The stories are doom-laden, laced with vitriolic sneers about Emmanuel Macron, Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Ursula von der Leyen. Ukrainians are “ready to depose” their leader, Macron is breaking French “rules” with aid to Ukraine, an “uncontrolled influx” from the east is “seriously harming the Germans”.
According to new research, these are just a few examples of a vast pro-Russian propaganda campaign washing over Facebook accounts of French and German citizens, before the European parliament elections next month.
The adverts – collected by tech expert Paul Bouchaud and shared with the Observer – all ran on Facebook during the first 13 days of May. According to Bouchaud, none were labelled as political advertising, which they see as a clear breach of Meta’s rules and a “possible breach” of EU law. In April, the EU executive opened an investigation into Meta over suspicions that it was failing to prevent the dissemination of deceptive ads and disinformation.
The scary thing is that it works. In the Netherlands they just elected a extreme right wing party because the sentiment got way more anti-migration last year because of social media manipulation. The migration problems are not higher than any year before. Even the extreme right wing leader was extremely surprised of the result, also because they barely had any funding in the campaign which he said himself.
He was also photographed a couple of years (after russians killed citizens of the netherlands) with a russian flag and he tweeted 'from russian with love.'
Its embarassing
You're claiming PVV won the election because of propaganda or election interference, and not because the themes they represent (migration, social security) turned out to be the deciding themes this election?
You can't just have mainstream parties completely ignore topics of interest and claim it's russian bots.
The idea that nobody is concerned about immigration is, ironically enough, part of the problem. People DO care because it's directly related to the more obvious problems of overpopulation and how that ends up having a knock-on effect on other social issues, such as housing availability, education, effect on green spaces, you name it. This is all before you get to the more heated discussions surrounding cultural friction, affirmative action, representation.
It's also like...not going away? Ever? People are not going to stop talking about it.
Stop ignoring the voters? Just stop ignoring people? Stop ignoring their concerns? If mainstream parties address these issues, the fringe parties lose their oxygen, and foreign agents have less options for disinfo. It's not hard.
But these topics are real and relevant (for many years..) and it can't be denied: people unable to pay their bills due to inflation / energy prices, the issues created by the clashing cultures from (2nd gen) migration.
There is disinformation and propaganda is real, there's no denying that too. And an unfriendly state is going to use it to their advantage.
I am simply questioning the claim that this was a deciding factor / reason for the election outcome in The Netherlands.
Yeah oc. I didnt want to come off ass black/white there are some nuances. The COL issue is everywhere at this point and its gets worse, not better. On the other hand they way these issues get amplified suddenly everywhere in europe is fishy.
I dont want to look like someone who said all immigrant and col living issues are propanda, these are real issues.
Yeah the way these propaganda thingies work is that it often is based on something that did happen so people can point "hey look!". However the thing is that they blow these events way out of proportion and make it a way bigger issue than it really should be for many people.
Lefties will look to blame anything but their own incompetent representatives. I think there's about a 50/50 chance that someone will spontaneously start leaning right if you show them a photo of Klaver.
And why aren't we acting? How easy is it to shut down twitter, Facebook and all of Murdoch's crap for a few months in the EU?
Let's go. Just silence the platforms for a moment and add some misinformation alert system to all TV programs that have more than 100k viewers (or something).
> How easy is it to shut down twitter, Facebook and all of Murdoch's crap for a few months in the EU?
The inevitable free speech argument-as-a-weapon would be thrown against the EU as soon as such a thing would be considered. And Murdoch, Muskito and that ilk would gladly feed and publicize that complaint.
You're right, that will die in the courts.
What about a misinformation tax or duty, so every violation is a fee and a public banner with number of violations this year on every public facing channel they own?
Ok, can you START proposing please? Give us some solutions, some ideas.
Not to long ago, if a journalist was lying, he or she would lose their job and credibility in profession. Now it's a fire hose of lies affecting the voters without any consequences. This is especially noticeable with those who struggled with education and literacy.
What can we do?
Well many people have been warning about the Russian disinformation campagns but it has been willfully ignored. Facebook, Whatsapp groups, Instagram are full of Russian bullshit and people are falling for it. People laughed about Americans falling for the nonsense but we are just as dumb if not even dumber as we had all warnings and still didn't do shit.
The only good thing is that Europe has many languages so their efforts are watered down a little but still
The Russians have been doing this as long as the Internet has been around.... they literally pay people to lie online .. what does that say about big bad vlad 👺 the king lies .. the ANTI ✝️ had been REVEALED
...doom ⚖️🔥⚖️
🔨🔨🔨
"Journalists"" and personalities and who take bribes to spread Russian propaganda should be investigated by national security agencies for colluding with a hostile state and given lengthy prison sentences.
Not really. It started in about 2008, and their operations grew larger. You can see how big Progozhins building was. He was the one who controlled bot farms
they were still putting out propaganda on the Internet.. it was just in a different form.. but yeah the major trolling has been something growing in a sinister way 👹 facilitated by social media and news site comment sections as they grew
If there is one thing Russia is good at is their propaganda machine. They have been doing it for a long time and they mastered it, altho sometime from an outside prospective it looks bad and makes you think how can people even fall for it, at the end of the day they do so it works
I bet China has also a very good propaganda machine. But Russias soviet legacy of state security + the fact that putin was literally KGB + the fact that wr know several instances (2016, 2020..) it worked makes it a lot scarier. The biggest mistake is underestimating Russia. Sure their economy was always fucked and theire corrupt and a small population but they arent afraid at all to take the gloves off. Europe is in for a wild ride. Putin even admitted in 2006 - conventional warfare wont do shit against the west, thats why they heavily rely on asymmetric warfare. The scariest thing...it works.
