1. Ukraine is behind disinformation campaign to temporarily boost morale.
2. Russia is behind disinformation campaign to mount an element of surprise (an all out offensive was suddenly ordered this morning).
3. Social media is facilitating disinformation with variety of incentives for its participants ranging from merchandising (as was for Ghost of Kiev) and internet points (DCS World footages)
This is quite worrying. Again its not clear who is behind this disinformation campaign and who stands to benefit from it.
I don't want to say it's Ukranian intelligence because it seems illogical to me but would confirm my suspicion that it is sabotaging its own: that they could use disinformation to shore up international support at the risk of inevitably being debunked and losing credibility.
Again, cui bono, who benefits here from this disinformation? It is still not clear because why would you raise the morale of your enemies troops on purpose in the opening hours of the war?
This is an endless hall of mirrors, whatever it is they are doing, its working, its raising the cost of discovering truths while lowering social cost of emotional outbursts (seen that already here from someone accusing me of being a Russian bot) to further distort reality.
Everybody needs to remain calm, and question what they are seeing is real or fake, before choosing to disseminate it.
At the same time, deutschewelle this approach of “everything could be fake news” reduces the speed with which support to the oppressed side may be provided. We have seen this over the past several months with European leaders travelling to Moscow one by one to show how much they’re achieving with their diplomacy.
This is modern Information Age warfare - morale is everything and with screens and videos it is possible to disarm/arm enemies with just media. The defending side will also use every opportunity they can to propagate a message, even if they can’t verify it. The other side will also do everything they can to tarnish that message with imperfections and counter stories.
What I would like to say here is that just like one can get carried away with emotional outbursts and hysteria, one can also get carried away in the opposite direction. That is over-restraining your emotions and repeating “let’s just wait and see” over and over. Until, that is, it turns out one day that the other side has been running a secret concentration camp or is bombing innocent people to acquire power or some other horror.
It does not surprise me that some have thrown such accusations in response to these kinds of comments. Business is rational, and war is often great business.
I wouldn't be surprised if it was beardnecks on 4 Chan or some other group etc. who are starting disinformation just for lolz. Sad world but sadly reality.
Twitter does a great job of elevating expertise signaling individuals, especially with long threads where mentions of "past experiences" and other name dropping dramatically boosts one's exposure.
it's incredible just from this thread alone the confusion and inability to tell what is going on.
In 2003, we just saw whatever CNN was feeding us but now anybody can become a CNN and you don't even need to be at the place of war.
Can I just point out how freaky this all is? We have never been more connected and have low barriers to access unlimited information, yet despite this, we have no bearing.
Information war is a thing. Though, you can find information from people on the ground on Youtube, social media and small websites (mainstream media you can completely forget, there are enough leaks to show that the likes of BBC and Reuters engage in propaganda to turn people against Russia (and I don't even mean local/international outlets but in Eastern European nations specifically and even in Russia itself)). Ah, of course, you should be able to distinguish footage from a video game from real life footage (referring to the large amount of people who apparently can't do that).
On the topic of video game footages being used seemingly by unknown actors with various intent, if a gamer like me can be tricked, how gullible is the average user?
I LEGIT thought the whole Ghost of Kiev video was REAL the first time I watched it. It was only when the whole scene did not make sense——why would the Russian jet slow down and slowly ascent with a pursuing Ukranian jet and why would it use AA missile instead of opting for guns at such close range moving slowly?
It was only after this exercise in logic did I take a second look at the video and saw the person holding the camera was moving way too stable without the artifacts you normally get from software stabilization.
Many, many people saw that video and retweeted it thinking it was legitimate. I almost did too until I saw it a second time and realized Twitter's compression algorithms degraded the quality in an authentic manner that hides anti-aliasing and uncanny valley.
Games are increasing becoming photorealistic where I can't tell from preview thumbs (ex. Ride 4) and we are probably witnessing the cusp of a new type of war. Our morales can be influenced by the hour now thanks to social media and advancements in light ray tracing.
Like in 2011 I was certain that photorealism was far off because of the computation difficulties with real-time ray tracing, I had not anticipated the leaps in GPU, AI, Deepfake technologies as well as software advancements like Nanite and Lumen in UE5
The Russians have deployed SAMs in Belarus and has an operating radius that covers almost the entire theater.
According to Rob Lee's twitter it appears Grand Parent's deduction is correct because previously a Ukranian Su-27 that blew up in Kiev was being falsely reported as Russian jet.
I have to note how difficult it is right now. "Ukranian side" (it is not clear who the original disseminator network is) appear to be using footages of ARMA 3 and DCS: World overlayed with voice and artifacts from Twitter's compression algorithms really can fool many to believe Ukraine is putting up fierce resistance.
The latest disinformation seems to be a seemingly staged conversation between a Ukranian driver and a Russian APC squad. I don't know who stands to benefit from these disinformation campaign but :
1) Ukranian side can raise morale by selling perception that Russia is poorly equipped and suffering from poor morale.
2) Russian side would purposefully allow such disinformation to spread for an element of surprise, might even be the one manufacturing it.
It is probably a combination of the two but from today's executive order from Putin to launch an all out offensive from all direction will be telling.
Send in the poorly equipped, inexperienced troops in first to feign false sense of security and send in your regular well equipped army.
White noise on all sides and I am noting too, just how difficult it is to get the real story but it seems Twitter makes this extra difficult and its not clear who is leaking these fake disinformation stories and to whom it is aimed to ultimately benefit.
We simply do not know what is happening but I am leaning towards #2, today's encirclement and seige of Mariupol, which was long touted as putting up effective resistance by pro-Ukraine twitter accounts, seems to have collapsed in a matter of hours, sort of like the "Ghost of Kiev" myth
I think it's absolutely splendid the way a 17 day old account with just 2 posts here, both about the Ukraine invasion, has such insight about the deceptive propaganda uses of simulation games! Could you please show us some examples?
