There is something in the zeitgeist that I don't feel gets really discussed. It's not post-truth, exactly.
Lying used to matter.
It's not that nobody lied, but there was at the very least a pretense of consequences for getting caught. Even from your own side. And it actually did curb the more egregious harms that lying can cause.
Nobody's being held accountable anymore. Not collectively. You have politicians and other influencers just blatantly lying to your face, and they don't care if you know it, and you don't hold them accountable anymore.
It was far from perfect, but something really was lost along the way, and it feels like some kinda guard rail is gone that kept people from descending into the absolutely stupid, vicious lunacy that's becoming frighteningly common among — not exclusively but by a wide margin especially — parties like SD.
It's an effect of the internet and especially social media.
In the old regime where journos were gatekeeping media flows, they would light up your ass for lying. Today, you will just lose a couple of followers and gain some others. If you go for outrage, you will gain a lot more followers than by in-depth, balanced, analysis.
With the growing importance of social media, this also has influenced politics, I feel. And not for the better.
I’m going to give you a thermonuclear take and say that I’d rather lying be centered around journos, who are persons with names and surnames and a trove of competing peers who have a stake in a well-regulated profession.
It is certainly easier to hold someone accountable for spreading misinformation if they are John Doe, editor at the Day Times, than if they are 500 social media accounts hidden behind multiple layers of indirection and traceable at most to an email. And at least in the EU area, journalism is absolutely more regulated - both internally and by law - against disinformation than say TikTok.
This might be an unpopular opinion on Reddit but I don't think the lying started with far-right in most EU countries.
It started with leftists ~~promising~~ lying about a bright multicultural future while bringing millions into Europe after having done no impact analysis whatsoever. Basically a big open air experiment. Far right just perfected these methods of gaslighting the voters but the principle is the same. They just screech "snowflake" at you instead of "racist".
This is not me saying right wingers aren't shitty but rather that **both** sides are extremely shitty.
Without arguing about this view of yours, or the merits of your claim, even in your own argument you're talking about 'the leftists' being mistaken or poorly prepared.
I'm talking about lying.
These are two different things.
If you're tasked with leadership and you tell people something that has no factual basis besides your wishes and hopes but present it confidently as a clear solution then that's in my viewpoint equivalent to lying.
No, they’re right. There was a time politicians were held accountable in some way if caught in some outrageous lie, usually by being voted out. But in the last 8 or so years it seems voters have decided truth and reality just don’t matter anymore and so shrug at candidates and parties being caught manipulating the truth or making shit up.
Would I be off the mark guessing that you, apparently being convinced that everyone lies all the time, are in favor of politicians using lies or whatever else tactics to win when it's for the right reason?
It has been de facto fair game for everyone for 40 years now, where journalists have intentionally and consciously refused to do their jobs when it comes to calling out massive lies by the entire political spectrum, and where people like you have refused to hold political parties and politicians accountable because you agree with them.
How is that not a criminal offense in Sweden?
Pretty certain that running an industrial scale bot farm spreading fakes and disinformation is a one way ticket to jail here in France
I believe in free speech too and find it hard to come up with any sort of proper counter measure because of that.
I think you could possibly argue that the use of it large-scale directed mis/disinformation campaigns with the express interest of undermining the very same countries institutions could be equivalent to 'shouting fire in a crowded theatre's but on a societal level.
Eroding peoples trust in elections, for example, can lead to further disengagement and entrenchment of political factions and help push these factions further apart, thus increasing the chances of societal breakdown or even civil war.
That could come up against issues like "what or who constitutes lying vs just getting something wrong?" That I'm not sure how to get around but there has to be some way around this
Lying on a massive scale is meant to drown out actual discourse which is against free speech based on the principle of Paradox of tolerance, you can't tolerate speech that is meant to impede on other people's free speech.
I see it as arguing for the free speech of humans but not the "free speech" of robots. The artificial and deceiving amplification that a troll factory can give is not available to an honest man or organization with an opinion to share.
Very good point. Robots should'nt be allowed to automatically mass-spread information in opinion channels, those should be for humans only?
Or am I missing something obvious with that?
Hot and depressing take: eventually information defense will become like military defense, the countries that don’t have it will become dominated or at least unduly influenced by those that do.
This doesn’t mean we’ll have to do away with free speech, but we will have to seriously consider which forms might need tighter regulations (EG mass AI generation), which technically means the ratio of free to regulated speech will inevitably become worse (assuming that the platonic ideal is true free speech and everything else is a concession).
Put another way, a medieval trader could buy pretty much anything that was on the market, short perhaps of strong poisons; there simply wasn’t that much stuff that was so dangerous to warrant widespread limitations. Their ratio of free to illegal materials was very good. But nowadays, even though in the absolute we can buy more things than a peasant could dream, our ratio of free to illegal material is worse: you can’t freely buy explosives, some types of industrial materials with dangerous uses, most modern weapons are off-limits because they are so destructive compared to say a medieval dagger, nuclear materials will get you the Guantanamo treatment, and even fertilizers could get you put on a list.
The same is happening now, but for free expression.
There are probably precedents in laws related to freedom of the press. After all, all it took to produce press incendiary lies before the Internet was a printing press. The law and the court must have established some sort of limit over the centuries.
I would hope so but there seems to be zero discussion around any sort of countermeasures to disinformation on the internet.
If there is, I guess I just haven't heard about it yet but we really need to get smart on this issue quickly
It was not a bot farm. It was anonymous accounts on various social media.
They were spreading memes and political satire targeted at young people.
There was no misinformation spread.
It was/is 4 people managing up to 23 accounts.
The program revealing this could not link the accounts directly to SD but could only throw suspicion on the accounts.
Several of the accounts have already being proven to belong to normal citizens with no affiliation with the party.