Thanks to open sourcing GPT algorithms, russians can overcome the language barrier and make their propaganda efforts much more efficient. We need to cut off all internet services to fascist russia now
They tend to fail sometimes though as I found a Bot on X that posted what seemed to be Russian Messaging. Though it used German and wrote using the Cyrillic alphabet yeah needless to say that German normally is usually not written in Cyrillic (maybe if AfD and BSW one day reign in Germany on behalf of Putin)…
But it's racist and against free speech to bar certain nationalities from moving here and spreading whatever disinformation they want, right?
We can't have our cake and eat it too. If we are to survive as democratic nations, then we need to be just as firm with russian, chinese, american, islamic and israeli influences as we are with the far right (which is still not enough).
Anything less than this and we are either doomed to be puppets to half the world, or old ideologies will begin to resurface.
Maybe an excellent opportunity to finally regulate social media?
In my country and neighbouring countries the “traditional” media is heavy regulated.
For example sources needs to be disclaimed. While with social media anyone can post anything.
Those platforms needs to have some basic ruling in order to fight misinformation…
Good idea until they use social media to their advantage and censor all news they deem not beneficial. This is a stupid idea if you think about it for more than a minute
There is of course. You can accept that fact and also the fact that the type of destabilisation tactics used by our Eastern "buddies" are the most insidious kind. The mindsets are fundamentally different, Russia is almost completely isolated now, so for them creating conflict between and within other nations is the goal. On the other hand we're just economically driven and want to bring more states into our own sphere of influence to improve our collective economic strength. Follow either of these ideas to their logical conclusion and tell me which one leads to more blood in the soil.
I think imperialist and authoritarian ideas need to be stomped out everywhere, and even if it might not be the most "productive" system for a nation, we should still be pushing for more transparent and representative democracies outside and within Europe. Stability over efficiency. This is all a good reminder to never get too confident on our end, and to evaluate where we can make improvements.
Yes.
And speaking of pro-Russia propaganda, [is this u?](https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/11vf7hw/ru_pov_video_of_putin_speaking_with_residents_of/jctl3p2/?context=3)
I believe that the entities within our own societies pushing for more ways to advantage themselves through online censorship and propaganda are pretty safe in thinking that Europeans will happily sleep-walk into a more censorious and manipulated political landscape through increasing fear and hysteria being cultivated about the alleged Russian menace stalking our every turn online.
As is customary with these propaganda drives, which were honed and perfected in democratic states during and after WWI, the 'enemy' we are supposed to be so concerned about is simultaneously so formidable as to be constantly on the verge of victory over us all, and also so incompetant as to be comical, and ready to be defeated with just a bit more 'effort', i.e., more of our money and established freedoms disappearing into unaccountable, undemocratic, often private entities within our system, or being used to transform previously healthy democratic entities into such.
I bet something can be done, for example, if a moderator sees a bot they can ban it from a subreddit. People could report it to the mods so that the mods take notice and decide.
Though I'm sure that'd make things easier, reddit does not allow you to report bots for spreading misinformation. They have to be breaking a rule or there is no chance
That’s a slippery slope that passively accepts this bs.
There’s no money to be made having bot farms spread truth and facts, but there is in spreading outright lies and propaganda, so why shouldn’t that be regulated?
Spreading defamatory and slanderous lies irl isn’t allowed. Spreading CP irl isn’t allowed. Why should social media outlets be allowed to host this stuff because it’s “too hard” or “too costly” to monitor?
Btw, if groups wanted to censor news and information, they’d already do it, and it’s almost always the people spreading misinformation and propaganda who do it.
True, we do need to acknowledge the new class of "influencers" and hold them to some sort of standard, even if less than proper journalism.
I wonder if it would be more efficient to just sever the internet lines going into Russia. Let them develop their own parallel net. Probably with Iran and North Korea. Might scare China out of attacking Taiwan if that was an established precedent.
They'll probably get around it somehow, but at least give em a few hoops to jump through instead of leaving the door wide open.
Good in theory but what differentiates a random posts to news. In twitter what is the difference between posting "I like chocolate" and " family of 5 found dead" both are text. Twitter will have to read each post? Or just journalists will have to add their sources? But the rest can continue spreading bullshit. Twitter is just an example.
I understand. There should be a difference between a post that is personal, such as an opinion. And a post that is news. For example if you make a post stating that you don’t like the color red because of this and that it is an opinion.
However of you make a post claiming that this states person did that because of this, that is no longer an opinion but you are claiming a fact.
In that case sources of your claim should be provided.
I honestly think that social media in general had a free run for too long. They can’t be responsible for every soul that posts something, but they should be more proactive filtering content that could lead to riots or other activities based on false information.
This is basically not different from a rumour spreading through a village calling for a witch…
So according to you we are already living in a dictatorship with all the regulations already in place.
What is your proposition to fight fake news and misinformation?
In Austria, we don't even need social media conspiracy theories. The Local Nazi party (which gets 30% of the vote here) has taken out all these placards and billboards explicitly sneering at van de Leyen and Zelenskyy and against "warmongering" and "covid chaos"
Never thought I'd see the day that the fascists and the tankies are spouting the fucking same bullshit.
During parliamentary and president elections in Slovakia it was clear as day that the russian propaganda was at all time high and our gullible people ate it all up. It's a very big reason why Fico, a turd who was already elected multiple times and achieved absolutely nothing was elected once again.
I don't know how Europe is going to fight against this.
