12 November, 2024

You're being targeted by disinformation networks that are vastly more effective than you realize. And they're making you more hateful and depressed.

https://www.reddit.com/r/self/comments/1gouvit/youre_being_targeted_by_disinformation_networks/

How Russian networks fuel racial and gender wars to make Americans fight one another

In September 2018, a video went viral after being posted by In the Now, a social media news channel. It featured a feminist activist pouring bleach on a male subway passenger for manspreading. It got instant attention, with millions of views and wide social media outrage. Reddit users wrote that it had turned them against feminism.

There was one problem: The video was staged. And In the Now, which publicized it, is a subsidiary of RT, formerly Russia Today, the Kremlin TV channel aimed at foreign, English-speaking audiences.

As an MIT study found in 2019, Russia's online influence networks reached 140 million Americans every month -- the majority of U.S. social media users.