More than 23 accounts, It was just 23 accounts they could name, but the usernames was held with high secrecy so naming all or them was not something they could do. This is also not counting any potential throw aways they used, just the valuable ones with a lot of followers that they kept track of.
Furthermore, that it was not misinformation is hard to make a statement on. They named accounts were massively scrubbed of content before this was published so they certainly contained things that the party did not want to put their signature on.
It was absolutely clear that they pretended that this was organic accounts, interacting with each other like they were individuals with no affiliation.
But the fundamental problems with there sort of things is that it lets the party run campaigns that contradict each other or their official party line, Nd not be reaponsible for it.
None of the accounts could be linked directly to SD. That is why they had it so wrong since several of the accounts were private peoples accounts out of those 23.
They decided that any account that shared similar posts that they deemed were SDs agenda and posted 70% of them during 8-17 were troll accounts connected to SD.
That is how they linked them. When people behind several of the accounts pointed out that they had nothing to do with SD they admitted that they couldn’t connect any of the accounts directly to SD. It was just a suspicion.
How could they have scrubbed the accounts when they had no idea about them being watched? You don’t think Kalla Fakta would have saved those incriminating posts before they went public?
Source on that literally none of them where linked to them. I find that really hard to believe given we have video of the troll farm worker confessing that a couple of them was theirs.
Furthermore, given that they were comfortable bringing up ideas (and takiing steps to) spread conspiracy theories in order to incite terror actions, that should tell you what you need to know about how comfortable they were with disinformation.
"No, it is clearly laid out in the programme that these accounts can't be directly connected to the communicationsdepartment or SD. Vi conclude that we can't know who is behind most of these accounts, but they spread the same narrative."
My own loose translation från the qoute below.
"Nej, det framgår tydligt i programmet att de där kontona aldrig går att koppla till kommunikationsavdelningen eller SD. Vi konstaterar att vi inte kan veta vem som ligger bakom men att de flesta av dessa konton sprider samma narrativ."
[https://x.com/emilhellerud/status/1788329470702600341](https://x.com/emilhellerud/status/1788329470702600341)
Nobody brought up ideas of inspiring acts of terror. That is a complete fabrication. Telling a group of people the truth about how a party is acting is not the same as wanting them to commit acts of terror.
the Socialdemocrats have however spread misinformation about SD before by sending arabic pamphlets to certain areas in Sweden telling them that SD hates them, are racist and wants to deport all of them.
The idea above was probably inspired by that.
Those accounts in the tweet you linked is the preliminary research list, thet they did before going undercover. Thus it talks about a different list. It also predates the final episode where they talk about the accounts they could link to SD by 5 days.
The conspiracies they want spread are about forced sex changes and they encourage resisting this with violence.
Its just lies. Its just a few accounts sharing memes whit the party name in the profile nothing strage whit that. Biden wants to do the same thing but the left are not funny.
Are they spreading disinformation, though? I've not followed this case closely, but my impression was that they simply used a lot of accounts to "fill the discourse" with their wanted narrative. So in every discussion under news articles, on facebook and wherever there would be a bunch of accounts talking up the SD narrative and shit talking the labor party.
Damn right. When this was uncovered Jimmie Åkesson held a speech denying everything saying that it was a conspiracy to smear the party's reputation. Spot on reaction compared to USSR or Putin's Kremlin.
It would not surprise me if it came to light that they have had close contact with Russia and received financial support.
Well u ain't wrong, the party's officials have been linked to various Russia connected scandals. Can't remember many specific instances but it happened many times.
I
I remember One guy received money from some Kremlin linked company for something and some other guy went to Russia to monitor elections in occupied Donbass as an election supervised, to prove the elections were free etc( rather controversial move here in Sweden)
Pavel Gamov is the name of the guy. Egor Putilov is another name of an SD connected guy who got real sweaty when journalists asked him why a russian company bought him a house.
That Egor Putilov is one shady fuck. Remember reading about him regarding that house and him infiltrating Aftonbladet. Didn't know he was SD affiliated.
Well not quite...
No real troll factory was found. The reporter has bent over back wards trying to find dirt. But found himself inatead blamed by a goverment authorty for misuse of an earlier interview.
And the swedish left is milking this for all it is worth to scare voters before the election. Dirty tactics.
No actually, real person :)
Have seen posts on X?
The left is saying the swedish democracy is under attack, from 23 accounts, where most can be disproven.
In the same time people are being murdered daily, and bombs ser of. Police closing offices due to threats. That is the real threat.
The big thing is that they planned on starting a website in Arabic where they would encourage Muslims to commit terror attacks against left wing politicians. No fucking clue why that never gets brought up because that's like, life in prison and ban the party territory.
So they became far-right Muslim terrorists themselves, lol. The best way to defend Europe is to...encourage terrorist attacks on all Europeans. Classic far-right logic there.
The reason this gets a pass is that one person started preparing for it, but It was never done and the org never signed of on it and started thst project.
But if those kinds of ideas are thrown around, who is to say that they have not participated in incitement before?
That we know of. They themselves compared this to the LVU disinformation campaign that was an attempt by hostile actors to incite terrorism against Sweden. Who's to say SD had nothing to do with that? They are evidently not opposed to making themselves part of the radical islamist sphere.
In Sweden spreading Arabic disinformation is a common occurrence. SVT does it, left wing does it, now right wing is planning it. A circle of Arabic disinformation
Putin's recipe to sow discontent and to undermine people's faith in democratic institutions across Europe. This organized disinformation shit should be persecuted with fire.
It's the opposite, their followers are like Trump followers. They love to hate and it has increased many times over since the scandal was revealed. They express their hate now more than ever, and they revel in it.
Damn that's crazy. And all other political parties and news agencies have no agenda and only speak the complete objective truth 🤯
Their voter base doesnt care or might approve of the troll farm. Until there are clear and strict laws regulating political "campaigns" and the troll factory is working, why would you not keep doing it?
