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Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

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Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#21

Post by vintermann »

Paracompact wrote: post #5
vintermann wrote: post #2

I've said for a while that I think this sort of thing is a much better explanation for trends we see than moustache-twirling foreign dictators "spreading dissent" for the heck of it. Yes, they exist and yes, they have troll factories, but they usually promote narratives with some immediate benefit to themselves. When they do promote irrelevant stuff, I think it's just to build social media clout for their actual mess…

Who of credit has claimed otherwise, that dictators spread dissent as an end rather than as a means?

Of credit, that's arguable. But a famous example is Nancy Pelosi suggesting that pro-Palestine protests in 2024 were funded by Putin.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#22

Post by nextstep »

Western governments are so concerned when this happens to them (at arguably a tiny scale) compared to the “interventions” they’ve supported around the world for almost one hundred years.

Rules for thee and not for me. Sure, Canada isn’t the CIA, but they’ve been right there with the US from Iran to Ukraine.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#23

Post by vintermann »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #12
vintermann wrote: post #2

I've said for a while that I think this sort of thing is a much better explanation for trends we see than moustache-twirling foreign dictators "spreading dissent" for the heck of it. Yes, they exist and yes, they have troll factories, but they usually promote narratives with some immediate benefit to themselves. When they do promote irrelevant stuff, I think it's just to build social media clout for their actual mess…

> which are things like, "Sanctions on Russian leaders are pointless and counterproductive", "Assad didn't gas anyone", "Actual nazis have the Ukrainian leadership's balls in a vice" etc. What would be the point of that? Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support. For instance here in the us, only around 3% of americans vote based on foreign policy. Does it really matter which narrative the mass…

Public opinion does sometimes change the direction of a country. For Russia it's probably most relevant in a few eastern European countries, but there's a normality effect - it is probably easier for someone like Órban to dissent from EU on Ukraine the more there is minority dissent in other EU countries.

Either way, it doesn't have to actually work, the propagandist only has to think it's worth it to try.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#25

Post by lava_pidgeon »

watwut wrote: post #20
throwaway27448 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> which are things like, "Sanctions on Russian leaders are pointless and counterproductive", "Assad didn't gas anyone", "Actual nazis have the Ukrainian leadership's balls in a vice" etc. What would be the point of that? Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support. For instance here in the us, only around 3% of americans vote based on foreign policy. Does it really matter which narrative the mass…

> Wars and support of wars do not generally rely on public support Up until Iran, wars in America had large general support. Americans liked wars and their support for leadership went up when those wards started. And Americans politicians who wanted those wars put a lot of work into making people support wars. Russians supported invasion of Ukraine. And Putin made sure they will. Even Germans prior WWI and WWII suppo…

In case of Germany nope. Germans were not against the wars but there was not a huge support case. Especially WWI it was only a nationalistic educated minority who supported the war. Most people were not so keen to die

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#26

Post by ifwinterco »

gambiting wrote: post #11
ifwinterco wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a meme that most "nationalist" Twitter/X posters in the UK are actually from South Asia, and only doing it because for people in low-income countries the Twitter payments are a viable source of income. I'm not on Twitter anymore thankfully, but when I was there seemed to be a lot of truth to this. It even got to the point of there being successful witch hunts outing quite large/popular accounts as being India…

I mean I'm not sure it's a meme - this guy literally got rich doing it, to a point where he's selling "self guide" courses on how to do this: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-11-16/kin...

Definitely a real thing, I meant it was a meme in the sense that at one point almost everyone was getting accused of being Indian (and subsequently having to refute it) in a partly humorous but also partly serious way

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#27

Post by ifwinterco »

TZubiri wrote: post #8
ifwinterco wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a meme that most "nationalist" Twitter/X posters in the UK are actually from South Asia, and only doing it because for people in low-income countries the Twitter payments are a viable source of income. I'm not on Twitter anymore thankfully, but when I was there seemed to be a lot of truth to this. It even got to the point of there being successful witch hunts outing quite large/popular accounts as being India…

X famously implemented a feature that revelaed where the posters were from. Sure you can use a VPN, but Musk changed the rules all of a sudden and exposed a lot of accounts posting about issues from other countries. Twitter may have a lot of faults, but they're ahead of Facebook on this one.

I think the difference is Elon is actually a Twitter addict and he's genuinely on there every day engaging with this stuff, so he probably saw the memes.

I get the sense Zuckerberg is a lot more disconnected from everyday Facebook and Insta content

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#28

Post by vintermann »

throwaway27448 wrote: post #18
a2128 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a uniform centralized group that operated for a decade under the name of Internet Research Agency, and almost certainly something like it continues to operate to this day. These had paid employees who got directions on what to promote with the goal of manipulating the public debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

I imagine Israel's various hasbara operation dwarfs its relevance and funding by multiple orders of magnitude. I don't see much evidence it plays a role outside of being useful to blame for inconvenient discourse.

Sure, but that's a good example. They obviously push pro-Israel, anti-Palestinian and probably a good deal of outright anti-Muslim positions.

But do you think they push random divisive issues, unrelated to their own interests, just to destabilize countries they don't like? I think the evidence for that is much weaker.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#29

Post by [deleted] »

a2128 wrote: post #10
throe939494848 wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when Russian trolls promote both sides Perhaps projection? It is perfectly valid to have different opinions. "Russian trolls" are not some sort of uniform centralized group, that gets directions what to "promote". Some people just have opinions, and do stuff out of conviction, not to get reward.

There is a uniform centralized group that operated for a decade under the name of Internet Research Agency, and almost certainly something like it continues to operate to this day. These had paid employees who got directions on what to promote with the goal of manipulating the public debate. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Research_Agency

[deleted]

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#30

Post by delta_p_delta_x »

gambiting wrote: post #11
ifwinterco wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a meme that most "nationalist" Twitter/X posters in the UK are actually from South Asia, and only doing it because for people in low-income countries the Twitter payments are a viable source of income. I'm not on Twitter anymore thankfully, but when I was there seemed to be a lot of truth to this. It even got to the point of there being successful witch hunts outing quite large/popular accounts as being India…

I mean I'm not sure it's a meme - this guy literally got rich doing it, to a point where he's selling "self guide" courses on how to do this: https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2025-11-16/kin...

You know what? I ain't even mad. 300k is life-changing money in Sri Lanka.
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