France shut several schools in October last year over concern about bedbug infestations. France has blamed the Kremlin for spreading misinformation about the pests.
  • awwwyissss@lemm.eeEnglish
    601·
    9 months ago

    I believe it.

    People are generally ignorant of how the Kremlin, and more recently the CCP, are using social media to divide democratic countries.

    • cygon@lemmy.worldEnglish
      7·
      9 months ago

      Same. The Russian IRA follows a simple, time-tested method: do whatever you can right now, little by little.

      Most of it is just simple opinion shaping (try to connect the anger of internet strangers to the EU, US, liberals or the left). The interest slowly accumulates. Spreading bedbug hysteria causes just a little harm to France’s reputation, causes just a small bit of disillusion in its people and reduces Olympic revenue by maybe just some 10’000 euros – but ever so slowly, it alters the overall course.

    • books@lemmy.worldEnglish
      81·
      9 months ago

      Dumb question, but if it’s so effective why dont we don’t in Russia? Or if we do, why doesn’t it work as well?

        • books@lemmy.worldEnglish
          2·
          9 months ago

          Only because I hear a lot about Russia doing it here and it’s effectiveness… Meanwhile Putin is still in power… It just seems if the us is doing it as well, we just ain’t as good as it.

      • cygon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        9 months ago

        I’d like to believe that our intelligence communities do, but I don’t know.

        What I do know that that Russian propaganda tries to “immunize” their marks against mismatching views. One method is to pull them out of the shared media ecosystem by seeding distrust against non-aligned media. Another is to associate any undesirable viewpoints with weakness, idiocy or perversion.

        Last but not least, Russia already tested a complete internet disconnect of their country so they could isolate their own population from anything not state controlled, should the tide turn or an emergency happen.

      • awwwyissss@lemm.eeEnglish
        42·
        9 months ago

        People don’t have access to social media in Russia like they do in most democratic countries. They don’t have as many devices, slower access, language barriers, and much bigger risk of serious problems from the government.

        Also, democratic governments run by committees are less able and less willing to use this kind of tactic.

        • humbletightband@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          112·
          9 months ago

          People don’t have access to social media in Russia like they do in most democratic countries.

          We do. About 70% of the population admit that they use VK, less use Telegram, youth uses TikTok. When Instagram wasn’t banned, about 15 millions used it at least once a week.

          They don’t have as many devices,

          We have about 300 millions of registered mobile devices - more than 2 per citizen, including newborns and elderly people.

          slower access,

          While it’s true for now due to governmental restrictions, the monopoly of Rostelecom, and sanctions, the internet access in Russia have been developing rapidly. Ookla says that Russia has an internet speed of about 85 Mbit/s on average. This number is pretty useless in the current context when the huge amount of the traffic to Europe routes via USA servers, but still it’s a good number.

          language barriers, and much bigger risk of serious problems from the government.

          You got this part correct!

          • awwwyissss@lemm.eeEnglish
            42·
            9 months ago

            Yes I’m not saying Russia is still in the stone age, but

            Those are significant differences. People in Russia are actively protected from foreign propaganda (like banning Instagram), whereas in the US there’s a heavy emphasis on free speech and access to information.

            Divide and conquer, a very old tactic now possible in an entirely new way via the Internet and social media. As with many things in life, it’s complicated. There are many factors… but I think we already agree anyway.

      • brainrein@feddit.deEnglish
        11·
        9 months ago

        This is what we do. The USA/CIA does this every day and they are the best. Any time a South or Central American or Middle Eastern state elects someone who puts that state’s interests above those of the United States, that person is doomed.

        Their reputation will plummet as long as they maintain freedom of the press. And if they decide to defend themselves by restricting press freedom in a trial to stop the media from lying, they are even more doomed to fail.

        Only a dictatorship like China can defend itself against American opinion-forming. But of course, life under a dictatorship has its own shortcomings. But perhaps it’s better than being another piece of prey in the American portfolio, unable to counter Western arrogance and racism. There are only a few countries on earth that can be seen as accomplices of American imperialism and not as its victims.