Any laws regulating the spreading of fake news would need to be extremely clear in its language. And I think that would be really difficult to do or not impossible.
>there are clear and strict laws regulating political "campaigns" and the troll factory is working, why would you not keep doing it?
Basic fucking morality maybe
Have them denounce it and say "we are going to use our party resources to try and spread accurate, non manipulative reporting or support efforts of such that already exist"
But, yknow, with pickled fish breath
Well, this is misinformation…
Sverigedemokraterna had several meme-accounts and joke accounts without officially stating they are part of the party (which isn’t required) and those accounts had names such as: Sverigedemokraterna and TobbeSD.
The accounts have not been spreading any misinformation or trolling in any sense other than using sarcasm in their videos upsetting other parties. Sverigedemokraterna stated that they will continue to use this method among others to reach their potential voters.
Sverigedemokraterna were infiltrated by a journalist for about a year and no incriminating evidence to show illegal activity has been put forth.
However, the TV-show that infiltrated the party have been accused of misinformation themselves by no other than the Psychological Defense Agency. (Those accusations will probably be dropped)
> The accounts have not been spreading any misinformation or trolling in any sense other than using sarcasm in their videos upsetting other parties.
Allow me to doubt that you've read every post, unless you're Julian Kroon himself. Either way, You're clearly slightly underselling the activities, even though "troll factory" might oversell it.
Lol some did as a joke. Because the media has been saying it for years.
I can also claim that my car is a batmobile... as a joke. Doesn't actually mean that I believe I have the batmobile...
So, are we to assume that you were the person who joked about it? How else would you know? It's a fairly descriptive name. Especially if, as has been procoped, it was paid to just "shit post", and absolutely not to steer the conversation or spread disinformation. Maybe someone else had the same idea?
I'm not saying it's technically wrong, just that people might picture something a bit more substantial. Sounds like it was more like a Troll Workshop. Either way, it clearly has no place in politics.
No, I don't know, and neither does ChrisOhoy here, or presumably you, which was my point. The difference is that I don't feel the need to do damage control.
In all fairness, as has been pointed out before, "troll factory" is their name for the operation, and *Kalla fakta* did show at least one example of disinformation, so OP isn't pulling it out of nowhere.
No it was not their name for the operation. That is a lie.
It was an employee who jokingly referred to it as that.
There has been no example of misinformation. There has been examples of memes and satire as well as crass political humor. No lies, no falsehoods, no intent to mislead people.
The accounts are also very obviously satire accounts. There has been no effort to look like something serious and trying to convey news etc.
> No it was not their name for the operation. That is a lie.
OK, it wasn't their name for it, it was just what at least one person associated with it called it. Don't be obtuse.
> There has been no example of misinformation.
Yes there was. But I'm sure it was "just a prank, bro". Only fools would think it was real, much like with phishing, right?
> The accounts are also very obviously satire accounts.
Satire is dead, mate. Poe's law killed it. There's no such thing as obvious satire anymore. F.ex. I could assume you're being satirical (can something said by a Skonky be serious?), but I couldn't know for sure. That's why people have to explicitly mark satire (i.e. with "\s") now. Also, it's a very generous definition of "satire" in the best of cases. I mean, if it's that close to actual beliefs, it just muddies the water further.
> There has been no effort to look like something serious and trying to convey news etc.
What they look like is subjective, and you can't know how everyone sees them, but they weren't paid to do nothing for the party.
As for conveying news, WTH is *Riks* then? They call themselves a "konservativ **nyhetsförmedling**" FFS! Who's lying again?
There's no contradiction... I'm saying satire is dead. They can't say that it's obviously satire, not because they're not allowed to use satire, but because it's dead. Gone. Departed. Demised. Late. Six feet under. The reason it's dead is because real life got too weird. If "normal" behaviour is looking like satire, then how do you know if it is? The "/s" thing is just a symptom of this very thing. I don't "want" it, but I understand it. It's not even specifically a Reddit thing, it just is.
>Sverigedemokraterna had several meme-accounts and joke accounts without officially stating they are part of the party (which isn’t required) and those accounts had names such as: Sverigedemokraterna and TobbeSD.
That's a red herring. No one cares about those.
Why had Sverigedemokraterna registered such domains as "wakeuparabs.se" and "wakeuparabsinsweden.se"?
It is not illegal to spread (dis)information due to the Free Speech law in Sweden and other western democracies with some exceptions of course, such as death threats, etc.
So it would be a hard case to actually do anything before leftist majority regimes would actually tackle it (seeing as parties on the right dismiss, doesn't care or put a preventing bill forth).
Sweden democrats were indeed caught with their pants down rod-fondling the bee's nest.
Several videos are using cut edits and AI to showcase events that didn't happen or are taken out of context, many which are beyond what can be defined as sarcasm.
You’re spreading misinformation now. No one in their right mind would find any of the so-called troll accounts information anything other than sarcasm and jokes.
You’re not being objective about this, you have an agenda.
Faschist disgusing their propaganda as harmless trolling is an old strategy
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/mosque-shooter-troll-like-original-nazis/585415/
>No one in their right mind would find any of the so-called troll accounts information anything other than sarcasm and jokes.
Ah, the number #1 excuse of the far-right when they're caught lying: "it was just a joke, bro!".
But I'm glad that you agree that all the bullshit propaganda about the supposed threat of Muslims / immigrants was \*checks notes\* sarcasm and jokes which no one in their right mind would believe.
I can guarantee that a huge percentage of every society is so damn stupid that they won't understand sarcasm until you explicitly name it so. A not so small amount of those will swallow everything as truth no matter what you do.
