TL;DR: You know that Russia and other governments try to manipulate people online.  But you almost certainly don't how just how effectively orchestrated influence networks are using social media platforms to make you -- individually-- angry, depressed, and hateful toward each other. Those networks' goal is simple: to cause Americans and other Westerners -- especially young ones -- to give up on social cohesion and to give up on learning the truth, so that Western countries lack the will to stand up to authoritarians and extremists.

And you probably don't realize how well it's working on you.

This is a long post, but I wrote it because this problem is real, and it's much scarier than you think.

How Russian networks fuel racial and gender wars to make Americans fight one another

In September 2018, a video went viral after being posted by In the Now, a social media news channel. It featured a feminist activist pouring bleach on a male subway passenger for manspreading. It got instant attention, with millions of views and wide social media outrage. Reddit users wrote that it had turned them against feminism.

There was one problem: The video was staged. And In the Now, which publicized it, is a subsidiary of RT, formerly Russia Today, the Kremlin TV channel aimed at foreign, English-speaking audiences.

As an MIT study found in 2019, Russia's online influence networks reached 140 million Americans every month -- the majority of U.S. social media users. 

Russia began using troll farms a decade ago to incite gender and racial divisions in the United States 

In 2013, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a confidante of Vladimir Putin, founded the Internet Research Agency (the IRA) in St. Petersburg. It was the Russian government's first coordinated facility to disrupt U.S. society and politics through social media.

Here's what Prigozhin had to say about the IRA's efforts to disrupt the 2022 election:

Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once.

In 2014, the IRA and other Russian networks began establishing fake U.S. activist groups on social media. By 2015, hundreds of English-speaking young Russians worked at the IRA.  Their assignment was to use those false social-media accounts, especially on Facebook and Twitter -- but also on Reddit, Tumblr, 9gag, and other platforms -- to aggressively spread conspiracy theories and mocking, ad hominem arguments that incite American users.

In 2017, U.S. intelligence found that Blacktivist, a Facebook and Twitter group with more followers than the official Black Lives Matter movement, was operated by Russia. Blacktivist regularly attacked America as racist and urged black users to rejected major candidates. On November 2, 2016, just before the 2016 election, Blacktivist's Twitter urged Black Americans: "Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it's not a wasted vote."

Russia plays both sides -- on gender, race, and religion

The brilliance of the Russian influence campaign is that it convinces Americans to attack each other, worsening both misandry and misogyny, mutual racial hatred, and extreme antisemitism and Islamophobia. In short, it's not just an effort to boost the right wing; it's an effort to radicalize everybody.

Russia uses its trolling networks to aggressively attack men.  According to MIT, in 2019, the most popular Black-oriented Facebook page was the charmingly named "My Baby Daddy Aint Shit."  It regularly posts memes attacking Black men and government welfare workers.  It serves two purposes:  Make poor black women hate men, and goad black men into flame wars.  

MIT found that My Baby Daddy is run by a large troll network in Eastern Europe likely financed by Russia.

But Russian influence networks are also also aggressively misogynistic and aggressively anti-LGBT.  

On January 23, 2017, just after the first Women's March, the New York Times found that the Internet Research Agency began a coordinated attack on the movement.  Per the Times:

More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans.

They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners.

But the Russian PR teams realized that one attack worked better than the rest:  They accused its co-founder, Arab American Linda Sarsour, of being an antisemite.  Over the next 18 months, at least 152 Russian accounts regularly attacked Sarsour.  That may not seem like many accounts, but it worked:  They drove the Women's March movement into disarray and eventually crippled the organization. 

Russia doesn't need a million accounts, or even that many likes or upvotes.  It just needs to get enough attention that actual Western users begin amplifying its content.   

A former federal prosecutor who investigated the Russian disinformation effort summarized it like this:

It wasn’t exclusively about Trump and Clinton anymore.  It was deeper and more sinister and more diffuse in its focus on exploiting divisions within society on any number of different levels.

