Russia’s Social Media Propaganda Campaign Is Backfiring, So It’s Banning Facebook In Russia
from the good-luck-with-that dept
Over the last five to six years, The NarrativeTM has been that Russia has built up such powerful propaganda and social media disinformation peddlers that it could effectively drive its own narrative and convince entire populations to go along with its preferred version of reality (i.e., not reality). There have always been reasons to question just how accurate a story that is, but it has been widely believed. That’s why it’s been kind of interesting to see how the narrative on the internet over the past few weeks of Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine… has been pretty universally against Russia. Indeed, there’s at least some evidence that Russia is flabbergasted that its own social media propaganda efforts have been a complete and total flop.
Its failed attempt at building support on Twitter is the latest illustration of a Russian propaganda war that’s fallen flat in the West. Since the invasion, the Kremlin has struggled to penetrate new barriers imposed on digital platforms and advance an anti-Ukraine narrative. On newer platforms, such as TikTok, pro-Ukraine content has dominated.
Ah well.
It appears that Russia’s response to all of this is… to freak out about actual information getting into Russia that debunks the Putin-driven narrative of what’s happening. There had been earlier demands made on social media companies to block “fake news” (i.e., accurate reporting) and now that that’s failing, Russia is going to just block Facebook entirely.
Russia’s media regulator said Friday it will block access to Meta-owned Facebook in the country as it escalates pressure on media outlets and tech platforms amid its invasion of Ukraine.
The regulator said Facebook violated federal law by restricting access to accounts of several state-affiliated media outlets, according to a translated version of a statement. The move marks an escalation from earlier limits Russia placed on Facebook.
Last week, the agency placed partial restrictions on Facebook for the alleged violation.
I’m sure that will work.
It appears Russia is trying to block other sites as well, threatening to block Wikipedia, for example. The Wikimedia Foundation responded to that threat appropriately, telling Putin to pound sand.
In all, it kinda looks like Putin himself believed the false narrative that Russian trolls and disinfo peddlers really could control the public sentiment around the world, and is now completely baffled by its failures.
Filed Under: disinformation, propaganda, russia, trolls, ukraine
Companies: facebook, meta, tiktok, twitter, wikimedia foundation, wikipedia
Comments on “Russia’s Social Media Propaganda Campaign Is Backfiring, So It’s Banning Facebook In Russia”
How delightful
So full of the belief that they could control the narrative that when it turns out not to be the case and instead people are calling out their lies left and right they flail about and go right to shutting down any platform that doesn’t bend the knee.
It’s not only funny to see the russian government panicking like this I suspect that this attempt to crack down on dissent might not work out too well for them, which will just add to the humor.
Re:
“You’ve blocked me on Facebook, and now you’re going to die.”
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Saw That Coming
Last year, we saw how Russia practiced disconnecting itself from the internet. I think they knew it would come to this: that someone would ban Russia’s state media companies, and then Russia could use that as a way to strike back. SplinterNet, here we come!
Re: Own Goal
Some sites are refusing to repeat Russian news. so Russia disconnects itself, ensuring that foreigners and expats cannot access Russian news sites. That is Magnifying the effects of the bans.
Re: Re:
Putin basic reasoning is that big country can tell small country what to do and that Ukraine doesn’t deserve self-determination.
You can’t really spin that.
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Bravely bold Sir Koby
Rode forth from the Internet. .
He was not afraid to die,
Oh brave Sir Koby.
He was not at all afraid
To be killed in nasty ways.
Brave, brave, brave, brave Sir Koby.
He was not in the least bit scared
To be mashed into a pulp.
Or to have his eyes gouged out,
And his elbows broken.
To have his kneecaps split
And his body burned away,
And his limbs all hacked and mangled
Brave Sir Koby.
His head smashed in
And his heart cut out
And his liver removed
"Denazification" indeed
Given that Putin keeps repeating his claim he needs to “denazify” Ukraine, his dealing with media is straight out of Hitler’s book.
