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Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

cbc.ca

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Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#31

Post by tokai »

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…

Its not about Americans. Russians already owned them and got them to do what they want. Its about Europeans that are much closer to their representatives.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#33

Post by watwut »

lava_pidgeon wrote: post #25
watwut wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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

> Especially WWI it was only a nationalistic educated minority who supported the war.

Definitely not minority. There were hawks "attack now" and doves claiming "we are not ready we get ready and attack". Moreover, large parts of Germans population did not accepted defeat of WWI, thought the peace was betrayal and wanted a redo.

In 1914, the "spirit for the war" was high.

> Most people were not so keen to die

It just so happen that young men and former soldiers were the keenest on WWII. Of course they were not keen to die, but they were massively keen on proving they are manly men who will kill their enemies. They wanted to prove they are as good as their heroes from WWI.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#35

Post by somenameforme »

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

That was a private company operated by Prigozhin [1] who was, almost certainly, an extremely mentally unwell individual. He was the guy who formed the 'Wagner' private military company, supported Putin, then seemingly tried to overthrow Putin, and then was likely killed by Putin. When he left the stage, it was unceremoniously shut down alongside most of his other ventures. The spastic operations of the org would be pretty much in the character of Prigozhin without any grand 5D chess going on.

I'm also of the mindset that the effort to suggest there's state propaganda everywhere is, itself, mostly domestic state propaganda in an effort to try to 'otherize' dissenting views, especially as politicians and their actions become ever more unpopular.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yevgeny_Prigozhin

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#36

Post by firen777 »

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...

Similarly: https://nypost.com/2026/04/21/us-news/top-maga-influencer-em...

Some highlights:

> The move made him a mint — and Sam was soon raking in thousands of dollars a month.

> “I was spending maybe 30 to 50 minutes of my day, and I was making good money for a medical student,” he recalled.

> He said he also attempted to make a liberal counterpart for Hart on Instagram, but “Democrats know that it’s AI slop, so they don’t engage as much,” he said.

The effort-to-profit ratio is so insane that you almost can't blame them for turning the internet into such toxic wasteland.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#37

Post by gambiting »

vintermann wrote: post #15
gambiting wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

People selling get rich guides did not get rich using the method they describe. But I don't doubt a lot of people try, with or without guides to help them.

Well I think both things can be true. I imagine he made a lot of money doing it, then eventually that well dried up for whatever reason, so he started selling courses (which are worthless because his method clearly doesn't work or he would just keep doing it)

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#38

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

somenameforme wrote: post #35
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

That was a private company operated by Prigozhin [1] who was, almost certainly, an extremely mentally unwell individual. He was the guy who formed the 'Wagner' private military company, supported Putin, then seemingly tried to overthrow Putin, and then was likely killed by Putin. When he left the stage, it was unceremoniously shut down alongside most of his other ventures. The spastic operations of the org would be p…

It's called Hybrid Warfare and is an explicit element in Russian military doctrine because it's such a cheap and effective force multiplier.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_hybrid_warfare

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#40

Post by TZubiri »

ifwinterco wrote: post #27
TZubiri wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Which is actually healthier, like a drug dealer that doesn't consume his own product
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