With initial efforts aimed at swinging upcoming German elections and discrediting Ukraine, Russia's "Doppelganger" influence operations have expanded to the BlueSky social media platform. It took the Russians a while to get around to it, but they've finally begun running their disinformation operations on social media platform BlueSky. On January 17,…
At least this anti-Ukrainian spam seems to get flagged as such in my polish corner of Bluesky. Wondering how long that will last and if we’ll see Jack Dorsey doing fascist salutes on stage too.
As far as I know, Jack Dorsey left Bluesky almost a year ago: https://www.businessinsider.com/jack-dorsey-bluesky-twiiter-nostr-interview-2024-5
His interview on the topic: https://www.piratewires.com/p/interview-with-jack-dorsey-mike-solana
I have to somewhat agree with him that Bluesky is still very much susceptible to turning into Twitter all over again. Right now, it definitely feels like Twitter in its infancy but with all the modern QoL features we expect to have nowadays. Which is nice, of course. Twitter didn’t used to be such a toxic shithole of bots and disinformation, it used to be a powerful communication tool for activism and journalists covering rapidly evolving events live.
However, the endgame of such platforms is inevitable. Higher user saturation means higher operating costs, which then usually means the company has a higher reliance on advertising, which then leads to more algorithms and data mining for targeted ads, which then leads to easier mass political manipulation campaigns.
I’m not sure if it’s actually possible to attract mass audience without an algorithm driven model. Mastodon tried and it’s had some moderate success, but because it’s completely devoid of algorithms, users have a harder time discovering people/accounts/mindless entertainment. That’s the only reason I can think of as to why Bluesky took off so much faster.
apparently, after a recent thread on lemmy and some reading, dorsey left bluesky some time ago
He quit and Mike Masnick, of Techdirt fame, replaced him which is a good upgrade.
Unfortunately, they still have Aaron Rodericks on trust and safety, who’s cozy with Singal.
And what’s the problem with liking Signal?
Wouldn’t want to be getting any criticism in your feed of an authoritarian far-right dictatorship, now would we? Can’t have these tankies calling for elections or banning Nazi symbols!
It’s funny that I can interpret this in every way possible. Yes, I prefer to be able to be critical of US or Russia on my social media without getting downranked. Yes, I’m for free elections in Belarus. I’d be for banning nazi symbols but they’re banned where I live already.
Haven’t you heard? When Ukrainians declare themselves Nazis, cover themselves in Nazi patches, and refuse to hold elections, it’s “complicated” and we’re not allowed to talk about it.
Unfortunately every countries military has nationalistic fascists, some of which use Nazi iconography to display their “pride”. I could find the 1940 Swedish general election (not at war), 1942 Icelandic parliamentary election (occupied by USA), 1943 & 1944 Irish general elections (not at war) as the elections held between Sep 1939 & Sep 1945, the other democratic European country’s I reviewed, elections were either postponed or went uncontested.
Is every country erecting monuments to or naming streets after famous Nazis?
Yes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memorials_in_Canada_to_Nazis_and_Nazi_collaborators
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monuments_in_the_United_States_to_Nazi_collaborators
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monument_of_Lihula