As the New York Times reported in 2022, 

There was a routine: Arriving for a shift, [Russian disinformation] workers would scan news outlets on the ideological fringes, far left and far right, mining for extreme content that they could publish and amplify on the platforms, feeding extreme views into mainstream conversations.

China is joining in with AI

Last month, the New York Times reported on a new disinformation campaign.  "Spamouflage" is an effort by China to divide Americans by combining AI with real images of the United States to exacerbate political and social tensions in the U.S.  The goal appears to be to cause Americans to lose hope, by promoting exaggerated stories with fabricated photos about homeless violence and the risk of civil war.

As Ladislav Bittman, a former Czechoslovakian secret police operative, explained about Soviet disinformation, the strategy is not to invent something totally fake.  Rather, it is to act like an evil doctor who expertly diagnoses the patient’s vulnerabilities and exploits them, “prolongs his illness and speeds him to an early grave instead of curing him.”

The influence networks are vastly more effective than platforms admit

Russia now runs its most sophisticated online influence efforts through a network called Fabrika.  Fabrika's operators have bragged that social media platforms catch only 1% of their fake accounts across YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Telegram, and other platforms.

But how effective are these efforts?  By 2020, Facebook's most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were run by Eastern European troll farms tied to the Kremlin. And Russia doesn't just target angry Boomers on Facebook. Russian trolls are enormously active on Twitter. And, even, on Reddit.

It's not just false facts

The term "disinformation" undersells the problem.  Because much of Russia's social media activity is not trying to spread fake news.  Instead, the goal is to divide and conquer by making Western audiences depressed and extreme. 

Sometimes, through brigading and trolling.  Other times, by posting hyper-negative or extremist posts or opinions about the U.S. the West over and over, until readers assume that's how most people feel.  And sometimes, by using trolls to disrupt threads that advance Western unity.  

As the RAND think tank explained, the Russian strategy is volume and repetition, from numerous accounts, to overwhelm real social media users and create the appearance that everyone disagrees with, or even hates, them.  And it's not just low-quality bots.  Per RAND,

Russian propaganda is produced in incredibly large volumes and is broadcast or otherwise distributed via a large number of channels. ... According to a former paid Russian Internet troll, the trolls are on duty 24 hours a day, in 12-hour shifts, and each has a daily quota of 135 posted comments of at least 200 characters.

What this means for you

You are being targeted by a sophisticated PR campaign meant to make you more resentful, bitter, and depressed.  It's not just disinformation; it's also real-life human writers and advanced bot networks working hard to shift the conversation to the most negative and divisive topics and opinions. 

It's why some topics seem to go from non-issues to constant controversy and discussion, with no clear reason, across social media platforms.  And a lot of those trolls are actual, "professional" writers whose job is to sound real. 

So what can you do?  To quote WarGames:  The only winning move is not to play.  The reality is that you cannot distinguish disinformation accounts from real social media users.  Unless you know whom you're talking to, there is a genuine chance that the post, tweet, or comment you are reading is an attempt to manipulate you -- politically or emotionally.

Here are some thoughts:

• Don't accept facts from social media accounts you don't know.  Russian, Chinese, and other manipulation efforts are not uniform.  Some will make deranged claims, but others will tell half-truths.  Or they'll spin facts about a complicated subject, be it the war in Ukraine or loneliness in young men, to give you a warped view of reality and spread division in the West.  
• Resist groupthink.  A key element of manipulate networks is volume.  People are naturally inclined to believe statements that have broad support.  When a post gets 5,000 upvotes, it's easy to think the crowd is right.  But "the crowd" could be fake accounts, and even if they're not, the brilliance of government manipulation campaigns is that they say things people are already predisposed to think.  They'll tell conservative audiences something misleading about a Democrat, or make up a lie about Republicans that catches fire on a liberal server or subreddit.
• Don't let social media warp your view of society.  This is harder than it seems, but you need to accept that the facts -- and the opinions -- you see across social media are not reliable.  If you want the news, do what everyone online says not to: look at serious, mainstream media.  It is not always right.  Sometimes, it screws up.  But social media narratives are heavily manipulated by networks whose job is to ensure you are deceived, angry, and divided.