        Unfortunately, Eastern Europe was not smart enough to hold on to the changed Soviet Union under Gorbachev and become its own economic power like China.

        They simply switched sides and became a bargain for Western interests. The Spoils of the Cold War. Just a market for western companies and products. Helpless at the mercy of the Americans. This is what professional propaganda can do to peoples.

        While Putin tries to turn back time. Also pathetic. He will be able to destroy a lot but his country will never benefit from it.

  • Ziggurat@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    427·
    9 months ago

    I don’t want to sound like the soviet union nostalgic you’ll find on grad. But there was a time when the KGB was supposed to be among the best secret service in the world with crazy operations. and now the best Russia can do to destabilize a democracy is… pretending there is some bedbugs in Paris

    • FermionEnglish
      34·
      9 months ago

      People have very limited bandwidth. You can only dedicate so much energy to care about things at a given moment. Bedbugs aren’t a huge threat society wide, but individually they’re devastating. So if you spend a bunch of personal energy and effort on making sure you don’t bring bed bugs into your home, what things are you not paying attention to that normally would be a big deal?

      Viral outrage campaigns don’t need to be devastating on their own. Their purpose is to keep people distracted, tired, and apathetic.

      The fact that you think this is an embarrassingly unsuccessful endeavor implies to me that they are doing a good job obscuring their actual objectives.

      • suppenloeffel@feddit.deEnglish
        7·
        9 months ago

        People really underestimate the psychological impact of something as seemingly annoying at best as a bug infestation.

        I’ve encountered bedbugs over 10 years ago on holiday, luckily didn’t bring them home. After all this time, the first thing I think about when something itches in bed: Bedbugs.

    • awwwyissss@lemm.eeEnglish
      8·
      9 months ago

      Far from the best, it’s only a small part of their social media propaganda effort.

    • circuscritic@lemmy.caEnglish
      71·
      9 months ago

      Russia’s systemic failures, significant as they are, will never be enough to displace their status as one of, if not, the best foreign intelligence operators. At least, not as long they’re the Russian Federation.

      That’s not because they’re magic, smarter, or genetically predisposed to being great spies. It’s a function, or symptom, of their empire and how they cobbled it together with so many diverse and divergent ethnic groups, cultures, and religions.

      America is a melting pot that forms a singular monoculture, more or less, but Russia is literally different nations stitched together from Europe to the opposite end of the Asian continent. It’s kept together through the immense effort of their internal security services…and the occasional indiscriminate bombing campaign, but primarily their internal security services.

      The continuation of the Russian empire necessitates the mass production of people for their internal security services, who also then just happen to have the same skill sets required for covert foreign intelligence work. So it’s not really surprising why they excell at it, and will continue to for the foreseeable future.

    • muelltonne@feddit.deEnglish
      4·
      9 months ago

      Quite interesting that you are posting this on the same day some new Marsalek information came out. Don’t underestimate russian intelligence

    • CAVOK@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      501·
      9 months ago

      Everything bad isn’t Russia. Exploiting bad things to benefit from it is probably Russia.

      We know Russia influenced brexit, that they own LePen and that they fund various far right groups in Europe. They’re probably trying to exploit this too.

      • teft@lemmy.worldEnglish
        255·
        9 months ago

        I wouldn’t engage with that guy. He was defending a russian plot in italy yesterday.

      • niktemadur@lemmy.worldEnglish
        6·
        9 months ago

        It is a proven fact that for the past decade at least, russia has participated in a constant social media misinformation “divide and conquer” campaign, their troll farms have been an openly known thing since brexit and the 2016 US election.

        You see posts on twitter ‘n’ shit about Texas seceding from the US, supposedly texans talking about Texas among texans, then one of them drops a mention of the advantages of Houston being “a warm-water port”. As if anybody outside of russia, let alone a goddamned ignorant guns ‘n’ oil cowboy, would even know or care about the distinction between a near-arctic and warm-water port.

        Sometimes their soiled black fake-Adidas knickers show this way, but most often they don’t, and there they are, stoking “local, patriotic dissent”… from the other goddamned side of the world.