Unfortunately, it is similarly effective since while you cannot actually keep a significant number of people from listening to “Feindradio”, “enemy news”, putting prohibitive penalties on spreading the truth does work for keeping it out of public discourse, meaning that it becomes impossible to arrive at a consensus about “what should we be doing about it?” and concerted resistance or other action.
Getting the truth to take hold in Nazi Germany ultimately required forcing its surrender in order to have a chance of getting people on the same page about the facts.
Now Putin’s Russia is not going to hand off the narrative, and anyway the U.S. model does not manage getting its populace on the same page about the facts even with a reasonably free press.
So while Putin cannot keep the truth from reaching those who are interested in it, he can rather effectively stop them from spreading it. Spreading it would require relating it to strangers or at least loose contacts, and that is rather likely to end you in a labor camp.
It’s really Hitler all over again. Including Putin spending the last year writing pseudohistorical treatises (“Mein Kampf” anybody?) in order to create his personal echo chamber of self-justification that will make him consider any diverging stances by others or even himself as punishable treason.
Re: Oh, I forgot.
This includes the “Third Reich” fantasy after the Czar Imperium and the Soviet Union.
It’s really embarrassing for humanity how much history manages to repeat itself.
Re: Re: Re Oh, I forgot.
History is a tyrant’s playbook.
Re: Re:
How insane do you have to be to compare the Soviet Union to Nazis. The Soviet Union is the major reason why WWII was won, it wasn’t the French, Americans not the Brits that dealt them the blow that eventually crippled them.
They kept records from Nazis and their collaborators which is what directly helped the nuremberg trials in prosecuting Nazi members.
The delusion is just too fucking strong with Americans.
Re: Re: Re:
It was a combination of the western nations and the Soviet Union. Hitler had a problem because he was fighting on two fronts at once.
Re: Re: Re: You are confused
Putin’s Russia is not the Soviet Union. It’s the Third Reich after the Czar Empire and the Soviet Empire. Putin declares other nations as unimportant when wanting to expand Russia to dimensions it happened to have at some point in history. He finds nothing wrong with killing people off he does not consider fitting his goals based on not-really-historic-or-relevant pseudo-political ramblings and invades countries that he has peace agreements with (Ukraine got guarantees from Russia for handing over its nuclear weapons, guarantees that Putin is not interested in heeding, like Hitler was not interested in heeding his pacts and guarantees when inconvenient).
How stupid do you have to be to not see the parallels? And by the way: the percentage of people from Ukraine who died fighting the Nazis was way larger than that of Russia.
Equating the former USSR with Russia but not with Ukraine is exactly the kind of history-warping imperialism that is the problem here.
The blind men and the wiki paqe
If all your news comes from one place, that kinda shapes your model of the world. How you get people who believe COVID “isn’t all that”, Pizzagate, the Kuwait incubator baby hoax. Roskomnadzor is special in that it doesn’t get a choice, it’s been given a truth to enforce, whether the individuals enforcing it believe it or not.
Well, to be honest, it depends what narrative you’re pushing and who you’re pushing it on.
It’s super easy to convince a republican that a democrat is evil to the core. And if democrats are against Russia, then Russia must be on the side of republicans, i.e. true american patriots. First because the world is super simple, with only good people on one side and bad people on the other, allies and enemies. Second, because democrats are the worst people on Earth. So A + B => Russia is great.
So, russian propaganda worked wonders for some time. Until they attempted to influence a lot more people than just a handful of right-wing US extremists. When they actually try to take large scale action that break the narrative, most people can see straight through the lies.
According to: https://www.facebook.com/onion-service
Facebook is accessible over this Onion address (via Tor Browser): https://www.facebookwkhpilnemxj7asaniu7vnjjbiltxjqhye3mhbshg7kx5tfyd.onion/
It’s generally believed they do that to help people in areas that block Facebook, though I think they’ve avoided saying that publically.
