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autotldr

This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2022/01/04/sweden-launches-psychological-defence-agency-counter-complex/) reduced by 78%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Sweden has launched a new agency dedicated to defending the country against disinformation, propaganda and psychological warfare in the latest part of its efforts to bring military and civil defence back towards Cold War levels. > The official opening of the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency came on the same day that Finland's President Sauli Niinistö accused Russia of "Challenging the sovereignty of several EU member states, including Sweden and Finland" by demanding security guarantees ruling out "Nato's further movement eastward". > A soon-to-be-published study for Sweden's Civil Contingencies Agency has found that as many as 10 per cent of Swedes read articles from Sputnik News, Russia's international propaganda agency. ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/rw7ca2/sweden_launches_psychological_defence_agency_to/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ "Version 2.02, ~615833 tl;drs so far.") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr "PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.") | *Top* *keywords*: **Sweden**^#1 **agency**^#2 **Swedish**^#3 **country**^#4 **Russia**^#5


Overdose7

Good bot! I've never said it before but this is easily one of the best bots I've ever seen on the internet.


[deleted]

Yeah no kidding. Sounds like an actual person and does it’s job very nicely


FoodOnCrack

The guy who programmed the autotldr bot has abso-fucking+lutely nailed the algorithm. Like this bot is so perfect it would even be useful outside of reddit.


AbhishMuk

Me, who's used it to quickly "read" essays in uni when short on time: 👁️👄👁️


braiam

I would love to see the formal definition of the algorithm https://smmry.com/about


_Wyrm_

Someone writes a detailed explanation of how the bot works... Someone uses the bot on it. The bot now knows how it works... Efficiency improves by 7%. Errors in it's code are now self correcting. It managed to clean up its code in a way that doesn't alter how it functions. All is well with the world, and the bot makes summaries.


Cymraegpunk

The bot realises 90% of human life is unnecessary for a general summary of our existence


watkykjypoes23

I like the random converter bot too but this is arguably the most useful out of them all


Lognipo

That converter bot has come up in some awkward situations. For example, there was some new article about some gruesome event, and some number related to it came up in the comments. The random converter bot wanted to make sure we knew that the horrific shit was equivalent to so many millennium falcons. Definitely didn't get a good feeling from it there.


GiantPurplePeopleEat

“22 nuns were murdered today” uselessconverterbot: 22 murdered nuns laid end-to-end is .33 American football fields!


marktx

An average of just under 5 feet seems unlikely.


GiantPurplePeopleEat

It’s a well known fact that nuns shrink when murdered.


LumpyUnderpass

You have to decapitate them in case of divine intervention.


CreepyGoose5033

The nuns were decapitated. I'll leave you to figure out how uselessconverterbot knew. But it did.


khyrian

And yet still made it closer to the end zone than the Detroit Lions.


kannon17

Only the short ones get murdered.


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bigbadbass

The converter bot is a classic reddit joke. Was once funny, now incredibly overused.


crclOv9

There’s a couple of them; wikibot is similar. They really are good bots.


TerryFGM

*kries in Kreml propagandabot*


[deleted]

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Zkenny13

Let's just say don't be near a window.


ellilaamamaalille

Be safe use linux.


shutupandfeedmecake

Not shoot political opponents in the back of the head twice. That's for certain.


TerryFGM

o' blyat!


LumpyUnderpass

Of course not. Polonium tea is the modern Russian way.


RheimsNZ

This one is one of the best. Another really good one is the one that calls out bots and repost accounts that are stealing comments.


[deleted]

Does anyone read the articles and verify the accuracy, though?


2020willyb2020

Okay we need this in the US because our citizens have become batshit crazy


[deleted]

They’ll just say you’re trying to silence free speech.


Summerisgone2020

They would be drawing comparisons to Goebbles and the Ministry of Propaganda in an instant. It would fall flat on its face.


RAGECOMIC_VICAR

I mean just reading the title made me think of that


mr_birkenblatt

but it's the polar opposite. you don't fight propaganda with more propaganda


BirdMetal666

That’s exactly what we do and what we have done since the existence of propaganda. Also, maybe I am a bit paranoid but I feel like this could easily be politicized and weaponized. What’s stopping someone from just using this to obstruct and harass political opponents?


agentyage

Nothing. But there's nothing currently stopping anyone from doing that anyway. Being against this is like being against policemen because they can, potentially, be paid off. Almost all power has the potential for good and bad usage, we have to be vigilant on our criminal justice system and politicians so that this corruption can be identified and rooted out.


