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60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

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Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#281

Post by disgruntledphd2 »

marshray wrote: post #235
disgruntledphd2 wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah now, if the US had formented a coup in 2014 then why didn't the pro Russian people of Ukraine reelect the original people in later elections? It seems to me at least that the Maida revolution was driven more by anger against corruption and a desire to join the EU than the US involvement (which there definitely was, along with Russian involvement).

Because Yanukovych, after he was removed by Parliament, immediately fled to Russia.

Sure, but if it was a coup orchestrated by the US, the next elections would have returned someone similar to power, right?

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#282

Post by thrown_22 »

hackerlight wrote: post #279
egeozcan wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nazis were chanting along the same lines against Jews. I don't want to believe you really mean what you are saying. Spreading hate on the internet is much removed from really wanting to kill humans and that's also much removed from being able to actually do it.

The problem isn't really purging Nazis per se, it's the sleight of hand that Russian propagandists use at the last minute to switch "Nazis" with "Ukrainians" or "Ukrainian government". In the abstract, sure, we all want to purge Nazis. But not if you're saying Nazis == Ukrainians. If you defined Nazis to mean Putin's Wagner Group (headed by a guy with SS tattoo), then sure, I'd agree. What's so cynical about all this…

Ukraine is the only country in the world to have _literal_ nazi swastikas on regimental flags.

Somehow the same people who thought the OK symbol was a secret white supremacist dog whistle are now coming out of the wood work saying that akshually it's only 40% of the Ukrainian army that has Nazi tattoos and it's fine.

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#283

Post by pushkine »

egeozcan wrote: post #276
cbHXBY1D wrote: post #269

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Search "Nazi patch Ukraine" or some variation on Twitter. I'm not exaggerating when I say that there's hundreds of examples - many of them posted by the BBC, Reuters, or Zelensky himself.

A lot of them are taken out of context see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhg8AXXHoRE I did find some photos of supposedly nazi-symbol-wearing Ukrainian solders but I didn't recognize the symbol before reading the explanation, maybe they didn't too? Also, I found some photos of Russian soldiers wearing such symbols too: https://www.businessinsider.com/russia-fighter-neo-nazi-symb...

If you want to look more into the Russian equivalent of those symbol-wearing soldiers, the Russian soldier in the second link also wears a patch belonging to the 'Rusich DShRG' group

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#284

Post by hackerlight »

thrown_22 wrote: post #282
hackerlight wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem isn't really purging Nazis per se, it's the sleight of hand that Russian propagandists use at the last minute to switch "Nazis" with "Ukrainians" or "Ukrainian government". In the abstract, sure, we all want to purge Nazis. But not if you're saying Nazis == Ukrainians. If you defined Nazis to mean Putin's Wagner Group (headed by a guy with SS tattoo), then sure, I'd agree. What's so cynical about all this…

Ukraine is the only country in the world to have _literal_ nazi swastikas on regimental flags. Somehow the same people who thought the OK symbol was a secret white supremacist dog whistle are now coming out of the wood work saying that akshually it's only 40% of the Ukrainian army that has Nazi tattoos and it's fine.

It's nowhere near 40% of the Ukrainian army. It's more like somewhere between 20%-100% of Azov, which themselves are less than 1% of the Ukrainian army.

And as we've already been through, Ukraine has no ability to pick and choose who is allowed to defend them from multiple Russian invasions. They are significantly smaller. Such luxuries only apply to strong countries that aren't being invaded. You keep dishonestly comparing Ukraine (small country being invaded) to the US (country not being invaded).

If Ukraine wasn't under constant threat of invasion from Russia, then I'd be the first to criticize their decision making around Azov.

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#285

Post by pushkine »

poizan42 wrote: post #185
tut-urut-utut wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unless of course you live in Russia's fantasy world where a Jewish president can be a neo-nazi Without arguing about the rest of the comment, Russian narrative sees Nazis as a group that want to exterminate Russians, based on what actual Nazis in WW2 did when they attacked. And this "Jewish president" who banned Russian language, banned almost all political parties and organizations of russian-speaking people and s…

> who banned Russian language That's an invention by Sergey Lavrov. Of course Ukraine didn't ban the native language of 30% of it's population. https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2022/jun/08/sergey-lav... > banned almost all political parties and organizations of russian-speaking people Ukraine did in fact ban pro-Russian parties. While I must admit I don't particularly like the idea of banning any parties in a de…

Per Wikipedia, the 2019 law says "All schools and universities are required to teach in Ukrainian". I don't know how Politifact managed to find the opposite of that statement

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_Ukraine#Ana...

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#286

Post by pushkine »

the_mar wrote: post #82
bergenty wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate Putin and his regime in Russia right now but Ukraine (atleast from the pictures I’m seeing) seems to be overrun with explicitly neo nazi groups. In my ideal scenario they both take each out without effecting the actual EU.