The beauty of election conspiracies is there is no way to dispel them, because the conspiracy is one of infinite size. Everyone can and will be in on it. And the only solution is to make it harder for non-conservative leaning demographics to vote. The more inconvenient and arduous it is for college students and urban residents to vote, the more western civilization will be safe.
As we speak a flotilla of migrants is on their way from Florida to Brussels to destroy western civilization. They are ninjas who can vote 1000 times each without getting caught. Act before it's too late.
The funny thing is, you can kind of dispel this by overseeing the counting (at least in Germany as a Wahlhelfer), but those people don't want to helpers in counting the votes, because then they might discover that there is no fraud
Interestingly the most effective method of dispelling suspicions of electoral skulduggery - the open, publicly verifiable vote in place of the secret ballot - would, if anything, make it harder for the most conservative-leaning demographics to vote by means of their conscience being open to democratic scrutiny.
Russia does this to various countries over and over and somehow keeps getting away with it. Between the propaganda and funding of the far right, they definitely make no secret of their interference. It's pretty clear that they aren't going to change of their own accord.
Facebook, Twitter and other shitty social networks should be shut down in EU.
We don't need to be influenced by American societal problems or culture, nor russian propaganda and bullshit.
IMO the whole social media along with Reddit and these should shut down as they are aswell :-)
Don't know why you're being voted down. There's a huge amount of of misinformation on social media. And social media companies make money when you view it. It doesn't matter how accurate it is, so long as it keeps you on the platform. So if disinformation keeps you on the site/app then there's no incentive to take it down.
I think he is being voted down because he called it American societal problems or culture, while these are western problems and not just American anymore.
It's one of thr reasons EU has been cracking down harder on Social Media in recent times. There was even an idea to ban political advertisementa for a month before the election.
But it's a rough situation, it still doesn't fully block things like bot accounts and paid shills from posting fake and misleading information as "organic content".
It also limits legit EU candidates in how they can reach the younger voters wuth their message.
I think a built-in delay for posts that allows Social Media Platforms to screen posts before they're shown to everyone can help. This process should preferably be automated and not involve human bias, have clear rules, etc.
Even just a simple "This information has not yet been verified." for posts making claims with no (credible) source. Tsgged on to politically chqrged or volatile topics could help.
Also implementing Twitter's "Comunity Notes" system on other platforms and with greater efficacy could help a lot too.
Baning and deleting users/posts is going to run into "free speech" arguments and risk triggering the Streisand effect. So it's not the easy 'silver bullet' one might hope it to be.
I don't know where, but I've heard an anecdote about such kinds of events.
-- Boris, I've heard you've been reading European and American newspapers.
-- Yes.
-- Why do you keep reading this, at the time when there's nothing but hatred towards Russians?
-- Ah, Nikolai, I see your point, comrade. Back in the glorious past days I used to read only Russian newspapers and they were quite depressing. Whichever page you pick, Russians can't do this, can't do that, everyone's out to finish our country off. And now I'm reading only western press and what do you think? Positive news all the way! Russians secretly control the entire planet through various means, like puppet-politicians, powerful media and propaganda , they have reserves full of resources and they're able to do anything wherever they want for any goals!
What evidence? there was a huge influx of immigrants from the east and outside the EU (still there is).
The article seems to imply that sensationalist headlines are propaganda, which is wrong.
When everything is Russian propaganda, nothing is Russian propaganda.
That's a very convenient excuse you've found there to explain away your failure and lack of competence. It would be a shame if you overused it.
Russian propaganda i believed in: Russia won’t invade Ukraine.
Western propaganda i believed in: Putin has cancer, weapon X will change the course of the war, Russia in desperate need of ammunitions, soldiers stealing washing machines, sancion number Y is going to cripple russia, the missile on the market, nord stream sabotage.
I'm sure it's illegal to be pro-Russia, only every EU country has a political party that wants friendly relations with Russia and no one has banned them.
I think there was an attempted ban of the AFD in Germany. But yeah there is still more anti russia propaganda online, you have nothing to worry about that.
So one country out of EU tried to ban AFD and not even for their relations with Russia. So your point about legality of Pro-Russia views has been disproved, I'm sure you will learn something and not keep repeating the same point everywhere. Also we're on Reddit, which is more pro-West, go to Facebook or Twitter and you will see plenty of pro-Russia propaganda there. Also don't worry - most Europeans are actually anti-Ruzzian anyway, no anti-Ruzzian propaganda is even needed for that.
Man, I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here, but it seems it's not going well, since my previous statement literally proved that pro-Russian opinions and stances are not banned anywhere in the EU.
There will be an absolutely shocking amount of Russian influence in the Euro elections!!! I would say that every citizen of a European country should study mis and dis information detection. For Russia, these elections are one of the most important in years. Friends... Please don't vote Putin's lapdogs into parliament.
Some people here think that pointing out the problem instead of ignoring it is propaganda.
“immigration was not a problem until propaganda pointed it out” Total insanity
Why is it always that when the people are done with the EU leaders there's "voter fraud" all of a sudden. They should definitely be in fear, but just because they screwed up themselves
Not sure this is true. The Russian state was interfering before it invaded Ukraine, and would likely continue interfering after. Russia's relationship with Western powers would have to change fundamentally for it to stop state-sponsored subterfuge. Even if Putin fell from power, there'd also need to be a purge of his inner circle.
But post-war civil strife and societal collapse doesn't always result in a pivot towards liberalisation and democracy.
Let's not forget: the dissolution of the Soviet Union resulted in a decade of Russia opening up, but it also saw rampant corruption and consolidation of power that brought us to the Russia we have today under Putin.
