I always wonder if Russia would collapse, if suddenly a lot of the disinfo & hate on various online media would become noticeably quieter.
That partially already happened at the start of the war. There was a massive “brain drain” among the higher educated part of society, which did include a bunch of hackers. Why live inside russia these days when you can move elsewhere and get paid better?
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Yeah that is so fucking sick.
Signal FTW and long live Snowden!
As I recall there was a period a couple years back where Russia was cut off from the greater internet and a lot of interesting things got quieter, including r/conservative on Reddit.
Probably. They’ve managed use throughput using bots, but if the government collapsed the bit farms would stop receiving funding, and the entire project would either wither away or be wiped away by a new state trying to replace the instruments of the old.
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there’s also iran, I wouldn’t be surprised if north korea and china also have bot farms, and then even in america evangelical christians fund shady hate operations around the world too
its well known china has an enormous online presence set around spreading misinformation, and of course the worlds best ‘whataboutisms’ you are ever likely to see
You can see them all over the lemmy.ml worldnews community talking about how Ukranians dying needlessly isn’t anybody else’s concern and any aid to them will immediately mean nuclear annihilation of the entire world.
we need to give in to every single one of putins demands otherwise you’re in favor of WW3 😠😠😠 /s
They seem to think it’s important based on how much they invest into it
I think it would absolutely make a difference.
Oh man, where would Lemmy be without all the communist
propagandamemes?What does communism have to do with Russia?
Only a tankie can answer that question.
It’s a nonsensical question, there are no communists that regularly get called a tankie who consider Russia communist. The tiny handful of instances of children that do not know better really don’t count.
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Russia has the last laugh since they confiscated 3 copies of The Sims 3.
Lemmygrad just lost half of its users.
I still can’t believe that happened
Context? Lol
recollecting from memory: Early in the war, russian news reported they busted a nazi hideout in the occupied donbass region. The report was accompanied by a picture of swastika flags, nazi tshirts, 3 copies of the “Sims 3” game and a document signed with “Illegible”. All layed out neatly on a bed.
Apparently, the instructions for staging the photo was to include Nazi paraphenalia, 3 SIM Cards and a document with an illegible signature. And someone didn’t read the instructions properly (or took them too literal), and instead used 3 copies of Sims 3, as well as a document signed with the name “illegible”
Iirc the illegible signature part was debunked as it was a reference to some nazi group whose signature was “illegible” (don’t quote me on that, i’m recollecting from memory). But the Sims 3 cards was at some NotTheOnion levels of ridiculousness.
Like putting “null” as your license plate except Humana are reading this, not computers. Clever but not effective.
that is one of the more hilarious things ive heard out of this whole conflict of russia continually embarressing itself
https://www.vice.com/en/article/88gpmg/russia-sims-3
It almost makes less sense WITH context.
Before anyone asks, yes, russia really is that dumb.
“We’re lucky they’re so stupid”
They wouldn’t have started this war if they weren’t this stupid.
Before anyone asks, yes, russia really is that dumb.
In the US, we have absolutely zero room to talk shit about other countries’ leaders doing stupid shit. We sat through 4 years of Trump.
Russia has had Putin for 23 years.
Nah we can call Trump a stupid shit along with Putin.
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And Trump is running again in 2024 lmao
Dude’s more impossible to shake than a bad habit.
Ukraine will never recover from that crushing blow. Without The Sims 3, those 3 soldiers will surely turn against Zelensky.
That was beautiful.
Daily comment to say fuck Russia
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If you had left out “gorgeous Russian girls” you would probably have significantly fewer downvotes. I generally agree it’s not the people’s fault their nation is a dictatorship, but I think generally when people say fuck Russia they mean fuck the Russian state, not the geographical area nor the people that happened to be born there.
Russian girls part was the best for it shows how unhinged they are if they aren’t a troll.
I happened to be born there, and I’ve seen a discussion about who’s to blame for so long it’s nausiating.
Idk what foreigners mean by that, probs they just react to the news and socialize by saying that without a second thought most of the time.
But the sad truth is regular people were purposefully fucked in the head for two decades (after just ten years of promising chaos). That’s not easy to undo. They won’t magically wake up after wishing another drone strike on Kiyv, they don’t believe they deserve political power or freedom, all they talk is how they are wronged by the world and how they get their sweet revenge.
If they weren’t so submissive it couldn’t have happened. It’s a learnt serf mentality. And they are complicit in that tragedy as well. Not as much, but it sure feels like there we see the whole country acting as a one, not a handful of leaders doing that against their will. And others like me not having means or courage to speak up. I’ve been already disowned by some friendgroups, thankfully without telling on me.
The whole thing about carving out ‘the good russians’ is done by people who didn’t (or couldn’t) do anything before it’s too late, to feel better and to bear with it. It’s its’ own subculture. And I really doubt this distinction means much in the big picture. Unvocal minority not even hitting the margin of error, and not deserving support like those who actually fucking die. A community without it’s place.
