This was from a comment waaaaay down-thread earlier this week, on a post about California Secession (a wedge issue backed by Russia). Thought you’d find it interesting.
Originally Posted By u/Dry_Counter533 At 2025-08-28 07:47:32 PM | Source
this post was submitted on 29 Aug 2025
196 points (96.2% liked)
/r/50501 Mirror
1254 readers
436 users here now
Mirrored /r/50501 Popular Posts
founded 6 months ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
You know, can you blame these Russian bots getting paid a cent for every spam they spout? They are saving money to buy plane ticket out of Russia before the country implodes from the economic strain caused by the war in Ukraine. As we speak, economists say Russia is on the verge of a recession.
Bots can buy plane tickets and go places? I thought they were lines of code on a server?!
Bot had also become synonymous with propagandist.
Never heard that, and it’s extremely confusing, in this day of actual software bots generating insane amounts of content.
Bots as in bots are still not good as trolls. There still requires human intervention.
Speaking of trolls, words change meaning all the time, when i was younger, troll used to mean an edgy Internet users who purposefully agitate other users for the heck of it without meaning what they say. Now, troll could also mean online propagandists. I used to be strict with definitions of words, but meanings of words change all the time but what can we do.
Wow, thanks professor, never in my life did I imagine that words change meaning over time. Next you’ll tell me fire is hot and water is wet. Maybe you should write a dictionary called Captain Obvious’s Guide to Things Everyone Already Knows. Also, by the way, if “troll” now includes “online propagandist,” does that mean your entire comment counts as self-reporting?
The above was just straight copied out of ChatGPT, after copying in your reply. Bots are perfectly capable of trolling without human intervention. They do it all the time.
Language changes all the time, but I’m just gonna come with a big [citation needed] on this particular change of language.
This is closer to true, though I think the majority of people who discuss these things would agree that the Venn diagram of trolls and propagandists doesn’t have complete overlap on either side
I think you have overcorrected. Then again, I’m one of those sticklers who thinks that “literally “ shouldn’t mean “figuratively”.
Whether you like it or not, there is no point being a stickler for word meanings, that's the point lol. When I was growing up in aughts, the word "ultimate" is plastered all over toys for boys. Everyone thought it means "super duper", but in Greek it means "final". Like, we've been using the word incorrectly all along?! What would the Greeks think?!
Who cares, words evolve all the time. I don't really care about words changing meanings so long as it's organic and bottom up, and not in authoritarian, top-down approach like in 1984.
You might be right.
That said, you are still sorely mistaken if you believe that software bots are not already excellent at being trolls and at scale
The human intervention is minimal, just need to point it at the right spot.
Same.