To think it is naive to assume Russian troll farms don’t target massive high traffic discussion forums like Mumsnet to post misinformation

I didn’t see that, but I can imagine. It’s actually really sad, like a cult where there’s no deprogramming available.

Exactly this..

The researchers in that study urged caution about drawing conclusions.
From your link;

Prof Laura Cram, director of neuropolitics research at the University of Edinburgh, told the Guardian that at least 419 of those accounts tweeted about Brexit a total of 3,468 times – mostly after the referendum had taken place...

Cram said the content of the Brexit tweets overall was “quite chaotic and it seems to be aimed at wider disruption. There’s not an absolutely clear thrust. We pick up a lot on refugees and immigration.”

She stressed that more research is needed to establish the extent of the tweets’ influence, and urged caution about drawing conclusions from the relatively small number of troll accounts so far identified. About 78% of the tweets came after the Brexit vote on 23 June 2016, she added.

There was a great thread last weekend from a worried daughter about the retired, mostly men bored who had gone down way too many rabbit holes on you tube Etc and were spouting nonsense daily. Her father was deeply enmeshed.

Bots aside, what I notice more and more are the obviously algorithm-addled posters. They all say the same things as though watching dodgy YouTube videos makes them political researchers. Usually spotted by references to being ‘awake’ and ‘waking up’ and horrifyingly hilariously ‘not believing everything you read.’

For the people denying this happens, it has been researched and reported in the mainstream media, mainly in relation to Brexit. Here's one report:

www.theguardian.com/world/2017/nov/14/how-400-russia-run-fake-accounts-posted-bogus-brexit-tweets

Who is to say any thread is genuine, if people blindly believe anything they read what do they really expect, it is up to people to use the brains they have been given, I know it is easier for some more than others but if cant tell fake from real is a forum the best place to be?

I mean clearly they read rubbish and one of them hadn't heard of the Dunblane massacre or how it precipitated the banning of handguns, so hardy a font of knowledge and then started rambling on about how Obama was secretly Clinton's cousin.

@Panterusblackish Americans in general are badly informed about international news as they get hardly any from mainstream verified sources. This means if they seek information out themselves it will generally be from SM.

While most people in the UK are also disadvantaged due to only speaking one language due to our country's size and history we are more likely to be given it from mainstream verified sources, and more interested in going to look for ourselves checking who the source is.

(I do remember telling a couple of Americans I knew how reliable certain US and UK sources were and their political bias.)

In regards to the US presidents it appears that they have taken something that is factual e.g. some genealogists have shown how all the US presidents are related to one another even if it just means they are a x cousin y times removed, and turned it into a conspiracy theory.

On the subject of "most Americans" voting for Trump. No. We didn't. 77M people voted for him, which is less than 30% of the adult population--less than 23% of the total population of over 340M

Yes you question them about sources and facts and they never reply with any. They do sometimes reply with a question instead.

The bots will spout out garbage, repeatedly, in different formats, but will not be able to back with facts. If they do attempt a fact, it is usually from a discredited source or completely ficticious.

FWIW I got a post deleted the other day. I believe it's because I suggested a bot was being paid. Rather than just a bot. That seems to be the line crossed into deletion.

Not just the US, but 'The West'.

Israel counts as The West, as does NATO, which is why Stop the War blame NATO for Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

All the threads about losing weight on various jabs also provide excellent advertising

I'm not a big proponent of horseshoe theory but the support for Putin on both the far left and far right (lowercase) is notable. Also agree with you re. Palestine. I'm pretty far off to the left, myself, and am also very disappointed with a lot that I see and read.

I've found that, and am disappointed in them. It seems they hate the US, and the enemy of their enemy is their friend. Also they are obsessed with Palestine, and associate Russia with the pro-Palestinian side. They think the people of Donbas and Crimea are fighting for national independence against the Ukrainian oppressor.

I wonder if they will get better at it with AI? There's another site I look at but do not post on where all the posters are very, very obviously British. However, when it comes to any threads on Ukraine or Russia the site gets inundated with sockpuppets who are clearly more used to spamming American- dominated sites. They only turn up for that topic and they stick out like a sore thumb. One of their tactics is just to offend the other posters in order to make the thread boring and off-topic and unreadable.

It's also unlikely that random 14yo boys would be giving the same lies.
They'd be making up their own rubbish.

It's also unlikely that a whole load of 14yo boys would simultaneously decide to sign up to mn to give the same false information.

If it was a set of boys being silly you'd also expect a far greater range of subjects. They're far more likely to be posting about imaginary sexual encounters or discussing body functions if they were doing it to be funny.

Editing wikipedia articles
Signing up on reddit and pretending to be egregiously bad parents/partners in the "am i an ahole" forum or something
One of the popular lads in my dd's form spread around a rumour last year telling everyone they could dress up on world book day (around 5 kids fell for it, dd's high school does not observe world book day)

Do share!

I honestly think bored 14 year old boys wouldn't be seen dead on Mumsnet. Why would they want to wind up a bunch of (mostly)old women. I say old, because any one over about 25 is probably old to a 14 year old.

You would be surprised given the stuff my oldest DD tells me about her classmates

No 14yo boy is so bored they'd come here for their lolz.😆

What makes you think Russian troll farms and not bored 14-year-old boys

@Panterusblackish It's just interesting that they must be getting these scripts from the same source. I wonder if some posters we may presume are bots, are actually people like this.

It doesn't matter as much as you'd think whether they are real people or bots, if they are disseminating the same bullshit. If a bad-faith actor programmes a bunch of bots to reach an audience, the message reaches the audience. If he disseminates bullshit to a group of people who share it on, to reach a wider audience, he's just using real accounts instead of the accounts he's set up himself. Those sharing don't necessarily engage very deeply - the point is the sharing on as much as, or more than, 'converting' them.