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I’d like to believe that our intelligence communities do, but I don’t know.

What I do know that that Russian propaganda tries to “immunize” their marks against mismatching views. One method is to pull them out of the shared media ecosystem by seeding distrust against non-aligned media. Another is to associate any undesirable viewpoints with weakness, idiocy or perversion.

Last but not least, Russia already tested a complete internet disconnect of their country so they could isolate their own population from anything not state controlled, should the tide turn or an emergency happen.

People don’t have access to social media in Russia like they do in most democratic countries. They don’t have as many devices, slower access, language barriers, and much bigger risk of serious problems from the government.

Also, democratic governments run by committees are less able and less willing to use this kind of tactic.

This is what we do. The USA/CIA does this every day and they are the best. Any time a South or Central American or Middle Eastern state elects someone who puts that state’s interests above those of the United States, that person is doomed.

Their reputation will plummet as long as they maintain freedom of the press. And if they decide to defend themselves by restricting press freedom in a trial to stop the media from lying, they are even more doomed to fail.

Only a dictatorship like China can defend itself against American opinion-forming. But of course, life under a dictatorship has its own shortcomings. But perhaps it’s better than being another piece of prey in the American portfolio, unable to counter Western arrogance and racism. There are only a few countries on earth that can be seen as accomplices of American imperialism and not as its victims.

Unfortunately, Eastern Europe was not smart enough to hold on to the changed Soviet Union under Gorbachev and become its own economic power like China.

They simply switched sides and became a bargain for Western interests. The Spoils of the Cold War. Just a market for western companies and products. Helpless at the mercy of the Americans. This is what professional propaganda can do to peoples.

While Putin tries to turn back time. Also pathetic. He will be able to destroy a lot but his country will never benefit from it.

People really underestimate the psychological impact of something as seemingly annoying at best as a bug infestation.

I’ve encountered bedbugs over 10 years ago on holiday, luckily didn’t bring them home. After all this time, the first thing I think about when something itches in bed: Bedbugs.

… are you saying they successfully tricked you, or that you had actual bedbugs?

I wouldn’t engage with that guy. He was defending a russian plot in italy yesterday.

It is a proven fact that for the past decade at least, russia has participated in a constant social media misinformation “divide and conquer” campaign, their troll farms have been an openly known thing since brexit and the 2016 US election.

You see posts on twitter ‘n’ shit about Texas seceding from the US, supposedly texans talking about Texas among texans, then one of them drops a mention of the advantages of Houston being “a warm-water port”. As if anybody outside of russia, let alone a goddamned ignorant guns ‘n’ oil cowboy, would even know or care about the distinction between a near-arctic and warm-water port.

Sometimes their soiled black fake-Adidas knickers show this way, but most often they don’t, and there they are, stoking “local, patriotic dissent”… from the other goddamned side of the world.