Social media turn on Putin, the past master Carole Cadwalladr

[elleng]

Disinformation and fake accounts were used against the west for years – now the Kremlin is under attack.

*In Russia on Friday, Vladimir Putin, a man who is now scared of his own shadow, took the extraordinary step of attempting to outlaw information. He banned Facebook. He shut down Twitter. He passed a new law that declares journalism a criminal offence: any journalist found to have published “fake news” on the war in Ukraine now faces up to 15 years in prison.

It is, like so many things in the last week, incredible, unprecedented, horrifying – but more importantly it’s also desperate and absurd. Because in 2022 you can’t ban information. It’s like trying to ban oxygen. It’s the kind of move that one of his grey-faced Soviet predecessors might have made. It’s as modern and up-to-date as a typewriter. Only a fool would make predictions right now, but here’s one anyway: it proves that Putin, the founding father of what’s come to be known as “information war”, just lost the information war.

Anything can and may happen. But having dominated the dark arts of disinformation for the last eight years, the Kremlin’s invincible mastery of the information space has been exposed as a sham, a fiction, another lie. Putin has put on the equivalent of a pair of bell-bottoms and is dad-dancing across the internet. Meanwhile Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy isn’t just commanding his armed forces: he’s commanding TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Telegram. He’s simultaneously available across all social media platforms – hybrid warfare’s first hybrid leader.'>>>

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/06/social-media-turn-on-putin-the-past-master

She was interviewed by H Sreenavasin for Amanpour, and I saw her for the first time, asserting putin's huge and long-term disinformation campaign.

[Laurelin]

1. This woman is a treasure

Thanks so much for posting it.

[elleng]

2. Absolutely.

[dalton99a]

3. Kick

[NJCher]

4. A couple observations

1. She is a heroine standing up to these
SLAP suits.

2. She sees the big picture—the picture that we saw with the Russian military assault on our information systems.

We knew it all along, and this fact alone is a testament to the worth of DU.

In all fairness, not everyone saw it. I had my doubts in the beginning, but as report after report piled up, it became impossible to deny that the Russians had come in and bought themselves a political party.

3. “All roads with you lead to Putin.” I will never forget Nancy Pelosi standing up in that room and saying that to those coward sell outs. The expression on their faces said it all.

[SunSeeker]

5. She says she spent 1M pounds defending herself in a SLAPP suit about her Brexit reporting.

The scumbag businessman who helped fund Brexit is making her like a living Hell with his disgusting litigation taking advantage of England's weird libel laws.

She is being pilloried for telling the truth.

[SheltieLover]

6. Ty for posting, Ellen!