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The affidavit does not mention the full list of influencers, but is still a terrifying indicator of how deep the Russian plot to interfere in U.S. politics really goes.
Well, why not? Name and shame all of them. Normal political ads are required to tell you who paid for them (even if they only do it in the fine print). There's no reason not to hold these schmucks to the same standard just because it's TikTok vids or whatever instead of magazine or TV ads.
Not a lawoligist, but I suspect they plan on pressing charges ;-)
Wont be in time for the election though, so the damage will be done
I feel like they already got their money's worth on interfering with elections.
They nabbed up several former Soviet republics and then publicly humiliated the states with the 2016 American election.
Say what you want about Putin, be he's a helluva spy.
Guaranteed they are all over the Fediverse and probably hosting their own instances.
There are a few obvious ones around but it's against the rules to even suggest that they could be shills or bots. Hopefully this news will get the mods to start taking action against the most blatant ones.
I, for one, will not return to allowing that particular guy back on my feed.
That guy gets on my nerves, but I've read enough from him on various topics that I'm pretty confident he's a genuine user. Don't get me wrong, he's for sure an ideologue who's no fun at parties, but I don't think he's a bot or that he's saying things he was instructed to say and doesn't actually care deeply about.
There's another user, with a three-word-phrase username, that I would describe similarly.
will get the mods to start taking action against the most blatant ones.
I've heard it from a reliable source, a Lemmy.ml mod, that there's simply no Russian activity on Lemmy. Would you like to know who?
Yes but... Fediverse has more moderators and even server level bans where we can fight back.
It's a different political makeup here on the Fediverse. It's not like the Russians can hand money to just one or two CEOs and suddenly all of the moderators we trust here turn to the other side.
We need to keep our wits about us here. We came to Lemmy (and Fediverse) because centralized commercial control of our discussion spaces led to perverse incentives.
I only consider this political situation to be yet another test of the Fediverse. We have to survive it. But I also believe we moved to the Fediverse because we all believe we can do more about disinformation or malicious actors here on the Fediverse than on... Reddit or Facebook.
What happens when your mods are part of it?
Remember: If your politicians say there is no Russian interference in your elections, they are the ones who have been funded.
Where are my republican “there is no Russian influence in the election” now?
I don't listen to the radio but my coworkers (school bus drivers) do so I overhear it from time to time. News reports keep mentioning "foreign interference in our elections" but scrupulously avoid mentioning a) it's Russia, and b) it's Russia interfering on behalf of Trump and the Republicans. Even fucking NPR is like this, most of the time. It should be obvious that any Republicans hearing this sort of "news" will believe it's a problem afflicting Democrats.
They will never hear about this in a non-obfuscated way
Shhhh....no Russian
No puppet, no puppet, you're the puppet!
They're currently brainstorming and waiting for their orders from fox "news". I expect we'll see a bunch of posts here in a few days about how it's all bullshit and blown out of proportion. Watch the names too, they'll all be accounts created a year or so ago and haven't posted for about 7 months.
About damn time. Could have used this 8+ years ago. Might have stopped Drump's term in office.
The only person who did anything helpful got sent to jail (reality winner)
still haven't got used to that being her actual name.
Every single conservative comment I have seen about this has claimed it is made up by the DOJ. That is the extent of it.
Law and order party says the doj is corrupt next time on sick sad world
"DOJ is corrupt but also police can do no wrong, let's give them tanks, until they are forced to be against our riots and then they are bad again, but only until we start saying that the riots weren't us and was the deep state actors, then they never did anything wrong"
To them DOJ < PUTIN
So don't expect anything different from those idiots.
Better a Russian than Democrat Or Justice!
a terrifying indicator of how deep the Russian plot to interfere in U.S. politics really goes
It is despicable but remember that they only paid right wing trolls to do what they were already doing. This is how modern corruption works. Conservative and reactionary talk radio all across the US works like this. The only reason the GOP is so successful in rural areas is they are doing the exact same shit Russia is doing. Fund extremists to continue their bullshit. You don't need a "Quid Pro Quo", you just need to pick the right weirdos to boost.
And if you think this is terrifying, think of not just what leftists think of this inside the US, think of what people all around the world think of the US election interference. For decades and decades the US has interfered and overthrown democracies. They did in Euromaidan too.
So yeah, fuck Russia, just realize many countries rightfully think the same about the USA.
Is anyone really surprised by this? Russia hasn't changed much in this particular way since before WWII ;).
Cool, so just how many wars is Russia trying to fight at the moment?
I'd like to see that list.
Alongside the list of influencers US is paying to spread its propaganda.
terrifying scale
barely a percentage point compared to the fossil fuel industry's war on Green Energy
I suppose you could reasonably argue that Rex Tillerson and Vladimir Putin were already joined at the hip. But the US advertising and influencing industry is vast - $515B annually and growing. The Russians aren't even in the top ten of foreign influence peddlers. FFS, the Saudis bought golf.
Saudis aren't trying to get Trump elected and directly meddle in the election.
And sure, the Saudis whitewash themselves and try to make us forget about Jamal. But Russia influence is really bad.
I'm not necessarily against foreign influence. Ukrainians have a right to make their case to us for example. But the Russian style disinfo is leading to conspiracy theories and a degeneration of our society.
Lol yes they are. They're part owners of Twitter, which became a pro-Trump cesspool. That alone is orders of magnitude bigger than this Russian thing.
Yes, what about this thing that has nothing to do with the subject of Russia influencing elections?
Wah but whatabout
Well Russia is part of that fossil fuel industry too, and they also hire lobbyists to push fossil fuels
4/5 are outside the US, does that mean most are in the EU?
Yes, even goverments. For example orban in #orbanistan (hungary), fico in slovakia controlled putin. There are also parties controlled by putin, like afd in germany, le pen's party in france, also the brexit guy nigel farage putin's puppet
And centrists will imagine that all of it is localized entirely on lemmy, in the form of anyone to their left.