Quote Originally Posted by Newish Pie View Post
You've lost me again. The people calling for action on climate change tend not to be apologists for Putin. In fact, it's rather the opposite... although there's no obvious correlation between the two, those who tend to be pro-Putin tend more towards climate change denialism. Perhaps it's the conspiratorial mindset.
I would bet serious cash Putin's propaganda system routinely regularly boosts "climate change is fake" kinda messages because his entire economy is fossil fuels.

It's not like they use separate arms of the internet lies dept either. I was active in some Australian covid-19 groups during the pandemic and when the war in Ukraine started a whole bunch of, for example, facebook sites that had been pushing anti-vax lies did a 270 degree turn and began screaming pro-russia war propaganda. It was really blatant and jarring, literally one day one set of propaganda, and the next day a completely different message about a completely different topic. At the same time the heavily boosted anti-vax stuff in other forums was still being posted but not as boosted. The upvote-brigade just had higher priorities all of a sudden.

I still think western intelligence agencies and leadership are underestimating the sheer extent to which public opinion in a lot of countries has been manipulated both by our own oligarchs and russian influence.