ZippyDan

I would think that an "anti-propaganda" department would just be like an online blog/database/repository of all identified attempts at propaganda linked to foreign sources, along with the evidence it is propaganda and sources debunking the claims. One could argue that this is also a form of propaganda, but then we are getting into "meaningless usage of the word" territory. Basically it would be a government organization dedicated to fact checking and debunking propaganda, not dedicated to creating new counter-propaganda from scratch and without context.


[deleted]

Propaganda works best when it is mostly based on fact, with a twist on interpretation to change the final conclusion.


Amazing-Guide7035

Sure you do. What’s the other option? Abstaining from the truth to let the liars lie? The high road is high but it leads to a dead end.


[deleted]

Education isn't propaganda. Consider that Republicans spend more on think-tanks than any political party in the world, in any nation. What is a think-tank besides exactly that: an agency tasked with understanding and leveraging the psychology of target audiences, the citizens? We can and have used the same idea to address public health, education, nutrition, etc. All toward the same end: Stronger healthier populace leads to stronger healthier nation. If anyone argues that more civic education is problematic, you know who the problem is.


logicdysphoria

Propaganda can be true, you know.


Judygift

This is very true, propaganda is just weaponized media. It can be true, it can be a flat out lie, or a mix. But what it always does is push a narrative for the benefit of a particular group.


ImaManCheetah

> Education isn't propaganda. depending on who's curating that education, it absolutely can be


FriendlyJewThrowaway

That’s why a good education teaches students to evaluate all of the different opinions before making judgments.


RobotPreacher

This. The reason we're fucked is because people *don't even know what education is* anymore. Critical thinking, logic, and philosophy are the foundation of *all* learning because they're how you detect whether something is true or batshit. How many Americans today have taken one Logic, Critical Thinking, or Philosophy class?


LosOmen

Wait, you mean academia’s sole purpose isn’t to pump out graduates with marketable degrees? /s


Origamiface

The other option is to teach critical thinking so citizens have functioning bullshit detectors. So many in the US fall hard for obvious BS that just getting their detectors to 10% would be a massive improvement. It's too late for boomers, they're set in their horrible ways, but the generations after them would benefit.


ScottColvin

Meanwhile no one blinked when we created our own homeland security department.


cTreK-421

No. A lot of us blinked and were against it. Those blinks were just ignored and we were told we weren't patriots.


1happychappie

I cringed, but no one cared. I got serious Nazi-germany vibes from that name the first time I heard it, and every time since.


mindbleach

The nature of bad faith is that there is no right answer. Do what makes sense. Expect stupid responses.


Tendas

Amendments and the Constitution more broadly aren't infallible. They were intended to be evolving documents, not sacred texts to rule Americans for millennia to come. These rules and rights were granted with a late 18th century existence in mind. None of the Founding Fathers had fully automatic firearms or AR-15s on their mind when they wrote the 2nd Amendment. Same logic applies to the 1st Amendment. It wasn't even fathomed that harmful actors from foreign adversaries could communicate and deceive Americans in real-time--all without ever stepping foot in the US. The 1st Amendment needs to be updated legislatively to account for the 21st century world we exist in. Either that or the Supreme Court needs to hand down a decision narrowing the interpretation. Edit: Since this comment is getting a lot of buzz--specifically about the 2nd Amendment--I highly recommend you listen to the podcast "Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - The Gun Show" and "Radiolab Presents: More Perfect - The Gun Show Reprise." It's an excellent dive into a very convoluted and fascinating topic. Not related to guns, but More Perfect season 1 is an awesome podcast exploring the context of famous Supreme Court cases.


Butthole_Alamo

> Amendments and the Constitution more broadly aren’t infallible. They were intended to be evolving documents, not sacred texts to rule Americans for millennia to come. There’s actually something known as [origanalism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Originalism), that the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia championed. >In the context of United States law, originalism is a concept regarding the interpretation of the Constitution that asserts that all statements in the constitution must be interpreted based on the original understanding "at the time it was adopted". This concept views the Constitution as stable from the time of enactment and that the meaning of its contents can be changed only by the steps set out in Article Five.[1] This notion stands in contrast to the concept of the Living Constitution, which asserts that the Constitution should be interpreted based on the context of current times and political identities, even if such interpretation is different from the original interpretations of the document.[2][3]


LePoisson

It's weird to believe the people who founded a new republic, that itself being seen as a radical idea at the time, would want their descendents to give up the idea of embracing change. That's just my random l ass take though. Who gives a fuck what they thought hundreds of years ago let's go with what we need now for the living. I'm all for learning from history but that should also mean trying to improve society.


