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Vatnik Soup Profile picture
@P_Kallioniemi
Jan 24, 2023 • 18 tweets • 8 min read • Read on X
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In today's #vatnik soup, I'll talk about Russiagate and the Russian interference in the 2016 US elections. Twitter Files by @mtaibbi and The Grayzone blogger @aaronjmate have often suggested that the Russians had no effect on the election, which simply isn't true.

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Many pro-Russian actors have been downplaying the effects of Russian propaganda and disinformation campaigns during the 2016 elections.

In Jan, 2023, Eady et al. published their research on Nature Communications which concluded that ...

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on Twitter, 1) the Russian disinformation was heavily concentrated, 2) the exposure was focused on people who identify as Republicans, and 3) the Russian influence campaign was eclipsed by content from domestic news media and politicians.

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This led to a publishing of several news articles, for example from @LukewSavage, @BrettWilkinsSF and @samfbiddle, claiming that "Russia bots" weren't effective during the 2016 US elections, even though the study doesn't even have the word "bot" in it.

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The study itself had nothing to do with bots, which are automated user accounts that are often used to spread and augment content on social media.

Second, the study's scope was very small, and it looked into the relationship between Russian ...

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... propaganda tweets and attitudes and voting behavior. This effect wasn't found, but because the scope was so small, it's impossible to make any real conclusions in regards to actual voting behavior or attitude change.

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In 2016, Russia spent 1,5 billion USD per year on online disinformation and propaganda. They ran campaigns in Reddit, Youtube, 4chan, Instagram, Twitter, fake news blogs, Facebook and FB groups.

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They also organized rallies, demonstrations and infiltrated activist groups. Internet Research Agency (IRA) also spammed comment sections of various domestic newspapers and other websites.

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For example, MIT Tech Review from 2021 exposed the incredible Russian infiltration in Facebook - 19/20 of top American Christian FB groups were troll farms, from African-American FB groups this number was
10/15.

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So called "hack and leak" operations were also effective in swaying the public opinion, and Russian hacker groups targeted especially the Democrats. For example the Podesta e-mails led to Pizzagate conspiracy theory which again helped QAnon to become extremely popular.

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Russians also forged documents that were then spread online by the IRA employees and useful idiots like Trump-fanboy Roger Stone. RT, Ruptly and Sputnik also conducted propaganda campaigns for people in the US and in the West.

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Memes and political news and ads were just a tiny part of this impressive campaigning, and research has found that organic online discussions were the most effective tools for the IRA.

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The organization activated people on the far end of both spectrum and heavily promoted sensationalist and conspiratorial content. IRA employees goal was to "set Americans against their own government".

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Stating that the research proves that "Russian bots" were ineffective is either ignorance or conscious lying, and it completely disregards the dynamics of Russia's disinformation and propaganda campaigns.

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36th Parallel made a nice graph of various aspects of the Russian information operation, and it shows that Twitter was just a tiny part of a huge campaign, affecting all levels of society.

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It's quite telling that most major US news outlets have used IRA tweets as sources for partisan opinions, and many of their conspiracy theories and narratives already constructed in 2016 just won't die.

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When someone's stating that Russia's tactics consisted of "Jesus masturbation memes", they're either being stupid or dishonest. anyone who's looked into Russia's "active measures" and IRA's campaigns knows, that they were so much more, and that they had real impact in 2016.
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Support my work (and get some AI art!): buymeacoffee.com/PKallioniemi

Related soups:
Russian info ops:
Troll farms:
Social media manipulation:

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More from @P_Kallioniemi

Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Apr 13
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we introduce Yanis Varoufakis, a Greek economist and politician. He’s best known for rising to power at the height of the Greek debt crisis, not solving anything but endearing himself to the left, and using his fame to promote Russian imperialism.

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Born in 1961 in Athens, Varoufakis studied economics in the UK and built an academic career in Australia, the US, and Europe. His early work focused on game theory, political economy, and critiques of capitalism.

2/20 Yanis Varoufakis: How I became an erratic Marxist https://www.theguardian.com/news/2015/feb/18/yanis-varoufakis-how-i-became-an-erratic-marxist
Presenting himself as the fearless, unorthodox economist willing to confront the EU’s “neoliberal” elites, he rose to prominence during Greece’s debt crisis. At its height in 2015, he was appointed finance minister under the left-wing Syriza government of Alexis Tsipras.

3/20 Greek PM Alexis Tsipras appoints radical economist to new government https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/27/greek-pm-alexis-tsipras-economist-yanis-varoufakis
Read 20 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Mar 29
In this 8th Debunk of the Day, we’ll discuss complaints about US financing of NATO, in particular how the US allegedly pays for European defense, leading to calls for a US withdrawal from the Alliance — which would only make it easier for Putin to invade more countries.

