politics

If everyone would just delete their x/Twitter account , this wouldn't be much of a problem. Let the bots and spies talk to each other.

And Elon couldn't be happier about it.

Twitter/X --like Fox News is propaganda. Anyone listening to them wants to be lied to and receive false information.

Xitter is a total dumpster fire. Why people even still use it is baffling.

I'm sure Elmo purchased it for totally legit reasons, though....

I know we all want to blame external actors for election propaganda but I sincerely doubt it matters in a country as big as the U.S. We’re perfectly capable of flooding social media with radicalizing bullshit all by ourselves.

The 2020 election saw $14.4 billion in political spending and that’s just the candidates, parties, PACs, etc. required to report their spending. It doesn’t include party media like Fox News or the thousands of grifters saying inflammatory shit for clout and whatever minor ducats their Substacks bring in. I’m not saying Russia, China, Israel, and others don’t have social media operations. I’m saying their posts get lost in the cacophony of a presidential election and traditional corruption is the real issue.

Lots of people in Trump world have shady connections to Russia and Saudi Arabia. NYC’s current mayor is having that weird scandal over Turkish money. Sen. Menendez was allegedly in Egypt’s pocket. I doubt posts on X have anything like the same R.O.I. as buying a few Senators.

Interestingly enough, the Chinese version of Twitter recently introduced a feature where the location of users is viewable at all times so that people can know if a post was made by someone outside of China.

Thankfully Lemmy doesn’t have that problem! /s

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Propaganda accounts controlled by foreign entities aiming to influence U.S. politics are flourishing on X even after they’ve been exposed by other social media platforms or criminal proceedings, a Washington Post analysis shows.

Previously, tech companies including Twitter, Facebook owner Meta and Google’s YouTube worked with each other, outside researchers and federal law enforcement agencies to limit foreign interference campaigns, following revelations that Russian operatives used fake social media accounts to spread misinformation and exacerbate divisions in 2016.

But X has been largely absent from that effort since Elon Musk bought it in 2022, when it was still Twitter, and for months hasn’t sent representatives to biweekly meetings in which the companies share notes on networks of fake accounts they are investigating or planning to take down, according to other participants.

“There has been a markedly increased emphasis in [Communist] Party leadership in taking a much more robust approach to influencing foreign audiences through all tools available at their disposal,” said Kieran Green, an analyst for advisory firm Exovera and the lead author of a study being published Friday on Chinese censorship and propaganda for the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, a body Congress created in 2000 to monitor U.S.-China relations.

In addition, probes by House Republicans and lawsuits by conservative activists have forced some disinformation researchers to rethink efforts to study or counter the spread of online misinformation as they battle accusations that their work leads to censorship.

Though some Chinese propaganda is focused on deflecting concerns about its human rights record, treatment of Hong Kong and ambitions in the South China Sea, it has increasingly sought to stoke existing U.S. divisions in the same way Russia has, researchers said.

The original article contains 1,504 words, the summary contains 282 words. Saved 81%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Where people are mocking and laughing at X, the real threat I see is when Lemmy gets a lot of these actors.

Our own US government is a larger threat to our society than Russia or China. Its in their best interests to keep us divided so they maintain heir power.