this post was submitted on 03 Jul 2024
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AI-powered network of Russia-based websites masquerading as local American newspapers is pumping out fake stories targeting the US election, investigation finds (www.bbc.com)
submitted 10 months ago by 0x815@feddit.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
26 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

cross-posted from: https://feddit.org/post/405394

A former Florida police officer who relocated to Moscow is one of the key figures behind it.

Dozens of bogus stories aimed at influencing US voters and sowing distrust ahead of November’s election. Some have been roundly ignored but others have been shared by influencers and members of the US Congress.

For example, one of these stories was published on a website called The Houston Post – one of dozens of sites with American-sounding names which are in reality run from Moscow - and alleged that the FBI illegally wiretapped Donald Trump’s Florida resort.

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[–] Grimy@lemmy.world 12 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (3 children)

It's easy to start thinking everyone that doesn't think like you is a bot. I try to always assume I'm talking to real people, anything else is a bad habit imo.

[–] andyburke@fedia.io 12 points 10 months ago

Functionally, when someone will not engage in good faith, what's the difference between a human and a bot?

If someone is not arguing cordially and supporting their position with facts, I don't care if they're human or not, they're a bot.

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 11 points 10 months ago

I agree. In a way, I'd prefer the majority of the bad takes I see to be from bots or paid actors, but from listening to family and coworkers long enough, it's easy to see you don't need to script or pay people to get terrible opinions. Just give them a platform and they'll unfortunately provide themselves to no end.

If it was fake, it'd be easier to write them off. It's much harder to accept that we share the same reality.

[–] psmgx@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago

At any given time 17-40%, roughly, of any social media platform posters are automated bots. Plenty of legitimate uses, such as media manager applications, or automatic reposters, curation, etc.

And IIRC this also included the front-ends for Mechanical Turk style human gopers and 50-cent Army posters, etc. so maybe not so legitimate...