> According to Rob Lee's twitter it appears Grand Parent's deduction is correct because previously a Ukranian Su-27 that blew up in Kiev was being falsely reported as Russian jet.
Ukrainian, Russian and Belarusian use the Cyrillic alphabet and I don't trust a random burner twitter account making that claim.
Rob Lee, who has been independently reporting about Ukraine since 2014, is fairly credible and does not appear to stand to gain anything from accusations that he is pro-Russian
What exactly is the valuable problem you are thinking in your head and how is it better solved by cryptocurrency and blockchain that can't already be done with existing methods, technologies and contractual agreements backed by various international treaties and dialectic tests for loopholes through thousands and thousands of years trading between countries, provinces, cities and entities?
I feel like your comment is unjustified and incoherent. It is obvious to many of us what "fraudulent" mean here, it could be an array of:
- previously flagged wallets moving through mixers
- purchases and refunds to facilitate money laundering
- converting to and from steam wallet to crypto etc.
It is NOT at all ambiguous which is what you are insinuating as the basis for not reading past the headline and discouraging others from doing so.
Bitcoin is a public ledger where all transactions are PERMANENTLY recorded. The law enforcement agencies have much better deobfuscation tools than 10 years ago and the tools will just continue to improve as they have INFINITE resources.
> But if a criminal has access to someone else’s Bitcoin, it’s already “cashed out”.
You are describing one type of crime that has existed far long before crypto as basis to discredit Gabe's claims and its an unconvincing argument/poorly baked logic that they tell in maximalist echo chambers.
Rather I ask, what is it that you fear so much whenever criticisms are raised? Did you transfer your savings to purchase jpegs and other insane APY that seasoned hedge fund managers can't produce?
There's the old anecdote about 20% of dollar bills having been used to snort cocaine at some point in the past. Who knows if it's true, but it seems plausible. Would it make sense for a merchant to say "we tested bills and found that 20% of dollar transactions were drug-related"?
>It is obvious to many of us what "fraudulent" mean here, it could be an array of:
>- previously flagged wallets moving through mixers
So if someone robbed a bank, used that money to buy drugs, that money ended up in my hands somehow (eg. I bought from the same drug dealer), and I used that to buy a big mac, my big mac purchase is "fraudulent" as well?
>- purchases and refunds to facilitate money laundering
How does that even work? You can only refund to the same person. It's not like you can buy a game, gift it to someone, and have that person "refund" the game to cash out
>- converting to and from steam wallet to crypto etc.
There isn't an official way to convert steam wallet to crypto
>It is NOT at all ambiguous which is what you are insinuating as the basis for not reading past the headline and discouraging others from doing so.
1. You say it's "NOT at all ambiguous" but you yourself listed 3 very different possible reasons. That sounds pretty ambiguous to me.
2. I skimmed the article and there isn't really much in the body either.
> Kumbhani is charged with conspiracy to commit wire fraud, wire fraud, conspiracy to commit commodity price manipulation, operation of an unlicensed money transmitting business, and conspiracy to commit international money laundering. If convicted of all counts, he faces a maximum total penalty of 70 years in prison.
Liberty Reserve operator Arthur Budovsky is serving his 20 year prison sentence, Kumbhani will likely serve 40+ years.
Liberty Reserve wasn't even incorporated in US or did a lot of business after getting booted but that didn't stop it from being used as money laundering.
Tether isn't very much different, LR/E-gold both tried various forms of insulation (LR not providing fiat on-ramp/off-ramp but through "verified" 3rd party).
In the end, the trail of money and cui bono ultimately indicted Arthur for facilitating money laundering and subverting US banking system. It's very likely that DOJ and other three letter agencies are utilizing Tether/Bitcoin/Monero as a honeypot to gather intelligence on the parties.
Imagine the wealth of information they are sitting on after capturing the hard drives of darknet marketplaces like Alphabay which were allegedly used to trace a former YC alumni's stolen Bitcoins.
Tether is a well known cable for moving money out of China and into real estate markets in the West, it's ironic that so many do not see the complete geopolitical ramifications: housing affordability has been hijacked to facilitate money exfiltration in authoritarian countries by the elites in the West, to make cheap goods.
In the West, lower and middle class unwittingly traded affordable housing for affordable consumer goods produced by authoritarian labor control and the beneficiaries of this were able to move their wealth out of reach from the same authoritarian government. Now that the musical chairs is ending, the same demographic in the West are being encouraged to become unwitting exit liquidity for the upper class. I predict this would have destabilizing effect on societies all over the world, especially countries that are over-leveraged and buying crypto on margin.
Love love these nostalgic takes, reminds me of this Windows 98 demo in a 3D simulation I recently came across. There is a real demand for 90s aesthetics
I feel like the era of flat panel displays and the error of windows 98 really didn't intersect much. Though it might just be bias because of how broke I was at the time.
Yes but if the whole country goes through enough unnecesary hardship (Russians have a tough life) and his manupulative PR apparatus stops functioning he could start fearing for his life. Any of his thugs he’s surrounded by could at some point initiate a mutiny and eventually after failed attempts it could end his reign. Putin is bluffing big time too, he knows it. At the same time he achieved so much power and wealth that he may want to go for a different glory, he seems to want to revive a broken empire, broken in the sense that at some point Russia was looked up and now he’d need to coerce friends into an involuntary hug. Russia is so broken (not defending US, which is on the verge of catastastrophe too) that nobody wants to be their friend beside getting cheap gas. Cheap gas has been one thing to keep Russia from collapsing altogether though, it’s a bargaining chip but not really the best hand in the game
