politics

I guess what I'm saying is we should get the hell rid of it all so eventually public opinion won't be swayed by cheap foreign labor, bots, and people who just want to burn it all down.

I've blocked so many accounts on here that are clearly not Americans just straight up trying to incite shit in US news / politics communities. I don't know what's worse: the number of upvotes those get or how transparent they are.

That requires a population that is educated and can critically read and analyze media. Don't think any country in the world has that.

I mean… 20 years ago when we only had Xanga, MySpace, Friendster, LiveJournal, LinkedIn, and many others. Even Facebook is 21 years old now… though it didn’t become available for everyone for a couple years after that.

This will 100% happen

And with greater VPNs

Probably already are

Well, lots of tankies, "centrists", and of course nearly all Republicans seem to think that concerns about Russia going back to 2016's election are a "hoax".

I don't know if they could even begin to articulate what they think that word means in the context of their claims. But they sure are butthurt about it.

It wasn't just based on IP from what I understand, but also what country's app store you used.

I could be wrong here, but unless you're actively trying to hide something pretty serious, I'd be surprised if people use a VPN and set it to a country like Nigeria or Bangladesh if you're from NA.

Maybe Canada if you're from the USA, likely other states, or maybe somewhere in the EU if you think their data protection laws will be better for you.

But Nigeria? Who fuck sets their VPN there?

The hired trolls are only one part of the problem. The other problem -- perhaps the bigger problem -- is that running scam / spam accounts is a legitimate occupation for people living in near-poverty. They need to put food on the table, and if they can do so by posting MAGA bullshit to get the advertising clicks, of course they'll keep on doing that.

This is a good example of why everyone should be working to improve the living situations of everyone else in the world, and not just in their own country. It's not like most people enjoy running scams, but if that pays the bills, fuck it, let the rich Americans sort it out.

A compassionate genius?

Idk he has kinda proven himself to be an incompetent nazi on many different occasions

Sounds cool, until the fascists take over the government...

To hear fElon tell it, that's what he thought Twitter was before, and what he aimed for Xitter to uphold...

LOL. Sorry, hard to type that w/o laughing.

Needs to be Shitter, LLC based in USSR.

That’s an extra cost, until the oopsiedaisy of revealing their location the cost was superfluous. The new accounts will use them.

may be survivorship bias, the ones that didn't use it got caught

The accounts are largely based in countries that are suspected by many to be manipulating US public opinion (e.g.Russia/Israel) or from countries with lots of click farms, scam centers, and other "engagement" services.

It showed how much of the American right-wing social media sphere wasn't legitimately American in origin.

It basically exposed all these accounts as being fake, and spreading MAGA conspiracy bullshit in USA

Exhibit A

Basically pretending to be an organic grass-roots movement or to plant the seeds but the movement is to either destabilize or otherwise benefit a foreign entity.

How do you do my fellow Americans? How about we just start burning stuff down?

Basically shit like that (it's not always that transparent except when it is exactly that transparent). See it pretty often even on here (less so since I've enabled "turbo" on my block button).

"America First!"

-some paid troll in Russia

Manipulating people. Pushing value and rhetoric "as a fellow American" when you're a bot in Russia.

Not that I pay attention to the platform, but I gather these where prominent accounts claiming to be real muricans who totally supported prez turnip but where entirely fabricated. In theory an account either needs to be legitimate, or marked specifically as a parody of some sort.