1/7 A flight of French and Polish Rafale and F-16 fighter jets above a NATO flag during the opening of the exhibition “Powerful because we are united”, dedicated to the 19th anniversary of Lithuania’s 2004 accession to NATO (OTD 22 years ago), in the bastion of the Vilnius defensive wall on March 29, 2023 (OTD 3 years ago) in Vilnius, Lithuania. (Photo by Oleg Nikishin/Getty Images)
NATO by itself costs peanuts. In fact, the core of NATO is a principle, an agreement, that ideally costs nothing. The main cost is defense spending, which the US is eagerly doing anyway: Trump has just announced a 50% increase in military spending for his “Department of War”.
2/7 Trump aides struggle with how to spend $500 billion more on military, Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2026/02/21/trump-hegseth-budget-military/
Trump calls for US military spending to rise more than 50% to $1.5tn https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy59kxl2xwzo
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To sow division and thereby weaken the Alliance, vatniks deliberately mix up different figures, such as contributions to the NATO common budget, with defense spending. And US military spending has been huge by the sheer fact that the US is the world’s largest economy.

3/7 Newsweek falsely claiming that the US pays 68% of NATO’s budget. The real number is 15%.

Elon Musk falsely claiming that the US pays for 2/3 of European defense. In another post he claimed it was 1/4. Both made-up numbers. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1870903805845598428 https://x.com/i/birdwatch/t/1870903805845598428
NATO has annual budgets and programs worth around EUR 4.6 billion in 2025 (representing 0.3% of total Allied defence spending), and up to EUR 5.3 billion in 2026. The US share for 2026-2027 is 15% of that: 0.8 billion. Source: Funding NATO https://www.nato.int/en/what-we-do/introduction-to-nato/funding-nato
Read 7 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Mar 9
In today’s Vatnik Soup, we’ll talk about why we’re doing this: why we think Ukraine is so important and why we believe that souping vatniks and debunking their propaganda narratives is so crucial to counter Russia’s & their allies’ wars of aggression and achieve real peace.

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War is expensive, and Russia is not a rich country that could afford this: Hospitals? Roads? Plumbing? No: everything into terror and destruction.

But not only that. There is a 2nd item in the Russian state budget that remains strong no matter what:

2/20
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Manufacturing support for that terror and destruction. Propaganda. Vatniks. “Innocent” travel bloggers. “Independent” journalists. “Patriotic” politicians. Russia spends hundreds of billions of rubles a year ($5 billion) on this, and that kind of money buys you A LOT of BS.

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Read 20 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Mar 2
In this second (and possibly last) Basiji Soup, we’ll explore how the Islamic Republic of Iran has prepared for a conflict with the US and Israel. We won’t cover the military aspects, but another kind of war — information warfare.

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In the 1st Basiji Soup, we souped the Islamic Republic, its disinformation operations, its hypocrisy, its support of terrorism including Russia’s, its (one-sided?) relationship with Putin, and the mass protests against it that started two months ago:

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The Internet blackout has been crucial in allowing the regime to cover up its massacre of the protesters and especially the scope of it, making it difficult to assess the number of victims. They went to great lengths to jam Starlink, after having made its use illegal.

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Read 20 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Feb 25
In this 7th Debunk of the Day, we’ll expose the “Chickenhawk” fallacy. The chickenhawk accusation or the “go to the front!” imperative is a dishonest attempt to silence anyone supporting Ukraine by pushing them to go fight. A barely hidden death wish, as it’s always uttered…
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…with zero regard for who you are or what your personal circumstances might be — you could already be there, on your way there, a veteran, or unable to fight. More broadly, not everyone can or should be a soldier, just as not everyone can or should be a policeman or a nurse.
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Yet a society still needs those things to be done, and the fact that not everyone can go to medical school or fight crime does not mean that we have to surrender to invaders and criminals, nor that we cannot all have an opinion on healthcare.
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Read 5 tweets
Vatnik Soup Profile picture
Feb 18
In this 6th Debunk of the Day, we’ll talk about a complex and controversial topic: conscription. It is used by vatniks to attack Ukraine for drafting men to fight, while conveniently ignoring the alternative, including the horrors of conscription into the Russian army.
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Military obligations are a reality in many countries, from the most peaceful democracies to the most tyrannical dictatorships — unless you have “bone spurs”. Some argue it is a necessity for defense against invading armies, especially for small countries.
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Others point out that it goes against individual rights or that a professional army is better. And Zelenskyy might agree: he did in fact end conscription. But then a full-scale invasion happened: exactly why many nations, including the US, still keep some form of draft.
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Read 8 tweets

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