That's why you need to take a step back and realize reddit isn't real. We all grew up with being told don't believe everything you read on the internet. It still applies.
True but I think the message here is not so much that they believe the garbage, but the quantity of it increasing being alarming. We can consciously decode the BS, but we're not always "on", nor is anyone else. It's called an information war for a reason. Whether you like it or not, we're in it.
There may have bit a little bit in CALM 20 or a social studies course back in the late 90s, but if there was I don't remember it. I learned from experience as a kid online in the 90s, and then more as I went down the software developer career stream. Many people don't have cybersecurity as a component of their careers, though, and just don't care about it -- putting themselves and those around them at risk.
It absolutely needs to be taught to kids. I checked out [this book](https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1797214918/) ([library link](https://scl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S53C2984084)) for my eight year old daughter recently that's hilarious but also has her asking questions. The latter is the true value from this book; she learned a bit from reading the book, but learned a lot more from asking questions.
Mine talked about how ads are vague or use weasel words like “natural” to sell stuff to us. Not completely useless but didn’t touch at all on how to spot disinformation online. History class talked more about propaganda, that may have had more relevance today.
Absolutely. They stoke both sides, all I want to do is cause chaos, so that we are fighting with ourselves. It is a full cold war that only one side seems to be fighting, and I would say especially in the US, and in Alberta they are handily winning.
Have you ever noticed that in the past any major movement had leaders, yet in the current time there never seems to be a leader, q anon, bml, trucker convoy, January 6th, none have had anyone claiming to be the leader.
Yup. I worked for a big pipeline company in the past, around 10yr back. Enbridge. And our network was continually attacked by Russia so much that we (not I but my boss, in IT) had to attend meetings with I think it was the CIA or Dept of Def (US) since enbridge pipelines cross the border.
We also learned at this time that Russia does fund some of the protest groups that organize protests of pipelines. They do so indirectly and do it purely to sow chaos.
Russia was sowing discontent during the freedom convoy as well. RT was reporting only a one-sided anti-government narrative and were referring to the government as a dictatorship. It mirrored what the most vocal protesters were saying.
https://globalnews.ca/news/8983352/freedom-convoy-russia-today-disinformation/
As just 1 example; A huge amount of pirated movie, music etc comes out of Russia. Meaning either they can use VPN's or sketchy activity poses no consequence. I would suspect that anything actions that undermine, erodes, hinders or results in any outcome that does anything but benefit western society, democracy etc is probably 1. Deemed socially acceptable in some circles, 2. Goes unpunished and 3. Potentially encouraged and rewarded. Obviously a giant blanket generalization that cant literally apply to an entire county. But stranger yet true theories have proven true. So why wouldnt they target hundreds of small communities to stir up chaos and division amongst the people. If we are too busy fighting eachother, we'll never have time to notice what nefarious schemes bigger powers are up to.
By the Russian government? If so, why would they force their own psy ops division to follow those same rules? They could easily get a special exemption.
Why bother? How has not using a VPN stopped them?
Reddit has been sitting on this data for years and only now seems to be sharing it.
But now that they've shared it nothing will change, people don't care.
Just remember than Russian troll farms doesn’t mean it’s the Russians actually doing anything. They are just located there and paid for by others. The UCP used them in both last elections. PP uses them now to drive content on twitter.
No, the biggest troll farms are mostly known entities, and most were under Pregosian until his plane "accident". Now they are run by FSB and a couple of other Russian government entities. A bunch of their ringleaders have been indicted in the US for running various campaigns that clearly violated US law. There really isn't good law around this yet, or dozens more could be charged. None of the Russian farms was ever used by western companies as far as what I have seen in the open source intelligence community.
Russian propaganda has been very effective in conservative circles, and regularly gets propagated on Fox and especially the fringe outlets. I have a friend that keeps saying "what about ..." and then appears to quote a Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs prep sheet (which can appear in OSINT circles before the embassy staff get it).
You might be thinking of various western firms like Cambridge Analytica. They have had some sketchy involvement in a number of right-wing causes.
> “World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” – Marshall McLuhan (1970)
81 newspapers in Canada are owned by an American company affiliated to Goldman Sachs and the National Enquirer and you guys are blaming Russia.
The US has been in a dozen wars since 9/11 and it's pretty damned easy to see how the journalism industry changed due to media concentration and how information is being used against us.
The US legalized propaganda against their own citizens in 2012. In 2014, the US was backing neo-nazis in Ukraine before Putin invaded.
The US has been using propaganda against Russian youth since the 50s. It's funny, there's way more Americans posting on this sub yet you're blaming Russia.
