The German foreign ministry, which commissioned the study after suspecting it was being targeted by bots, said the findings highlighted the need for governments to systematically tackle the growing number of disinformation campaigns and recognise the effect they could have on elections.
Democratic countries are so far behind in this kind of asymmetrical information war. The Kremlin and now also CCP have been blasting propaganda and bad information on social media for years, and democracies are still flat footed.
How is that supposed to look?
How do you differentiate legit free speech, from concerted propaganda efforts? Especially as information is very volatile nowadays. How do you mark false information, without creating systems abused to opress investigative exposures and whistle blowers?
Russia and China dont need to protect free speech, press and information.
Social Networks have more meta information than you see on their frontend. It would be possible for them to find those networks based on who they follow, retweet, like and engage with. Or maybe check if they only write in German, but only post during business hours in St. Petersburg …
St. Petersburg is just two hours earlier in winter and one hour earlier in sommer bc. of summer time.
It is very difficult to acertain a single user to be a “bot” either as a true machine program or as a paid troll. By those metrics you can observe larger efforts. E.g. is the spread of time windows of certain accounts, which write for a specific point and argument significantly different from the overall users that engage with this kind of topic?
Is there a specific pattern how many accounts interact with specific topics, e.g. are they always “first on the scene”?
But for an individual account it is quite difficult to identify. Could be that it is just one person getting up early. Could be that this person loves to tweet over his morning coffee.
I can highly recommend this presentation on The Rise and Fall of “Social Bot” research where the presentator concluded most metrics to be used in research until then to be arbitrary and giving many examples of real users that were considered as bots by those poor metrics. It is from the end of 2021, so i assume the research has improved in the past 2 years.
The key takeway remains though. There is no simple way to identify individual accounts as “bots”.
That’s kind of a thing that only pro-propaganda people say.
It’s pretty blatant, propaganda focuses on emotional appeal and not factual information. Usually several forms of intellectual dishonesty are part of it as well.
Any side by side comparison of propaganda material and legitimate sincere discourse makes this plain.
To summarize beforehand. I think you are underestimating propaganda as a whole and you are significantly underestimating the propaganda capeabilities of western countries. This could also be seen as the success of western propaganda as opposed to russian or chinese propaganda.
I have the feeling that you believe propaganda is plain to discern and subvertive efforts, which are common by all sorts of actors in liberal democracies too, are easy to identify.
But this is not the case. The emotional manipulation can be very subtile. Media outlets that are considered highly reputeable are also engaging, sometimes knowingly, sometimes unknowningly in larger propaganda efforts.
I highly recommend you to read manufacturing consent, for an in depth analysis how government propaganda has been an integral part of western democracies. It certainly is not lacking behind Russia or China. If you think these kind of actions were in the past, have a read about the framing of Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, when they made information about US war crimes and surveillance public.
There is numerous historical examples, where the US successfully used propaganda in other countries as an offensive mean, to help people lose or gain power. And those that were couped into power more often than not were no democrats. There is no reason as to why similiar offensive use of Propaganda by western countries wouldn’t occur in other countries today too.
What you, me and everyone else considers factual information and intellectually honest information is mostly created in reference to our personal believes, about how the world or certain issues are. To take an example: You see a media report about an US politician being accused of corruption. Neither you, me or enyone else has access to, and can verify the informations on which the accusation is made. I bet with you, that your subconcious or even your concious will evaluate the same article as more or less plausible depending on whether the accused politician is a Republican or a Democrat and which of the parties you are more or less aligned with.
One honest question I have is how effective such a campaign really is. Sometimes I feel like Russian disinformation is used as an excuse when public opinion is genuinely shifting away from the government line.
You saw this as well during the BLM protests in the US, where some liberals accused Russia of instigating the riots.
I live in Germany and I know multiple people that think the best thing to do right now is just accept the losses, get a peace deal, and stop the violence. And I don’t think they are on X.
Just to clarify I’m not saying Russia isn’t trying or that no measures should be taken to limit obviously foreign propaganda, I’m just wondering if it really has that much of an effect.
I know multiple people that think the best thing to do right now is just accept the losses, get a peace deal, and stop the violence.
The problem with this idea is Russia’s track record of broken deals (like accepting Ukraine’s territorial integrity, then invading) and aggressive ambitions (greetings to our Baltic allies). Chances are the last two points are nothing but false hopes and all that remains is “accept the losses”, while Russia prepares to invade the next neighbor. All the good points are also the untrustworthy points. We kind of tried this idea when they took Crimea, and see where it got us.