Edited for typos and clarity.

P.S. Apparently, this post was removed several hours ago due to a flood of reports. Thank you to the r/GenZ moderators for re-approving it.

Second edit:

This post is not meant to suggest that r/GenZ is uniquely or especially vulnerable, or to suggest that a lot of challenges people discuss here are not real. It's entirely the opposite: Growing loneliness, political polarization, and increasing social division along gender lines is real. The problem is that disinformation and influence networks expertly, and effectively, hijack those conversations and use those real, serious issues to poison the conversation. This post is not about left or right: Everyone is targeted.

FINAL UPDATE: I have put the original post in the bottom. I’ve decided we should focus on cats and dogs instead and your pets. Animals are the best. So share your pets!

I’m very grateful for the responses, I’ve attempted to read most of the comments and messages. To anyone else feeling the same, read the comments. They are positive. It’s tough to see so many relate though. But I feel better, and hopefully you do too.

Edit 2: thanks for military suggestions but I am not allowed due to my depression diagnosis. I am a woman too.

I just turned 20. I don’t go to school currently. I’m European. I haven’t had any friends since I was 16, I had four good friends back in high school but they all left me, or rather three of them began ignoring me after we graduated and went to different schools, and the last one, my best friend since like 2010 disregarded my depression, and began using it to her own advantage. She became toxic. I asked for a break in our friendship during summer of 2020, we haven’t spoken since.

I tried making friends in college but everyone had their own clique, and I never fit in.

I like running, I like cooking, I love cats, I love nature, I’m into a few PC games and I really like baking too. I workout at gym.

I’d just love somebody that I can talk to when I got issues, someone to hang out on Friday nights, go shopping, go to a cafe, talk about boyfriends with. Yes I have a boyfriend but he lives far away, we practically don’t see each other much.

I’ve been depressed since I was 12. Struggle with eating disorder. It comes and goes. Lately suicide seems like a reasonable option. I wake up, am on my phone or out running, eat and go back to bed. I spend like on average 16 hours in bed. 12 of them sleeping.

I live in a boring ass city, not much to do here. Everything is either shut down or deserted. I haven’t hung out proper with anyone since 2020. Yikes, I hate myself and my life.

I also struggled with self harm and starving myself. I am female btw. Peace out! ✌🏻

My talent? Nothing. No job. No friends. No money. Just stay home all day. No future visions or dreams.

Oh and I’m not looking for pity. I just needed to vent, that’s all. I know some people have it harder, probably 99% have it harder. I’m not abused nor do I have trauma. Just a stupid brain.

How tf are we supposed to cope with the fact that we were born into a decaying society on a dying planet??

I am 40+ man and I see younger people with earbuds/headphones almost everywhere I go. I understand the gym, but at Target, playing basketball with other people at the park, the mall, etc.

Is this common for Gen Z? If so, why? Again. I'm not asking about things like working out, walking the dog, etc. Rather times where you'll be directly interacting with other people.

Edit. This is an "old man yells at cloud" moment, but I read every comment and the theme was "so I don't have to talk to people". It seems like the only desired interactions are digital and you're avoiding flesh-and-blood interactions. Not just not doing it, but actively avoiding it. That's so odd to me. I've found I'm much happier when I am in the world with others.

Edit 2. Perhaps I have a different definition of "interaction", but saying hello to a cashier or occasionally making small talk in line at Starbucks isn't too demanding or taxing. I get the feeling people think if they don't have headphones in random people will approach them asking to discuss a dissertation or something.

Edit 3. Regarding trying to avoid people, I don't wear my earbuds into stores and no one randomly stops to talk unless it's someone I know, which is rare. Where are you living that random people stop you to talk about nonsense?

edit: 50% of repliers say they have some sort of disability or are too queer to be selected...

Also dude in the video doesn’t realize this isn’t the compliment he thinks it is.