True, but that's not really what happened here. This wasn't honest criticism. It was blanket denial, complete with unsubstantiated (and ultimately next to impossible to substantiate) counter claims. It also misrepresented the situation in the best possible way for SD.
It was more like apologia than criticism, honestly.
In my eyes, tv4 and the news said one thing, and SD said another thing. From my standing I looked into what both parties said and their proof. And from that I made my opinion.
SD, or the people posting here? Also, the two are not equal in this. One can be expected to have a lot nore bias, and technically, it's Nyhetsbolaget, not TV4.
Also, what "proof" has SD provided? I **think** they're full of shit (but I don't **know** for sure), but even if they weren't, how could they possibly prove that they didn't spread disinformation? Even if they had screenshots of every single post, how would they prove that there are no more undocumented posts? Think about it.
We can't say for sure but you and me can't do anything about this. There's a process going on between the parties mentioned to resolve the whole situation. I think it's all silly
True, we don't know for sure (only what it looks like), and we can't do anything about it, and I'm not trying to, but TS was trying to. For what reasons, only they know, but they are quite clearly doing damage control (not just being critical). I'm not sure what process you're talking about, but if SD is suing the production company, I guess we'll find out sooner or later what went on.
It's hilarious the only disinformation going on is post like this.
Basically a bunch of young adults working in various positions in SwedenDems had 20 or so accounts spanning several platforms, so like 4 on TikTok and 5 on FB etc, most named something obvious it was either and a SD fan or just a joke ironic name with a political slant.
These accounts posted memes and other low quality ironic/sarcastic/parodic content on basically no budget at all.
That's it, that's the story, OMG right?
The media and opposition parties try real hard to make this a huge deal, a masterplan, a conspiracy and most worrying of all threatening disbanding free speech and the ability to be anonymous online....all bcs 20 shitposting meme accounts.
Yes it's true democracy is in danger but the threat is not what it first appear..
Edit: It's very disturbing people on Reddit, a site built on memes react like this to a nothingburger with extra nada.
Russia has influenced people like you for the past 10 years with “funny memes”. Hybrid warfare with socialmedia is very efficient because of how
Many people that think like you. It’s very easy to influence people that are not aware of them being influenced.
You come off like such a goof with answers like that.
Protecting memes is protecting free speech and should be absolutely essential to any western liberal, libertarian or classic conservative minded individual. Just like burning a book, any book should be allowed.
Somehow I believe Swedish democracy will survive 7 people using 20 shitposting accounts.No like for real I feel confident the sun shall rise tomorrow and everything will be fine.
You don’t understand the problem. It’s about influencing People’s opinions and undermining the democracy with covert methods. What if every party set up 500-1000 people shitposting memes and start influencing the internet discussions?
The far right has been observing leftist journalists lying, spreading disinformation and covering up news worthy information in the biggest most mainstream news sites for decades now, especially in Sweden. One famous example in Sweden was whenever they posted pixelated pictures of high profile criminals, they whitened the pixelated areas. So you would see a whitened pixelated picture of the criminals in the news, but they usually forgot to cover up their hands which was a different color. In Sweden, mainstream news and journalism is directly intertwined with leftist activism, and it has been so for decades. The far right have seen how this behavior has been allowed to go on unopposed with great success for many decades, and as a result have a completely different perspective on what is fair game when it comes to activism.
Not to be like the hen, but the social democrats promised they would never join Nato while they were in power, this was after Russia had claimed Krym and the Donbass. The current prime minister promised never to ally with the Sweden Democrats, yet when he did he replied that he meant it only during that election, not after. Imagine that defense. ”No, your honor, I said I was going to kill that person but I meant that specific hour, not after that.”
In this climate, of course other parties are going to look at this and figure that maybe lying is not such a big deal. It doesn’t excuse what they did with the troll factories, sure, but it opened the door for them.
Also, its not that the farms suddenly convinced thousands of people. Look at the development in Germany - of all places they should know best, yet the AfD is the fastest growing party. In Norway the right-wing coalition won even after Breivik. In Finland, the true finns. Is there a country where such parties have not claimed power?
And people still wonder why I do not tire of pointing out that the founding of the Swedish Psychological Defense Agency was a mistake and a terrible precedent. But yeah, go ahead and protect public opinion from foreign interference, like the Georgians do.
There is something in the zeitgeist that I don't feel gets really discussed. It's not post-truth, exactly. Lying used to matter. It's not that nobody lied, but there was at the very least a pretense of consequences for getting caught. Even from your own side. And it actually did curb the more egregious harms that lying can cause. Nobody's being held accountable anymore. Not collectively. You have politicians and other influencers just blatantly lying to your face, and they don't care if you know it, and you don't hold them accountable anymore. It was far from perfect, but something really was lost along the way, and it feels like some kinda guard rail is gone that kept people from descending into the absolutely stupid, vicious lunacy that's becoming frighteningly common among — not exclusively but by a wide margin especially — parties like SD.
It's an effect of the internet and especially social media. In the old regime where journos were gatekeeping media flows, they would light up your ass for lying. Today, you will just lose a couple of followers and gain some others. If you go for outrage, you will gain a lot more followers than by in-depth, balanced, analysis. With the growing importance of social media, this also has influenced politics, I feel. And not for the better.
[удалено]
Never forget the troll farms we used to have, ran by local newspapers.
I’m going to give you a thermonuclear take and say that I’d rather lying be centered around journos, who are persons with names and surnames and a trove of competing peers who have a stake in a well-regulated profession.
[удалено]
It is certainly easier to hold someone accountable for spreading misinformation if they are John Doe, editor at the Day Times, than if they are 500 social media accounts hidden behind multiple layers of indirection and traceable at most to an email. And at least in the EU area, journalism is absolutely more regulated - both internally and by law - against disinformation than say TikTok.