Russia is an independent actor on the world stage, with a huge military, a huge nuclear arsenal, and a huge economy (ppp). We have to find a way to live peacefully with them because the alternative is a nuclear holocaust.
Russia started a war of aggression, which is THE primary war crime, and should not go unpunished. So relations can probably not be normalized until the current leadership is replaced (which granted might take a while), but a cease fire at least stops the killing.
I live in Germany and I know multiple people that think the best thing to do right now is just accept the losses, get a peace deal, and stop the violence.
You also should ask them what to do when Russia will try the trick again somewhere else…
Or better, ask them what part of Germany they are ready to drop off to some other state…
Russia was very explicit in what would happen if the west kept promising NATO membership to Ukraine, and then it did as promised. No such situation exists for any current NATO or EU member state.
To add to this Russia and Ukraine were already de facto at war since 2014, promising a military alliance to a country at war without expecting escalation is just plain stupid.
And just to reiterate, starting a war of aggression is the principal war crime and should not go without consequences. But we do need to live together with Russia on one continent and this requires concessions from both sides, because the alternative is the mass death and destruction that we now see in Ukraine.
Russia was very explicit in what would happen if the west kept promising NATO membership to Ukraine, and then it did as promised. No such situation exists for any current NATO or EU member state.
Also the Budapest Memorandum (1994) was very explicit. But it seems that the fact that Russia infringed it is not really important to you.
To add to this Russia and Ukraine were already de facto at war since 2014, promising a military alliance to a country at war without expecting escalation is just plain stupid.
Like not respecting a signed agreement. But some sort of military alliance was already set 20 years earlier with the Budapest Memorandum, so no, USA and Uk just stick to the agreement they signed.
And NATO arguarbly has problems with someone attacking a neighbour after signing a treaty which ensures protection and acknowledges its sovereignty.
And just to reiterate, starting a war of aggression is the principal war crime and should not go without consequences. But we do need to live together with Russia on one continent and this requires concessions from both sides, because the alternative is the mass death and destruction that we now see in Ukraine.
So, only Ukraine should do some concessions ? What concessions should be made by Russia, in your opinion ? Just stop a war they started ? And learn the lesson that EU/NATO just give up just because we need to live together in the name of peaceful living ?
But let me ask something: if we concede for the “peaceful living”, aside to become the last ally someone want, what would stop Russia (or anyone else for that matter) to try to pull the same trick 5 years from now ? Putin attacked Ukraine again because we make clear to him that he can do whatever he want without the fear of any consequences. I don’t think this is a particularly intelligent thing to do.
And again, which part of your country are you prepared to concede to some attacking actor just for the peaceful living you seems to care so much about ?
So you know 3 nutjobs that believe the propaganda, good job mate. They may not be on Xitter, but I bet you they are on Telegram, where the worst of Xitter’s content is aggregated.
Russia is destabilizing the west by influencing people like you, which creates a divide. Ever heard of the term “divide and conquer”? It’s a pretty serious thing.
S, where some liberals accused Russia of instigating the riots.
Literally no one said this…
All I’m seeing in this article is that ruskie trollfarms cranked out both pro and con propaganda, just like they do for literally everything. It is legit actually part of FSB standard practice LONG before they tried to meme. Just look at how their own government news does it constantly.
But I don’t see any parts where it says liberals accused russia of starting the riots.
I see a lot of info about studies that showed that those groups did output a ridiculous amount of memes intending to rile up folks, but I don’t see evidence of liberals blaming the riots on russia.
It’s funny, you’re using russian troll farm techniques and now I’m going to spend a few minutes going over your post history.
I don’t understand this weariness you describe. We aren’t even at war, we are comfortably sitting back letting Ukraine do the fighting. All we have to do is throw some money and equipment their way and they essentially fight for our geopolitical interests by proxy.
What’s more, who the fuck are we to tell them to settle and be done with the war, when clearly Russia doesn’t respect any status quo or existing border. Imagine the outrage if it was us at war with, say, France over northrhine-westphalia and everyone was urging us to just concede that territory for the sake of peace.
We should throw billions at Ukraine and place whole orders with our MIC for them, and afterwards still say thank you very much. Because they die we don’t have to.
It’s amazing anyone still uses that platform…