I think everyone saw the Russian Disinfo during the 2016 presidential elections, the previous president’s term, and the 2020 election and remembered and… mostly learned from it. Or at least I’d like to think so.
Re: You are missing the point of Alternate Facts™
The point of Alternate Facts is not to provide a more believable narrative but a more desirable narrative.
You make a package your target clientele wants to believe.
“Fitness drink” instead of “couch potato fattener”.
Re: Re:
It’s also used to “muddy the waters” so much that people doesn’t really know what to believe which can have an effect on elections where some people gets so tired of the whole thing and just don’t vote.
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Again Masnick talks out of his ass about Russia
Mike Masnick clearly has no clue about Russia. He’s likely never been there, and most certainly isn’t fluent in the language or the culture. However, given the opportunity to show his Russophobic bias, he just can’t seem to push a false narrative for the Democrat party who has been trying to bring down Russia since Hillary Clinton lost the 2016 election, falsely blaming Russia at fault, then the whole email scandal blamed Russia again and provided no evidence to law enforcement agencies to investigate.
Then Edwards Snowden gave Glen Greenwald documents that proved the US govt has spied on Americans during the Obama admin bypassing everyones 4th Amendment. It was suspended, then re-enacted.
Then the US GOVT coordinated the coup in Kiev to overthrow the democratically elected leader of Ukraine.
What nobody seems to understand(including Masnick) is the history of Ukraine, Russia and the CIA influence after WWII. Because after WWII, Russia was labeled by the CIA as their next enemy interest. And therefore, the CIA had decided to forgive the Nazis and employ them into their eastern Europe division.
The CIA has operated in Ukraine since 1948 and was headed by Nazi superspy Reinhard Gehlen after WWII where his personal Nazi agents under him planted sleeper cells as the cutting edge vanguard of its efforts to take down Russia: Maidan 2014, Fascist paramilitary militias stealing natural resources, cultivating businessmen and politicians, and terrorizing pro-Russian civilians, and even murdering them for 70 years(70 yrs!).
Only someone who has deep historical knowledge about cybersecurity and the CIA would be able to even talk about such things. So I suppose that leaves Masnick with his foot in his mouth unable to even verify what I’m talking about because his history knowledge is shit.
So ask yourself Masnick. What does the CIA do? Given your historical awareness using your common sense, or lack there of. Do you thnk, giving their reputation in history, causes conflicts in media and other methods, perhaps online, with fake stories, lies, and coercive means to steal, commit illegal crimes, up to even mass murder to achieve the goals of the US govt and their business interests?
And given this knowledge that Facebook, Google, etc, decided to be an arm of the govt in banning speech it doesn’t like, using censorship to serve the interest of the political affiliation they like, and ban the ones they don’t, that they aren’t in collusion with the CIA?
And do you think that after Nazi Azov battalion troops amassed just a few miles from Donbas shelling their civilians all day and night while “peace” negotiations to implement MINSK was being ignored and refused by the Ukrainian president, while he sought Nukes and NATO to his border as well?
And do you think that all of this happened under the Biden Admin, 8 years later after the 2014 Coup organized by Nuland with CIA/Nazi’s later placed into the ranks of the Ukranian military, armed with US weaponry, with a looming thrat at Russias border was a coincidence, not orchistrated by the State Department/CIA to force Putins hand?
What was Russia to do? They granted the requests by the Donbas people for recognition to bring peace within the region. Yet, the Biden Admin decided to falsely claim Ukraine had been invaded, completely ignoring an entirely independent region of people who wanted to be separated from Ukraine since 2014 because of the coup that was obviously orchestrated by the US, and CIA NAZI Azov mass murder in Odessa, which is so convenient to be ignorant of.
So what happened after the Biden admin made false claims that Russia invaded Ukraine the very day Putin recognized Donbas? The very next morning the region was shelled upon by the Nazi Azov Battalion, bringing Putin to have decided he had enough of the decades-long military Nazi buildup armed by the USA/Canada, the CIA presence, and called a special operation to liberate the Ukrainian population, and denazify, demilitarize the region.