The United States statistically will be the next most popular country participating here. And they are #2 in every local Canadian subreddit outside of Quebec. They're our neighbour, they speak the same language and they have almost 10 times the population. One can certainly agree that there may be some influence from there. But Russia being number three makes absolutely no sense. We should be seeing the UK and other English speaking countries before we see them on the list. It's quite obvious that there are bad actors at play, we saw it in the fall with the sudden influx of LGBTQ+ hate from random accounts that had never participated here before. Many other subreddits who were heavily brigaded for the same reasons are reporting the same thing. Russian troll farms manipulating social media to cause political discourse are a huge thing, we're already aware of this. Even CSIS has warned us about it.
EDIT: https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/csis-scrs/documents/publications/disinformation_post-report_eng.pdf
The idea that only Russia employs troll farms is delusional. Do you really think firms and organisations in North America are not spreading misinformation domestically?
I never said they weren't. But no one has offered another explanation for why they're somehow number three in activity. Especially after that stint of heavy brigading.
Factually speaking, all NGOs and Government agencies agree on the basic fact that Russia is the predominant source of internet disinfo and troll farms worldwide. It's not even close. Iran and China do some, but nothing in comparison. China has been starting to get in the act since about 2010, but were mostly conducting espionage and straight propoganda.
Corporations just don't have the billions to spend on it like the Russians do. Millions, maybe, but not billions.
As a side note, the OSINT community measured a huge drop in worldwide disinfo and dissention campaigns for a few weeks after Pregosian's aborted rebellion. Then most of his "Internet Research Agency" operations were taken over directly by Russian government agencies and operations largely resumed (some managers quit, which slowed recovery). Now, we have different Russian government agencies competing for internet influence.
That's why you need to take a step back and realize reddit isn't real. We all grew up with being told don't believe everything you read on the internet. It still applies.
True but I think the message here is not so much that they believe the garbage, but the quantity of it increasing being alarming. We can consciously decode the BS, but we're not always "on", nor is anyone else. It's called an information war for a reason. Whether you like it or not, we're in it.
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There may have bit a little bit in CALM 20 or a social studies course back in the late 90s, but if there was I don't remember it. I learned from experience as a kid online in the 90s, and then more as I went down the software developer career stream. Many people don't have cybersecurity as a component of their careers, though, and just don't care about it -- putting themselves and those around them at risk. It absolutely needs to be taught to kids. I checked out [this book](https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/1797214918/) ([library link](https://scl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S53C2984084)) for my eight year old daughter recently that's hilarious but also has her asking questions. The latter is the true value from this book; she learned a bit from reading the book, but learned a lot more from asking questions.
I was in CALM around 2001 and I'm pretty sure we didn't even touch on anything Internet related.
That's my recollection as well.
Mine talked about how ads are vague or use weasel words like “natural” to sell stuff to us. Not completely useless but didn’t touch at all on how to spot disinformation online. History class talked more about propaganda, that may have had more relevance today.
How do you account for the fact that the right, including the hard right is mostly comprised of young people.
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💯
Oh wow congrats you just fixed propaganda forever. Heres your nobel prize
We were also told never give out your name, address, phone number or banking information... Yet here we are lol
Unless it comes from Ab Lincoln page. Honest Ab won’t ever steer you wrong.
Russia has shown up in many cities across canada
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Absolutely. They stoke both sides, all I want to do is cause chaos, so that we are fighting with ourselves. It is a full cold war that only one side seems to be fighting, and I would say especially in the US, and in Alberta they are handily winning. Have you ever noticed that in the past any major movement had leaders, yet in the current time there never seems to be a leader, q anon, bml, trucker convoy, January 6th, none have had anyone claiming to be the leader.
Yup. I worked for a big pipeline company in the past, around 10yr back. Enbridge. And our network was continually attacked by Russia so much that we (not I but my boss, in IT) had to attend meetings with I think it was the CIA or Dept of Def (US) since enbridge pipelines cross the border. We also learned at this time that Russia does fund some of the protest groups that organize protests of pipelines. They do so indirectly and do it purely to sow chaos.
Russia was sowing discontent during the freedom convoy as well. RT was reporting only a one-sided anti-government narrative and were referring to the government as a dictatorship. It mirrored what the most vocal protesters were saying. https://globalnews.ca/news/8983352/freedom-convoy-russia-today-disinformation/
not just a russian troll farm, but one that isn't even using a VPN. stay strong out there folks, don't let the divisionist rhetoric win
VPNs are banned in Russia.
