> The Kremlin instruction resulted in thousands of social media posts and hundreds of fabricated articles, created by troll farms and circulated in Ukraine and across Europe
I mean, would you prefer this not be reported simply because you aren't personally surprised? Where does that logic end? The German invasion of France in 1940 was hardly a surprise either.
No, that wasn't my intent at all. I was only pointing out that this is not surprising because this is how Putin has always played the information warfare game. It's definitely good to report on it.
not at all. They must have people and a budget, they are going to do their job. The result was very close. It would have been cheap and take little effort. They must have people to estimate the obvious.
By what weird mechanism would people imagine all of them could not do the job they are hired for with their superiors being fine with it?
I'm more surprised that it is the top comment. I may be misreading, but I'm not quite sure how your comment is promoting discussion.
One of the things I find surprising about propaganda is that so many people think they are immune to it but do not ask why it is so effective. I think the obvious bad propaganda is propaganda to make you feel like you are good at recognizing it while enabling more subtle propaganda to sneak in the back door.
That's because they are obligated to express surprise or disbelief, not because they are actually surprised or skeptical. If you tell a US government worker about the contents of the Manning leaks, they will also express surprise and disbelief.
It's possible to care about your own tribe (if you didn't, it wouldn't be your tribe, would it?), denounce things other tribes do, and also denounce things your own tribe does.
I mostly see men who care about someone else's truth and justice, while having this huge leeway for things happening in their own backyard, which they objectively cannot affect.
It is not surprising when you don't assume that HN has not become a target of the intelligence agencies running mentioned campaign. Considering the potential of the crowd here it is actually rather unsurprising.
I wonder how the troll farms are doing without Prigozhin. Perhaps he was just a Kremlin paycheck collector for various dirty businesses to supply Putin with goods and services.
Troll farms are flourishing on Youtube. Especially this week when lots of bad news from Avdiivka started coming. Most of comments by @user-... are from trolls. They will share similar amounts of likes too.
He seemed like a sort of effective director but he was already knee deep in Ukraine with his mercenaries to not be involved in that anymore before his demise
His vlog-like videos made it appear that way, but it's hard to say what the dude did or didn't do when the cameras weren't rolling. He did come a long way from being a restauranteur. Unfortunately, he exceeded his station and received a customary Putin retirement {{Buk missile, Polonium, Novichok, starvation in Siberia on false charges}}. He violated the prime directive of the oligarchs' social contract: Never challenge emperor Putin's fame, ego, policies, or profits if you wish to have a long life inside or outside Mother Russia.
The absense of such campaign would mean that Kremlin has so low esteem of Zelensky that they think any replacement would be to their detriment. And this is even after taking the collateral damage to the Ukrainian image as a whole into account.
In an ideal world Russia could admit defeat and go home.
More realistically it looks like a bit of a stalemate and they may have a N Korea like ceasefire. Or Trump will get in, give the occupied lands to Russia and a similar cease fire.
US estimates of Ukrainian deaths so far are ~80k, or 0.2% of the population so we are a long way off the last Ukrainian.
I'm reminded a bit of the fighting between Britain and the IRA. For a long time the IRA said we want this and that and killed people and it didn't achieve much as the Brits said we won't give into terrorism. Then the IRA switched tack and blew out the windows in London's financial district which didn't kill people but was massively expensive and led on to the peace process. It's probably easier to figure a deal when it's about money rather than killing each other.
Since bullshit is so cheap, why wouldn't everybody run a campaign to undermine everybody else they don't like at the same time? State actors sure have money to do this.
They are, and have been doing to some degree or other for thousands of years. It really picked up in the late 19th century (e.g. Franco-Prussian war actually started due to shrewd deployment by Prussia of information warfare)
When I was a teen I read that there used to be an anti-witchcraft campaign group in the UK. Apparently, if witchcraft was ever shown non-negatively on the BBC, they would call to complain, multiple times each in order to make it seem like their outrage was representative of a much wider audience.
Mary Whitehouse was famous for intensive campaigning against social liberalism in general and sex in particular.
I've seen enough examples that a long time I just assumed there were in fact no actually harmful groups out there, just people voicing their own phobias.
It is a war. In which war doesn't one party run disinformation campaigns to undermine the other party? I don't know what kind of disinformation the Ukrainian government spreads against Putin, it is obvious there is too. It is just the nature of warfare.
If you look at WW2 for instance, the information warfare is just as interesting as the actual combat, if not more so.