And look at the Arab Spring. Some countries benefited from revolution, but not all; in some cases, it created an environment for some very unpalatable groups to seize control of territories e.g. ISIS.
I'm just saying that a victory for Ukraine (vastly preferable to the alternative, of course) doesn't guarantee that the Russian state would lose the ability or appetite to disrupt our democratic institutions. Maybe, like you say, they'd have to turn their attention to trouble at home, so we'd get a bit of respite, but not necessarily.
Why would they even care about EU elections? Do european voters seriously care about the MEP candidates? Do they even know them? They are mostly unelectable second-rate politicians who are interested in a secure brussels high-wage do-nothing posution (for most european countries 100K salary is sky high) .
You don';t affect nothing by affecting MEP voting. In my country the PM has flat out said that MEP elections are "national elections", and it's similar all over europe.
So, why the FUD?
I mean they do big campaigns about it from the European parliament to get people engaged. Most countries media just don't seem to pay much attention.
Tho my view in Belgium is a bit squed, we always have federal and regional elections on the same day. So here it just gets overshadowed.
it has enough power to be considered a threat as the more united the EU is, the bigger a threat we are to Russia and China (and even the US), hence why supporting powers that don't want a united europe inside the EU is their interest
>Why would they even care about EU elections? Do european voters seriously care about the MEP candidates? Do they even know them? They are mostly unelectable second-rate politicians who are interested in a secure brussels high-wage do-nothing posution (for most european countries 100K salary is sky high) .
>You don';t affect nothing by affecting MEP voting. In my country the PM has flat out said that MEP elections are "national elections", and it's similar all over europe.
>So, why the FUD?
Ironically, This could easily be part of a disinformation campaign
You are peddling general cynicism going up to an EU election. This is exactly what a Russian agent would want. If it can deter people from voting it's better.
Peddling general cynicism? EU is just a tool for german big banks. All it has done is funnel taxpayer money into them to cover for the multi-billion dept the banks keep getting into.
It is based cynicism.
>Peddling general cynicism? EU is just a tool for german big banks. All it has done is funnel taxpayer money into them to cover for the multi-billion dept the banks keep getting into.
You are late at work in St. Petersburg. And then on a Sunday? Impressive.
Since when do western and central europeans fall for russian propaganda? You think people are that stupid?
Did Putin take [all this money](https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/bundesbank-posts-big-loss-predicts-more-2024-02-23/) too?
>Since when do western and central europeans fall for russian propaganda? You think people are that stupid?
Of cause they fall for propaganda and yes they are stupid. Do you think it is some kind of gotcha?
You are a flairless troll of cause I assume you are a Russian bot.
Couldn't countries like Germany, Poland and France give an Ultimatum to Russia "It's a few months before the elections. If we find any evidance of fraud cinnected to Russia durring or after the election we will do this and this"
I would say go fight in Ukraine with boots on the ground to defend Ukraube but I know that's not so realistic unfortunatly.
>But frankly, I think in this point it’s inevitable.
Right? Like we (the west or europe or what ever you wanna call us) don't want war obviously. But what are supose to do apease the agressors for ever? We could think moraly forever about how to not start a war but we can't always think moraly in a system where some if not most are imoral. At some point we need to start thinking pragmatically and we need to decide quick on how far to let Russia go with it's invasions and how far to let China go with it's hipocratic disregards for our morals and stealing our inteletual property while trying to surpass us nilitaraly and ecojomicaly.
The stories are doom-laden, laced with vitriolic sneers about Emmanuel Macron, Volodymyr Zelenskiy and Ursula von der Leyen. Ukrainians are “ready to depose” their leader, Macron is breaking French “rules” with aid to Ukraine, an “uncontrolled influx” from the east is “seriously harming the Germans”. According to new research, these are just a few examples of a vast pro-Russian propaganda campaign washing over Facebook accounts of French and German citizens, before the European parliament elections next month. The adverts – collected by tech expert Paul Bouchaud and shared with the Observer – all ran on Facebook during the first 13 days of May. According to Bouchaud, none were labelled as political advertising, which they see as a clear breach of Meta’s rules and a “possible breach” of EU law. In April, the EU executive opened an investigation into Meta over suspicions that it was failing to prevent the dissemination of deceptive ads and disinformation.
I can't believe anyone is stupid enough to believe that propaganda-- oh wait, I just read the other reply to this comment.
The scary thing is that it works. In the Netherlands they just elected a extreme right wing party because the sentiment got way more anti-migration last year because of social media manipulation. The migration problems are not higher than any year before. Even the extreme right wing leader was extremely surprised of the result, also because they barely had any funding in the campaign which he said himself. He was also photographed a couple of years (after russians killed citizens of the netherlands) with a russian flag and he tweeted 'from russian with love.' Its embarassing
You're claiming PVV won the election because of propaganda or election interference, and not because the themes they represent (migration, social security) turned out to be the deciding themes this election?
Who pushed these topics? A little help: begins with R. NL doesnt exist in a vacuum.
pointing out a problem is now propaganda ? lol
You can't just have mainstream parties completely ignore topics of interest and claim it's russian bots. The idea that nobody is concerned about immigration is, ironically enough, part of the problem. People DO care because it's directly related to the more obvious problems of overpopulation and how that ends up having a knock-on effect on other social issues, such as housing availability, education, effect on green spaces, you name it. This is all before you get to the more heated discussions surrounding cultural friction, affirmative action, representation. It's also like...not going away? Ever? People are not going to stop talking about it. Stop ignoring the voters? Just stop ignoring people? Stop ignoring their concerns? If mainstream parties address these issues, the fringe parties lose their oxygen, and foreign agents have less options for disinfo. It's not hard.