And I’m really surprised I see this group named in english language.
edit: Originally there were three or four paragraphs. I sent it too early.
Culture, movements, propaganda, all odd and complex things. Seeing how things have changed in the last 30+ years in the US (since that’s what I know) and especially the last 10, and how that all came about, gives me a very different perspective about the directions various countries take and how the populous is led there gradually.
I’ve been to Moscow briefly. I know the people there are just people like anywhere. But their reality, like mine, is shaped by information available, the culture, the history.
Rise of right wing craziness to mainstream in USA via right wing media has been a targeted project for the last 40+ years following Watergate. Only now do we see those plans come to fruition in the form of judicial takeover and extreme divisiveness among the populace. As educational institutions continue to be eroded, underfunded, demonized, and subverted there will come a time when the majority of the population gladly accepts its strong man and relinquishes the rest of its freedoms with a smile.
Agreed, wholeheartedly.
It’s also a fun bit that our special services and oligarchs has a lot of handshaking with your politicians and having same talking points. Both have their own goals in that, but they do cooperate to secure their standing and wealth.
It’s kinda weak to ask your people to not help my own propaganda, but seeing Rogan and Carlson shortly translated into russian and spreading it as the opinion at the very heart of the US of A, while Biden is joked at every single time he trips over something causes me headaches.
If there weren’t these fucks capitalizing on anything, the media hold could’ve been less strong… But at this point we collectively smell our own farts anyway. So it’s more of a wish for you to become better as I lose any hope we’d ever come to what the majority of the world thinks is bad.
And I don’t want another country to come onto that level of a shitshow. We have enough of them rn.
Are there no longer gorgeous girls in Russia? Where did they go?
They have returned to nature and now run in wild packs on the Kazakh steppes.
Nice.
especially: gorgeous Russian girls
Bruh
I agree that there’s nothing wrong with being any ethnicity (although that’s a creepy way to say it), however the Russian public does have extremely high support for Putin’s actions: https://www.statista.com/statistics/896181/putin-approval-rating-russia/
Notice the huge jump in approval when he invaded Ukraine. Only FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and the Bushes have ever gotten that high of approval in the US.
And Americans voted Trump.
I’m not trying to whataboutism here, my point is that even an actual democracy people are fooled by the (political)elite. We can’t blame the Russian people for living in a dictatorship and for (foolishly) trusting / listening to their media, I think. Still open to be convinced otherwise.
There’s some amount of nuance to both I think. For America, Trump actually had less popular support for both elections he ran in. For Biden v Trump, he not only lost the electoral college but also got something like 10 million fewer votes, which is a blowout result for an election in a 2-party nation. For Hillary v Trump, he lost by a few million but was more strategic with the states he appealed to, winning several Rust Belt states by fairly thin margins. For Russia, polling works a bit differently in a dictatorship vs. a democracy. In a democracy, even if everyone hates the current leader the idea that people can vote them out often brings contentment, so a democracy can chug along with low approval. In a dictatorship, the dictator can’t be voted out and will often use fear to gain support, so they tend to poll highly because the people doing well love them and the people doing poorly are too afraid to say their feelings on the matter on government record. However, this means that if polling falls low that there are either fairly few people doing well or they no longer attribute their well-being to the state and that the people doing poorly are either bold or desperate enough to push through fear. This is extremely bad news for a dictator and may signal an impending change in leadership. With all that in mind, stable dictators like Kim Jun Un and President Xi Jinping poll very highly even during times of hardship, and Putin’s poll numbers falling to levels that would seem fine in a democratic nation could be dire news for his state.
Is it sarcasm?
I don’t think so.
It kinda is.
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As you imply, it’s possible for someone to come into power by winning elections, and then become a dictator by breaking the democratic process, ending free & fair elections, criminalizing opposition parties, destroying independent judiciary so that dictatorial actions cannot be reviewed in court, etc.
There are plenty of examples of this in today’s international fascist movement.
Musk just lost 150K sycophants.
Same for Zuck
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Well you can see it like 150 gallons of gas on fire putting a dent in the Amazon forest.
Those troll farms are quite efficient it seems.
Hopefully the conservative channels get quite a bit.
How does this have negative three comments??
Looks like a bug! For me, from lemmy.world’s web interface, it is -1 as of this posting.
As the saying goes, there are two fundamentally difficult things about programming:
- cache coherence
- coming up with good names for things
- off-by-one errors
Negative comment counts are likely caused by the latter.
It’s something glitchy that happens when people delete comments. I know Voyager recently pushed a fix, I’m not sure about Liftoff (If I’m recognizing the UI in your screenshot correctly).