What's most surprising to me is the comments. They seem to be replying to the title and not the content of the article. I think no one is surprised that Russia is running a disinformation campaign. But this is like how people show you clips of politicians asking stupid questions that are actually just questions so that the information is on the record. What do you want, the Washington Post to __not__ report on the disinformation campaign? Should it better be titled "Kremlin's disinformation campaign to undermine Zelensky?" Or "Document reveals how the Kremlin is undermining Zelensky through disinformation?" I suspect we'd get similar comments.
The perverse nature of disinformation and propaganda is that so many think they are immune to it and it is easily recognizable. But if you really think this, this is a mark of the success of propaganda, because you have let your guard down. Just think from a likelihood perspective, and how much your model fits reality. If propaganda was easy to identify then there's two outcomes: you can't explain why it is so effective (your model is broken) or you are particularly unique and special because propaganda is effective but just not on you (i.e. everyone else is dumb, I'm smart). This is the tool at play. We like to feel smart. So sample from people you know, do you think you're sufficiently smarter than enough of them? Are you in a bubble? Or what?
The obvious propaganda helps the more subtle propaganda in. It's like how I trained my cat to be terrible at hiding. I just pretend I don't see her when she's in an obvious place and I make it well known and trick her into thinking I wasn't looking for her when she actually is in a good hiding place. It's about the information imbalance and knowing how the other side will interpret the information.
At best, if you're just another comment patting yourself on the back, all you've done is create more noise. Which enables propaganda. At worst, you're helping train yourself and others to be like my cat.
The documents (PDFs linked inline in the article) are insightful. I haven't checked the metadata and my PDF viewer reports correctable encoding errors, but the contents look legit: language/jargon gives no reason to suggest these are fake.
When cats are scared they hide. In an actual emergency I need to be able to grab my cat. This isn't so great if my cat hides by tucking herself behind the washing machine. If she instead thinks hiding under the table is a legitimate hiding spot I can quickly grab her when it is actually needed.
Training is simple. Be good at finding cats. When cat is in good hiding place, always make it known that you know and if they go to a place that is annoying to get to, extract them. Make the process annoying or uncomfortable (not harmful) so they have a bad association with it. But we also need positive reinforcement. When an easy to extract spot is used, pretend you can't find them. Make an excuse to call them. Make a big display. Walk around the house, calling them. Walk right past where they are and even get close. Cats naturally play hide and seek as a game, so we're just doing this.
Basically you are inverting the reward function on the hide and seek game.
No, he's not a fluffy, but the tragedy is that for his first two terms he really tried to become friends with the West. He was called a traitor in Russia when allowed NATO to use our military airports to supply war in Afghanistan.
It really needs to be. Russia isn't close to the diplomatic/economic reach of the US, and has to develop other means of influence. The same idea applies to most instances of asymmetrical conflict.
There is no nuance - russia attacked Ukraine without any provocation murdering hundreds of thousands there. What kind of f#$@ng nuance can there be?
Also USA, UK and Russia committed to protect Ukraine's souvernity in exchange for Ukraine giving up third largest nuclear arsenal in the world. Ukraine is simply asking for what was promised in exchange for what was already delivered (nuclear disarment) by Ukraine.
I just love how some believe the views of genocidal dictators should be worthy of the same consideration as others. There's no fucking nuance when you've got an invading force indiscriminately butchering civilians, kidnapping children and raping women.
Huh? The exact headline was "Bernie Sanders briefed by U.S. officials that Russia is trying to help his presidential campaign" No evidence of Russian interference was ever provided.
> Sadly, this mind-set resonates well in a post-Iraq and post-financial-crisis West increasingly skeptical about its own institutions, where reality-based discourse has already fractured into political partisanship. Conspiracy theories are prevalent on cable networks and radio shows in the United States and among supporters of far-right parties in Europe.
What ruthless thing has Putin personally done? Are you at all familiar with his alternatives in Russia?! He is the most West-compatible Russian leader with real chances to lead. Navalny never stood any chance!
All politicians in Russia are corrupt. They are involved with the mafia. Many people may want politicians dead - not just Putin! Putin doesn't benefit from this at all. These were not threats to his rule anyway!
I don't particularly like the fact that whenever Russia or China is discussed, you can count on some accounts trying to detract the discussion into the usual "But Murica... (The West, NATO, Israel...) " threads.
You may not like it, but when discussing these big geopolitical issues, ignoring and silencing the justifications and counterarguments of others is dangerously narrowminded. How can real solutions or constructive discussions be had when only one viewpoint is allowed and even proven facts are verboten if they seem to support an "enemy" statement? How will self-censorship and denial make us better than those we dislike? If we really want to be better than others, we should attempt to live up to our ideals, not hypocritically hide our shortcomings.