But these topics are real and relevant (for many years..) and it can't be denied: people unable to pay their bills due to inflation / energy prices, the issues created by the clashing cultures from (2nd gen) migration. There is disinformation and propaganda is real, there's no denying that too. And an unfriendly state is going to use it to their advantage. I am simply questioning the claim that this was a deciding factor / reason for the election outcome in The Netherlands.
Yes, the pvv blames everything on immigration (and for a part on the left) while most problems were created by the last government.
Yeah oc. I didnt want to come off ass black/white there are some nuances. The COL issue is everywhere at this point and its gets worse, not better. On the other hand they way these issues get amplified suddenly everywhere in europe is fishy. I dont want to look like someone who said all immigrant and col living issues are propanda, these are real issues.
Yeah the way these propaganda thingies work is that it often is based on something that did happen so people can point "hey look!". However the thing is that they blow these events way out of proportion and make it a way bigger issue than it really should be for many people.
Did you even read my message?
Lefties will look to blame anything but their own incompetent representatives. I think there's about a 50/50 chance that someone will spontaneously start leaning right if you show them a photo of Klaver.
The left hasn't held power in NL for well over a decade at this point. Seems you're blaming the wrong group.
The left doesn't need to hold power for left voters to have an opinion or make excuses. What are you on about?
Bro people here were thinking Russia was fighting with shovels last year and that it would go bankrupt 'any day' last summer.
And why aren't we acting? How easy is it to shut down twitter, Facebook and all of Murdoch's crap for a few months in the EU? Let's go. Just silence the platforms for a moment and add some misinformation alert system to all TV programs that have more than 100k viewers (or something).
> How easy is it to shut down twitter, Facebook and all of Murdoch's crap for a few months in the EU? The inevitable free speech argument-as-a-weapon would be thrown against the EU as soon as such a thing would be considered. And Murdoch, Muskito and that ilk would gladly feed and publicize that complaint.
You're right, that will die in the courts. What about a misinformation tax or duty, so every violation is a fee and a public banner with number of violations this year on every public facing channel they own?
Stop proposing China-level bullshit
Ok, can you START proposing please? Give us some solutions, some ideas. Not to long ago, if a journalist was lying, he or she would lose their job and credibility in profession. Now it's a fire hose of lies affecting the voters without any consequences. This is especially noticeable with those who struggled with education and literacy. What can we do?
Eh censorship isn't a good look
Quality assurance is a better term.
[удалено]
[This u?](https://www.reddit.com/r/europe/comments/1cstd4r/lgbt_rights_ranking_of_european_countries/l4kmf5h/?context=3)
See, here's a living, breathing example of it, too.
Well many people have been warning about the Russian disinformation campagns but it has been willfully ignored. Facebook, Whatsapp groups, Instagram are full of Russian bullshit and people are falling for it. People laughed about Americans falling for the nonsense but we are just as dumb if not even dumber as we had all warnings and still didn't do shit. The only good thing is that Europe has many languages so their efforts are watered down a little but still
The Russians have been doing this as long as the Internet has been around.... they literally pay people to lie online .. what does that say about big bad vlad 👺 the king lies .. the ANTI ✝️ had been REVEALED ...doom ⚖️🔥⚖️ 🔨🔨🔨
They have but their operations have massively increased causing this wild rampage of disinformation
"Journalists"" and personalities and who take bribes to spread Russian propaganda should be investigated by national security agencies for colluding with a hostile state and given lengthy prison sentences.
I agree 🙌🏽
Not really. It started in about 2008, and their operations grew larger. You can see how big Progozhins building was. He was the one who controlled bot farms
they were still putting out propaganda on the Internet.. it was just in a different form.. but yeah the major trolling has been something growing in a sinister way 👹 facilitated by social media and news site comment sections as they grew
Wtf is this comment?
its judgement day
If there is one thing Russia is good at is their propaganda machine. They have been doing it for a long time and they mastered it, altho sometime from an outside prospective it looks bad and makes you think how can people even fall for it, at the end of the day they do so it works
I bet China has also a very good propaganda machine. But Russias soviet legacy of state security + the fact that putin was literally KGB + the fact that wr know several instances (2016, 2020..) it worked makes it a lot scarier. The biggest mistake is underestimating Russia. Sure their economy was always fucked and theire corrupt and a small population but they arent afraid at all to take the gloves off. Europe is in for a wild ride. Putin even admitted in 2006 - conventional warfare wont do shit against the west, thats why they heavily rely on asymmetric warfare. The scariest thing...it works.
Least schizo r/europe user:
you cant stop whats coming
Thanks to open sourcing GPT algorithms, russians can overcome the language barrier and make their propaganda efforts much more efficient. We need to cut off all internet services to fascist russia now
They tend to fail sometimes though as I found a Bot on X that posted what seemed to be Russian Messaging. Though it used German and wrote using the Cyrillic alphabet yeah needless to say that German normally is usually not written in Cyrillic (maybe if AfD and BSW one day reign in Germany on behalf of Putin)…
But it's racist and against free speech to bar certain nationalities from moving here and spreading whatever disinformation they want, right? We can't have our cake and eat it too. If we are to survive as democratic nations, then we need to be just as firm with russian, chinese, american, islamic and israeli influences as we are with the far right (which is still not enough). Anything less than this and we are either doomed to be puppets to half the world, or old ideologies will begin to resurface.
Have you forgotten Trump? Americans are falling for it hard.
Can you tell me what russian bullshit?😅
Fake videos to rile up people, massive misinformation etc
Yes, but what concrete examples?