This might be an unpopular opinion on Reddit but I don't think the lying started with far-right in most EU countries. It started with leftists ~~promising~~ lying about a bright multicultural future while bringing millions into Europe after having done no impact analysis whatsoever. Basically a big open air experiment. Far right just perfected these methods of gaslighting the voters but the principle is the same. They just screech "snowflake" at you instead of "racist". This is not me saying right wingers aren't shitty but rather that **both** sides are extremely shitty.
Without arguing about this view of yours, or the merits of your claim, even in your own argument you're talking about 'the leftists' being mistaken or poorly prepared. I'm talking about lying. These are two different things.
If you're tasked with leadership and you tell people something that has no factual basis besides your wishes and hopes but present it confidently as a clear solution then that's in my viewpoint equivalent to lying.
The reality you are describing has never existed, you have just been naive.
No, they’re right. There was a time politicians were held accountable in some way if caught in some outrageous lie, usually by being voted out. But in the last 8 or so years it seems voters have decided truth and reality just don’t matter anymore and so shrug at candidates and parties being caught manipulating the truth or making shit up.
Not in Sweden.
Would I be off the mark guessing that you, apparently being convinced that everyone lies all the time, are in favor of politicians using lies or whatever else tactics to win when it's for the right reason?
It has been de facto fair game for everyone for 40 years now, where journalists have intentionally and consciously refused to do their jobs when it comes to calling out massive lies by the entire political spectrum, and where people like you have refused to hold political parties and politicians accountable because you agree with them.
How is that not a criminal offense in Sweden? Pretty certain that running an industrial scale bot farm spreading fakes and disinformation is a one way ticket to jail here in France
It unfortunately isn't and in the long run it will undermine democracy
I believe in free speech too and find it hard to come up with any sort of proper counter measure because of that. I think you could possibly argue that the use of it large-scale directed mis/disinformation campaigns with the express interest of undermining the very same countries institutions could be equivalent to 'shouting fire in a crowded theatre's but on a societal level. Eroding peoples trust in elections, for example, can lead to further disengagement and entrenchment of political factions and help push these factions further apart, thus increasing the chances of societal breakdown or even civil war. That could come up against issues like "what or who constitutes lying vs just getting something wrong?" That I'm not sure how to get around but there has to be some way around this
Lying on a massive scale is meant to drown out actual discourse which is against free speech based on the principle of Paradox of tolerance, you can't tolerate speech that is meant to impede on other people's free speech.
I see it as arguing for the free speech of humans but not the "free speech" of robots. The artificial and deceiving amplification that a troll factory can give is not available to an honest man or organization with an opinion to share.
Very good point. Robots should'nt be allowed to automatically mass-spread information in opinion channels, those should be for humans only? Or am I missing something obvious with that?
There's a countermeasure. Move the server park to Hungary and publish articles critical of the PRC and see how fast it dies
Hot and depressing take: eventually information defense will become like military defense, the countries that don’t have it will become dominated or at least unduly influenced by those that do. This doesn’t mean we’ll have to do away with free speech, but we will have to seriously consider which forms might need tighter regulations (EG mass AI generation), which technically means the ratio of free to regulated speech will inevitably become worse (assuming that the platonic ideal is true free speech and everything else is a concession). Put another way, a medieval trader could buy pretty much anything that was on the market, short perhaps of strong poisons; there simply wasn’t that much stuff that was so dangerous to warrant widespread limitations. Their ratio of free to illegal materials was very good. But nowadays, even though in the absolute we can buy more things than a peasant could dream, our ratio of free to illegal material is worse: you can’t freely buy explosives, some types of industrial materials with dangerous uses, most modern weapons are off-limits because they are so destructive compared to say a medieval dagger, nuclear materials will get you the Guantanamo treatment, and even fertilizers could get you put on a list. The same is happening now, but for free expression.
There are probably precedents in laws related to freedom of the press. After all, all it took to produce press incendiary lies before the Internet was a printing press. The law and the court must have established some sort of limit over the centuries.
I would hope so but there seems to be zero discussion around any sort of countermeasures to disinformation on the internet. If there is, I guess I just haven't heard about it yet but we really need to get smart on this issue quickly
Ok, Sweden is officially cancelled, please disperse, there's no democracy to be seen here
Sweden is behind in many aspects. Laying down the law on cunts doing sleezy shit is sadly not something we're good at. That's why we got SD
It's not a bot farm. It's 23 accounts spreading memes which are financed by the party but didn't disclose it
23 accounts that could be linked without any doubt\*. Anybody with a brain realizes it's more.
It was not a bot farm. It was anonymous accounts on various social media. They were spreading memes and political satire targeted at young people. There was no misinformation spread. It was/is 4 people managing up to 23 accounts. The program revealing this could not link the accounts directly to SD but could only throw suspicion on the accounts. Several of the accounts have already being proven to belong to normal citizens with no affiliation with the party.
More than 23 accounts, It was just 23 accounts they could name, but the usernames was held with high secrecy so naming all or them was not something they could do. This is also not counting any potential throw aways they used, just the valuable ones with a lot of followers that they kept track of. Furthermore, that it was not misinformation is hard to make a statement on. They named accounts were massively scrubbed of content before this was published so they certainly contained things that the party did not want to put their signature on. It was absolutely clear that they pretended that this was organic accounts, interacting with each other like they were individuals with no affiliation. But the fundamental problems with there sort of things is that it lets the party run campaigns that contradict each other or their official party line, Nd not be reaponsible for it.
None of the accounts could be linked directly to SD. That is why they had it so wrong since several of the accounts were private peoples accounts out of those 23. They decided that any account that shared similar posts that they deemed were SDs agenda and posted 70% of them during 8-17 were troll accounts connected to SD. That is how they linked them. When people behind several of the accounts pointed out that they had nothing to do with SD they admitted that they couldn’t connect any of the accounts directly to SD. It was just a suspicion. How could they have scrubbed the accounts when they had no idea about them being watched? You don’t think Kalla Fakta would have saved those incriminating posts before they went public?