Of course, being Russophobic, you have complete blindness to what’s actually going on. Because to all of you at Techdirt, including its readers. You’re so delusional in your own echo chamber. That you want to push a false narrative because you want everyone to hate Russia, and Putin too.
This war was coerced by the Biden/Admin and Nato, to please the Democrats/Republicans screaming about Nord Stream 2. Because every war the US got into, it was over foreign countries who were going to an independent oil reserve currency away from the Petro-dollar. And the United States cannot remain a country as it is, without the Petrodollar being what the world depends on.
So the result of happening? Tech dirt doesn’t have a clue. Certainly not Masnick himself, he has his head up his ass, swimming in his self-created echo chamber of love.
The social media operating under NED/CIA elements tied to the US GOVT trying to unilaterally destroy Russia in an information war. Why? Because for the past 70 years, the US govt, and its allies has positioned their Eastern European intelligence agencies within Ukraine all tied to the NAZI’s who have served the European country’s self-centered corrupt interests, while the natives of Ukraine remain unable to live in peace. So all the intelligence agencies are in panic mode and are in a full information war with the blessing of the Biden Admin/Eastern European countries because their operations within Ukraine will be exposed and no longer be operational.
But hey, the next comment is going to be a troll with no historical understanding about any of this. And Masnick himself is just going to remain ignorant and believe the Russophobic narrative that Russia/Putin is bad and therefore he has to jump in on the bandwagon of bullshit.
Re: What's to understand?
What’s to understand? Russia is bombing residential areas, killing civilians. Russia is also attack a nuclear power plant, a thing that if it goes boom, irradiates the surrounding area for centuries. Russia is the aggressor.
If Putin really wanted to get rid of Nazis in Ukraine, there are more diplomatic ways of doing so. Killing women and children (and arresting dissent in Russia’s streets, even under the guise of COVID restrictions, isn’t a good look) just comes across as warmongering, not peacekeeping.
Re: Is that the tripe served in Russia?
Because this bunch of incoherent shit reeks of stupid conspiracy theories that utterly ignore a large long and developing history with different actors and different directions and different politicians?
And if Stalin and his successors did not “denazify” the Ukraine while it was part of the USSR, what business has Putin shelling it into oblivion when it is an independent democratic state in Eastern Europe?
And what is it that “Nazis” actually do? Clamp down on freedom of information, individual rights and responsibility in comparison to state interest, invent ethnological myths to justify expansion over the dead bodies of inferior people, put people into labor camps for dissent, preach the superiority of their culture over all others, implement killing commands and secret police and attack other countries they consider rightfully theirs over harebrained historic claims in conflict with current and inconvenient realities.
Really, talking about “denazification” while rolling off Hitler’s playbook is really chutzpah.
Re: Full circle:
Like Mike said in the headline already:
and this is a good example.
Re: I hope you got paid before all the sanctions.
Holy shit, this reads like you intentionally botched your job at spreading Russian disinformation.
Re: Re:
Hopefully in Rubles, otherwise people might think they don’t support Mother Russia.
Re: Re:
It was certainly an eye-opening confabulation of misrepresented facts, clever-ish falsehoods, and quite deranged fantasy.
When I was still on twitter, I used to follow a psychologist who studied this kind of thing — iirc, she wrote her thesis on this stuff.
Re: Re: Re:
I always find posts like that fascinating because the narrative is so single-mindedly focused on painting the US as the root of all evil that they forget the world consists of more countries and people who can see for themselves what is going on.
Re: Hope you got paid in Vodak son
And here we have a prime example of how the Russian Troll Factory has all pivoted lock-step to the narrative Ukraine are Nazis and therefore invading a sovereign country is totes cool. Also Hillery…I mean Biden, is bad because reasons.
Re:
Twist and turn all you like, you won’t persuade ANYONE that Putin isn’t the agressor. Tough shit.
Re:
I’m so tempted to “First word” or “Last word” this comment, simply to highlight just how desperately twisted the alt-reality perspectives can get.
