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How active are foreign influence operations in censoring or manipulating content on U.S. social media platforms, and is this activity worsening around major elections? (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 week ago by G3ck0@beehaw.org to c/askmeanything@lemmy.ca

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Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a sharp increase in proactive foreign state propaganda across major Western social media platforms.

The pattern became undeniably clear around September 11, when an overwhelming volume of hostility, anti-American messaging, and divisive narrative pushes flooded feeds across multiple platforms. Whenever I attempt to engage with these posts or debunk blatant disinformation, my account rapidly becomes the target of coordinated backlash—ranging from sudden downvote brigading and mass reporting to lockouts and automated harassment.

It leads to a broader question about how foreign influence operations—particularly those linked to actors like state-aligned bot networks (e.g., "Spamouflage")—operate beyond their own borders. While foreign governments cannot directly delete content on American platforms, they seem to rely heavily on manipulating platform algorithms, abusing automated reporting systems, leveraging major calendar events (like 9/11), and deploying bot networks to suppress counter-narratives and silence individual users.

With major elections and midterms consistently serving as prime targets for foreign interference, these tactics appear to be getting more aggressive. Instead of just pushing state-sanctioned talking points, these campaigns increasingly aim to disrupt organic debate, hijack community moderation, and foster general distrust in democratic discourse. I don't know what's your take on it?

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[–] swab148@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 week ago

This isn't "ask anything" it's "ask ME anything"!

What's your favorite dinosaur?

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[–] wizardbeard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 1 week ago

It's something that has been claimed by both US Democrats and Republicans over time, and by various US non-party affiliated government agencies. It's a pretty safe bet it's happening.

I think it's interesting that things like 9-11 have generally been seen as ok targets for jokes for ages, when terrorist attacks in other countries generally aren't. It's not offensive, and I can understand (to a point) the global frustration/hate/etc of the US, but it is interesting.

One other narrative that you see flare up around various US elections is that voting is wrong. Not that voting isn't worth it, or "don't stop at just voting, get actually involved in local politics", but that it is intrinsically furthering problems. Not "don't vote for the bad guy", or "don't throw your vote away on a third party", but that participating in voting somehow makes you personally responsible for horrible things and is bad to do.

Voting alone won't solve things, and voting at all is unlikely to cause great effect. But in my opinion, it's one of the "official ways" to make our voices heard, so I can afford to take the time to do it. So you can say "Yes, I did this the acceptable way and didn't immediately jump to destruction of government property".

We can argue forever about how much that's actually worth, but I'm not of the opinion that things are so dire that interacting with some aspects of the US government in good faith is always problematic.

I feel that your point about hijacking community moderation is important as well, because a lot of people don't look past the pushing of surface level talking points.

My own Lemmy instance has become more politically outspoken over time than it used to be, and while I'm not against most of the related decisions, the admin posts whenever things happen are getting more and more charged. Using less neutral language over time. Very clearly framing events with a certain conclusion in mind.

I've long been of the opinion that so very much of all this shit is just distractions to keep everyone arguing among themselves while the oligarchs continue amassing more wealth and power.

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