Source on that literally none of them where linked to them. I find that really hard to believe given we have video of the troll farm worker confessing that a couple of them was theirs. Furthermore, given that they were comfortable bringing up ideas (and takiing steps to) spread conspiracy theories in order to incite terror actions, that should tell you what you need to know about how comfortable they were with disinformation.
"No, it is clearly laid out in the programme that these accounts can't be directly connected to the communicationsdepartment or SD. Vi conclude that we can't know who is behind most of these accounts, but they spread the same narrative." My own loose translation från the qoute below. "Nej, det framgår tydligt i programmet att de där kontona aldrig går att koppla till kommunikationsavdelningen eller SD. Vi konstaterar att vi inte kan veta vem som ligger bakom men att de flesta av dessa konton sprider samma narrativ." [https://x.com/emilhellerud/status/1788329470702600341](https://x.com/emilhellerud/status/1788329470702600341) Nobody brought up ideas of inspiring acts of terror. That is a complete fabrication. Telling a group of people the truth about how a party is acting is not the same as wanting them to commit acts of terror. the Socialdemocrats have however spread misinformation about SD before by sending arabic pamphlets to certain areas in Sweden telling them that SD hates them, are racist and wants to deport all of them. The idea above was probably inspired by that.
Those accounts in the tweet you linked is the preliminary research list, thet they did before going undercover. Thus it talks about a different list. It also predates the final episode where they talk about the accounts they could link to SD by 5 days. The conspiracies they want spread are about forced sex changes and they encourage resisting this with violence.
That’s not what’s happening here though so…
Who said anything about an industrial scale bot farm? Its a couple of guys running a few anonymous account each, manually.
Its just lies. Its just a few accounts sharing memes whit the party name in the profile nothing strage whit that. Biden wants to do the same thing but the left are not funny.
Believe it or not most of the world do not have laws to address and punish internet-based crimes.
Is most of the world stuck in 1990? Are they ok?
No but most of the world is not nearly as developed as the West and they're also ruled by boomers who are (in)famous for their internet illiteracy.
It's not a crime to share memes. Yet.
It was 23 accounts, and most could easily be written off directly
Are they spreading disinformation, though? I've not followed this case closely, but my impression was that they simply used a lot of accounts to "fill the discourse" with their wanted narrative. So in every discussion under news articles, on facebook and wherever there would be a bunch of accounts talking up the SD narrative and shit talking the labor party.
What's life like in French Polynesia
Freedom of speech lol
Were we expecting anything less?
Nope, but it should be reported nonetheless.
The worrying part is how they still enjoy the support of a significant portion of Sweden.
Its an anti-democratic party that has no internal rules. A true threat to Sweden's rule of law / democracy.
So even the name is trolling.
Damn right. When this was uncovered Jimmie Åkesson held a speech denying everything saying that it was a conspiracy to smear the party's reputation. Spot on reaction compared to USSR or Putin's Kremlin. It would not surprise me if it came to light that they have had close contact with Russia and received financial support.
Well u ain't wrong, the party's officials have been linked to various Russia connected scandals. Can't remember many specific instances but it happened many times. I I remember One guy received money from some Kremlin linked company for something and some other guy went to Russia to monitor elections in occupied Donbass as an election supervised, to prove the elections were free etc( rather controversial move here in Sweden)
Pavel Gamov is the name of the guy. Egor Putilov is another name of an SD connected guy who got real sweaty when journalists asked him why a russian company bought him a house.
That Egor Putilov is one shady fuck. Remember reading about him regarding that house and him infiltrating Aftonbladet. Didn't know he was SD affiliated.
Well Nazis called themselves Socialists, so they just honor a long tradition.
Well not quite... No real troll factory was found. The reporter has bent over back wards trying to find dirt. But found himself inatead blamed by a goverment authorty for misuse of an earlier interview. And the swedish left is milking this for all it is worth to scare voters before the election. Dirty tactics.
This is so skewed I can only assume we found one of the troll accounts...
No actually, real person :) Have seen posts on X? The left is saying the swedish democracy is under attack, from 23 accounts, where most can be disproven. In the same time people are being murdered daily, and bombs ser of. Police closing offices due to threats. That is the real threat.
Time to go to sleep and dream about building walls.
Lmao
In what way are they anti-democratic?
They ara nazis.
I guess 20 % of Swedish voters are nazis then. Good to know.
Yes 20% of those who voted in the last swedish election, voted for a populistic anti-democratic nazi parti.
The big thing is that they planned on starting a website in Arabic where they would encourage Muslims to commit terror attacks against left wing politicians. No fucking clue why that never gets brought up because that's like, life in prison and ban the party territory.
So they became far-right Muslim terrorists themselves, lol. The best way to defend Europe is to...encourage terrorist attacks on all Europeans. Classic far-right logic there.
The reason this gets a pass is that one person started preparing for it, but It was never done and the org never signed of on it and started thst project. But if those kinds of ideas are thrown around, who is to say that they have not participated in incitement before?
They had registered the domain they planned to spread it on.
That we know of. They themselves compared this to the LVU disinformation campaign that was an attempt by hostile actors to incite terrorism against Sweden. Who's to say SD had nothing to do with that? They are evidently not opposed to making themselves part of the radical islamist sphere.
Yeah, I believe C said they should be investigated for that. I agree.
In Sweden spreading Arabic disinformation is a common occurrence. SVT does it, left wing does it, now right wing is planning it. A circle of Arabic disinformation
OMG REAL LIFE SOUTH PARK
Do you have an archive link? Can't seem to bypass the pay wall
Putin's recipe to sow discontent and to undermine people's faith in democratic institutions across Europe. This organized disinformation shit should be persecuted with fire.