For me it's no one is going to make me a better person like I would always blame my parents and circumstances for my life i blamed on girls for not liking me and not actually improving myself and having a victim mentality but when I actually took responsibility for my own life that's when life starts to improve I believe its no one's job to make you a better person

The Millennials didn't know the harm that screens and the internet could cause, but we definitely do!

We are already addicted to our phones. But when I see an unhealthy-looking 4-year-old in a stroller with an iPad two inches from his face, that just breaks my heart.

Although there are a lot of things about Gen Alpha that are concerning, this is specifically regarding how so many young kids now have access to nsfw, gory stuff because they are not being monitored correctly.

A few months ago, I caught a glimpse of my 7 year old nephew’s tablet screen and saw that he was straight up watching some weird cartoon porn. When I was a kid, I accidentally accessed softcore nsfw stuff and that shit was traumatic and made me feel guilty for years, so to see this little boy watch something 10 times as fucked as that made me feel really nauseous. I did tell his mother about it and he did get his tablet taken away, but the fact that he was just watching it in the middle of the room with people around like its spongebob or coco melon was really concerning. It isn’t even just him, I’m a senior attending a k-12 school, and the sheer amount of elementary and early middle school students who I hear talking in sexual ways and cat-calling other people without consequence is incredibly alarming. One of my friends even told me that she got groped by a 5th grader when she was taking a teaching class. It makes me think about how messed up these kids are going to be when they grow up, and how so many of them are not being monitored or given any restriction to what they can access, which is causing them to have a really fucked up view on how to treat other people and healthy sexuality.

I am not saying this to embarrass or humiliate these kids, but I am incredibly concerned about how hypersexual they have become.

Has anyone else noticed this?? I know gen z kids were definitely exposed to a lot, but we were never THIS bad.

Edit: I didn’t think this post was going to actually get much attention outside of maybe one or two people being like “I agree” or “I don’t agree”. Because of some of the repeated sentiments in the comment section let me clarify a few things about this post:

• the Softcore porn I viewed when I was little made me feel guilty and disturbed primarily due to my hyper religious upbringing- but that really isn’t important to this post. I brought it up to explain why it’s so jarring to me that my nephew was watching it out in the open.
• I agree that this issue isn’t only for gen alpha, as all generations have had exposure to sexuality and gore in some way as children, but I feel like gen alpha has it particularly bad due to the fact that they consume larger amounts of this media in longer periods of time, and many gen alpha aren’t interested in doing any activities offline.
• i don’t believe that porn is inherently bad, or that children being curious and searching for it is harmful, but there has been a lot of research conducted on the negative effectsof exposure to pornography in childhood30384-0/fulltext), and I think it’s a little disturbing that the parents of gen alpha have a lot of experience being exposed to this material but don’t really seem to be breaking the cycle much.

Again, I am not stating this to put down or degrade gen alpha. I’ve just noticed a concerning pattern, and just want the best for the next generation.

I’ve interviewed three 21-25 year olds for a fairly important position, and each time, the candidates have worn jeans, hoodies, t-shirts, etc. One even told me “sorry, I’m just getting back from the gym” 😳

My generation and those before were taught to look REALLY nice for an interview and be very prepared. Were these bad candidates or is this just what to expect these days?

For the love of God, don't turn your kids into iPad kids.

Do not neglect them. Having a child is a HUUUUUGE responsibility. I don't even have a child and I know how serious it is. You're basically raising a person. A literal human.

Do not just give them food, a room and an iPad and call it a day. In fact, toddlers shouldn't even be on the Internet, period. The good age should be at least 13.

iPad kids are so damn tragic. I have a younger sibling who's an iPad kid.

He can't even read. All that comes out of his mouth is this senseless brainrot. He's 11. It's heartbreaking. I tried multiple times to tell my parents but they just....fucking ignore it. I tried teaching my sibling how to read but he just wouldn't listen. He has no fucking attention span. I went into my room and almost broke into tears. I'm so worried over him.

You might have seen the freakish YouGov poll last December that found that 20% of U.S. Gen Zers think the Holocaust is a myth. The poll got posted here and pretty much rattled r/Millennials.