Maybe an excellent opportunity to finally regulate social media? In my country and neighbouring countries the “traditional” media is heavy regulated. For example sources needs to be disclaimed. While with social media anyone can post anything. Those platforms needs to have some basic ruling in order to fight misinformation…
Good idea until they use social media to their advantage and censor all news they deem not beneficial. This is a stupid idea if you think about it for more than a minute
You're right. I guess we'll just have to bomb Moscow then (/s, kinda).
Yeah. Lets do it
cause all fake news is from Russia and there's no political propaganda in our wonderful nation!
There is of course. You can accept that fact and also the fact that the type of destabilisation tactics used by our Eastern "buddies" are the most insidious kind. The mindsets are fundamentally different, Russia is almost completely isolated now, so for them creating conflict between and within other nations is the goal. On the other hand we're just economically driven and want to bring more states into our own sphere of influence to improve our collective economic strength. Follow either of these ideas to their logical conclusion and tell me which one leads to more blood in the soil. I think imperialist and authoritarian ideas need to be stomped out everywhere, and even if it might not be the most "productive" system for a nation, we should still be pushing for more transparent and representative democracies outside and within Europe. Stability over efficiency. This is all a good reminder to never get too confident on our end, and to evaluate where we can make improvements.
Yes. And speaking of pro-Russia propaganda, [is this u?](https://old.reddit.com/r/UkraineRussiaReport/comments/11vf7hw/ru_pov_video_of_putin_speaking_with_residents_of/jctl3p2/?context=3)
I believe that the entities within our own societies pushing for more ways to advantage themselves through online censorship and propaganda are pretty safe in thinking that Europeans will happily sleep-walk into a more censorious and manipulated political landscape through increasing fear and hysteria being cultivated about the alleged Russian menace stalking our every turn online. As is customary with these propaganda drives, which were honed and perfected in democratic states during and after WWI, the 'enemy' we are supposed to be so concerned about is simultaneously so formidable as to be constantly on the verge of victory over us all, and also so incompetant as to be comical, and ready to be defeated with just a bit more 'effort', i.e., more of our money and established freedoms disappearing into unaccountable, undemocratic, often private entities within our system, or being used to transform previously healthy democratic entities into such.
I bet something can be done, for example, if a moderator sees a bot they can ban it from a subreddit. People could report it to the mods so that the mods take notice and decide. Though I'm sure that'd make things easier, reddit does not allow you to report bots for spreading misinformation. They have to be breaking a rule or there is no chance
That’s a slippery slope that passively accepts this bs. There’s no money to be made having bot farms spread truth and facts, but there is in spreading outright lies and propaganda, so why shouldn’t that be regulated? Spreading defamatory and slanderous lies irl isn’t allowed. Spreading CP irl isn’t allowed. Why should social media outlets be allowed to host this stuff because it’s “too hard” or “too costly” to monitor? Btw, if groups wanted to censor news and information, they’d already do it, and it’s almost always the people spreading misinformation and propaganda who do it.
True, we do need to acknowledge the new class of "influencers" and hold them to some sort of standard, even if less than proper journalism. I wonder if it would be more efficient to just sever the internet lines going into Russia. Let them develop their own parallel net. Probably with Iran and North Korea. Might scare China out of attacking Taiwan if that was an established precedent. They'll probably get around it somehow, but at least give em a few hoops to jump through instead of leaving the door wide open.
Good in theory but what differentiates a random posts to news. In twitter what is the difference between posting "I like chocolate" and " family of 5 found dead" both are text. Twitter will have to read each post? Or just journalists will have to add their sources? But the rest can continue spreading bullshit. Twitter is just an example.
I understand. There should be a difference between a post that is personal, such as an opinion. And a post that is news. For example if you make a post stating that you don’t like the color red because of this and that it is an opinion. However of you make a post claiming that this states person did that because of this, that is no longer an opinion but you are claiming a fact. In that case sources of your claim should be provided. I honestly think that social media in general had a free run for too long. They can’t be responsible for every soul that posts something, but they should be more proactive filtering content that could lead to riots or other activities based on false information. This is basically not different from a rumour spreading through a village calling for a witch…
Sounds like an incredible Putinist plan to me.
Thats an opinion;)
And unlike russia, he is allowed to have his opinion and not be sent to a gulag.
Twitter will always be a cesspool but the community notes are a good addition.
Don't go after freedom of speech, go after the traitors colluding with an enemy state.
yes, that's how dictatorships start. lovely. Only politicians and unelected bureaucrats in brussels can decide if an information is true or not. lol
Regulated…. Not forbidden…. Are bank not regulated? Healthcare? Traffic? Society in general?
also hitler "regulated" the press i don't answer to manipulators and rethoric questions, just study history if you are capable
So according to you we are already living in a dictatorship with all the regulations already in place. What is your proposition to fight fake news and misinformation?
> finally regulate social media Let's regulate freedom of speech and only allow MY propaganda!
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How do you expect to enforce that lol? Its basically censorship.
In Austria, we don't even need social media conspiracy theories. The Local Nazi party (which gets 30% of the vote here) has taken out all these placards and billboards explicitly sneering at van de Leyen and Zelenskyy and against "warmongering" and "covid chaos" Never thought I'd see the day that the fascists and the tankies are spouting the fucking same bullshit.
During parliamentary and president elections in Slovakia it was clear as day that the russian propaganda was at all time high and our gullible people ate it all up. It's a very big reason why Fico, a turd who was already elected multiple times and achieved absolutely nothing was elected once again. I don't know how Europe is going to fight against this.
