Ukraine takes down massive bot farm, seizes 150,000 SIM cards

https://lemmy.world/post/1773090

Ukraine takes down massive bot farm, seizes 150,000 SIM cards - Lemmy.world

Daily comment to say fuck Russia
Correction: Fuck Putin. Let’s not be Russophobic towards the good Russian people. After all, it’s not their fault they have a dictator in charge of their country.

I agree that there’s nothing wrong with being any ethnicity (although that’s a creepy way to say it), however the Russian public does have extremely high support for Putin’s actions: www.statista.com/…/putin-approval-rating-russia/

Notice the huge jump in approval when he invaded Ukraine. Only FDR, Truman, Kennedy, and the Bushes have ever gotten that high of approval in the US.

Putin approval rating Russia 2025| Statista

Vladimir Putin's popularity level remained stable in June 2025. The vast majority of Russians approved of the activities of their country's president.

Statista

And Americans voted in Trump.

I'm not trying to whataboutism here, my point is that even an actual democracy people are fooled by the (political)elite. We can't blame the Russian people for hearing their media, I think. Still open to be convinced otherwise.

There’s some amount of nuance to both I think. For America, Trump actually had less popular support for both elections he ran in. For Biden v Trump, he not only lost the electoral college but also got something like 10 million fewer votes, which is a blowout result for an election in a 2-party nation. For Hillary v Trump, he lost by a few million but was more strategic with the states he appealed to, winning several Rust Belt states by fairly thin margins. For Russia, polling works a bit differently in a dictatorship vs. a democracy. In a democracy, even if everyone hates the current leader the idea that people can vote them out often brings contentment, so a democracy can chug along with low approval. In a dictatorship, the dictator can’t be voted out and will often use fear to gain support, so they tend to poll highly because the people doing well love them and the people doing poorly are too afraid to say their feelings on the matter on government record. However, this means that if polling falls low that there are either fairly few people doing well or they no longer attribute their well-being to the state and that the people doing poorly are either bold or desperate enough to push through fear. This is extremely bad news for a dictator and may signal an impending change in leadership. With all that in mind, stable dictators like Kim Jun Un and President Xi Jinping poll very highly even during times of hardship, and Putin’s poll numbers falling to levels that would seem fine in a democratic nation could be dire news for his state.