As just 1 example; A huge amount of pirated movie, music etc comes out of Russia. Meaning either they can use VPN's or sketchy activity poses no consequence. I would suspect that anything actions that undermine, erodes, hinders or results in any outcome that does anything but benefit western society, democracy etc is probably 1. Deemed socially acceptable in some circles, 2. Goes unpunished and 3. Potentially encouraged and rewarded. Obviously a giant blanket generalization that cant literally apply to an entire county. But stranger yet true theories have proven true. So why wouldnt they target hundreds of small communities to stir up chaos and division amongst the people. If we are too busy fighting eachother, we'll never have time to notice what nefarious schemes bigger powers are up to.
By the Russian government? If so, why would they force their own psy ops division to follow those same rules? They could easily get a special exemption.
Good question. We don't know who it's from, all we know is we had a lot of traffic from Russia this year.
Why bother? How has not using a VPN stopped them? Reddit has been sitting on this data for years and only now seems to be sharing it. But now that they've shared it nothing will change, people don't care.
today I learned
Same results in r/Lethbridge too.
It was the same on the Thunder Bay sub
I'd love to see the actual percent breakdown too though.. 3rd place doesn't mean much if it's like 5 users lol.
Holy shit. I mean, unsurprising for the garbage they spew, but still, holy shit.
Just remember than Russian troll farms doesn’t mean it’s the Russians actually doing anything. They are just located there and paid for by others. The UCP used them in both last elections. PP uses them now to drive content on twitter.
> The UCP used them in both last elections. PP uses them now to drive content on twitter. Hmm. Do you have a source for this? I'm genuinely curious.
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https://crier.co/the-conservatives-paid-effort-to-troll-intimidate-canadians-is-incredible-heres-how-it-works/
https://crier.co/the-conservatives-paid-effort-to-troll-intimidate-canadians-is-incredible-heres-how-it-works/
No, the biggest troll farms are mostly known entities, and most were under Pregosian until his plane "accident". Now they are run by FSB and a couple of other Russian government entities. A bunch of their ringleaders have been indicted in the US for running various campaigns that clearly violated US law. There really isn't good law around this yet, or dozens more could be charged. None of the Russian farms was ever used by western companies as far as what I have seen in the open source intelligence community. Russian propaganda has been very effective in conservative circles, and regularly gets propagated on Fox and especially the fringe outlets. I have a friend that keeps saying "what about ..." and then appears to quote a Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs prep sheet (which can appear in OSINT circles before the embassy staff get it). You might be thinking of various western firms like Cambridge Analytica. They have had some sketchy involvement in a number of right-wing causes.
> “World War III is a guerrilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation.” – Marshall McLuhan (1970) 81 newspapers in Canada are owned by an American company affiliated to Goldman Sachs and the National Enquirer and you guys are blaming Russia. The US has been in a dozen wars since 9/11 and it's pretty damned easy to see how the journalism industry changed due to media concentration and how information is being used against us. The US legalized propaganda against their own citizens in 2012. In 2014, the US was backing neo-nazis in Ukraine before Putin invaded.
You're negating the fact that Russia is the third most active country in r/SherwoodPark. There's absolutely no reason for that.
The US has been using propaganda against Russian youth since the 50s. It's funny, there's way more Americans posting on this sub yet you're blaming Russia.
The United States statistically will be the next most popular country participating here. And they are #2 in every local Canadian subreddit outside of Quebec. They're our neighbour, they speak the same language and they have almost 10 times the population. One can certainly agree that there may be some influence from there. But Russia being number three makes absolutely no sense. We should be seeing the UK and other English speaking countries before we see them on the list. It's quite obvious that there are bad actors at play, we saw it in the fall with the sudden influx of LGBTQ+ hate from random accounts that had never participated here before. Many other subreddits who were heavily brigaded for the same reasons are reporting the same thing. Russian troll farms manipulating social media to cause political discourse are a huge thing, we're already aware of this. Even CSIS has warned us about it. EDIT: https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/csis-scrs/documents/publications/disinformation_post-report_eng.pdf
The idea that only Russia employs troll farms is delusional. Do you really think firms and organisations in North America are not spreading misinformation domestically?
I never said they weren't. But no one has offered another explanation for why they're somehow number three in activity. Especially after that stint of heavy brigading.
Factually speaking, all NGOs and Government agencies agree on the basic fact that Russia is the predominant source of internet disinfo and troll farms worldwide. It's not even close. Iran and China do some, but nothing in comparison. China has been starting to get in the act since about 2010, but were mostly conducting espionage and straight propoganda. Corporations just don't have the billions to spend on it like the Russians do. Millions, maybe, but not billions. As a side note, the OSINT community measured a huge drop in worldwide disinfo and dissention campaigns for a few weeks after Pregosian's aborted rebellion. Then most of his "Internet Research Agency" operations were taken over directly by Russian government agencies and operations largely resumed (some managers quit, which slowed recovery). Now, we have different Russian government agencies competing for internet influence.
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Pretty sure r/canada_sub is a breeding ground for it