I've said for a while that I think this sort of thing is a much better explanation for trends we see than moustache-twirling foreign dictators "spreading dissent" for the heck of it.
Yes, they exist and yes, they have troll factories, but they usually promote narratives with some immediate benefit to themselves. When they do promote irrelevant stuff, I think it's just to build social media clout for their actual messages. The payload so to say.
In particular, when Russian trolls promote both sides in some divisive foreign domestic issue, it's not to "spread chaos", but to gain a foot in the door to promote their actual messages, which are things like, "Sanctions on Russian leaders are pointless and counterproductive", "Assad didn't gas anyone", "Actual nazis have the Ukrainian leadership's balls in a vice" etc.
There's a meme that most "nationalist" Twitter/X posters in the UK are actually from South Asia, and only doing it because for people in low-income countries the Twitter payments are a viable source of income.
I'm not on Twitter anymore thankfully, but when I was there seemed to be a lot of truth to this. It even got to the point of there being successful witch hunts outing quite large/popular accounts as being Indian people pretending to be British
X famously implemented a feature that revelaed where the posters were from. Sure you can use a VPN, but Musk changed the rules all of a sudden and exposed a lot of accounts posting about issues from other countries.
Twitter may have a lot of faults, but they're ahead of Facebook on this one.
I think the difference is Elon is actually a Twitter addict and he's genuinely on there every day engaging with this stuff, so he probably saw the memes.
I get the sense Zuckerberg is a lot more disconnected from everyday Facebook and Insta content
> The move made him a mint — and Sam was soon raking in thousands of dollars a month.
> “I was spending maybe 30 to 50 minutes of my day, and I was making good money for a medical student,” he recalled.
> He said he also attempted to make a liberal counterpart for Hart on Instagram, but “Democrats know that it’s AI slop, so they don’t engage as much,” he said.
The effort-to-profit ratio is so insane that you almost can't blame them for turning the internet into such toxic wasteland.
Definitely a real thing, I meant it was a meme in the sense that at one point almost everyone was getting accused of being Indian (and subsequently having to refute it) in a partly humorous but also partly serious way
People selling get rich guides did not get rich using the method they describe. But I don't doubt a lot of people try, with or without guides to help them.
> which are things like, "Sanctions on Russian leaders are pointless and counterproductive", "Assad didn't gas anyone", "Actual nazis have the Ukrainian leadership's balls in a vice" etc.
What would be the point of that? Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support. For instance here in the us, only around 3% of americans vote based on foreign policy. Does it really matter which narrative the masses believe? I would think it would be people in power worth persuading, and there are much more direct ways of buying politicians and career government workers.
Propagandizing their own people I get, but what you're outlining just doesn't make sense. "Spreading chaos" does because it draws resources away from their interests to domestic discord.
Public opinion does sometimes change the direction of a country. For Russia it's probably most relevant in a few eastern European countries, but there's a normality effect - it is probably easier for someone like Órban to dissent from EU on Ukraine the more there is minority dissent in other EU countries.
Either way, it doesn't have to actually work, the propagandist only has to think it's worth it to try.
Its not about Americans. Russians already owned them and got them to do what they want. Its about Europeans that are much closer to their representatives.
> Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support
Up until Iran, wars in America had large general support. Americans liked wars and their support for leadership went up when those wards started. And Americans politicians who wanted those wars put a lot of work into making people support wars.
Russians supported invasion of Ukraine. And Putin made sure they will. Even Germans prior WWI and WWII supported and wanted war. Ironically, especially young wanting to prove their masculinity.
In case of Germany nope. Germans were not against the wars but there was not a huge support case.
Especially WWI it was only a nationalistic educated minority who supported the war. Most people were not so keen to die
> Especially WWI it was only a nationalistic educated minority who supported the war.
Definitely not minority. There were hawks "attack now" and doves claiming "we are not ready we get ready and attack". Moreover, large parts of Germans population did not accepted defeat of WWI, thought the peace was betrayal and wanted a redo.
In 1914, the "spirit for the war" was high.
> Most people were not so keen to die
It just so happen that young men and former soldiers were the keenest on WWII. Of course they were not keen to die, but they were massively keen on proving they are manly men who will kill their enemies. They wanted to prove they are as good as their heroes from WWI.
Perhaps projection? It is perfectly valid to have different opinions. "Russian trolls" are not some sort of uniform centralized group, that gets directions what to "promote". Some people just have opinions, and do stuff out of conviction, not to get reward.
There is a uniform centralized group that operated for a decade under the name of Internet Research Agency, and almost certainly something like it continues to operate to this day. These had paid employees who got directions on what to promote with the goal of manipulating the public debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
That was a private company operated by Prigozhin [1] who was, almost certainly, an extremely mentally unwell individual. He was the guy who formed the 'Wagner' private military company, supported Putin, then seemingly tried to overthrow Putin, and then was likely killed by Putin. When he left the stage, it was unceremoniously shut down alongside most of his other ventures. The spastic operations of the org could well be explained simply by being under Prigozhin.