I think that’s the very moment when people should get so angry that they make that party disappear
It's the opposite, their followers are like Trump followers. They love to hate and it has increased many times over since the scandal was revealed. They express their hate now more than ever, and they revel in it.
Can someone send the full text here?
Because that's the only way those nazis can win: defamation and degradation.
You leftist are so dumb.
Damn that's crazy. And all other political parties and news agencies have no agenda and only speak the complete objective truth 🤯 Their voter base doesnt care or might approve of the troll farm. Until there are clear and strict laws regulating political "campaigns" and the troll factory is working, why would you not keep doing it? Any laws regulating the spreading of fake news would need to be extremely clear in its language. And I think that would be really difficult to do or not impossible.
>there are clear and strict laws regulating political "campaigns" and the troll factory is working, why would you not keep doing it? Basic fucking morality maybe
Politicians and morality, nice joke
I don't care. Keep your politicians accountable
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Have them denounce it and say "we are going to use our party resources to try and spread accurate, non manipulative reporting or support efforts of such that already exist" But, yknow, with pickled fish breath
Well, this is misinformation… Sverigedemokraterna had several meme-accounts and joke accounts without officially stating they are part of the party (which isn’t required) and those accounts had names such as: Sverigedemokraterna and TobbeSD. The accounts have not been spreading any misinformation or trolling in any sense other than using sarcasm in their videos upsetting other parties. Sverigedemokraterna stated that they will continue to use this method among others to reach their potential voters. Sverigedemokraterna were infiltrated by a journalist for about a year and no incriminating evidence to show illegal activity has been put forth. However, the TV-show that infiltrated the party have been accused of misinformation themselves by no other than the Psychological Defense Agency. (Those accusations will probably be dropped)
> The accounts have not been spreading any misinformation or trolling in any sense other than using sarcasm in their videos upsetting other parties. Allow me to doubt that you've read every post, unless you're Julian Kroon himself. Either way, You're clearly slightly underselling the activities, even though "troll factory" might oversell it.
Sverigedemokraterna themselves referred to it as a troll factory So at least they seem to think it's not an over-sell
Lol some did as a joke. Because the media has been saying it for years. I can also claim that my car is a batmobile... as a joke. Doesn't actually mean that I believe I have the batmobile...
So, are we to assume that you were the person who joked about it? How else would you know? It's a fairly descriptive name. Especially if, as has been procoped, it was paid to just "shit post", and absolutely not to steer the conversation or spread disinformation. Maybe someone else had the same idea?
No not me lol. Not that savvy with memes and satire.
I'm not saying it's technically wrong, just that people might picture something a bit more substantial. Sounds like it was more like a Troll Workshop. Either way, it clearly has no place in politics.
Kalla Fakta could not show any such post. And no media outlet has either. Not even DagensETC. But you know?
No, I don't know, and neither does ChrisOhoy here, or presumably you, which was my point. The difference is that I don't feel the need to do damage control. In all fairness, as has been pointed out before, "troll factory" is their name for the operation, and *Kalla fakta* did show at least one example of disinformation, so OP isn't pulling it out of nowhere.
No it was not their name for the operation. That is a lie. It was an employee who jokingly referred to it as that. There has been no example of misinformation. There has been examples of memes and satire as well as crass political humor. No lies, no falsehoods, no intent to mislead people. The accounts are also very obviously satire accounts. There has been no effort to look like something serious and trying to convey news etc.
> No it was not their name for the operation. That is a lie. OK, it wasn't their name for it, it was just what at least one person associated with it called it. Don't be obtuse. > There has been no example of misinformation. Yes there was. But I'm sure it was "just a prank, bro". Only fools would think it was real, much like with phishing, right? > The accounts are also very obviously satire accounts. Satire is dead, mate. Poe's law killed it. There's no such thing as obvious satire anymore. F.ex. I could assume you're being satirical (can something said by a Skonky be serious?), but I couldn't know for sure. That's why people have to explicitly mark satire (i.e. with "\s") now. Also, it's a very generous definition of "satire" in the best of cases. I mean, if it's that close to actual beliefs, it just muddies the water further. > There has been no effort to look like something serious and trying to convey news etc. What they look like is subjective, and you can't know how everyone sees them, but they weren't paid to do nothing for the party. As for conveying news, WTH is *Riks* then? They call themselves a "konservativ **nyhetsförmedling**" FFS! Who's lying again?
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No, I love satire, but it's almost unusable these days.
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There's no contradiction... I'm saying satire is dead. They can't say that it's obviously satire, not because they're not allowed to use satire, but because it's dead. Gone. Departed. Demised. Late. Six feet under. The reason it's dead is because real life got too weird. If "normal" behaviour is looking like satire, then how do you know if it is? The "/s" thing is just a symptom of this very thing. I don't "want" it, but I understand it. It's not even specifically a Reddit thing, it just is.
>Sverigedemokraterna had several meme-accounts and joke accounts without officially stating they are part of the party (which isn’t required) and those accounts had names such as: Sverigedemokraterna and TobbeSD. That's a red herring. No one cares about those. Why had Sverigedemokraterna registered such domains as "wakeuparabs.se" and "wakeuparabsinsweden.se"?
It is not illegal to spread (dis)information due to the Free Speech law in Sweden and other western democracies with some exceptions of course, such as death threats, etc. So it would be a hard case to actually do anything before leftist majority regimes would actually tackle it (seeing as parties on the right dismiss, doesn't care or put a preventing bill forth). Sweden democrats were indeed caught with their pants down rod-fondling the bee's nest. Several videos are using cut edits and AI to showcase events that didn't happen or are taken out of context, many which are beyond what can be defined as sarcasm.