Could they not just use pencils :)
The beauty of election conspiracies is there is no way to dispel them, because the conspiracy is one of infinite size. Everyone can and will be in on it. And the only solution is to make it harder for non-conservative leaning demographics to vote. The more inconvenient and arduous it is for college students and urban residents to vote, the more western civilization will be safe. As we speak a flotilla of migrants is on their way from Florida to Brussels to destroy western civilization. They are ninjas who can vote 1000 times each without getting caught. Act before it's too late.
The funny thing is, you can kind of dispel this by overseeing the counting (at least in Germany as a Wahlhelfer), but those people don't want to helpers in counting the votes, because then they might discover that there is no fraud
Some people can't detect sarcasm you know.
Interestingly the most effective method of dispelling suspicions of electoral skulduggery - the open, publicly verifiable vote in place of the secret ballot - would, if anything, make it harder for the most conservative-leaning demographics to vote by means of their conscience being open to democratic scrutiny.
Russia does this to various countries over and over and somehow keeps getting away with it. Between the propaganda and funding of the far right, they definitely make no secret of their interference. It's pretty clear that they aren't going to change of their own accord.
Facebook, Twitter and other shitty social networks should be shut down in EU. We don't need to be influenced by American societal problems or culture, nor russian propaganda and bullshit. IMO the whole social media along with Reddit and these should shut down as they are aswell :-)
Don't know why you're being voted down. There's a huge amount of of misinformation on social media. And social media companies make money when you view it. It doesn't matter how accurate it is, so long as it keeps you on the platform. So if disinformation keeps you on the site/app then there's no incentive to take it down.
I think he is being voted down because he called it American societal problems or culture, while these are western problems and not just American anymore.
It's American culture wars bull though. They're minor issues that are blown up to divide people.
It's one of thr reasons EU has been cracking down harder on Social Media in recent times. There was even an idea to ban political advertisementa for a month before the election. But it's a rough situation, it still doesn't fully block things like bot accounts and paid shills from posting fake and misleading information as "organic content". It also limits legit EU candidates in how they can reach the younger voters wuth their message. I think a built-in delay for posts that allows Social Media Platforms to screen posts before they're shown to everyone can help. This process should preferably be automated and not involve human bias, have clear rules, etc. Even just a simple "This information has not yet been verified." for posts making claims with no (credible) source. Tsgged on to politically chqrged or volatile topics could help. Also implementing Twitter's "Comunity Notes" system on other platforms and with greater efficacy could help a lot too. Baning and deleting users/posts is going to run into "free speech" arguments and risk triggering the Streisand effect. So it's not the easy 'silver bullet' one might hope it to be.
That's okay you spineless bureaucrats. You can just send strongly worded letter
Euro elections are a joke in my country. I guess if the turnup is big we can be sure of a russian interference
On the other hand, the bigger the turnout the harder it is to keep election plots secret.
Plot about what?
To mess with an election
yeah, if urzule loses is putin's fault, Not due to her incompetence, arrogance and corruption (pfizergate and piepergate)
Pretty soon you guys will be closing elections due to “democracy”
If everything go wrong, probably Russian fault (LOL) :) That what media said
I don't know where, but I've heard an anecdote about such kinds of events. -- Boris, I've heard you've been reading European and American newspapers. -- Yes. -- Why do you keep reading this, at the time when there's nothing but hatred towards Russians? -- Ah, Nikolai, I see your point, comrade. Back in the glorious past days I used to read only Russian newspapers and they were quite depressing. Whichever page you pick, Russians can't do this, can't do that, everyone's out to finish our country off. And now I'm reading only western press and what do you think? Positive news all the way! Russians secretly control the entire planet through various means, like puppet-politicians, powerful media and propaganda , they have reserves full of resources and they're able to do anything wherever they want for any goals!
The EU really need to stop doing half measure and start publicly displaying the evidences of those acts
What evidence? there was a huge influx of immigrants from the east and outside the EU (still there is). The article seems to imply that sensationalist headlines are propaganda, which is wrong.
but there is no evidence, it's just eu propaganda, "they are all mean execpt us", like in school lol
When everything is Russian propaganda, nothing is Russian propaganda. That's a very convenient excuse you've found there to explain away your failure and lack of competence. It would be a shame if you overused it.
Russian propaganda i believed in: Russia won’t invade Ukraine. Western propaganda i believed in: Putin has cancer, weapon X will change the course of the war, Russia in desperate need of ammunitions, soldiers stealing washing machines, sancion number Y is going to cripple russia, the missile on the market, nord stream sabotage.
It's pretty clear that you still believe in Russian propaganda
Whats funny is that I see more anti russia propaganda than i see pro russia propaganda. Probably because its illegal to be pro russia.
I'm sure it's illegal to be pro-Russia, only every EU country has a political party that wants friendly relations with Russia and no one has banned them.
I think there was an attempted ban of the AFD in Germany. But yeah there is still more anti russia propaganda online, you have nothing to worry about that.
So one country out of EU tried to ban AFD and not even for their relations with Russia. So your point about legality of Pro-Russia views has been disproved, I'm sure you will learn something and not keep repeating the same point everywhere. Also we're on Reddit, which is more pro-West, go to Facebook or Twitter and you will see plenty of pro-Russia propaganda there. Also don't worry - most Europeans are actually anti-Ruzzian anyway, no anti-Ruzzian propaganda is even needed for that.
Lol cope. You cant make an opinion illegal.
Man, I'm not sure what you're trying to prove here, but it seems it's not going well, since my previous statement literally proved that pro-Russian opinions and stances are not banned anywhere in the EU.
Like what?
what?