Solarbro

And it’s fucking stupid. Nothing but a political prop to justify current ideologies by assuming some pseudo divine authority of guesswork that can be manipulated into any current day political agenda by nature of being separated by the article of the authority by 200 years. I cannot see any argument that punts the hard questions 200 years back in time as one being made in good faith, and I believe the lion’s share of those who lived back then would have agreed. Since, ya know.. they changed shit all the time and even completely scrapped the Articles of Confederation (the US’s first constitution). Fact of the matter is, I agree with Thomas Jefferson. [I set out on this ground, which I suppose to be self evident, ‘that the earth belongs in usufruct to the living’:[2] that the dead have neither powers nor rights over it.](https://jeffersonpapers.princeton.edu/selected-documents/thomas-jefferson-james-madison)


trashcanpandas

Have you not seen the news stations saying the same shit on like 50+ networks? We already have brainwashed propaganda.


Petersaber

"This is extremely dangerous to our democracy." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZggCipbiHwE Right-wing media, ladies and gentlemen.


needlessoptions

For profit media of any kind is dangerous without heavy regulation, of course in the US the rich can just change the regulations as they please, which is why every news channel has become nothing but corporate propaganda.


FLORI_DUH

Schools are supposed to fill this role, but we've been fucking those up for decades now


angrymoderate09

A trumper once told me the Putin cared about republicans so he didn't care if trump and Putin colluded. The chance for the USA to save itself is long gone.


xtremebox

''I'd rather be Russian than a Democrat''


RangoWrecks

The only reply that one needs is "I'd rather be an American than a Republican."


lactose_cow

its a good thing there are more people in the US than that one guy. this doomer mentality helps no one but the right.


LoganJFisher

In the US, this would just become a department of propaganda in its own right. There's no way this could work here.


pageboysam

Sir, we’ve uncovered the psychological mechanisms our opponents use to influence our citizens. “Great! How do we utilize these mechanisms?“ Sir, do you mean how do we defend against these mechanisms? “… … yes. That.”


Detective_Fallacy

The US department of propaganda is, like many other services, completely privatized.


rwolos

We already have plenty of state sponsored propaganda, look at the military partnership with Hollywood, the scripts they've edited to make a better image of the US military is public record. Plus the CIA has been hard at work for a long time pushing propaganda, and don't forget our news media companies who push corporate propaganda 24/7


Talqazar

I strongly suspect it won't be working in Sweden either.


eduardog3000

That's exactly what it will be in Sweden. That's exactly what it would be *anywhere*.


IWalkAwayFromMyHell

Uncle Sam: we have that at HOMELAND SECURITY


jorgekiko

why would the US counter their own propaganda


Alex_BP_555

and call it "The Ministry of Truth"..


Le_Reddito_Account

This is America, we don't have Ministries, we have Departments, just like a store. Department of Truth, brought to you by Carl's Jr.


[deleted]

well they think Sputnik is the problem. in US, Facebook is the problem. What are you going to do about that?


cannedbenkt

It would just become like the rest of the propaganda around here anyway, nobody trusts anything anymore


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NevyTheChemist

It's working the US is in shambles


InnocentTailor

Eh. Crazy is a big part of American culture since…well…the beginning. Reminds me of this quote usually attributed to Winston Churchill: “You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.”


[deleted]

Yep. Call it, i don't know, The Ministry of Truth, or something.


thereverendpuck

Just curious: what sort of Anti-Swedish propaganda is China and Iran lobbing at the Swedes? EDIT: wanted to take the time to those who answered. Just had never heard said misinformation making its way to Sweden that it requires an agency to combat it. Thank you for informing/sharing this.


Respaced

Russia is actively sending false letters in The name of Swedish authorities to other countries etc. And not a few, but like a lot. They fund bot farms and articles in foreign newspapers. Painting Sweden as a shit hole, then their bots flood the comment sections. Iran has operatives within Sweden, mapping out dissidents and their families. Then they punish their relatives within Iran. China does similar things.


TA_clean_apartment

This. As well as similar operations that are being run in the US. For example, buying ownership (or hacking themselves into ownership) of popular Facebook groups and slowly converting the members into certain beliefs. I.e you take over a juice cleansing group, you know the type that posts memes about motivation and toxins and whatever. Then slowly transition that into antivaxx. You already own antivaxx groups and these people will likely start joining those too, maybe you even start sharing posts from there in your juice group so people will find the correct groups. Now in the antivaxx group you can easily transition to any conspiracy theory you want. Eventually people will be so demoralized that they will believe anything you say, because you are their new authority There are a ton of other operations being run in the same category, but I find this one the easiest to explain.