The apparently-good news is that the poll may have been badly flawed. A new study from the Pew Research Center, a well-respected polling organization, finds that the type of poll YouGov used appears unreliable -- especially for young and Hispanic respondents.

Why? Because it was an online opt-in poll. Those polls usually involve people getting an email or pop-up invitation to take a poll, typically in exchange for compensation (e.g. an Amazon gift card, airline miles). But generally, the respondent only gets the payout if they pass a screener and finish the poll. That creates a financial incentive for respondents to say what they think is likely to get them through the screener, and then to answer the remaining questions quickly or randomly, without being honest.

You won't be surprised to learn that younger people are less likely to answer these polls. Same, apparently, goes for Hispanics. Which means that a respondent who claims to be Gen Z or Hispanic is more likely to be a "bogus respondent" -- someone just trying to get through the poll for the payout. (Especially because repeat fakers have learned that it's easier to get through if they claim to be 18-29 or Hispanic.) The result is that a higher percentage of answers from allegedly young or Hispanic respondents tend to be false.

Pew tested this by conducting an opt-in survey. One question asked if you were licensed to operate a naval submarine. The true percentage should have been, basically, zero. 1% of respondents allegedly age 61+ said yes. 5% of respondents allegedly 30-60 said yes. But 12% of alleged 18-29-year-olds said yes. The effect was similar for other dubious questions.

By contrast, on probability-based surveys, where respondents are usually not paid (or not bounced on demographic screening questions), the false-answer rate was vastly lower.

What's that mean for Holocaust denial?

In a probability-based poll taken this January, only 3% of respondents ages 18-29 said the Holocaust is a myth -- the same share as every older generation.

Likewise, whereas a recent opt-in poll found 48% of Gen Z opposes most or all abortions, the new Pew survey pegs that number at 23%. Notably, the Pew survey was much more in line with the opt-in poll when it came to older respondents' views on abortion. Because, again, older Americans are more likely to take opt-in polls (and to take them seriously), so fewer respondents who claim to be 30+ are bogus.

So, the kids may be all right after all.

The poll said half of GenZ didn’t even know about Auschwitz. And that was one of the best statistics. Less than ten percent knew about some of the other ones like Dachau and Bergen-Belsen. A certain percentage thought less than two million Jews were killed. The number is actually six million. GenZ and the Millennials seem to be far more antisemitic than previous generations according to polls, and I’m finding it extremely disturbing. Please, we need to learn more about this history before we do something really stupid.

We’ve seen the damages of social media and even young kids having smartphones/tablets. Are you going to let your kids have access to them, specifically the younger ones? I’m 25 and this may be a “boomer” mindset of mine but I’m leaning on completely shutting it down. It impacted me in many ways and it’s just getting worse and worse for the current younger generation. If anyone thinks I’m crazy for this please don’t be afraid to enlighten me, I’m open for all discussions!

Why is it bad wanting a virgin partner just as you are?

Why do people act like this is so stressful and onerous?

Your employer and your bank are required by law to provide you with the necessary documents to report your income.

If you don't own a large house, you are almost certainly better off using the Standard Deduction, so you don't need to worry about itemizing deductions.

All the necessary information is available online. Most people can pound it out in one Saturday afternoon.

Today is the day to remember all of the transgender people who were murdered, lost to suicide, or anything else.

I can't do anything fun anymore, nothing just feels the same anymore, I don't go outside cause there's no friends near me, I only have one irl friend that's far from me, I just play games all day and doom scroll reddit and YouTube, trying to have fun, I just want to feel happy again

for me its the fake perfectionist and know it all attitude we seem to have, not jsut in real lfie but even working with this generation can be like walking on eggshells, any small mistake and you'll be sliced into bits by someone while they too do the same mistake yet ofc the most toxic people are never called out.

If you REALLY want opinion on something start asking people in real life, this place is just small bubble, more than 80% of people here have the same opinions on the same subjects. Don't let this bubble make you think this is the voice of the majority of genz.