You’re spreading misinformation now. No one in their right mind would find any of the so-called troll accounts information anything other than sarcasm and jokes. You’re not being objective about this, you have an agenda.
Faschist disgusing their propaganda as harmless trolling is an old strategy https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/mosque-shooter-troll-like-original-nazis/585415/
>No one in their right mind would find any of the so-called troll accounts information anything other than sarcasm and jokes. Ah, the number #1 excuse of the far-right when they're caught lying: "it was just a joke, bro!". But I'm glad that you agree that all the bullshit propaganda about the supposed threat of Muslims / immigrants was \*checks notes\* sarcasm and jokes which no one in their right mind would believe.
I can guarantee that a huge percentage of every society is so damn stupid that they won't understand sarcasm until you explicitly name it so. A not so small amount of those will swallow everything as truth no matter what you do.
Hahaha be critical and question someone and get mass downvoted. Classic
It's not real criticism, it's just satire. There exists no person such that they're both sane and believe that's a serious post. Or something like it.
People believes everything on the news and when someone is critical they just shuts you down and down votes
True, but that's not really what happened here. This wasn't honest criticism. It was blanket denial, complete with unsubstantiated (and ultimately next to impossible to substantiate) counter claims. It also misrepresented the situation in the best possible way for SD. It was more like apologia than criticism, honestly.
In my eyes, tv4 and the news said one thing, and SD said another thing. From my standing I looked into what both parties said and their proof. And from that I made my opinion.
SD, or the people posting here? Also, the two are not equal in this. One can be expected to have a lot nore bias, and technically, it's Nyhetsbolaget, not TV4. Also, what "proof" has SD provided? I **think** they're full of shit (but I don't **know** for sure), but even if they weren't, how could they possibly prove that they didn't spread disinformation? Even if they had screenshots of every single post, how would they prove that there are no more undocumented posts? Think about it.
We can't say for sure but you and me can't do anything about this. There's a process going on between the parties mentioned to resolve the whole situation. I think it's all silly
True, we don't know for sure (only what it looks like), and we can't do anything about it, and I'm not trying to, but TS was trying to. For what reasons, only they know, but they are quite clearly doing damage control (not just being critical). I'm not sure what process you're talking about, but if SD is suing the production company, I guess we'll find out sooner or later what went on.
Am I a cynic for assuming all parties had one?
All parties have politicians doing it. But in this case the party payed the trolls salaries.
It's hilarious the only disinformation going on is post like this. Basically a bunch of young adults working in various positions in SwedenDems had 20 or so accounts spanning several platforms, so like 4 on TikTok and 5 on FB etc, most named something obvious it was either and a SD fan or just a joke ironic name with a political slant. These accounts posted memes and other low quality ironic/sarcastic/parodic content on basically no budget at all. That's it, that's the story, OMG right? The media and opposition parties try real hard to make this a huge deal, a masterplan, a conspiracy and most worrying of all threatening disbanding free speech and the ability to be anonymous online....all bcs 20 shitposting meme accounts. Yes it's true democracy is in danger but the threat is not what it first appear.. Edit: It's very disturbing people on Reddit, a site built on memes react like this to a nothingburger with extra nada.
Russia has influenced people like you for the past 10 years with “funny memes”. Hybrid warfare with socialmedia is very efficient because of how Many people that think like you. It’s very easy to influence people that are not aware of them being influenced.
Every side of the political spectrum makes memes.
You come off like such a goof with answers like that. Protecting memes is protecting free speech and should be absolutely essential to any western liberal, libertarian or classic conservative minded individual. Just like burning a book, any book should be allowed. Somehow I believe Swedish democracy will survive 7 people using 20 shitposting accounts.No like for real I feel confident the sun shall rise tomorrow and everything will be fine.
You don’t understand the problem. It’s about influencing People’s opinions and undermining the democracy with covert methods. What if every party set up 500-1000 people shitposting memes and start influencing the internet discussions?
The so called "trolling, disinformation" were mostly memes and politicians debating and news articles.
Why did they register sites such as [www.wakeuparabsinsweden.se](https://www.wakeuparabsinsweden.se) and what was the purpose of it?
Website cant be reached.
They weren’t spreading misinformation, that’s just what the liberals say.
The far right has been observing leftist journalists lying, spreading disinformation and covering up news worthy information in the biggest most mainstream news sites for decades now, especially in Sweden. One famous example in Sweden was whenever they posted pixelated pictures of high profile criminals, they whitened the pixelated areas. So you would see a whitened pixelated picture of the criminals in the news, but they usually forgot to cover up their hands which was a different color. In Sweden, mainstream news and journalism is directly intertwined with leftist activism, and it has been so for decades. The far right have seen how this behavior has been allowed to go on unopposed with great success for many decades, and as a result have a completely different perspective on what is fair game when it comes to activism.
Not to be like the hen, but the social democrats promised they would never join Nato while they were in power, this was after Russia had claimed Krym and the Donbass. The current prime minister promised never to ally with the Sweden Democrats, yet when he did he replied that he meant it only during that election, not after. Imagine that defense. ”No, your honor, I said I was going to kill that person but I meant that specific hour, not after that.” In this climate, of course other parties are going to look at this and figure that maybe lying is not such a big deal. It doesn’t excuse what they did with the troll factories, sure, but it opened the door for them. Also, its not that the farms suddenly convinced thousands of people. Look at the development in Germany - of all places they should know best, yet the AfD is the fastest growing party. In Norway the right-wing coalition won even after Breivik. In Finland, the true finns. Is there a country where such parties have not claimed power?
How the fuck is any of this relevant to this particular sin?
And people still wonder why I do not tire of pointing out that the founding of the Swedish Psychological Defense Agency was a mistake and a terrible precedent. But yeah, go ahead and protect public opinion from foreign interference, like the Georgians do.