To be honest, between the cynically propagandizing dis-informers and the credulous believers, it’s the credulous believers that worry me more.
Re:
So much wrong here, but I want to address this:
I’m sorry, but last I checked, the US and NATO are not fighting in Ukraine or against Russia right now. Russia shot first here, and we aren’t in this war. The US and NATO are putting pressure (mostly political and economic) on Russia to stop the invasion, but that’s it. So please, how was this war “coerced” by Biden or NATO?
Re: Re:
They found the nudes of Putin “riding” a bear and blackmailed him into invading Ukraine so it would fuck up the world-economy again since it was getting better after the pandemic peaked, all in an effort to blame it all on Russia.
Hmm, somehow the above sarcasm sounds more plausible than any of the drivel the troll managed to put together…
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"Disinformation" means information they don't want you to have.
The only accurate statement in this article occurs at the beginning where the author mentions The Narrative (TM) of widespread Russian influence through propaganda and disinformation shared on social media being untrue. That was always 100% bullshit peddled by intelligence agencies and salty Democrats to attack Trump and generate the anti-Russia sentiment that is now feeding into the current war effort. Anti-Russian propaganda has been steadily pumped out by the US corporate media machine since the CIA-backed coup of 2014 overturned the elected government of Ukraine and replaced it with a puppet regime under the control of the US government. this caused a national breakdown which left the country in a state of bloody civil war for the last eight years.
Social media has been used as a tool of the US government to encourage social unrest, violent uprisings, and the toppling of foreign leaders. A prime example of this are the so-called Arab Spring revolutions, again engineered by the CIA and largely enabled thanks to facebook and twitter. In 2011, John McCain took the stage during the Halifax Security Forum and not only openly bragged about the US driving the uprisings, but threatened Russia and China with the same treatment: “This Arab Spring is a virus that will attack Moscow and Beijing.”
Wikipedia is another information warfare platform that is supervised and edited by intelligence agencies to manipulate public perception. In 2007, researchers designed a program called WikiScanner that revealed entries on controversial topics like the Iraq War and military prisons were being regularly edited by CIA computers to conform with official state-sanctioned narratives. 80% of Wikipedia content is written by just a few hundred anonymous people. Members of British intelligence have been outed as paid editors as have managers of pharmaceutical companies. You’s be hard pressed to pick a shittier example of objective information that Wikipedia.
It’s supreme irony that you close with describing Putin as baffled (I doubt he is) that he can’t easily manipulate public perception when any and all Russian media is currently being attacked, demonetized, and banned across platforms by the most far reaching and sophisticated propaganda machine the world has ever seen. RT might be state media, but so is CNN, MSNBC, VOA, and anything the USA produces. The only difference is I have seen our media clearly lying and distorting the truth to manipulate people which I haven’t witnessed with RT. We don’t look so free when they need to silence every voice that might offer a challenging perspective. Our elections are currently determined by who facebook and twitter will allow to have a voice. Referring to the present arrangement as “our democracy” is nothing more than a sick joke.
Re: And another shill (or the same one)
Grievance over a perceived loss of influence does not warrant bombing an entire nation into oblivion even if you believed every bit of your regurgitated propaganda.
Re: Re:
The funnier thing is all that shit about how the U.S. government controls Ukraine. If that were true, Zelinskyy would’ve caved to Trump’s extortionist bullshit instead of, y’know, saying “no” to Old 45.
…and by the by, this is a good time to remind everyone that Trump’s first impeachment was over the phone call where he threatened to withhold military aid from Ukraine unless they dug up dirt on Joe Biden.
Re: Re: Re: Inaccurate as well...
Zelinsky was not in a position to say “no”, being between a rock and a hard place (between Putin and Putin’s lapdog). He equivocated. Which certainly is not the same as being under U.S. control.
But you just need to throw in that Trump isn’t really under thrall of big government and the CIA, and Zelensky was merely evading Trump’s requests in order to please his real U.S./CIA/Nazi/Pokemon masters.