If a user deletes a comment it subtracts from the count, seems to go to negative numbers sometimes, maybe when it’s removed it subtracts two on certain circumstances
be interesting to see how much the usership of lemmygrad drops lol
(and the rest of lemmy)
Nah, lemmy is too small of a circlejerk to really be a target for these people. I don’t think instances require working phone numbers for account creation anyway.
bruh, if its small the troll farms have no problem outmassing real ppl
Yeah but if there aren’t enough eyeballs on the spam it doesn’t actually matter.
Have you seen Hexbear? It’s all just Russian/Chinese propaganda. If the trolls aren’t posting there, the users are getting their information from the trolls and then reposting it.
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What do they do with these SIM cards?
From what I gather here in the comments, they use the sim cards to make the bots look like they’re actually posting from where the farm is located, since using a VPN would not be sufficient to hide their tracks.
I’d be interested in seeing exactly what messages this farm was putting out. Lists of accounts and what networks they primarily operated on would also be very interesting.
I saw on yahoo about pringles being in Belarus a comment about how Pringles was killing “Nazzis” in Ukraine. Makes we wonder if that shit was from Russia
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Everyone is well aware of the Azov brigade. They are at most, 2200 soldiers, and do not represent Ukraine on the whole.
and do not represent Ukraine on the whole.
74% of Ukrainians view the leader of the WW2 Ukrainian fascists (the OUN) Stepan Bandera favourably. And 81% view the OUN positively.
• The support for the recognition of the OUN-UPA as the participants of the struggle for the national independence of Ukraine has significantly increased: 81% support it, and only 10% are against. This support has increased 4 times since 2010, and doubled since 2015.
• Bohdan Khmelnytsky and Mykhailo Hrushevsky are Ukrainian historical figures who are unequivocally positively perceived by Ukrainian society (by more than 90% of the respondents). Over the recent years, there has been a positive trend in the attitude towards Ukrainian historical figures, around which heated debates were going on in Ukrainian society decades ago. In particular, the attitudes that gradually improved are the ones towards Ivan Mazepa (44% in 2012 and 76% in 2022), Simon Petliura (26% in 2012 and 49% in 2022) and Stepan Bandera (22% in 2012 and 74% in 2022). It is important that the positive attitude towards the ideologue of Ukrainian nationalism prevails today in the south-eastern regions of Ukraine, and among those who speak only Russian in everyday life.
Source: One of the largest Ukrainian polling institutes
The OUN carried out pogroms, mass executions of jews and were regarded by even the nazi SS as disgustingly brutal.
https://www.dw.com/en/stepan-bandera-ukrainian-hero-or-nazi-collaborator/a-61842720
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There are many pictures of non-Azov combatants with Nazi symbols.
But at least you acknowledge Azov are nazis, that’s a step up from the rest.
They are at most, 2200 soldiers
It’s weird how they’re on every front of ukraine, in front of the cameras everywhere, and also in western ukraine simultaneously. Amazing how so few people can be everywhere at once and always in front of the cameras instead of literally anyone that isn’t a nazi.
Who did they invade?
This man actively defends nazism in his profile.
LOL, I mean you have Stalin in your profile picture.
The following countries were invaded by Nazis:
Austria Belgium Czechoslovakia (modern Czech Republic and Slovakia) Denmark Estonia France Greece Guernsey (U.K. Channel Island) Hungary Italy Jersey (U.K. Channel Island) Latvia Lithuania Luxembourg Monaco Netherlands Norway Poland Russia (partial occupation) San Marino Ukraine Yugoslavia (modern Albania, Croatia, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia)Okay, which ones of them were members of the Azov Battallion? Because this is about them.
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Pretty sure they aren’t, or Azov would be the ones doing the invading. You seem to not care that a sovereign country was invaded by a larger force.
You’re discussing with someone that is part of the botnet mentioned in the article. Just look at their history. Just report as off-topic and move on. No point talking to propaganda mouthpiece.
Dude is a fucking moron. The more we all report his comments and block him, the better Lemmy will be.
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Do you think Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was justified because of Azov? Does that justify all the civilians being killed? Are they all complicit? Is the only way to solve the problem annexing the country to Russia? Is the fact that Russia also has Neo Nazis in their ranks not relevant?
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Give me 1 article showing Zelensky was making progress on a nazi purge before the war.
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Oh? Already gave up on your previous insinuations? Geez.
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You think swearing in another language will save you from a ban?
EDIT: Thanks moderation for the excellent work curbing the folks incapable of civil discussion.
Do not thank me, please review this https://www.factcheck.org/2022/03/the-facts-on-de-nazifying-ukraine/ the picture you provided was disingenuous.
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Maybe it wasn’t a big problem? Every country has Nazis, and ironically Moscovies are known from having the largest percentage.
Azov is clearing their dark past. It’s not fully Nazi anymore. Ukraine needs to clear remaining Nazi symbols within the government to improve the international image. The real enemy of Russians is the Kremlin, not Ukraine.