Where are you seeing this? Genuinely asking because I always thought that the whole ukraine neo-nazi thing was entirely made up

It's real, but it's only used for its anti-Russia symbolism. It's my understanding that they don't actually adhere to other parts of the ideology.

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#287

Post by igorkraw »

throw_nbvc1234 wrote: post #215
kaba0 wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still see zero reason for Russia to start a war against a sovereign country with a democratically elected leader. It’s like saying that the other classmates didn’t let the bully copy their homework so he is right in beating the everliving shit out of a completely different kid.

> It’s like saying that the other classmates didn’t let the bully copy their homework so he is right in beating the everliving shit out of a completely different kid. Is this the only way that situation gets resolve or are there any alternatives? Why is the kid a bully? Why does he feel the need to copy homework? Maybe the classmates should group together and seriously injury the bully first, would they be in the rig…

The point is it does not matter that the kid has a horrible life. It's still bullying and attacking people and needs to stop. The first rule of helping a family member with depression or a friend lashing out in pain is protect yourself, otherwise you can't help anyone.

The situation would be different if e.g. Ukraine had invaded Russian territory after the invasion of Crimea, or had done broken armistices beforehand, or there had been a mass killing of ethinic Russians in Ukraine. There has not been. This means long before we can talk about Russia maybe feeling threatened by NATO expansion they need to stop the war they started.

There is no nuance here. Russia felt that for whatever reason an attack-war was warranted and couldn't even be bothered to come up with a believable justification. The fact that other countries have done the same thing (e.g. over allegations of WMD) changes nothing here.

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#288

Post by igorkraw »

wyager wrote: post #219
igorkraw wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, so what is your take on the issues GP identified? Or is the only conclusion you can arrive at "it's complicated"? GP made the very salient point that some things are clearly bad . Blind clinging to the idea that everything has two sides is just as simplistic as thinking everything can be viewed from a perspective which is just as moral as every other. Except maybe even more so, because at least the moral simpli…

> so what is your take on the issues GP identified I refuse to discuss it here, because much of the site's userbase seems incapable of having an even slightly nuanced political discussion, and I will possibly get a nasty comment from moderation accusing me of flame-baiting or something. The best I can do it argue for epistemic humility, because at least people generally find that abstractly palatable. > "Putin and ot…

So basically all you are doing is claiming to have a nuanced take, but you aren't capable of expressing it in a way that won't get caught by HN moderation who despite me being an eccentric hothead that can't always resist some snark manages to no accuse me of bad faith, and rarely if ever seems to censor interesting debates. Forgive me if I take this as evidence that your arguments and thought might be less nuanced and well developed than you claim.

And regarding the point of China, aside from being a very naive read of Chinese economic history (see PolyMatters series on China for evidence) this is a non-sequitur, the output of a completely different culture and system has nothing to do with the output of Russia, nor did I claim this was the completeness of my argument.

I observe again that all you seem to do is exclaim you cannot believe how stupid peoples arguments are for not being nuanced or developed enough, without stating your own take. For anyone reading this thread, pay note to this pattern, it's basically debate smell for someone not engaging in good faith.

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#289

Post by pushkine »

thriftwy wrote: post #218
viro wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

BUCHA? do these look like soldiers to you? https://storage.googleapis.com/afs-prod/media/8b286707d5df49... edit: source = https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-europe-2c77447fda4...

I don't think I'm qualified to comment about their actual contents, but it seems that these (soldiers and victims of the war) graveyards were described in Russian telegram war channels in spring already.

Yeah there's a months-old video from the Russian MoD showing the burying process at that exact site in Izyum, I don't think there's much to it

Bucha though, I've seen drone footage of civilians getting executed by Russian BMPs.

You could argue the systematicity of that process, but Russia's occupation west of Kyiv undeniably caused a large number of civilian casualties

Re: 60-80% of Tweeters posting on Russia-Ukraine war are bots, 90% pro Ukraine

#290

Post by pushkine »

mc32 wrote: post #21

eh, by now, I think we are all pretty well resigned to Twitter, FB, TT, etc., being organs of propaganda with a social veneer. By propaganda I mean propaganda, to disseminate the establishment take on things. Occasionally you get the dissenter's take or opposition's propaganda, but it's pretty much all propaganda, mostly from, to borrow a hippie phrase, "the man". Not everything "the man" says is automatically wrong,…

I've noticed that every source of information I find particularly trustworthy and meaningful ends up getting corrupt and re-purposed for malicious intent.

For instance, I strongly believe that the process of corrupting Wikipedia has started and in a few years time we'll read articles about how troll farms altered a massive number of wiki articles about certain topics to revise historical facts.

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