I DMed you an example of one of the accounts posting constantly about US politics, and then one day using non-US currency punctuation in their numbers. That in itself isn’t all that weird, obviously, but then someone asked them the fairly obvious question of, wait, hang on, where are you from? If you’re not from the US (which looking at your numbers you clearly are not), then why do you post constantly about US politics? And, of course, the particular take they had on politics was exactly the same bizarre “all anti-Democrats all the time” opinion set that a lot of these accounts tend to have.
Anyway, when asked about the punctuation, they professed total confusion about the question, made a weird comment about symbols on their calculator, accused people of being super weird for thinking anything was strange about the non-American style they used for money, got hostile, and refused to engage anymore. Basically their answer was 100% bizarre. That part of it is a pretty strong indication that they’re a foreign influence operation, although of course I have no idea whether that means “Russian,” and it’s impossible to really be sure.
They’ve long since been banned for other sins, but that was the one that really stuck out to me as actual evidence. Most of the time, it’s impossible to tell the difference between an influence operation and just someone with a particular set of genuine opinions. They’re only really obvious when they fuck up like that or something, which doesn’t happen all that often.
Whether that poster is American or not, they’re quite obviously not a bot. But accusing people who are critical of America’s bipartisan support for genocide of just being a foreigner is a little too mask-off.
But accusing people who are critical of America’s bipartisan support for genocide of just being a foreigner is a little too mask-off.
I had a feeling you would wildly misconstrue lol
I was and still am very welcoming of people who are critical of America’s bipartisan support for genocide. I’m one of them. People who wanted to make the genocide ten times worse (and have now succeeded), by letting someone into power who wants to turn what was already a catastrophe into something much, much darker, probably the end of Gaza and maybe the end of the West Bank depending, I was opposed to.
People who were willing to sacrifice Gaza by letting Trump come into office, for whatever reasons of their own, and disguise it behind a tissue-thin veneer of care for Palestinians and accuse other people of some kind of wild weirdness any time someone calls them out on it, I was definitely opposed to. Also, not to mention sacrificing progress on the climate, safety for anyone inside the US who’s not a citizen, free elections, all kinds of things which are now in horrible danger.
Anyway, this account clearly wasn’t American and was still agitating tirelessly for a particular outcome in American politics which was guaranteed to make things much, much, much worse for Palestinians. If you want to say that they’re not literally a bot, and I haven’t proven that they’re Russian, then sure. Fair. IDK why you would immediately react though by making excuses for this user or pretending that my complaint was something absolutely wholly different from what my complaint was, if you cared about Palestinians.
Its not misconstruing to point out you original claim, Russian bots, isn’t what you are trying to prove, foreign-funded pro-republican posters.
But the notion that the poster is pro-republican is the core issue here.
The purpose of screaming about ghoulish shit the dems do isn’t to pretend the republicans won’t do the same shit, its to pressure the dems to stop doing that shit so they have a shot in hell at winning. By the end of October, dem insiders were saying the protesters were electorally irrelevant and the kids would forget and go home and vote dem by November and people like you were demanding we pledge to vote dem unconditionally instead of helping pressure the dems to do the only thing that would have allowed them to win.
Nothing you or I can say makes genocide, means testing, and rolling over for republicans/adopting their framing and policies popular among potential dem voters.
Every time you say “well republicans also do x/y/z”, you help the DNC maintain the delusion they can win on dogshit policy that only their donors like.
So then you sort of implied that OBVIOUSLY I hadn’t seen any Russian bots and was just squirming.
So then I said, well, here’s a poster who is pretty clearly a foreign influence operation of some kind, in my opinion, but you can draw your own conclusions.
And then you said that OBVIOUSLY I’m just against anyone who is critical of America’s bipartisan support for genocide, and the whole thing about the calculator and the actual point of my post was just a distraction I guess.
When I addressed that you moved to saying OBVIOUSLY the purpose of this non American person “screaming about the ghoulish shit the dems do” is just to help the Democrats win the election by changing their messaging, because the DNC reads Lemmy I guess? And you know that that was this person’s motivation?
There is a pretty good video which talks about this argumentation strategy. It’s never just “Hey show me an example of a Russian bot” “Here’s an example, it doesn’t completely fit what you asked for but it’s what I’ve got” “Yeah that doesn’t exactly fit, I thought you said Russian bots” “Tru dat” (fin). It always has to morph into some new argument in every message, and it always has to be part of a prepackaged talking point (“I’m just trying to help the Democrats” “Oh I guess you think ANYONE who’s anti-genocide is a Russian bot” are both things I’ve seen a bunch of times before. The first one doesn’t even apply here, since I think ostensibly we were talking about why this other person was airing these particular views, which you would have no idea about why they would say it, or what the “purpose” was. Anyway, and so on.)
The running theme here is all these people who ostensibly want a frank exchange of ideas spend a lot more time making accusations than asking questions. Because why ask what you believe when they can tell you what you believe and make you correct them? And if you ever don’t go to the trouble of correcting them, must be because they’re right.
I asked for a Russian bot. When what you gave me wasn’t a bot and undetermined whether Russian, I didn’t say “thats not a bot, you’re wrong”, I accepted what you actually meant, ‘malicious foreigners, presumably paid, to post arguments and news that supports republicans by showing the dems actions and words’ and responded accordingly.
Show me one, an actual bot. Nearly any instance admin would be happy to ban them.
Though if you meant “malicious foreigners are the reason people were saying genocide is bad and the dems need to stop it or they will lose”, we can have that discussion instead.
Show me a Russian bot on Lemmy. I, and I’m sure plenty of instance admins would love to know what they look like.
