It's not just Russian propaganda anymore. It got adopted more widely in an effort to establish oligarchies in the West as well.
It's useful for the super-rich because staying on the path of democracy and regulation hurts their profits, and it's useful for Putin because it destabilizes Europe when European countries turn more isolated and separated with right-wing nationalist leaderships.
Standard fascism playbook. Attach false labels to your opponents (if they already radicalized enough parts of their base, their base is going to go with it), then start oppressing them (or worse).
Trump also regularly attaches labels like "Radical Leftist X" or "communist activist judge Y" to people he doesn't like. It's to spread these false accusations, establish these falsehoods as a new reality in the public minds through constant repetition of such propaganda lies (see Goebbel's dictionary, he mentioned that large parts of the population can be made to believe any false claim if you just repeat it enough times), and then to radicalize their followers to start oppressing these people.
Law, order, truth, science, it all doesn't matter anymore. Fascism is all about creating its own warped reality in which everyone who is against the fascists is a ripe target for oppression (or worse).
It's also going to get worse as time goes by because they want to remain in power even when their terms are limited, i.e. they need to establish a dictatorship-like form of corrupt and criminal government which also fuses with ruthless mega corps and other ruthless, powerful billionaires on the other side (who benefit from corrupt, right-wing extremist governments).
And thanks to the internet and billionaire-controlled proprietary social media platforms and some other media companies, it doesn't stay local to the USA - the brown propaganda spreads to all western democratic countries, turning a significant portion of citizens into fascists who will then vote right-wing extremists into power.
Next to climate change, this is the biggest problem we have in the western world right now.
They probably reached their goal. It was never about efficiency. That was just the PR spin to sell it to the public. It was about getting rid of pesky regulatory bodies which stood in the way of making more money. Especially those who hindered Musk's companies.
The USA is currently experiencing the end phase of capitalism: massive corruption turning into open corruption with an economic oligarch class fusing with the government, massive income gaps and problems for regular citizens, class and culture wars plus reappearance of fascism to keep the population busy with culture wars among themselves instead of uniting against the exploiters, and so on. But it just started in USA. It's already swapping over to other western democratic countries as well.
You becoming a neo-nazi by constantly being served right-wing propaganda on company-controlled social media channels is better for their business than if you were a neutral, critical thinker. It's why Twitter was worth the 40 billion for Musk. Not because he expects it to ever repay itself. But because he can produce more loyalists by influencing what the algorithm shows and hides for you. Nazis are great for them because they're busy fighting against other parts of the population while giving the wealthy class a free pass to do what they want. Which is more money, more influence, more exploitation.
Overexplaining it might scare away non-technical users. Just compare it to well-known social media but say it 's independent and more like e-mail in the sense that everyone can choose a different server with different rules but they all talk to each other. No one company controls everything. And that the algorithms aren't secret or manipulative.
Basically, just tell them the main advantages in an easy to understand way.
if a society extends tolerance to those who are intolerant, it risks enabling the eventual dominance of intolerance, thereby undermining the very principle of tolerance. This paradox was articulated by philosopher Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945),[1] where he argued that a truly tolerant society must retain the right to deny tolerance to those who promote intolerance. Popper posited that if intolerant ideologies are allowed unchecked expression, they could exploit open society values to erode or destroy tolerance itself through authoritarian or oppressive practices
That is exactly what tolerating Nazi ideology within a society leads to. If you allow objectively harmful ideology on the grounds of balance or fairness, they are allowed to continue and eventually take over.
Even if you're a 100% centrist, you should never allow anyone to undermine or remove basic constititional or human rights. Yet that is exactly what Nazis do. Tolerating them means tolerating that.
This is just the beginning. It will not get better, because after this current shitshow there's the climate disaster growing and coming with full, unmitigated force. This will cause mass migrations, deaths and chaos world-wide.
Humanity just fucked it up.
Make the best out of it but don't expect anyone who's young today to have any sort of positive future.
What this also means: you cannot have any private conversations with windows users anymore. They all have to be considered fully backdoored. Even if the agent runs locally, you don't know what it all sends back to MS servers.
For people who have any slice of privacy consciousness left, this is the death of Windows. The difference between this and using a desktop directly from MS' cloud is negligible - MS can get access to potentially everything that's visible or readable on your desktop.
This. Use as much ethical open source software as possible for you, while supporting and advocating for important projects in that space. And don't let yourself get sucked into some closed platform or ecosystem you don't like. For communication and social media, use only open and decentralized servers/protocols. Use as much end to end and strong encryption as possible. Minimize your data footprint. Buy from local and ethical shops. Be the change you want to see in the world.
What I don't really understand as a non-US citizen is why no one from the current US regime (except Trump (who has legal immunity, which is already laughable and highly problematic)) got into any sort of legal trouble over any of the unlawful and unconstitutional acts that were done for many months or years now.
Even when considering that Trump himself is immune, why does it seem like all the others are immune, too? Is nothing working over there? Is the US justice system already completely and utterly broken?
If you steal candy from a random shop you probably get 100% prosecuted (and quickly), but if you act against fundamentally important laws or even the constitution, you just get away with it?
After you've already established security, you can add obscurity (without compromising security) on top for an even bigger gain in security overall. But you can't do obscurity in place of security.
I read somewhere (and it seems very plausible, though I'm not sure whether it's scientifically accurate) that the subjective feeling that time runs so fast is something you automatically get with increasing age, and it has to do with what's still exciting or new for you in life and what is not. With increasing age and life experience, you get the feeling that anything is still exciting or new less often over time. You've kind of seen it all, that's why days seem much more similar to each other than when you were still a kid (when almost every experience you've made was still a fresh one), that's why each day is less memorable, that's why it seems like time is flying by like crazy.
This is not just a dark chapter. If they also get this power, they can eliminate or disappear anyone at will. It's one of the last major things they need to gain full dictatorial powers.
In this particular case, I don't get what's in it for them. Of course they generally want more power and wealth, while ignoring everything else. But is this also really about that? If so, how? Also they are alienating even a big portion of their stupid base with stunts like this. It doesn't seem useful, any way I look at it. It doesn't seem lawful evil or neutral evil like they usually are. It seems chaotic evil.
My take on it: most people do have foresight or at least understand the issue, but they still don't act on it or ignore it as long as the status quo is still convenient enough. So it's purely a matter of pain and inconvenience. Once enough pain and inconvenience has accumulated, they're much more ready to make an actual switch. Thankfully, with Microsoft's services also becoming increasingly enshittified (forced AI chatbot integrations everywhere, even more cloud dependencies, ever more expensive subscriptions, ...) there's also Microsoft shooting itself in the foot a bit in order to accelerate this process. Vile actions from the current US regime are also accelerating the process of course.
It's not just Russian propaganda anymore. It got adopted more widely in an effort to establish oligarchies in the West as well.
It's useful for the super-rich because staying on the path of democracy and regulation hurts their profits, and it's useful for Putin because it destabilizes Europe when European countries turn more isolated and separated with right-wing nationalist leaderships.