This underlying idea that the US state is “just the same” as Russia, China, etc. (and that as such they will function in the same way) is imho one the biggest factors on the decline of the quality of western democracy today. I’m not American, have only been there once a couple of days, and have no special sympathy for the country, but the fact that so many people do not understand that the US democracy is fundamentally different than the Russian or Chinese regimes is such a sad, depressing thing.

They're "just the same" in the sense that they would surely both use similar tools in the information war. Just like they're "just the same" in having submarines, fighter jets, etc etc.

The content of the information war or different, but it's still a war, and the idea that the US would just cede all advantages to Russia because they're above using bots strikes me as faintly ridiculous.

I will use the term Ruzzia and Ruzzians to identify the Zed regime and the Zed patriots, Ruzzian != Russian, Ruzzian = a Zed patriot, a imperialist Russian or Putin fanboy, proud to stick a Zed on his face,body or property

Ridiculous is your idea that whatever Ruzzia does then USA also is doing.

Ruzzia kills journalist on Putin's birthday as presend or the deal leader then USA does it too to make their president happy

Ruzzia poisons political opponent, then arrests and kills them in prison, now they also arrested the lawyers then USA also does this (provide evidence for say just 3 poisonings and opponents killing assasinations of the USA president in the last 2- years please)

Oligarchs fall from window weekly in Ruzzia so it must be the same in USA, please provide evidence

Prigozin creates an army of cyber trolls, gets rewarded by Putin so it must be the same in USA, show me the USA version of Prigozin , a criminal /murdered nazi friend of the president that has a cyber army and a mercenary army.

Ruzzia puts weekly fake/falsified documents about Zelensky buying a new mansion or a new sports car, show me please faked documents posted weekly about Putin buying a new home/ sports car

Ruzzian groups are selling services of bot farms, they reocated after the invasion in Gerogria and Bulgaria and it is well known, so please show us the USA groups that sell bot farm services for social media.

Ruzzia downed 2 civilian airplanes and continues to not admit it, ask the Ruzzians and you will get 5 different version of the events, some ridiculous like "NATO airplanes were flying over the MH-17 to hide" , or "MH-17 was filled with corpses to make the good/kind Ruzzia look bad" , please show me how USA does this kind of idiotic mistakes and then they pretend it was the illuminati or some other bullshit.

Ruzzia sends their people in meat vawe attacks, show me in USA such low value for human live.

Riuzzia lies to their people and everyone knows it, like all drones intercepted but the debries started a fiew, or the Moscow was sunk because of bad weather or smoking accident, show USA is the same.

It is obvious for people that follow what happens in Ruzzia that the Zed regime is vary different, they want to kill their political opponents in a visible spectacular way, they lie to you and know that everyone knows it is a lie, they are a russian flavored fascist regime bettern named russcism.

We're talking respective to foreign policy here. Thanks for straying the conversation though :D

OK, why only external policy? we are talking if the Ruzzian regime and the USA state would do the same stuff, if they are the same, because the topic was "if Ruzzia is doing it then USA is also doing it"

a contra example or more should shut this idiotic take and we can find some other evidence for this invisible USA bot farms.

> we can find some other evidence for this invisible USA bot farms.

You mean articles like this, which have been completely wiped and erased from every search engine?

https://archive.ph/20180131071525/http://www.washingtonsblog...

Yeah USA has bot farms as well, they just like to pretend it's only the others who do.

So your claim is USA does it but in a very intelligent way that nobody sees it, where Ruzzia is doing in such a dumb way that intelligent people can see the bots and the politicians in Ruzzia are so stupid that they publicly reward the trolls.

I do not believe it, UK did a brexit where the Ruzzian bots were active so it is clear they do not have bots to fight them, USA elected again a special person supported bytthe Ruzzian bots so again no chance USA has super intelligent bots that are hidden but manipulate the public opinion .

No my claim is that USA doesn't constantly point out the obvious ways they are doing it. And of course most of it will be in foreign languages so nothing we can really come across.

In regards to things our secret government agencies do, we are the same though (and secret police/courts/governmental organizations are very much anti-democratic in principle, so it says a lot that we have them in our "fundamentally different" US democracy)? Covertly manipulating opinions in foreign countries is very much spy agency territory IMO. Seems like they should be running bot farms as well if they are effective.

So the claim is USA has bot farms but they are much, much better then the Ruzzian ones since we never seen them, and no USA hired criminal publicly got medals and rewards for running them.

But is a very typical Ruzzian stuff happening in response to my original comments

1 denial, "are the Ruzzians bots in the room with us" , trying to imply I am mad and there is no such thing as Ruzzian bot farms funded by Kremlin

2 Ruzzia has bot farm but what about USA

If bot farms are effective, we probably have them. I doubt that bot farms are good enough to prefer over the "feed a story to friendly media" approach which has been working very well so far.

>If bot farms are effective, we probably have them.

If UFOs are effective then USA has them too

> Or is the US just too much of a moral actor to do this?

US government has massively more oversight because of still somewhat functioning legislative and judicial systems. Also free press is still a thing (compared to Russia anyway..).

Ao any large scale program like this would inevitably be leaked and scrutinized (of course if they keep it somewhat low scale it will probably pass under the radar).

So effectively.. yes? It is?

Russia was just flowing USA's lead, Centcom was contracting out influence operations through sock puppet accounts since 2011, no different than Radio Free Asia really, influence hearts and minds, now with just a little automation.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...

That does not make any sense.

"If germany had concentration camps and they were effective then surely US has much larger concentration camps"

Why do you assume that US must be worse than the worst in everything? US is not perfect but russia, iran, north korea etc are on another level.

No, US is the one that gives them platform.

Say it is true, then both are wrong and evil. But from my POV Ruzzia has more interests in destabilizing my country and region then do a invasion they would call liberation and grab some strategic lands.

It's not a conspiracy theory. We know where the farms were located and several former bot farm workers spoke about them.

The US government can barely make a comment telling people that they're not horses.

And what’s the point you’re trying to make? If Russia was trying to drop bombs on DC and the US was trying to drop bombs on Moscow, would you think it strange for the US to try to prevent the bombs from being dropped on DC?