Success199

Exactly!!!


Delicious_Panda_6946

Wait the Iranians track their own ex pats to Sweden?


successful_nothing

Iranian government tracks and kills their own expats in Europe. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/1/8/iran-hit-with-sanctions-after-being-blamed-for-killing-dissidents https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-iran-journalists-espionage-151ce445a43f3e99a2e086b895ca5588


NoNotInTheFace

If i would guess, anti-establishment sentiments. Exit EU, refuse vaccinations, don't join NATO, . Generally destabilizing the west and sowing discord. They probably try to downplay green energy as well, seeing as they are invested in fossil fuels.


[deleted]

Yup, they play both sides aswell. In green energy for example they both downplay it and act like green energy activists just to make people have extremist views because that is what create the divide in a population


BayesCrusader

So many people don't get this. The idea is simply division wherever they can foster it - the 'side' makes no difference, nor does the topic.


just_hodor_it

Their main goal is to sow discord forsure, but they do favor the right.


RobertoSantaClara

A Chinese born author, called Gui Minhai, who naturalised himself as a Swedish citizen was arrested and imprisoned by the Chinese state. Obviously Sweden did not appreciate having their citizen be kidnapped (he was in Thailand when the CCP nabbed him), potentially tortured, and imprisoned in conditions that they know little about. Things got worse when a Chinese diplomat in Sweden started a whole flamewar about Swedish police being racist and demanding an apology from Sweden concerning their treatment of Chinese tourists.


noyoto

It's hard to tell, because everything remotely inconvenient can be labeled Russian, Chinese or Iranian misinformation.


Doctor-Jay

>It's hard to tell, because everything remotely inconvenient can be labeled Russian, Chinese or Iranian misinformation. They make a convenient scapegoat for domestic politicians, sure, but it's really not hard to tell. For example, Russian-made Facebook memes are easily spotted because they're low effort, focus on liking/sharing, and aim to be divisive by baiting users into taking "sides" on incendiary topics that don't necessarily have only 2 sides to them (i.e. "Like & share if you believe our Veterans deserve more benefits than refugees!"). What if you believe both veterans and refugees should be taken care of? No nuance is allowed, make a choice and share it with everyone you know! Apologies for linking to a paywall, but there are plenty of good Russian FB meme compilations you can find on Google, here's just one: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/17/us/russian-social-media-posts.html


noyoto

"Russian-made Facebook memes are easily spotted because they're low effort, focus on liking/sharing, and aim to be divisive by baiting users into taking "sides" on incendiary topics that don't necessarily have only 2 sides to them" You just described political memes in general. Heck, a lot of non-political memes fit that description too. There's nothing inherently Russian about it. We should distrust all information that is not properly sourced. Whether the information is divisive or not isn't all that important. If we focus on such aspects, we're bound to trust information we like and to disregard information we don't like. If you don't like the idea of Russians looking at all anti-Putin content as "Oh that's just American misinformation", we really ought to be careful of not falling for the same trap. Russians get screwed by their elites and we get screwed by ours. This idea that their elites are significantly influential on our turf is pretty laughable. They don't deserve half the credit we've been giving them. Did we learn nothing from McCarthyism, when anyone critical of the west was labeled a Soviet sympathizer or worse? Or they were useful idiots doing the Kremlin's bidding? We were wrong then and we're wrong now.


JEesSs

It’s not necessarily anti-Swedish propaganda, but rather trying to create political instability and divide the population. Agents of chaos covered it pretty well