See, that wasn’t so hard.
Re: Re: Re:2
Who did you think controlled the CIA?
Re:
Yes or no, comrade: Are you okay with Russia bombing civilian targets (and killing civilians) in Ukraine?
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Re: Re: hipocrisy
Yes or no, comrade: Are you okay with the USA bombing civilian targets (and killing civilians) in Iraq?
Yes or no, comrade: Are you okay with the USA bombing civilian targets (and killing civilians) in Afghanistan?
Yes or no, comrade: Are you okay with the USA bombing civilian targets (and killing civilians) in Vietnam?
You don’t get to suddenly be the good guys because this time it’s not you invading….
Re: Re: Re: And what about her Emails?
At any rate, Iraq invaded Kuwait, the USSR invaded Afghanistan, you’ll be hard put to find anybody proud of the Vietnam war in the U.S.
And I don’t quite remember who the Ukraine invaded to deserve what you are doing to them. The last war they were in (as part of the USSR) was WWII where millions of people died while protecting Russia from worse.
Re: Re: Re:
Ah the classic ‘But you do it too!’ instead of answering the question, which is an answer itself.
Re: Re: Re:
No. No, I’m not. I’m against war, imperialist violence, and hurting innocent people—including from my own country. When the day comes to judge the United States as a country in the context of history, it’ll have a lot to answer for in the context of its military actions. Your deflective whataboutism is tiring; answer the question or fuck off.
Re: Re: Re:
No. Your point?
No. Your point?
No. Your point?
I never decided to invade anyone, and I protested those things when they happened (except Vietnam, which was before I was born, but I would have protested it too if I had been around back then).
Also, this is a glitch whataboutism. Answer the question.
Re: Re: Re:
“You don’t get to suddenly be the good guys because this time it’s not you invading…”
Actually yes we do.
Re: Can I get half and half Pro Trump Anti Ukraine with a Hillery ending?
Honest question comrade. You you actually agree with the drivel you’re paid to pump out? Or are you more like a hooker and will say/do anything as long as the money is good?
Russia has forced some social media company’s to open Russia offices or host data in Russia , Russia can’t block all Western media or block the Web since at this point the economy depends on acess to the Web for business finance education so there was little chance they could control the narrative Russia is not cuba it will just block apps like twitter or Facebook to try and control anti Russia news they have already shutdown almost all independent Russian news sources based in Russia
It’s simply impossible to run a modern economy without allowing acess to the Web and Russia also uses the web to get around sanctions
I think the REAL reason is so that people cannot stream the end of the world if Putin pushes the nuclear button over Ukraine.
One documentary on ways the world could end said that with social media, people will whip out their phones and stream the end of the world live, and that the public will know ever before the other wide detects the launch.
of course, tech saavy Russians could do it in a way which would be impossible to block.
You could connect to VPN via SSL, and the connect to the PPTP VPN using its internal address on that network, instead of the public IP address.
I used to do that when Taco Bell around here, blocked PPTP VPN connections, bit I found that if I( connected to the SSL connection on port 443, and then connected to my PPTP VPN using the internal address on my network of 192.168.0.1 instead of the public IP address for it, and I was able to connect, because the fireall tha the Bell was using thought I was connecting to an internal address on their network.
This did not break any California laws or any federal laws, so don’t get me started on the CFAA. Doing what I did to totally bypass their firewall did not violate the CFAA.
Control Public Sentiment
Not exactly false. For many years, Russian trolls appear to have influenced public sentiment, at least in the States.
It may have controlled enough to influence the 2016 election. Even though a majority of the voters chose one candidate, the distribution of votes was such that a different candidate was declared the winner.
There seemed to be a lot of pro-Russia and anti-Ukraine postings and influence around the time of the ``perfect” phone call. Again, a majority of the public may not have been convinced of the administration’s unreliable narrative, but enough, in the right places, seem to have been convinced.
(BTW: ``preview” still seems borken)