I'm also of the mindset that the effort to suggest there's state propaganda everywhere is, itself, mostly domestic state propaganda in an effort to try to 'otherize' dissenting views, especially as politicians and their actions become ever more unpopular.
I imagine Israel's various hasbara operation dwarfs its relevance and funding by multiple orders of magnitude. I don't see much evidence it plays a role outside of being useful to blame for inconvenient discourse.
Sure, but that's a good example. They obviously push pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian and probably a good deal of outright anti-Muslim positions.
But do you think they push random divisive issues, unrelated to their own interests, just to destabilize countries they don't like? I think the evidence for that is much weaker.
Canada may not have laws against this, but some countries might classify this as "subversive activity harmful to the nation". That is normally punished by imprisonment, losing the right to conduct business and hold public office.
Well done to the journalist that uncovered this. Makes a change from copying and pasting press releases that many 'journalists' seem to do these days (partly because journalist organizations have been so hollowed out by Facebook et al).
Western governments are so concerned when this happens to them (at arguably a tiny scale) compared to the “interventions” they’ve supported around the world for almost one hundred years.
Rules for thee and not for me. Sure, Canada isn’t the CIA, but they’ve been right there with the US from Iran to Ukraine.
Facebook is also paying far right israelis, whose content incites violence against Palestinians.
> a new report titled “Monetizing Occupation: Meta’s Financial Enablement of Settlement Activity and Violent Rhetoric Against Palestinians.” The report reveals how Meta allows Israeli far-right pages, settler-affiliated accounts, and extremist media outlets to generate revenue through its platforms, despite publishing violent, racist, and inciting content against Palestinians, and despite many being directly linked to promoting illegal settlement expansion, as well as widespread violence and attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.
I've said for a while that I think this sort of thing is a much better explanation for trends we see than moustache-twirling foreign dictators "spreading dissent" for the heck of it.
Yes, they exist and yes, they have troll factories, but they usually promote narratives with some immediate benefit to themselves. When they do promote irrelevant stuff, I think it's just to build social media clout for their actual messages. The payload so to say.
In particular, when Russian trolls promote both sides in some divisive foreign domestic issue, it's not to "spread chaos", but to gain a foot in the door to promote their actual messages, which are things like, "Sanctions on Russian leaders are pointless and counterproductive", "Assad didn't gas anyone", "Actual nazis have the Ukrainian leadership's balls in a vice" etc.
There's a meme that most "nationalist" Twitter/X posters in the UK are actually from South Asia, and only doing it because for people in low-income countries the Twitter payments are a viable source of income.
I'm not on Twitter anymore thankfully, but when I was there seemed to be a lot of truth to this. It even got to the point of there being successful witch hunts outing quite large/popular accounts as being Indian people pretending to be British
X famously implemented a feature that revelaed where the posters were from. Sure you can use a VPN, but Musk changed the rules all of a sudden and exposed a lot of accounts posting about issues from other countries.
Twitter may have a lot of faults, but they're ahead of Facebook on this one.
I think the difference is Elon is actually a Twitter addict and he's genuinely on there every day engaging with this stuff, so he probably saw the memes.
I get the sense Zuckerberg is a lot more disconnected from everyday Facebook and Insta content
I mean I'm not sure it's a meme - this guy literally got rich doing it, to a point where he's selling "self guide" courses on how to do this:
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-11-16/kin...
Similarly: https://nypost.com/2026/04/21/us-news/top-maga-influencer-em...
Some highlights:
> The move made him a mint — and Sam was soon raking in thousands of dollars a month.
> “I was spending maybe 30 to 50 minutes of my day, and I was making good money for a medical student,” he recalled.
> He said he also attempted to make a liberal counterpart for Hart on Instagram, but “Democrats know that it’s AI slop, so they don’t engage as much,” he said.
The effort-to-profit ratio is so insane that you almost can't blame them for turning the internet into such toxic wasteland.
Definitely a real thing, I meant it was a meme in the sense that at one point almost everyone was getting accused of being Indian (and subsequently having to refute it) in a partly humorous but also partly serious way
You know what? I ain't even mad. 300k is life-changing money in Sri Lanka.
People selling get rich guides did not get rich using the method they describe. But I don't doubt a lot of people try, with or without guides to help them.
Who of credit has claimed otherwise, that dictators spread dissent as an end rather than as a means?
Of credit, that's arguable. But a famous example is Nancy Pelosi suggesting that pro-Palestine protests in 2024 were funded by Putin.