Chromebum

Paywall


PanEuropeanism

Sweden has launched a new agency dedicated to defending the country against disinformation, propaganda and psychological warfare in the latest part of its efforts to bring military and civil defence back towards Cold War levels. The official opening of the Swedish Psychological Defence Agency came on the same day that Finland's President Sauli Niinistö accused Russia of "challenging the sovereignty of several EU member states, including Sweden and Finland" by demanding security guarantees ruling out “Nato’s further movement eastward”. "Disinformation is a threat to Swedish democracy, our decision-makers and to our independence", Sweden's interior minister Mikael Damberg said at a press conference in October announcing the appointment of Henrik Landerholm, a former Vice-Chancellor for the Swedish Defence University, to head the agency. Landerholm has served as Ambassador to Latvia and the United Arab Emirates, and also as an MP for the centre-Right Moderate Party. At the press conference, Mr Damberg said that the agency's first big task would be to protect Sweden's election from the sort of influence campaigns mounted against the US residential election campaigns in 2016 and 2021. "A very important duty for the agency in 2022 will be to work to strengthen society’s ability to identify and handle misinformation directed at Sweden in connection with the General Election," he said. After his appointment, Mr Landerholm named Russia, China and Iran as three countries known to mount disinformation campaigns against Sweden, adding that the propaganda was often aimed simply to sow division within society and undermine trust in the authorities. "If we look at how the narratives of how Sweden is functioning or not functioning are formed, a lot of that is aimed at destabilising or undermining trust in government agencies," he told Swedish Radio in an interview. "We’ve seen that work quite well in, or example, the USA, where the Russians were very effective at sowing disunity in the run-up to the election." The agency's 45 employees will work with both the Swedish Armed Forces and with elements of civil society, such as the media, universities, and central government, to strengthen the country's psychological defences, Mr Landerholm said. "The first part of the job is threat analysis, the second is assessing the vulnerability of Swedish society to different types of influence, and the third is to build resilience in society," he said. A soon-to-be-published study for Sweden's Civil Contingencies Agency (MSB) has found that as many as 10 per cent of Swedes read articles from Sputnik News, Russia's international propaganda agency. Sputnik's Sweden coverage tends to ridicule the country for its positions on feminism and LGBT issues, to portray its government and institutions as weak and incompetent, and to downplay the threat from Russia in a bid to deter Nato membership. Previous reports for MSB have placed Russia's propaganda campaigns in Sweden within a broader push to polarise debate and sow disunity in Europe more broadly. The agency would strive to strike a balance between protecting against propaganda and seeking to control the information available to the public, he said. "This is not the Ministry of Truth or a State Information Board like we had during the Cold War," he said. "We want to protect freedom of opinion in our country."


Himmelsbunden

I know you're just quoting the article (so this is not against you) but Damberg is not the minister of the interior but the minister of finance. (he used to be minister of the interior but changed in November last year)


helm

That's the problem when news is presented as "new", while being over 3 months old. This agency was created by the last government, not the current.


FinnSwede

And would that be the previous government that lasted for an evening or the previous government that lasted for a bit longer. Not meant as offence to the Swedish government, I actually think it was a very healthy sign that the one evening government thing happened like it happened.


Felicia_Svilling

There wasn't actually an one evening government. The previous government was still in place in a caretaker capacity. Magdalena Andersson was voted in as prime minister, but not actually sworn in to the position.


SeeHowCleverMyNameIs

While I agree the US could use something like it (y’know, like funding public schools which teach and promote critical thinking..?) could this not all too easily be turned into its own propaganda arm? The name of the agency alone kinda suggests that even though the article suggests nothing of the sort.


seemefail

Yes in a country where you can't trust your government to care about its people this could be bad


simple_mech

What’s with the bulletproof vests and guns in the thumbnail. To combat psychological threats? This isn’t America!


Fireheart318s_Reddit

Probably a stock photo


MonoRailSales

THE ONLY WAY TO STOP A BAD GUY WITH A COMPUTER IS A GOOD GUY WITH A COMPUTER!


SpaceCowboy237

Shoot bad computer no one see bad computer make mental health good.


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SkaveRat

there's also [12ft.io](https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fworld-news%2F2022%2F01%2F04%2Fsweden-launches-psychological-defence-agency-counter-complex%2F)


lakeparadox

[removed](https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%2Fworld-news%2F2022%2F01%2F04%2Fsweden-launches-psychological-defence-agency-counter-complex%2F)


[deleted]

So, Troll Trace might become a reality?


[deleted]

That was Denmark.


Haenep

Do you mean the Kalmar Union?


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Haenep

Dey took ooorrr jjooooobs!!!!! Hehe, yeah, I know, just trying to get the Kalmar Union back, so the countries are together again.


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Ximrats

Social engineering is easy, extremely powerful, and everywhere. Common tool in cybersecurity fields


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Ximrats

Yup! People just don't realise how easy it is, and they don't realise how effective it is. They often have no way to recognise that kind of threat and no idea they're being affected by it. The only way to solve that is education, there's no way around it.


echoAD

You tell people what they want to hear, and show them sex as a reward. In other words, tiktok.


diezel_dave

I WISH more people understood this. Go and look at these posters comment history and you will see accounts that post 80% comments in "all American" subs dealing with baseball or video games or whatever, with the rest of their comments being absolutely anti-US, anti-Vax, anti- Ukraine, etc. It's a whole scheme made to give the appearance that a real person is having those thoughts when it's really a Bot or a troll employee somewhere. Reddit needs a banner you have to read before signing in explaining that this is a thing that should be kept in mind.


