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0 pointsBugBrother11y ago0 comments

As I wrote on another comment of yours -- Russia and China pay people to write comments [astroturf/50 cent army]. It was obvious in Swedish.

Edit: The astroturf was obvious in the Swedish language. Very shortly: People with very bad Swedish started posting pro Putin comments, some obviously using G Translate. They were unable to discuss certain things -- like that international democracy indexes class Russia as autocratic. (They'd probably be fired.) There were systematic down votes (10-100 down votes in a minute probably going through a bot net, so web admins couldn't automatically detect it). This spamming with very, very unusual opinions were systematically half of all comments on those web sites I read. (After a few months the Swedish of the posts got better, some halfway to idiomatic.)

Edit 2: Sprint, maybe. But not in the same volume in Swedish and not with that amount of fake votes.

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10 comments · 3 top-level

pipy11y ago· 4 in thread

I live in Russia and in the past have been running a website that criticizes Russian elites and Putin in particular for years, the one that fails under this law, BTW.

But why do I get outraged by the unsourced comments as yours even more than by this stupid law?

I personally challenge you: I will provide you with information that I'm a real person and my claim about running website criticizing Russian elites is real if you take time to explain why is it OK for the West to support regime that kills Ukrainian civilians en masse.

You keep churning unsourced "Russian shills everywhere" message, while ignoring two simple possibilities:

1. While there are Russian Government shills on the Internet, as well as Western ones, real Russian people can also be genuinely outraged by actions of the West.

2. The West may be in reality backing puppet regime that commits horrific crimes.

P.S. It is ironic that I'm probably the single person in this thread that is really affected by this law and at the same time I am being modded down.

mpyne11y ago

> why is it OK for the West to support regime that kills Ukrainian civilians en masse.

Why do you try to imply that identifying pro-Putin shills is equivalent to supporting "a [Ukrainian] regime that kills Ukrainian civilians en masse"?

Assuming your supposition is true for now, why do you not go further and think to imply that these civilians would not be getting killed en masse if Putin would withdraw forces of the Russian Federation from the sovereign territory [1] of Ukraine?

History shows that the truest way to harm civilians in conflict between groups that are not trying to kill civilians (either directly through systemic action or indirectly through things like famine) is to prolong the armed conflict by interceding on behalf of one side or the other.

But even if you're completely right and not involuntarily affected by propaganda yourself, just because someone tries to keep a comment board free of "shills" of all types doesn't mean someone is necessarily aligned with any side, which is an issue you appear to be conflating here.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereignty

pipy11y ago

> Why do you not go further and think to imply that these civilians would not be getting killed en masse if Putin would withdraw forces of the Russian Federation from the sovereign territory of Ukraine?

Because there are no forces of Russian federation, probably apart from some Spec Ops, logistics and reconnaissance units.

> History shows that the truest way to harm civilians in conflict between groups that are not trying to kill civilians (either directly through systemic action or indirectly through things like famine) is to prolong the armed conflict by interceding on behalf of one side or the other.

So you say that Russia should abandon support of people of Donetsk and Luhansk and leave them at the mercy of Kiev government, who is committing crimes against them? [1]

I actually watch Ukrainian mainstream television and recently one of the experts was openly talking about the need to "physically eliminate about 1.5 million of civilians of Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are not able to fit in Ukrainian Nation" [2]. And he didn't get fined or jailed for these words, or even challenged by the TV host. If this is not Fascism, I don't know what is.

Why don't you ask questions such as: who started this mess? What has Russia done to stop it? What has the West done to stop it?

[1] http://www.thenation.com/article/180466/silence-american-haw...

[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCD4RS9LsTI

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pessimizer11y ago

>Why do you try to imply that identifying pro-Putin shills

Identifying pro-Putin shills is not what's being done here. This is just accusing people that don't agree with everything said about Russia and the depiction in the US media of the current conflict in Ukraine of being Russian shills.

I remember when people who questioned the Iraq war had to constantly defend themselves from accusations of being terrorist shills. This has the exact same chilling effect.

edit: I am honestly interested in evidence of shill posting. I enjoy the detective work. If your evidence of shilling is that you think that the opinions people hold could only be held by shills, you're just stifling dissent in the traditional way that it has always been done. It's no more noble or complex than that.

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lotsofmangos11y ago

The Ukraine forces do appear to be using unguided grad rockets in areas where they end up hitting civilians, which is a war crime. http://www.hrw.org/news/2014/07/24/ukraine-unguided-rockets-...

The insurgents are also accused of using grads, but this whole thing is far from being one sided.

schrodinger11y ago· 3 in thread

Excuse my ignorance, but can you elaborate about it being "obvious in Swedish"? I'm afraid I'm unaware of the reference....

pjc5011y ago

I interpret that as BugBrother being Swedish and reading lots of Swedish-language discussion sites. While Sweden isn't adjacent to Russia like Finland is, it's obviously a looming neighbour.

schrodinger11y ago

Ah that makes more sense. Sorry, was legitimately unsure if I was missing something.

Ygg211y ago

It's the Swedish equivalent of "I think Putin is good. His reforms are improve life in Russia. Americans suffer from frogs wanting to get horseshoues".

Sprint11y ago

So does the US, we know thanks to Snowden.

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