> If Russia was able to create division, why are they so bad at it when it matters - now.

Just guessing: It is easier to create division, when you manipulate both sides. It is easier to manipulate both sides, if you genuinely do not care which side wins.

As an example, consider vaccination. Trolling only on the anti-vax side would be a rookie mistake. A few bad arguments get made, then they get debunked, for most people it's game over.

To do it properly, you must also have your trolls on the pro-vax side. Their purpose is to provide stupid arguments in favor of vaccination, so that anyone who remembers their high-school education will go like "wait a moment, this doesn't actually make sense". They will also make such nasty attacks on their opponents, that many decent people will go like "hey, I am technically on side of vaccination, but these guys are assholes; I would rather not be associated with them publicly". -- This creates the situation where you have lots of confused young people documenting the mistakes of the pro-vax side, and pointing out their horrible behavior. Much better (from the attacker's perspective) than if one side is merely wrong.

The important thing is that (to the attacker) it doesn't matter which side wins. The goal is to create conflict. If the pro-vax side wins, by doing something that will make the losing side mistrust and hate them forever, mission accomplished. A few more conflicts like this, and the society is ready for a civil war.

Now when the two sides are pro-Russia and anti-Russia, would you want to be the Russian troll assigned to write anti-Russian articles? It's a lose/lose situation, because if you are too good at doing your job, instead of a bonus you might actually get a bullet, if you boss starts suspecting that you actually mean it. But your boss is even more scared of his boss, which is why he will probably assing all trolls to write pro-Russian comments. The entire troll department will play it safe, but as a result they will be much less effective.

I'm not pro-Russia. I oppose virtually all wars, especially ones that have a terrifyingly high chance[1] of solving global warming by nuclear winter. Furthermore, I'm neither Russian nor Ukrainian and I didn't have an opinion on the validity of the parties' justifications for the last 8 years of the Donbas conflict and I see no reason to let CNN/FOX/NYT/Twitter or any other American media outlet assign me one now. That being said the Ukrainians shelling ethnic Russian regions for 8 years was wrong. Russia invading and shelling Ukrainian regions is also wrong. My bias is against the unnecessary taking of human life. My intellectual interest here is in the use of propaganda and how it mutilates the ability of otherwise intelligent persons to make sense of world events.

Evidently the anti-Russia side is doing a fine job already, so why wouldn't Russian propaganda operations in the West just focus on the completely occulted pro-Russia side? And rest assured there is a pro-Russia side, we just don't get to hear it. If Russian "troll farms" were effective they'd manage to get it out. They observably haven't, so we can conclude they're incapable of doing so. Furthermore, the powers that be in the West act as though we are children that can't risk exposure to dangerous Russian media. This offends me and it ought to offend everyone else that has any intellectual self-respect. Regardless which side, if any, is in the right, the infantilization of the subject in the West is depressing.

How many people here have even heard of the Azov Battalion[2]? What is behind the apparent absurdity of an openly neo-Nazi unit fighting for the Jewish President of Ukraine? There's a lot going on here to be curious about and we're not permitted to be.

[1] I estimate it's around 1% right now.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion

My impression is that troll farms work like much of social media, the vast majority of things they do have zero impact on the world but a very small percentage of their efforts goes viral. I think people like to inflate their actual impact for partisan political reasons.

Still I’ll give an example of very effective propaganda. I was linked to this video a few years back made by “independent Canadian Journalist” Eva Bartlett. She oozed credibility, she was a westerner speaking at the UN and had legitimately been to Syria herself. It appealed to all my biases, she spoke against a mainstream media conspiracy to coverup war crimes to promote war in the Middle East. She even got featured by modestly popular pundit Jimmy Dore. Her video has been watched around a million times or so on YouTube.

https://youtu.be/g1VNQGsiP8M https://youtu.be/Z9F-cHc5Qog

Regardless of her sincerity, what isn’t obvious at all from these videos is that she’s on Russia Today’s payroll:

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/370618-syria-sources-bartlett-rt/am...

Now I won’t comment on the credulity of her claims, but I found it remarkable how when I first watched her video I had NO IDEA she was on RT’s payroll. She was called “Independant Canadian Journalist”. I like to think I’m hard to manipulate but man the Russians played me like a fiddle with this propaganda!

It's your personal problem that neo-nazi equals hating jews. As someone who worked with keeping young men away from neo-nazi groups in the past - it's just not true for many groups. The real picture is much more complicated and is more often than not related to simple hate. If you have someone closer to you to hate, every other topic or nationality takes a backseat. Russian imperialism is closer to these groups than anything else now.

> rest assured there is a pro-Russia side, we just don't get to hear it.

Lucky you! I hear a lot of it. Here is a summary, if you wish -- everything is USA/NATO's fault; war is horrible and the best way to end it is to stop supporting Ukraine and convince them to give up; if you say anything negative about Putin or doubt his words, then you are a hysterical warmonger and the good and decent people should make sure that you will be properly punished for that.

> the infantilization of the subject in the West is depressing.

For me the depressing thing is the assumption that 50% of media in the West should be the voice of Russian trolls, otherwise something is wrong with the West.

I don’t want to watch Russian propaganda anymore than I want to watch Ukrainian or US propaganda for that matter. You completely missed my point. What I don’t want is for someone else to decide what I can watch for me.