
As we saw in the Hamilton 68 hoax, the accounts that were banned were mostly Americans with dissident views rather than Russians.
Sweet summer child is a term for naivety. -1 for your understanding of the world around you. Almost no one in US and Japanese state departments want war. They would be very pleased with Russia and China not invading their neighbors for conquest though, as would most decent people. If you never defend yourself against conquest you don’t have a state.
Then your pass at manually creating a Facebook account as an hour long side job presenting as evidence completely sidesteps the fact that it’s not remotely the equivalent of Russian state level resources, nor is it even remotely close to just Facebook properties with their levels of inauthenticity countering. Cue X, 4chan, French politicians, YouTube, indy sites like ZeroHedge, etc.
Then your ridiculous handwave of “fake” typical of uneducated retorts to experts whose entire job and training is analyzing, determining, and reporting these issues. Ya, I remember these asinine arguments well when people like you were on HN deriding the Guccifer 2.0 DNC hack as having no evidence it was the Russian state. No surprise how that turned out. They were wrong, Guccifer 2.0 was Russia duh.
There is much more to these stories than you seem to know. It somewhat evidences the effectiveness of propaganda and censorship in this country. Wikipedia is written by the CIA. NPR and Japantimes are state affiliated media that weave narratives to their interest. If more Americans were allowed to hear the Russian perspective of the story, Ukraine would not be quite such a disaster today. I suggest widening your information sources to include independent media and foreign (non NATO) media sources. We should aspire to truth by looking at issues from many angles.