> which are things like, "Sanctions on Russian leaders are pointless and counterproductive", "Assad didn't gas anyone", "Actual nazis have the Ukrainian leadership's balls in a vice" etc.
What would be the point of that? Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support. For instance here in the us, only around 3% of americans vote based on foreign policy. Does it really matter which narrative the masses believe? I would think it would be people in power worth persuading, and there are much more direct ways of buying politicians and career government workers.
Propagandizing their own people I get, but what you're outlining just doesn't make sense. "Spreading chaos" does because it draws resources away from their interests to domestic discord.
Public opinion does sometimes change the direction of a country. For Russia it's probably most relevant in a few eastern European countries, but there's a normality effect - it is probably easier for someone like Órban to dissent from EU on Ukraine the more there is minority dissent in other EU countries.
Either way, it doesn't have to actually work, the propagandist only has to think it's worth it to try.
Its not about Americans. Russians already owned them and got them to do what they want. Its about Europeans that are much closer to their representatives.
> Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support
Up until Iran, wars in America had large general support. Americans liked wars and their support for leadership went up when those wards started. And Americans politicians who wanted those wars put a lot of work into making people support wars.
Russians supported invasion of Ukraine. And Putin made sure they will. Even Germans prior WWI and WWII supported and wanted war. Ironically, especially young wanting to prove their masculinity.
In case of Germany nope. Germans were not against the wars but there was not a huge support case. Especially WWI it was only a nationalistic educated minority who supported the war. Most people were not so keen to die
> Especially WWI it was only a nationalistic educated minority who supported the war.
Definitely not minority. There were hawks "attack now" and doves claiming "we are not ready we get ready and attack". Moreover, large parts of Germans population did not accepted defeat of WWI, thought the peace was betrayal and wanted a redo.
In 1914, the "spirit for the war" was high.
> Most people were not so keen to die
It just so happen that young men and former soldiers were the keenest on WWII. Of course they were not keen to die, but they were massively keen on proving they are manly men who will kill their enemies. They wanted to prove they are as good as their heroes from WWI.
> when Russian trolls promote both sides
Perhaps projection? It is perfectly valid to have different opinions. "Russian trolls" are not some sort of uniform centralized group, that gets directions what to "promote". Some people just have opinions, and do stuff out of conviction, not to get reward.
There is a uniform centralized group that operated for a decade under the name of Internet Research Agency, and almost certainly something like it continues to operate to this day. These had paid employees who got directions on what to promote with the goal of manipulating the public debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency
That was a private company operated by Prigozhin [1] who was, almost certainly, an extremely mentally unwell individual. He was the guy who formed the 'Wagner' private military company, supported Putin, then seemingly tried to overthrow Putin, and then was likely killed by Putin. When he left the stage, it was unceremoniously shut down alongside most of his other ventures. The spastic operations of the org could well be explained simply by being under Prigozhin.
I'm also of the mindset that the effort to suggest there's state propaganda everywhere is, itself, mostly domestic state propaganda in an effort to try to 'otherize' dissenting views, especially as politicians and their actions become ever more unpopular.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Prigozhin
I imagine Israel's various hasbara operation dwarfs its relevance and funding by multiple orders of magnitude. I don't see much evidence it plays a role outside of being useful to blame for inconvenient discourse.
Sure, but that's a good example. They obviously push pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian and probably a good deal of outright anti-Muslim positions.
But do you think they push random divisive issues, unrelated to their own interests, just to destabilize countries they don't like? I think the evidence for that is much weaker.
Canada may not have laws against this, but some countries might classify this as "subversive activity harmful to the nation". That is normally punished by imprisonment, losing the right to conduct business and hold public office.
Well done to the journalist that uncovered this. Makes a change from copying and pasting press releases that many 'journalists' seem to do these days (partly because journalist organizations have been so hollowed out by Facebook et al).
Imperial boomerang strikes again
Western governments are so concerned when this happens to them (at arguably a tiny scale) compared to the “interventions” they’ve supported around the world for almost one hundred years.
Rules for thee and not for me. Sure, Canada isn’t the CIA, but they’ve been right there with the US from Iran to Ukraine.
Albrexit?
Alberxit?
Albexit?
Albertata!
Facebook is also paying far right israelis, whose content incites violence against Palestinians.
> a new report titled “Monetizing Occupation: Meta’s Financial Enablement of Settlement Activity and Violent Rhetoric Against Palestinians.” The report reveals how Meta allows Israeli far-right pages, settler-affiliated accounts, and extremist media outlets to generate revenue through its platforms, despite publishing violent, racist, and inciting content against Palestinians, and despite many being directly linked to promoting illegal settlement expansion, as well as widespread violence and attacks against Palestinians in the West Bank.
https://7amleh.org/post/meta-monetizes-settlements-and-viole...
I feel that somehow this is all Putin's fault /s