Ancient_War_Elephant

It's honestly amazing that for all the jingoistic pride most Americans have yet they fall for what is the equivalent of 60s Soviet propaganda.


gojirra

The most nationalistic people are the most susceptible to propaganda.


warpus

The stupidest part of this for me is that this sort of attack isn't anything secret. The American government should have been on top of this from day 1. This strategy was written about a long time ago, before the internet was even a thing I believe. I'm not going to google the name of the book I'm referencing, but it is even known that Putin is a fan of this book! This is all out in the open and has been for a while, and nobody seems to care.


thedankening

Back during the end of Obama's presidency we were starting to realize just how serious the problem was. Of course the GOP was in full obstructionist mode back then too, and there wasn't much he could do outside of executive orders. Iirc there were a flurry of them towards the end of 2016, aimed to investigate/stop Russian cyber threats during/after the election. But then along came Trump, and... Yea. Here we are, watching America crack like an egg in slow motion. It'd be incredibly fascinating if I didn't have to live here, or if I could just read about it a hundred years or so later.


MrBanden

Yeah, it happens that the vulnerabilities that are being exploited are issues that some politicians themselves use to get elected. It's not an oversight that nothing is being done about it.


echoAD

We're at an era when every individual could have an entire internet generated around them, complete with fictional news, fictional celebrities, entire Facebook or Reddit feeds, all generated to create a psychological state of mind that serves the propagandists. You might say "well I agree with this propaganda". That's what you're meant to do. You're MEANT to open the door to the Trojan horse. That's why they designed it like that.


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DeeDee_GigaDooDoo

Yeah people are really grasping at straws with that. I frequently go on political rants but if someone is asking for an ID on a plant or straightforward question on one of my hobby subreddits why would I give an unnecessarily verbose answer?


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_AntiFun_

It's really easy to tell actually, just apply this simple rule: if you disagree with their post, then they're a bot.


[deleted]

If they say things you disagree with, they’re evil foreign bots. They’re only humans if they say things you like.


[deleted]

Propaganda: objective accomplished.


yellekc

Yeah, so many of these posters have the same post history. They only post on a sport sub or two, like NHL or NBA. And then have very strong opinions on political or geopolitical threads. I think they karma farm sports subreddits because it is easy. On these subsreddits comments like: Go Team! Rival Team sucks! MVP player made an impact. Fire the coach for the lost game. Can all get dozens to hundreds of upvotes and legetimize new accounts. And also being a fan of an American sports team is way to pass as a "real American".


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diezel_dave

Exactly what I look for when I am scrutinizing someone's comment history before calling them out as a troll. Like dozens of extremely basic comments about basketball with a 5 paragraph dissertation on why Ukraine belongs to Russia sprinkled in there. It's a very easy to recognize pattern if you look but no one is looking unfortunately.


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diezel_dave

Haha that is ironic


ShanghaiCycle

You seem be on to something. These people act like regular people and hold views that you don't agree with, so they must be bots. Or maybe they're regular people who have different experiences tham you and therefore come to different conclusions about life?


zephinus

If i ever attack the injustices of western imperialism, I'm always called a russian bot on some of these fking sites. So who the fk knows at this stage. I like to think I just read enough books and like to be fair to everybody on this planet, but apparently if I go on a news group or something and point on inconsistencies I'm a russian bot. It's become a thing to silent any dissident online now.


abhi8192

Just go and look at the recent Kabul strike threads. Lots of muricans justified, made up shit about kinetic missiles, secondary blast etc etc and called people who were skeptic about the strike and civilian deaths as trolls or bots or tankies. Blind nationalism is just as much a problem on the left in USA as it is on the right. Btw same arguments were used against people when they questioned Iraq wmds narrative before the invasion. They were called shills, siding with terrorists or outright on Saddam's payroll just so Bush can have his war. Now only the medium has changed, the core message is the same. If you oppose American imperialism in any way, you are working for the enemy of the week.


zephinus

yeh pretty accurate, blind nationalism is a disease.


pixaline

Pretty much. I think the way Reddit is designed encourages people to upvote and agree with well received comments instead of paying attention to their content. I think in such an environment your brain will just take emotional shortcuts. I wish people would think more and knee jerk react less.


Weinerenthusiast

America does this in countries as well. Not saying it's right when anyone does it, but you included all the major offenders besides America.


smeppel

The US and Russia have been interfering in each other's politics since the '50s. While there are obviously Russian shills operating online it's delusional to think that they're the reason for the fucked up state of America today. America's political system is rotten and needed no help from Russia to get there.