I could be banned from this community if I did. That’s the way they set up the rules for it.
You’re not squirming out of this so easily. If you have seen a Russian bot, dm me the evidence. Ill post it.
I DMed you an example of one of the accounts posting constantly about US politics, and then one day using non-US currency punctuation in their numbers. That in itself isn’t all that weird, obviously, but then someone asked them the fairly obvious question of, wait, hang on, where are you from? If you’re not from the US (which looking at your numbers you clearly are not), then why do you post constantly about US politics? And, of course, the particular take they had on politics was exactly the same bizarre “all anti-Democrats all the time” opinion set that a lot of these accounts tend to have.
Anyway, when asked about the punctuation, they professed total confusion about the question, made a weird comment about symbols on their calculator, accused people of being super weird for thinking anything was strange about the non-American style they used for money, got hostile, and refused to engage anymore. Basically their answer was 100% bizarre. That part of it is a pretty strong indication that they’re a foreign influence operation, although of course I have no idea whether that means “Russian,” and it’s impossible to really be sure.
They’ve long since been banned for other sins, but that was the one that really stuck out to me as actual evidence. Most of the time, it’s impossible to tell the difference between an influence operation and just someone with a particular set of genuine opinions. They’re only really obvious when they fuck up like that or something, which doesn’t happen all that often.
There you go, no squirming required.
Whether that poster is American or not, they’re quite obviously not a bot. But accusing people who are critical of America’s bipartisan support for genocide of just being a foreigner is a little too mask-off.
I had a feeling you would wildly misconstrue lol
I was and still am very welcoming of people who are critical of America’s bipartisan support for genocide. I’m one of them. People who wanted to make the genocide ten times worse (and have now succeeded), by letting someone into power who wants to turn what was already a catastrophe into something much, much darker, probably the end of Gaza and maybe the end of the West Bank depending, I was opposed to.
People who were willing to sacrifice Gaza by letting Trump come into office, for whatever reasons of their own, and disguise it behind a tissue-thin veneer of care for Palestinians and accuse other people of some kind of wild weirdness any time someone calls them out on it, I was definitely opposed to. Also, not to mention sacrificing progress on the climate, safety for anyone inside the US who’s not a citizen, free elections, all kinds of things which are now in horrible danger.
Anyway, this account clearly wasn’t American and was still agitating tirelessly for a particular outcome in American politics which was guaranteed to make things much, much, much worse for Palestinians. If you want to say that they’re not literally a bot, and I haven’t proven that they’re Russian, then sure. Fair. IDK why you would immediately react though by making excuses for this user or pretending that my complaint was something absolutely wholly different from what my complaint was, if you cared about Palestinians.
Its not misconstruing to point out you original claim, Russian bots, isn’t what you are trying to prove, foreign-funded pro-republican posters.
But the notion that the poster is pro-republican is the core issue here.
The purpose of screaming about ghoulish shit the dems do isn’t to pretend the republicans won’t do the same shit, its to pressure the dems to stop doing that shit so they have a shot in hell at winning. By the end of October, dem insiders were saying the protesters were electorally irrelevant and the kids would forget and go home and vote dem by November and people like you were demanding we pledge to vote dem unconditionally instead of helping pressure the dems to do the only thing that would have allowed them to win.
Nothing you or I can say makes genocide, means testing, and rolling over for republicans/adopting their framing and policies popular among potential dem voters.
Every time you say “well republicans also do x/y/z”, you help the DNC maintain the delusion they can win on dogshit policy that only their donors like.
So then you sort of implied that OBVIOUSLY I hadn’t seen any Russian bots and was just squirming.
So then I said, well, here’s a poster who is pretty clearly a foreign influence operation of some kind, in my opinion, but you can draw your own conclusions.
And then you said that OBVIOUSLY I’m just against anyone who is critical of America’s bipartisan support for genocide, and the whole thing about the calculator and the actual point of my post was just a distraction I guess.
When I addressed that you moved to saying OBVIOUSLY the purpose of this non American person “screaming about the ghoulish shit the dems do” is just to help the Democrats win the election by changing their messaging, because the DNC reads Lemmy I guess? And you know that that was this person’s motivation?
There is a pretty good video which talks about this argumentation strategy. It’s never just “Hey show me an example of a Russian bot” “Here’s an example, it doesn’t completely fit what you asked for but it’s what I’ve got” “Yeah that doesn’t exactly fit, I thought you said Russian bots” “Tru dat” (fin). It always has to morph into some new argument in every message, and it always has to be part of a prepackaged talking point (“I’m just trying to help the Democrats” “Oh I guess you think ANYONE who’s anti-genocide is a Russian bot” are both things I’ve seen a bunch of times before. The first one doesn’t even apply here, since I think ostensibly we were talking about why this other person was airing these particular views, which you would have no idea about why they would say it, or what the “purpose” was. Anyway, and so on.)
I asked for a Russian bot. When what you gave me wasn’t a bot and undetermined whether Russian, I didn’t say “thats not a bot, you’re wrong”, I accepted what you actually meant, ‘malicious foreigners, presumably paid, to post arguments and news that supports republicans by showing the dems actions and words’ and responded accordingly.
How about all the “Democrats are equally as bad as Republicans” bots and the “Genocide Joe” bots?
I bet you saw a lot of those.
You know, the ones who made sure the Democrats didn’t get enough votes to win against someone as dumb as Trump?
Show me one, an actual bot. Nearly any instance admin would be happy to ban them.
Though if you meant “malicious foreigners are the reason people were saying genocide is bad and the dems need to stop it or they will lose”, we can have that discussion instead.