You're very correct. It's much, much easier to amplify sentiment that already exists, as opposed to attempting to manufacture sentiment from nothing at all. That's been true for as long as propaganda has existed, afaik.

Brexit was the flagship of combining this approach with the cheap leverage available on social media at a time when people were more innocent/ignorant about it. Russia clearly influenced the UK vote, then applied those lessons elsewhere in the West.

(The Brits themselves seem to consider this subject somewhat taboo, even though Putin continued to mock them with operations like murdering people in broad daylight in Salisbury in 2018.)

I forgot to reply to your message last week. Thanks for this perspective. While I don't know much about the details of Russia's influence operation on Brexit, it seems highly plausible that exacerbating tensions between the UK and the EU would be in Russia's advertised interest. I'm curious to learn more.

I disagree. It seems just as easy to plant a seed for people to latch onto. In my experience, people are unlikely to express any kind of opinion that they haven’t seen someone (anyone) else express first.

Why do you believe it's "just as easy to plant a seed for people to latch on to"? Please provide some basis, whether it's first hand experience or published research. I'm open to the possibility that I'm misinformed. I just need more information to work with.

I'm honestly, pretty convinced that it's the opposite. I mean, people are spooled up? But I think the sentiment is entirely generated beyond the normal complaints?

Like, yeah, people are annoyed, so like you say, foreign adversary just dumps targeted gasoline on the issue until people are rabid. Meanwhile, I don't see dick about the Epstein files, the ice raids, or literally crazy levels of authoritarianism in the general zeitgeist... It's like that other stuff piqued the interests of people for 20 minutes in March, then they stopped caring as soon as some people got fired at DHS.

You guys remember "No Kings?" When is the next one of those? When is the next of any kind of protest? Where is the awareness?

I see all those topics brought up, both here (though usually flagged) and on the Fediverse.

Why wouldn't the tech companies, rich capitalists and current US government use these services to drum up support? I mean hell, why wouldn't they use the product they're building for this purpose? They have every incentive to.

To the public, data centers = AI. What material good has AI brought most people? Increased energy and RAM costs. Real and promised mass layoffs. More slop to read at work. Some good memes.

I am surprised opposition is not even stronger.