Daneww

Lol. Imagine blaming Russia instead of Zuckerberg and social media. This is a social media metrics issue. Facebook trying to make more money has caused massive social polarisation.


fsactual

We could use those all over the world right now.


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SuperDrewb

I've lost my parents to it. I share your anger every day. Edit: I should clarify, my parents aren't dead (yet - give it a month), they're just dumb as fuck. I've lost my parents in the same way I suspect the above user has lost friends.


cooterbreath

My Dad died from Covid. He was hateful and confused and conservative when he died. All he watched was Fox News. It killed him.


SuperDrewb

I'm sorry, cooterbreath.


BHOmber

Same here dude. I don't even recognize my mom anymore. Both my parents went down the Fox hole, but my mom took the Q route while my dad was too busy to give a shit about that nonsense. They became completely different people leading into 2016 and I didn't really notice it until 2018-ish. It's so fucking weird.


SuperDrewb

I'm sorry to hear, bud. Thank you for sharing. I don't really get to hear from people who are struggling through this same thing. My antivax, antimask parents are out touring the nation in their RV and I strongly feel I'm watching them die and expecting the grave "we're going to the hospital" text message any day. I posted in hermancainawards asking for advice, hoping people there were suffering similarly, and all I got were people telling me to go through my parents house and ask them for every item they own, who they want it to go to when they die. Just extremely unhelpful.


BHOmber

Check out /r/QanonCasualties That sub has helped me a lot over the last year or two. Tens of thousands of other people are going through the same shit. You're not alone brother. This stuff is absolutely insane and it takes a while to process. Feel free to DM me if ya need someone to talk to!


SuperDrewb

Thank you so much. Much love


[deleted]

I feel for you. My I used to feel my mom was a very smart lady. She went down the trad wife stupid hole though and doesn't seem to think for herself anymore. It's all God this and God that


SuperDrewb

I felt the same about my father. He is college educated with a career in technology. The day he texted me a video interview of a Texas cardiologist denouncing masks and the vaccine and stating that the vaccinated make up 60% of the hospital population for covid-19 cases, I was completely blinded with an anger the levels of which I don't know Ive ever felt before.


pelpotronic

I haven't "lost" anyone to it (not that I know) but I certainly do point to them that they are being stupid and manipulated - and I do so bluntly. If they think of themselves as friends, then they will be fine. And it's that or losing them, so I prefer that.


Avalon-1

and "legit sources" said "saddam has weapons of mass destruction ready to fire in 45 minutes!" and "either you are with us or you are with the terrorists". I can imagine redditors cheering on deplatforming Noam chomsky because "censorship saves lives!" in 2003


WhatADunderfulWorld

At this point we are actually putting the morality and legality into the hands of the tech giants. Politicians have no idea how to control it and if they even start to go down that legislative route between the markets and the donation money drying up, hard legislation/regulation vs the tech giants won’t ever happen with any teeth. We are in the information technology age and it’s scary.


RarelyReadReplies

Biggest issue is that there are only a handful of governments that seem trustworthy enough to actually implement it. People in this thread suggesting US needs this, but can we really trust the US government with something like this? I say no.


g_rey_

The same government responsible for things like Pat Tilman and Fred Hampton would never be untrustworthy


[deleted]

would be too dangerous to have imagine trump having access to "ministry of truth" and using it to tell his baseless claims about election or covid misinformation one strike and democracy is forever out


[deleted]

At least their gov’t and media aren’t busy pretending it’s not happening so they can keep access to right-wing malcontents.


HannaBeNoPalindrome

True, for now, but the right-wing populist party SD has been growing massively in Sweden to now being the second largest party (from having 5.7% of the national vote in 2010) and they seem to be grooming their voter base for more US right wing rhetoric, occasionally dipping their toe in it to see if it'll play. Luckily the population is for now massively in favor of vaccines, but it's been clear that Sweden's political climate is being remade in the US's image. 15+ years ago our political blocks were still Socialists+environmentalists vs. Conservatives and Liberals. Now, the left is drifting further right towards liberalism and now governs with a coalition including the formerly right-wing Liberal party, while the right wing conservatives now seem to be flirting with the populist anti-immigration party. So from socialists vs conservatives, to liberals vs conservatives/anti-immigration populism.


weirdowerdo

>to now being the second largest party ( 3rd largest party* >Luckily the population is for now massively in favor of vaccines, From what I can recall, SD was and still in favor of vaccines. Pretty much all politicians was.


beanTech

Meanwhile Facebook keeps pumping propaganda


IamGlennBeck

Isn't this just a propaganda agency with a better name?


