if you find yourself on the same side as Russian bots and don’t find it so disturbing that you immediately change your position
As mentioned by another commenter, the actual strategy of the real Russian government is to sow division by advocating a bunch of positions, so a particular position being presented by Russian trolls absolutely does not warrant immediately changing my position. Your position is not special in that regard.
But more generally, I’m not going to change my position on anything solely because someone awful agrees with it.
And even more generally, I don’t care about unifying people under the political agenda of any existing government or political party. I want to see people unified about organizing themselves. To that end, letting one of the existing political parties, including yours, dictate our political will to us goes against the goal of people organizing themselves.
you can’t claim any high moral ground use that to lecture other people.
I do not claim nor need the moral high ground to present my opinions. Same goes for everyone else.
I don’t lose sleep at night knowing that these bots exist (or those of any other government). They shouldn’t exist for the simple reason that public institutions shouldn’t be in the business of deceiving people, but unfortunately, deceiving the public is a bunch of what the State actually fucking does “for” “us”. I especially don’t think the Russian government cares to run bots/trolls on our little corner of the internet when bigger targets exist.
Vacuously, I don’t disagree with literally everything that the Russian bots say because they can be found saying just about anything.
I cannot stress enough that I do NOT approve of state-sponsored botting or trolling of public spaces in general. However, when you see Pro-Russian or Pro-whatever opinions on the Internet, you are probably reading the words of a “useful idiot” or non-State troll.
This reality is a lot scarier than if the opinions were all just from some Russian troll farm, because now we have to interrogate the reality that these people have different and complex reasons for why they ended up with those opinions. It means that the task of persuasion is a lot more complicated than just shielding people from bots and trolls.
You wrote down a reason why Russian bots are bad and one that is not really true. Russian bots aren’t saying just about anything. Not to mention most people wouldn’t mind if a self proclaimed Russian bot started to push for vanilla ice cream over chocolate agenda. They would “not lose sleep” over it, but then some still go out and buy some vanilla. Even if they don’t believe in marketing.
It doesn’t really matter if they are a bot or a useful idiot if they are doing the same job.
As mentioned by another commenter, the actual strategy of the real Russian government is to sow division by advocating a bunch of positions, so a particular position being presented by Russian trolls absolutely does not warrant immediately changing my position. Your position is not special in that regard.
But more generally, I’m not going to change my position on anything solely because someone awful agrees with it.
And even more generally, I don’t care about unifying people under the political agenda of any existing government or political party. I want to see people unified about organizing themselves. To that end, letting one of the existing political parties, including yours, dictate our political will to us goes against the goal of people organizing themselves.
I do not claim nor need the moral high ground to present my opinions. Same goes for everyone else.
So basically what you are saying is : Russian bots aren’t all that bad 🤣
Yes, in two senses:
I cannot stress enough that I do NOT approve of state-sponsored botting or trolling of public spaces in general. However, when you see Pro-Russian or Pro-whatever opinions on the Internet, you are probably reading the words of a “useful idiot” or non-State troll.
This reality is a lot scarier than if the opinions were all just from some Russian troll farm, because now we have to interrogate the reality that these people have different and complex reasons for why they ended up with those opinions. It means that the task of persuasion is a lot more complicated than just shielding people from bots and trolls.
You wrote down a reason why Russian bots are bad and one that is not really true. Russian bots aren’t saying just about anything. Not to mention most people wouldn’t mind if a self proclaimed Russian bot started to push for vanilla ice cream over chocolate agenda. They would “not lose sleep” over it, but then some still go out and buy some vanilla. Even if they don’t believe in marketing.
It doesn’t really matter if they are a bot or a useful idiot if they are doing the same job.