The Russian military were able to create personality profiles of every American on these platforms by using the data collection tools that Edward Snowden smuggled to Putin with the help of Assange in 2013.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/ap-cyborgs-trolls-and-bots-a-guide-to-online-misinformation.1005699/post-15310450
Then 2014 the Russian military started their attack on our citizens using social media trolls. This was the genius part. By having one person control trolls that are 'left' 'right' etc, they could get people to get wrapped up in a argument that they could control, and teach people how to argue the lies that they would convince themselves were true.
So like if your sister was online defending her position about something she cared about, the militarized troll would attack her with a '
lib' account, while simultaneously supporting her argument from the 'right' account, feeding her b.s. propaganda links/talking points. The
Lib account would then start acting foul towards her, imprinting that hateful rhetoric with 'the Democrats'.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/bi-partisan-senate-report-calls-for-sweeping-effort-to-stop-russian-trolls-on-social-media-platforms.997908/
They also developed a array of propaganda websites (OANN, the Hill, the Nation) and reporters to push their lies into a 'credible' seeming information source.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/trumps-war-on-factual-news-journalism.1020994/post-15615786
Then in 2016 Trump gave the Russian military all of the data he received from the RNC that allowed the Russian military to attack us down to the districts that we live in.
The genius of this attack was to simultaniously attack all people from all sides of every story that they cared about, inserting trigger words like 'racist' that ends conversations in real life. Because they knew who is reading what stories and who they talk with in real life, it is easy to start fights if people are not aware of the attack.
Through online repetition these false beliefs harden and people can be programmed into believing pretty much anything over enough time and lack of real world conversations.
It sucks man, the effectiveness of this attack by the Russian military on our friends and families is not something we were ready for.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/dealing-with-politics-and-family.990663/
And they ramp it up around important events in our society too.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/trumps-destruction-of-family-during-the-holidays.1002467/
I put this thread to post some videos of people that I think have some really important insights into what is going on with the social media impacts in our lives.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/i-actually-think-this-guy-is-worth-listening-to.1032546/post-15824989
Hope this helps you out man. Someone said before that we need to reach herd immunity with this attack as a society, It sucks that Trump has stopped our governments ability to warn us of it (through classification) and to stop it (by defunding/firing/assigning his propagandists to key roles), and the Republicans (whose scam got hijacked by the Russian military) have allowed it to happen.