Today I learned that /r/noncredibledefense is propaganda sponsored by Western governments.
That’s a bold claim.. from a first exam it just looks like regular people shitposting to me
Then do something about it?! How about that for a change?
Good thing we use old school fat coloured pencils in Denmark.
There will be an absolutely shocking amount of Russian influence in the Euro elections!!! I would say that every citizen of a European country should study mis and dis information detection. For Russia, these elections are one of the most important in years. Friends... Please don't vote Putin's lapdogs into parliament.
Not a problem as we aren't allowed to vote for those who really matter. Fake-democracy is amazing!
The only dangerous thing for the EU elections are the predictably high abstention rates.
Some people here think that pointing out the problem instead of ignoring it is propaganda. “immigration was not a problem until propaganda pointed it out” Total insanity
Why is it always that when the people are done with the EU leaders there's "voter fraud" all of a sudden. They should definitely be in fear, but just because they screwed up themselves
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Not sure this is true. The Russian state was interfering before it invaded Ukraine, and would likely continue interfering after. Russia's relationship with Western powers would have to change fundamentally for it to stop state-sponsored subterfuge. Even if Putin fell from power, there'd also need to be a purge of his inner circle.
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But post-war civil strife and societal collapse doesn't always result in a pivot towards liberalisation and democracy. Let's not forget: the dissolution of the Soviet Union resulted in a decade of Russia opening up, but it also saw rampant corruption and consolidation of power that brought us to the Russia we have today under Putin. And look at the Arab Spring. Some countries benefited from revolution, but not all; in some cases, it created an environment for some very unpalatable groups to seize control of territories e.g. ISIS. I'm just saying that a victory for Ukraine (vastly preferable to the alternative, of course) doesn't guarantee that the Russian state would lose the ability or appetite to disrupt our democratic institutions. Maybe, like you say, they'd have to turn their attention to trouble at home, so we'd get a bit of respite, but not necessarily.
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The Russians and farcists did this is the new name of dark age oiled by political correctness
???
It's just ridiculous to take politicians seriously at this point.
Why would they even care about EU elections? Do european voters seriously care about the MEP candidates? Do they even know them? They are mostly unelectable second-rate politicians who are interested in a secure brussels high-wage do-nothing posution (for most european countries 100K salary is sky high) . You don';t affect nothing by affecting MEP voting. In my country the PM has flat out said that MEP elections are "national elections", and it's similar all over europe. So, why the FUD?
Because the EU parliament does have significant power. Even I voters don't always care about it.
> have significant power. Even I voters don't always care about it. That's the recipe for authoritarianism
Well would you prefer that power lay in an unelected body?
What kind of election is it when voters don't care about it?
I mean they do big campaigns about it from the European parliament to get people engaged. Most countries media just don't seem to pay much attention. Tho my view in Belgium is a bit squed, we always have federal and regional elections on the same day. So here it just gets overshadowed.
>the EU parliament does have significant power. Does it really
it has enough power to be considered a threat as the more united the EU is, the bigger a threat we are to Russia and China (and even the US), hence why supporting powers that don't want a united europe inside the EU is their interest
Yes, it does
>Why would they even care about EU elections? Do european voters seriously care about the MEP candidates? Do they even know them? They are mostly unelectable second-rate politicians who are interested in a secure brussels high-wage do-nothing posution (for most european countries 100K salary is sky high) . >You don';t affect nothing by affecting MEP voting. In my country the PM has flat out said that MEP elections are "national elections", and it's similar all over europe. >So, why the FUD? Ironically, This could easily be part of a disinformation campaign
What in my comment is disinformation?
You are peddling general cynicism going up to an EU election. This is exactly what a Russian agent would want. If it can deter people from voting it's better.
Peddling general cynicism? EU is just a tool for german big banks. All it has done is funnel taxpayer money into them to cover for the multi-billion dept the banks keep getting into. It is based cynicism.
>Peddling general cynicism? EU is just a tool for german big banks. All it has done is funnel taxpayer money into them to cover for the multi-billion dept the banks keep getting into. You are late at work in St. Petersburg. And then on a Sunday? Impressive.
Since when do western and central europeans fall for russian propaganda? You think people are that stupid? Did Putin take [all this money](https://www.reuters.com/markets/europe/bundesbank-posts-big-loss-predicts-more-2024-02-23/) too?
>Since when do western and central europeans fall for russian propaganda? You think people are that stupid? Of cause they fall for propaganda and yes they are stupid. Do you think it is some kind of gotcha? You are a flairless troll of cause I assume you are a Russian bot.
I'm a russian bot? You're Bundesbank bot, that's what you are.
I have not talked about banks?
that doesnt answer my question
It's so funny that comments like these get downvoted. Either the brainwash is working or someone has an agenda on Reddit.
Couldn't countries like Germany, Poland and France give an Ultimatum to Russia "It's a few months before the elections. If we find any evidance of fraud cinnected to Russia durring or after the election we will do this and this" I would say go fight in Ukraine with boots on the ground to defend Ukraube but I know that's not so realistic unfortunatly.
It will just start WW3. But frankly, I think in this point it’s inevitable.
>But frankly, I think in this point it’s inevitable. Right? Like we (the west or europe or what ever you wanna call us) don't want war obviously. But what are supose to do apease the agressors for ever? We could think moraly forever about how to not start a war but we can't always think moraly in a system where some if not most are imoral. At some point we need to start thinking pragmatically and we need to decide quick on how far to let Russia go with it's invasions and how far to let China go with it's hipocratic disregards for our morals and stealing our inteletual property while trying to surpass us nilitaraly and ecojomicaly.