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Well, yeah. It's pretty obvious that Russian troll farms have been running massive psyops. But beyond that, psyops that generate anger with ingroup/outgroup mentality drive eyeballs, and that means profit. There were reports about troll farms in the 2016 election, I think in Albania or the Balkans, that made a fortune making up us-vs-them stories on both sides.


The abject failure of Russian propaganda in the West during the current conflict renders the notion of Russia having any sort of more than trivial shit stirring capability implausible, if not outright risible.


If you look at the rapid change in some points of view in the West, it shows how widespread Russian propaganda is/was.

When the invasion was launched, there was a huge pro-Putin contingent in the US who said it was justified. You can also look historically at how well it worked in Russia's other wars of aggression over the past decade. The fact that it was not able to overcome the images coming out of Ukraine is kinda irrelevant.


One failure doesn't invalidate years of work and mountains of evidence.


> It's pretty obvious that Russian troll farms have been running massive psyop

Alternatively, this narrative is a massive psyop.


Everyone should be sober, dispassionate, and to the extent that it's possible, take off any ideological blinders.

It's clearly more likely than not that both are true.


> It's clearly more likely than not that both are true.

Very few people seem to have the ability to realize this, on certain topics. It is a major bug in evolved consciousness.


I don't know why people should be dispassionate. Unbiased, sure. Dispassionate, not so much.


Passion seems to work against reason and facts - in fact, it's key to psyop manipulation, afaik.




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