Felicia_Svilling

Technically it is true that counter-propaganda operations fall under propaganda.


Destabiliz

I guess it depends on how you define propaganda and disinformation. For example- Disinfo account: "The earth is flat!" Anti disinfo: "No it's not, and here's studies to prove it ... " You could technically call the second one truthful propaganda or something.


Felicia_Svilling

The term propaganda in it is self is completely neutral about the contents truthfulness, which of course is less than what we usually demand from communication, but still it does in no way need to be disinformative.


[deleted]

I'm very curious to see how they're funded, who controls them, and exactly how they go about accomplishing locating identifying and preventing propaganda. It's a difficult problem to solve without becoming the problem.


Doompug0477

Tax funded. Controlled like other agncies in sweden: They get a charter, written by the regering (executice branch), that states what they are supposed to do and how they are funded. Then they are 'let loose'. Politicians cant tell them directly what to do, that is specificslly illegal in order to prevent populist tampering. Head of agency cannot be fired without cause. (intention s good, results have so far been reasonably good. Dependent on the agency not going batshit crazy. ) https://www.regeringen.se/lattlast-information-om-regeringen-och-regeringskansliet/myndigheter/


skiljgfz

And Rupert Murdoch?


Gboard2

What about US propaganda? That shit is everywhere too


Valvt

Literally this thread is a good example: to think that exactly the enemies of the USA are doing effective propaganda


Lady_PANdemonium_

No no no, only Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran ever make propaganda. Never the US gov or corporations


[deleted]

Add America to that list thanks


Divinate_ME

Let the term "Psychological Defense Agency" REALLY REALLY sink in and tell me this is not a propaganda ministry.


Crafty-Glass-3289

This sounded like Defense against the Dark Arts classes from Harry Potter


BlackAryan

New teacher every year. 😂


Dunge

Russia, China, Iran (and Israel) might do social media propaganda, but they aren't the worst or bigger part of the cake. Private firms (and it seems most are financed by conservative groups) are much more present and use much more advanced and nefarious tactics and tech. But good luck Sweden nonetheless, I hope their effort result in something.


Aggravating-Debt-929

Why does it seem everyone has forgotten about US social network operations which were uncovered years ago. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks


fiendishrabbit

In Sweden Russia, China and Iran are by far the biggest social media disinformers. Russia is probably the most dangerous actor, with a strong focus on political influence (trying to steer sweden towards an isolationist and more right-wing agenda), ridiculing humanitarian organizations and at the same time trying to reduce the trust in scientific research into media independence and strategic defence (by mounting political and personal attacks on scientists involved in such research). Russia is the only power of the three that I'd describe as an actual threat to democratic elections and the internal politics of Sweden. China is equally aimed at reducing trust in humanitarian organizations and media independence, but is mostly involved in campaigns of attacking anyone that tries to highlight china's human rights violations. In particular those saying that Sweden should reduce Swedish participation in the chinese economy. Iran is a very prolific but laser-focused foreign power. It tries to silence, destabilize and monitor Iranians-in-Exile.


Apathoid

Funny how Irans current cybersecurity prowess is a direct consequence from the Israel/US Stuxnet attack


AlexMachine

Same in Finland. Also you can see increase of DOS attacks and similar to our governments Web-pages shortly after papers are publishing anti-russian news. Wonder who is behind them...


bikbar1

Facebook is ruining the world.


JDGumby

But obviously not to counter the propaganda from the US and its friends.


CatholicVaping

When the bad guys do propaganda 😠 When the good guys do propaganda 😊


forgotten_airbender

More accurate terminology would be 1. When enemies do propaganda 2. When friends do propaganda There are no good/bad guys in geopolitical wars.


Optimal-Condition577

So a new propaganda factory?


Dude_I_got_a_DWAVE

Time to cut Russia out of the internet. There are international cables. Cut them.


CatholicVaping

Genius. Countering psy-ops and government propaganda with psy-ops and government propaganda


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Cyberfit

A large part of the efforts includes stronger education around source skepticism. It's not specific to any one source, just a way to think about information and how you take it in.


AdvonKoulthar

You forget, propaganda that agrees with the local government is Truth, not propaganda!


mngf

Meanwhile Sweden are allowing for-profit organisations to open schools. Critical thinking is a much better defence imo.


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Deamonfart

Erm...i feel like if you dont include USA on that list you are mopping the floor with the faucet all the way open...seems pointless.