Originally published at: Moldovans vote to join European Union - Boing Boing
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One strange aspect of the story is that the Russian tr0lls got Brian Baumgartner (“Kevin” from The Office) and other celebrities to record anti-Sandu messages in Russian on Cameo* and then compiled them and put them on TikTok to try and influence Moldovan voters.
There’s probably an onslaught of this going on in the U.S. right now, aided by “AI” and enabled, as usual, by the feckless or outright malicious owners of social media platforms.
[* a site where you can pay celebrities to record short video messages for birthdays and such.]
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Remember, according to Zuckerberg, Arsebook’s only mistake was saying sorry. Kind of. A tiny bit.
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Russia had reportedly spent vasts sums to thumb the scales and very nearly succeeded.
Some of the evidence of that almost eclipses elon_musk trying to buy out the states election … for instance:
…with actual rampant vote buying by Russia. Moldovans flying back to Moldova from Russia and Turkey had over a million euros in cash held by customs authorities on suspicion of being funds from a criminal enterprise, yet none of the people who had the cash from them has filed an application to have it returned.
(“The 2020s were characterized by overt plutocratic assaults on democracy at various levels…”
–From a fictitious history book copyright 2042)
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I always find it odd that a thing trollies do is declare their favored (funding?) side is going to win, especially “in a landslide”.
I kind of expect it is effective otherwise they wouldn’t keep doing it (or maybe I shouldn’t assume competence?).
It just seems like “these guys are gonna super win” doesn’t motivate people to take time out of their day and vote for the people they want to win. If anything it should shave some votes off as complacency takes effect. Like people not voting for HRC because Trump “only” had a one out of six shot of winning so “clearly” they didn’t have to go to the polls and vote.
Are there really a ton of people out there who want to be part of the winning team so they only go vote for someone/something if they expect it to win? Do they vastly outnumber the people who see victory for their “side” and decide not to vote?
It seems like the effective strategy would be to forcefully assert (even if a lie) why voting “your way” will make things better, and failure to do so makes things worse, and not project “wins”.
I suppose it could also be that for the people who are easily manipulated by propaganda they want “to win”?
Maybe my continued failure to understand how to properly manipulate people also explains why I don’t run a trolley farm Or maybe the is because I have a half ration of morals?
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I don’t think the main goal is to win. If Russia gets their way, it’s a bonus. To me, it feels more like to sow doubt and create chaos. It’s the same with 2016 and 2020. I don’t think they expect 
to win but to cast doubt on democracy as a whole because it makes Russia look bad domestically and internationally.
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yep.
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I think it’s more a case of “Look, these guys are going to win by a landslide, so there’s no point in making the effort to go out and vote against them. Don’t waste your time.”
The point is to demotivate and dispirit the opposition’s supporters.
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Exactly this. I remember reading a story about Karl Rove, as a student in a debate club, coming to a tournament with very formal looking binders of clippings and papers, but they were just nonsense, meant to intimidate the other team into thinking he was super prepared. It’s 100% demotivation.
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I’m reading a very interesting book – Facts and Other Lies – by an Australian journalist called Ed Coper. It explains how these disinformation campaigns work, if not by directly affecting change, then by destabilising the accepted reality of things.
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Good for Moldova! That was uncomfortably close, but I’m glad the Russian meddling didn’t screw things up for them.
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From the BBC:
The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Sandu would need to present “evidence” for her claims that there had been foreign interference in the vote.
On Sunday, the BBC stumbled upon evidence of vote-buying at a polling station for residents of the breakaway Moldovan region of Transnistria - which is economically, politically and militarily supported by Russia.
A BBC producer heard a woman who had just dropped her ballot in the transparent box ask an election monitor where she would get paid.
When we asked directly whether she had been offered cash to vote, she admitted it without qualms. She was angry that a man who had sent her to the polling station was no longer answering her calls. “He tricked me!” she said.
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Pah!
In Putin Great Russia World Court, evidence find you.
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Also an old trick used by cops and other intoregators. Show up with a stack of paper in a file, something like that. The idea is to create an impression of “we already know everything and have proof, so why don’t you just talk”.
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