At first I got angry...but then noticed the usernames.

What is the probability that two users with stereotypical American male names + random numbers, who instantly reblog from each other, are real people? I say pretty darn low. Even though their blogs seem genuine at first glance, I think they are bots aimed specifically at the US audience. I think they either real people (=russian employees) or, most likely, AI. They would probably argue with you and hold the conversation pretty well if you tried to talk to them.

Be mindful people, we live in crazy times. Safer not to get into any arguments online, bots or not.

upd: I think it's the ukraineneedsairdefense tag attracted bots

Venäjän trolleilla on vähän ongelmia suomen kielen kanssa 😀

Your personal validation is not more important than actually saving lives.

If your moral purity politics and conservative guilt tripping are preventing you from taking effective action, like say voting out real life Nazis, then you are not the good the person you pretend to be and you don't actually care about the causes that you claim to care about.

Anyways, show up at the polls on Election Day to remove the GOP from all levels of office, and block and report anyone who tries to argue that "both sides are the same" or that the "Dems are secretly worse", because these people do not care about the well being of yourself or others.

Republicans are very particular about which government is influencing social media.

But with Russian troll master Yevgeny Prigozhin currently deeply distracted, we're not sure who exactly is minding the troll shop in St. Petersburg these days.

Starting to see people talk in earnest about Russian trolls again. I hate election years so much. I'm sure if this sideblog gets any attention, someone will think I'm a Russian troll.

Really not doing a great job of it seeing as I'm not trying to get followers or anything

If part of your party's propaganda is to focus on Ukrainian nazis when Russian minister Lavrov is out here being openly anti-semitic, it really says a whole lot about you T-T And that's only the tip of the iceberg with this guy.

Everyone please block this clown if you haven't already, he is by far the biggest scum I have seen on this app yet.

Since the Vote Blue crowd keeps trying to resurrect the Russian Troll accusations to dismiss any criticism of their approach, I suppose someone ought to move beyond just belittling them and start a proper rebuttal. So here goes:

Vladimir Putin almost certainly does not give a shit whether Democrats or Republicans take power in the midterms or 2024: If his government has done any research at all, they would know that both parties are almost completely captured by the Military Industrial Complex. Which means that both parties will continue to be incredibly hawkish, continuing to approve billions of dollars and countless weapons to keep the War in Ukraine going and prevent either party from negotiating a ceasefire. If anything, any credit given to Biden for not formally pushing us into World War III should mean that Putin would prefer him to stay in power.

Similarly, Putin does not give a shit whether the United States holds onto some semblance of democracy or collapses into fascism. Again: if anything, a democratically-elected President and Congress would be less of a threat to him than a fascist dictatorship. People who need to be re-elected are more likely to be concerned about the populace turning on them due to war escalation, rampant inflation, and/or military conscription.

Finally, all the stories about Facebook, Tumblr, Twitter, etc. confirming that fake accounts connected to the Russian government contributed to the political discourse in 2016 are not and have never been particularly newsworthy. The Mueller Report was released, and the smoking gun of a backdoor meeting between Trump and Putin to rig the election in return for favorable treatment never materialized. And so what we are left with is a picture of a foreign government sowing division and misinformation seemingly at random, playing both sides when it comes to issues like the Black Lives Matter movement. What, then, is it about? Part of it, most likely, was to test their capabilities. To see how long they could go without being found out, how much of an impact they could have on these discussions, and where the pressure points are in terms of manipulating people to their own ends. Something that they might be considered stupid not to do, given that the CIA is almost certainly doing the same to them.

So, no. That person arguing that maybe we shouldn't just keep blindly voting down party lines after two years of this Lesser Evil Hellscape probably isn't taking marching orders from The Kremlin.

How Russian Trolls Helped Keep the Women’s March Out of Lock Step - The New York Times

Gotta say, the Russian troll thing is already happening. I went into the swedish tag to try find blogs to folllw and there is a bunch of blogs posting things with WordPress as theirs source. No notes. And different blogs posting the same things.

I'm not going to reblog the post because most people don't read further than the first post which features exactly the content that you want to debunk. If you just scroll through your Tumblr dash you just see the first post! For the rest you have to actually click on it and read on. I imagine that many people don't do that but just safe the first information in the back of their mind.

So look at this post but make sure to expand it and read everything!

PLEASE DON'T REBLOG STUFF LIKE THIS IF THE FALSIFIED INFORMATION IS IN THE BEGINNING! YOU'RE STILL PRIMARILY SPREADING THE FAKE NEWS .

Comments section to an average video about war in Ukraine

Yes, a lot of these is russian trolls. But (1) not all of them, I've met people like this irl, and (2) it is not less distressing to be constantly bombarded with xenophobia AND russian missiles.

Over half of anti-Heard tweets were bots or paid trolls, many linked to Saudi government bots.

"According to an investigation by Tortoise Media, which examined more than one million tweets, more than 50 per cent of anti-Heard messages in the run-up to the 2022 defamation case were "inauthentic' - either from automated "bot" accounts or people hired to attack the actress."

"Bradley Hope, author of a book on Bin Salman, told the podcast that the pro-Depp tweets emanating from Saudi Arabia appear to be produced by "flies", a name for Saudi bot accounts."

"An intelligence professional who tracks online disinformation campaigns, said there was only a "0.1 per cent chance" that the hate directed at Heard was from genuine Depp fans.

The investigation also claims that bot networks in Thailand and Spain tweeted large numbers of pro-Depp messages."

"...more than 100 Twitter accounts sent 1,000 identical messages at exactly the same time to any company that had worked with Heard, reading: "This brand supports domestic violence against men."'

"The makers of the podcast argue that the criticism of Heard could have affected the jury in the 2022 US defamation trial which found in favour of Depp."

"So, if you couldn't tell the difference between a real-life Johnny Depp fan and a bot in 2022, then you probably won't be able to tell a Russian troll from a US election official in 2024. And that represents a serious problem for the security of our democracies."-Alexi Mostrous, presenter of the podcast.

"Johnny Depp and the Saudi Embassy did not respond to Tortoise's request for comment."