Of course you are right, the problem is, these people are not interested in actual discussion and exchanging arguments, only detracting the discussion. For example, when Putin killed Navalny, they try to dig up all possible dirt on Navalny. The point is not to have an actual discussion (which in this case wouldn't matter that much tbh as they guy is dead anyway so his view on immigration don't seem that important anyway) but to paint him in a bad light.
Same with Ukraine: they push the view that "The USA is doing the same so it is fine" which is broken on both points (the USA is not doing the same and it is not fine even if they did).
And why did that happen? Nothing to do with the western-backed color revolutions or burning people alive? I'm not pro Russia, sillies. I'm noticing the erosion of US standing in the world.
You mean countries can't have revolutions unless they are approved by Russia? Which types of revolutions by which backers would be acceptable to Russia so they don't burn the country down?
This is an absurd argument. Whether or not a CIA puppet government is installed in a neighboring country, and the Russian language is banned or whatever Russia feels is "provoking": that kind of provocation isn't handled by tanks rolling across the borders of sovereign nations. Russia isn't where Russian is spoken, it's where the 1991 borders are.
> Nothing to do with the western-backed color revolutions or burning people alive
Again, who cares? Are you saying Russia was "provoked"? By Ukraine? To the point where millions must be displaced and hundreds of thousands killed?
No one cares whether anything "provokes" Russia in Russia's view. There are borders, those borders are between Russia and Sovereign nations. There is nothing that could go on in the area that could even begin to motivate rolling tanks across borders. Nothing.
> Russia isn't where Russian is spoken, it's where the 1991 borders are.
There are ethnic Russians who lost family in the Euromaidan incident who may disagree with that. They also didn't appreciate having a Georgian installed by the west. But what do they know? Clearly you and Victoria Nuland know better!
> Again, who cares? Are you saying Russia was "provoked"? By Ukraine?
The fighting went on after the western-backed color revolutions, with many Russians dying inside of that 1991 Russian border. So provoked by Ukraine? Not exactly. More poignantly, Russia was provoked by PNAC heavyweights like Nuland. If you don't know about this I don't think anyone is going to take you seriously, whether you support that Bush/Wolfowitz doctrine or not. Clearly you do, whether you know it or not. That is yes, by definition, antagonistic toward Russia, regardless of what Russian speaking Russians on whatever side of the border want.
Very, very interesting to see all these random accounts immediately showing up in mass to defend the Kremlin. Especially on a post like this, where it is not some outlandish accusation. Those countries are coming up on a third year of a full scale war, it'd be more surprising if they didn't have a disinformation campaign to discredit each other.
Having observed them over a decade or so, I came to the conclusion that they don't need to be subtle because to be successful they just need to spread messages (photos, clips, etc.) that are in line with your view. For example, during BLM riots, they were inciting emotions on both sides of the conflict.
Subtlety was never their asset because once we get to the bottom of things, they have no real argument. For example, Putin pushes the narrative that Hungarians living in Ukraine would be happy if their land was Hungarian. But if you really ask these Hungarians if they choose a war over their land in order for this to happen, they would call you a madman. There is nothing to discuss and Putin knows it, and also these trolls know it, so they need to resource to not-so subtle arguments.
It seems to work better when it’s not subtle. You’ll get all the *chan bois relaying your disinformation for the lulz. YouTube and podcaster hucksters trying to make a name for themselves to get a payday from some weird billionaire’s self-funded media machine. In the end you’ll get some local politicians on-board and maybe a US Senator or two.
Russia lost the cultural/ideological war in Ukraine, that doesn't give them the right to right to invade a soverign country and kill people. Ukraine asked for help and got it.
You're the kind of person who would be skeptical of the war machine against Nazi Germany in 1940. There's a famous photo with person carrying a board with "Why not negotiate with Hitler?". Just like Hitler, Putin is not interested in negotiating with Ukraine, evidenced by his insistence that the western support needs to be pulled before negotiation can start, thus removing any negotiating leverage.
Ultimately what you're implicitly suggesting is to surrender to the aggressor, but that's not going to happen. Even if the West stops support, Kyiv is conquered, there will be guerilla war for years to come.
> Ultimately what you're implicitly suggesting is to surrender to the aggressor, but that's not going to happen. Even if the West stops support, Kyiv is conquered, there will be guerilla war for years to come.
That's what everyone thought at the beginning of this war. Unfortunately, I think the lack of a massive guerilla movement in the occupied territories disproves this theory. Russian brutality and torture is very effective at fighting guerilla movements.
The Russian invasion needs to be beaten back on the field! Please, vote for candidates that support Ukraine.
Who finds this surprising? (don't get me wrong, it's good to see reporting on this)