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.
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
We actually did see this at the start of the war. When Russia was dealing with the new sanction and shifting focus from the west to Ukraine.
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?communist propaganda
It’s like you know that these are words, and they’re words that you’ve seen people put together in the past, but you have no idea what they mean.
Where is anyone talking about communism? Where is the propaganda? What the fuck are you even talking about??
Where is anyone talking about communism?
Lemmygrad.ml, I assume? I dunno if it’s “propaganda,” though, mainly because I haven’t really seen much from that instance. It isn’t defederated or anything; it just apparently isn’t popular enough to show up in Active/Hot/Top.
I see a lot of communism good/capitalism bad meme content in lemmy.ml in general. Now I’m really not against communism and I absolutely see the negative effects of western society’s brand of unregulated late stage capitalism, but political meme content in general is just entirely devoid of all nuance to the point where people are seriously dropping silly statements like “capitalism is the sole contributor to climate change”, as if if you could turn off capitalism climate change would just stop lol. It’s straight up propaganda.
That and conveniently ignoring any negatives involving China/Russia.
There are a few users on Lemmy.ml who I see all over the place. Half their posts will just be funny “lol capitalism sucks, amirite?” memes and the other half will be “Look at how China is ushering the world into a golden age of social and economic progress” or “When will the west acknowledge Ukraine’s Nazi problem?”
They often seem to blame capitalism for the fact we’re not in an impossible utopia.
Agreed, seems like “capitalism” has become analogous with “greed”, which I mean, they sort of go hand in hand, but that doesn’t mean greed doesn’t exist without capitalism.
I think people also conflate social democracy with socialism, and/or communism.
And communism with Stalins dictatorship (and Xi etc etc).
The ideas behind the ideologies are all interesting but only democracy have proven “not horribly killing a large part of the population and a large part of the neighbour population” like all the time
So for me anyways, it’s full democracy, then tack on socialism (for example).
I think the discussion about democracy is also largely non present, I mean how fun is it if other people just decide what they want and you can like object every X Years?
We got democracy 0.1 let’s move forward!
it’s kind of like how USSR/Russia was seen bad because of communism, and now since 1991 they are not communist so they are the good guys.
It is the same freaking country, they just embraced fascism over communism in the last 3 decades.
We’re on different instances, bet our top day looks very different.
Maybe reconsider where you spend your time then? You aren’t locked to a single instance. Also, sub to what you like and change your view to subscription, problem solved.
Is there a way to keep the Lemmy homepage set to my subscriptions rather than the default for the instance? I have to manually change it to the subscribed tab every time I open Lemmy
There are instance profile settings where you can change the default view to subscription you can access through the browser, and on iOS/Android there are Memmy and other lemmy apps that have their own settings as well for your phone where you can also change the settings to whichever default view you want, specific to while using the app on your phone.
There’s an option in your profile settings.
Alternatively, if you like it to be set to your subscriptions and sorted by ‘Hot’ just set those settings up and then create a bookmark and it will always take you back to the page with current content and your selected settings.
Yes, I understand how lemmy works… I meant in these comments specifically. Otherwise the comment was a complete non-sequitor.
Huh? The comment I replied to is about disinfo and hate in online media, Lemmy is online media. I was making a joke about the content I see regularly, and clearly it landed perfectly.
People are confusing pro-china and pro-russia users as “pro-communists” even though they don’t ever mention communism and only comment things that benefit the dictators running these two governments.
look another shithead for the block list
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.
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?
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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
why are these are being set up in Ukraine and not Russia? What do they gain from having them within reach of the Ukrainian police?
My guess is that it’d make it look like it were actual ukrainians spreading the disinfo, as the IP wouldn’t show russian addresses. Could also be that Ukraine is blocking internet traffic from Russia, so being there is a way to bypass the block.
I fully expect the assholes behind said farms to be safely within russian territory, so they’re just sighing and shrugging as having to set up a new base.
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Still, being physically there is weird. Aren’t there reliable ways to fake it?
Depends what you mean by “faking”. You can fake Ukrainian IP by using some VPN service, but then you’re using VPN IP which is quite obvious. If you want many genuinely residential IPs, you could use some botnet and infected computers in Ukraine. This is more authentic and harder to filter out. But some services actually require phone number and at least capability to receive texts to verify the number, some use the number as user account. (Telegram and such) Then you need actual SIM cards (not to be confused with Sims 3, the game 😉) and you need to connect to local cell tower. (perhaps you could do roaming, but that would be quite obvious long term) Now to fake all that, you’d need at least some devices operated in Ukraine and at that stage it’s probably easier to find some people willing to do this locally for money or because they are high on russian propaganda themselves.
Do you need to connect to actual celltowers tho? I know legit SIMs are a kind of a barrier, but then…
Using a portal through KZ to an UA endpoint via VPN\proxy, faking geoloc and other identifying stuff on your device.
For me, it sounds like enough, and a collaborant is only holding an exit node that is easier to defend in court than having all infrastructure at their place.
Well you do if you want to receive the confirmation text. And while you’re at it, you might as well use the same cell tower for data so that you get “residential” IP.
You can definitely fake geolocation and perhaps you could fake IP through some proxy, but you can’t use commercial VPN services as their IPs are well known VPN IP ranges at this stage. (these SIMs might have been used as such proxies for some spamming besides being used for this specific botnet) Effectively the more you want to blend in with the actual Ukrainian end user traffic, the more you need to be present in the country and the more complicated it is to fake it otherwise. Especially if you’re trying to hide from state level investigation, that has access to triangulation from cell towers, providers logs, etc…
It’s just I see one collab having a gateway on their PC for russian-based labs to operare rather than the whole scheme based oin Ukraine.
Cell-tower data would be hepfull to locate the guy, but do web\apps collect it?
You can do the gateway on a PC thing. You don’t even need to have collaborator to do that, plenty of people run outdated systems riddled with malware.
But once you need actual working SIM (Telegram, Watsapp, etc…) you really need that SIM somewhere in Ukraine. And you need plenty of them. (see the pictures in the article, there’s a ton) At minimum to activate the accounts and more realistically for occasional re-verification. (2fa) Sure you can then run actual bots in russia, but that need for physical presence is still there at least occasionally. The article mentions 100 individuals, when you consider that 150k SIMs were there, most of the operation indeed was in russia or somewhere else.
The triangulation is just a way to maybe correlate multiple SIMs in the same spot by Ukrainian officials once they had enough suspected malicious SIMs. (So that they know it’s not just few random persons with malware on their phone, but it’s indeed huge concentration of SIMs in one spot)
it’s so these accounts can believably pose as ukrainian
Couldn’t they set up a VPN / Proxy in Ukraine and have the actual bot farm run from within Russia.
If they did that it would be pretty easy to spot for anyone looking, all the bot accounts would be connecting through the same IP address(es). For it to be believable, you would need thousands of Ukrainian IP addresses, owned by Ukrainian internet providers. What Russia did is an effective way to achieve this. With thousands of sim cards on multiple Ukrainian mobile networks, the traffic is very hard to distinguish from real Ukrainian internet traffic. Of course the downside is that all the devices with those sim cards have to be in Ukraine for it to work. It’s also possible that at least some of these devices were essentially just acting as VPNs for more devices in Russia.
Better infrastructure and access to tech would be my guess
Sim farms can be found in most countries. Granted this is a big one.
Russia would be a less than ideal choice for criminals right now due to the sanctions affecting routes and prices between Russia and Europe.
That’s a million in SIM cards. And then people still go and mock anyone who dares suggest that troll factories are present in discussions.
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
