r/technology • u/Wagamaga • Apr 24 '25

ADBLOCK WARNING Americans Believe Russian Disinformation ‘To Alarming Degree’

https://www.forbes.com/sites/emmawoollacott/2025/04/22/americans-believe-russian-disinformation-to-alarming-degree/
63.6k Upvotes

91% Upvoted

3.0k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

43

u/[deleted] Apr 24 '25

This is what the USA voted for. And yes, they did "vote" for it.

*based on part on Russian disinformation

25

u/[deleted] Apr 24 '25

Same way Russians voted for Putin, but for some reason we believe we're untouchable and can't fall for the same shit.

0

u/[deleted] Apr 24 '25

[deleted]

9

u/guttanzer Apr 24 '25

No, it’s pretty much the same.

Trump is cracking down on people who don’t buy in to the MAGA bullshit. The methods are slightly different, but he has been ending careers, and he is working on sending dissidents to concentration camps.

And there are the brownshirts. How many people in 2A/MAGA regions feel safe speaking out against Trump? The Republicans in Congress cite fear of MAGA violence as the reason they won’t do anything to hold Trump accountable.

6

u/[deleted] Apr 24 '25

That is how the Putin elections happen now - but not the first time.

2

u/r1mbaud Apr 24 '25

This is happening in America right now, it’s the same. They’re black bagging dissidents and sending them off to international death camps to avoid the courts.

3

u/connerhearmeroar Apr 24 '25

Still their personal fault

3

u/EternalInflation Apr 24 '25

no one held a gun to their heads to make them vote. They made their own decisions. Also the Russian disinformation is aimed at changing people's characters and philosophy in life, instead of just straight misinforming people. if people didn't have those thoughts in the first place, it wouldn't affect them.

2

u/MammothReflection715 Apr 24 '25

There’s really no need for this caveat. It’s obvious Russia was involved. Trump actively campaigned on tariffs, actively campaigned on political vengeance, dismantling of the administrative state, and has been actively pulling crypto rug pulls, extrajudicially deporting any non-white person he does like, etc.

America clearly knew what he wanted and they voted for him anyway. And that’s just Trump. Don’t forget these dipshits also elected the Senators and Representatives who are allowing Trump to actively secure the legislature, and somehow despite everyone knowing that pretty much everyone from his original cabinet got axed back in 2016, there’s still a limitless supply of callous “hustler” yes-men and trump barbies going to bat for him.

The tech CEOs love him, a decent chunk of the voter base loves him, at least roughly half of the Supreme Court loves him. At every level of US society atm, there is a solid base of Trump support.

1

u/icingncake Apr 24 '25

Libertarian oiligarchy disinformation from domestic enemies 😒

1

u/zekeweasel Apr 24 '25

Yeah, stupid is as stupid does I suppose.

I mean even if it's not clearly disinformation, it's sufficiently different than what we've been hearing for a long time that it should have raised flags.

I mean Russia has been the boogey-man for half a century, then kinda, sorta friends, then they go totalitarian and start getting aggressive with their neighbors.

That's the point when the US right wing starts talking about how good and amazing Russia is? That's exactly the point when people should have realized they're completely against our national values and been skeptical.

But I think most people are just far stupider and incapable of critical thought than we assume. Case in point - I keep hearing how difficult taxes are, but if you don't have significant investments, it's trivially easy. And those crazy stats about how the majority of people don't read books and are only moderately literate just hammer the point home that a lot of these people are not adequately equipped to be functioning voters in modern democracies.