@Wipqozn though to be fair the fact they could do this is actually apart of a wider existing problem

there was an episode of LastWeekTonight where it was highlighted that unauthorized and unsupervised access to voting machines is actually very easy to achieve

like the Trump Camp's claims are bullshit, but it's really just a matter of time because said claims made by someone else aren't

and thanks to Trump and his sycophant followers, i do have the worry that if any party messes with voting machines and wins (though i suspect the GOP More), the public wont take the claims seriously since the same claims would have lost all meaning

UK exposes sick Russian troll factory plaguing social media with Kremlin propaganda

> The evidence shows the troll factory

where

i don't see any evidence on this webpage

like, i fully believe russians are trying to spread misinformation in the bottom half of the internet but i don't know a single person here who believes putin's war is a good thing

and they haven't shown any evidence of people suggesting this course of actions, just what politicians think about it

@Corsaka Russian Trolls aren't targeting us either

wdym

"Us" being educated liberals

eh i guess

It appears to be a social media thing.

report claims they're going into the comments section of news articles

Russian Trolls target their propaganda at people who they know are more likely to get outraged by it, and who aren't critical enough in their thinking to know they're targeted

i was unaware people read those tbh

It's not their goal to convince people of their truth, it's to create dissent and distrust in the population

i also don't think we need the malice of russian trolls to be distrustful of each other

although yeah i guess maybe it's been them doing so, for so long, that's caused modern discourse to be outrage-fests

The mass public believes everything they read.

And the easiest way to do that is to go after the people who are less educated and in fact are skeptical of higher education and think it's an attempt to indoctrinate their kids

Because those people generally lack the critical thinking skills to realize that they're being manipulated

y'know i was about to protest that, then realised my father thinks that viruses aren't real

Does your father read newspapers?

And if so, which one?

he doesn't anymore

he's gone from "elites control the world" to "everything the government says is a lie" to "everything the media says is a lie" to "i don't trust anything except the things that agree with me"

which

there's some truth in that sort of thing but "everything" is too far

Btw, I didn't mean to "troll" the room with that link :P

there's a whole bunch of shady shit happening worldwide from financial influence but he's gotten to the point of trusting people who i have shown him have lied repeatedly

ah dw about it i'm just ranting at this point lmao

@Corsaka And your father is exactly the sort of people who is targeted by Russian trollaganda: underinformed, critical of established authority, caught in their own information bubble

yeah, but he also doesn't read that sort of thing because he doesn't touch official media websites

he'll go onto very small websites of a few people who sound like they know what they're talking about, get various opinions from anyone who isn't official, but refuse to accept that maybe the government is right about /some/ things

conspiracy theorist i guess

russians probably don't need to do anything more lol

@Corsaka I'd actually wager a lot of those sites are supported by Russian trolls

....that makes sense

i think it's sorta close-minded to go "the problem is russia" and leave it there though

And those sites may not even be aware that they're coopted in that way

a significant number of genuine scientists still get a platform and state misinformation purely for personal gain

he brought up Andrew Wakefield, who's one of the anti-vaxx guys that got famous by claiming the MMR vaccine caused a disease, and that's spiraled into the modern vaccines-cause-autism movement

@Corsaka you mean he brought him up as a positive example?

wakefield made up the disease, and concluded in his paper that we should still take vaccines but they should be split into three separate ones, all of which he was conveniently selling

no

wakefield is a vile person

but i don't think he's influenced by russia

@Corsaka no, I mean does your father think Wakefield told the truth?

he's now gone back on what he said on that paper and speaks regularly at anti-vaccine talks because those are the only people who will payhim anymore

oh, he does

i've shown him the evidence of wakefield lying

and of it being a plant to make money

and he refuses to acknowledge it

Yeah, it's really hard to get people with such ideas to reconsider them

just infuriates me even though i know the science behind core beliefs, etc.

Something that sometimes works is to figure out a way to show that the people spreading the propaganda have the same problems as the people he's opposed to

but even that doesn't often work

yeah, i don't see a path to do that with him

his claim is "there are so many layers of lies with truths interspersed, it doesn't matter which parts are true because it's based on a lie"

and with that he rejects basically any counterargument

so i've just given up at this point

@Corsaka Sometimes that's the only thing that you CAN do for your sanity

For your own sanity

How old is he?

Like, just avoid them

62, and yeah i'm lucky enough to be able to hide in university from september onwards

but these summer months have been painful

conclusion: russian influence made me want to spend money at a university

Study hard the competition is fierce out there.

shall do

Damn. Olivia Newton-John has died. RIP

@Jolenealaska days after Judith Durham aswell