Republicans were, though, more likely to believe Russian disinformation claims than their Democratic counterparts, with 57.6% falling for at least one Russian disinformation claim, compared with just 17.9% of Democrats and 29.5% of people who didn’t identify with one particular party.
Well, an alarming number of Americans believe that Trump should be president. And that America is the best country in the world, and that compassion is communism.
This tells more about how gullible Americans are, and not much about the skills of unchecked Russian propaganda.
Gullibility appears to cut across party lines, with respondents identifying as Democrats just as likely as Republicans to believe at least one of the 10 false claims.
Republicans were, though, more likely to believe Russian disinformation claims than their Democratic counterparts, with 57.6% falling for at least one Russian disinformation claim, compared with just 17.9% of Democrats and 29.5% of people who didn’t identify with one particular party.
I looked at the 10 false claims used for the test. Most of them were ridiculously easy to dismiss as false. The only one I had difficulty with was identifying whether social security cuts were part of “Project 2025” agenda, due to the agenda being very extensive (the source says 922 pages) and me not living in a country that it’s about. Thus I’d have answered “not sure”. I’d have also answered “not sure” about the birth place of some terrorist.
If people stumble on these, people are really poorly informed or unable / unwilling to inform themselves.
Some guesses.
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the US media environment is very entertainment-focused?
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the US education system leaves things to be desired?
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the US population spends a high amount of time in social media echo chambers?
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do Republicans spend more of online time in bot-infested places?
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do they have lower bot recognition and fact checking skills?
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are they drinking the kool-aid because their great leader drank it, so it seems legit?
In general, propaganda works. That’s why people pay for it. When you have a delicate equilibrium and you can push it past the tipping point with little effort, that’s the most economical way of disabling an opponent. :( Using force would require a spending a trillion, but using disinformation, you can get outcomes with a tiny amount.
Russia is spending significant amounts on promulgating misinformation in the U.S. Last year, for example, the U.S. Department of Justice indicted two people for funneling nearly $10 million through a Tennessee-based content creation company to publish misinformation about Ukraine.
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Their methodology involves asking people a bunch of questions and then if they don’t get 100% correct they’re counted as believing misinformation. Putting aside the unreliability of online polls, that’s a pretty misleading way of framing it, if you ask me.
If you asked people 10 questions about just about anything, you’d probably find a substantial number of people who don’t get every one right. In fact, they did do this under the heading, “Disinformation Nation: Americans Widely Believe False Claims on a Range of Topics.” That’s probably why they found that, “Respondents identifying as Democrats were about as likely (82 percent) to believe at least one of the 10 false claims as those identifying as Republicans (81 percent).”
Many of the people responding to the poll may not have ever encountered the claims they were asked about. If you are first encountering a claim in that context, you pretty much just have to guess whether you think it’s true based on vibes. And you can easily set up misleading vibes, like, “Conservative initiative Project 2025 proposes cutting or eliminating Social Security” which is false because it’s not explicitly stated, but it does explicitly state a whole bunch of other horrible shit, so like, if you get got by that one it doesn’t really show that you believe in an inaccurate picture of the world, just that you got tripped up by details. But that claim dings you for “believing misinformation” just as much as " COVID-19 vaccines killed 15 million people worldwide."
So like it doesn’t really tell us very much about how far reaching disinformation really is, the results are more of a reflection of their methodology.
[Reposted from the last time this study was posted]
Many of the people responding to the poll may not have ever encountered the claims they were asked about.
However, they do offer a “not sure” option, which can be taken if a person knows they’re not informed.
uneducated country that wants to be even more uneducated. runs its platform based on robbing the country blind whilst using the dumbest of the population as a shield by rage baiting them into protecting them against the opposition.
the world is going to be unrecognizable in 20 years. I’m convinced its going to end up with multiple state collapses and nuclear wars.
The amount of people who are actually responsible for all this hate are an extreme minority.
We need a new constitution that forbids using the best of psychology to manipulate people. No more propaganda and public relations. No more advertising. We already have seen the results of unregulated psychological warfare on the public by corporations, governments, and billionaires.
A new bill of rights that guarantees housing, education, healthcare, and income. One that spells out what privacy really means and how important it is. A government that is not ran by a two party first past the goal post most popular vote cesspool.
The system is broken because we allow it be. Our policies and structure produce perverse results. The government has to be designed from the ground up to resist corruption. Anything less is just inviting disaster.
We have all been lead into a state of learned helplessness. The solutions to solve our problems are already there and there are many of them. There is no one right answer either, there are a lot of great ways to solve our many issues.
Has anyone ever looked at the education level of population voting for different parties? (I don’t know how to query statistics in an educated way)
It’s widely known. Attained education correlates with preference for left-wing policies, and in the US case, with opposition to Trump.
a sample from Newsweek’s “Trump approval tracker”
Generally, studies have shown that the more educated a person gets the more they lean left. People at the PhD level tend to be far more liberal than people with only a high school degree.
I expected that. But, is there specific statistics? Numbers? Graph? Pie Chart?
I Googled “political orientation and educational level,” and the first link was this
It is highly detailed, with lots of graphs and charts, and eventually comes to the same conclusion that I posted in my previous comment.
There are plenty of other links that confirm it as well.
Thank you. I completely agree with you, and this study. I was trying to find a “dumbed down” version.
Many of the supposed “leaders” are spouting Russian disinfo - Hegseth the other day was crying about the media talking about the “Russian hoax”, meaning, reporting on donvict’s sus ties to Putin and Russia in his first term.
The “Russian Hoax” is a hoax.
HitlerPig’s ties to Putin and Russia are well-documented, all the way back to his first visit to Soviet Moscow in 1987, BEFORE the fall of the Iron Curtain, when the Soviets were shocked at how easily he could be manipulated with the most insincere flattery, and he was given the code-name designation Krasnov.
Within six months of his first visit, he was taking out his first full page ads spouting Soviet talking points.
By any objective measure, HitlerPig is the most prolific Traitor in American history, worse than all other American traitors COMBINED.
on reddit i pointed out in political subs so many times that alot of the posters were russian trolls positng russian back news to bait people. cant you people see its obvious. around the time of the gaza invasion, i reported a couple people in the pics sub for israeli propaganda, because they were posting the " attacks against palestine" as a way to frame bidenw as the sole cause of the conflict and hes doing nothing, i reminded them that both parties have always supported in great numbers, and its only currently being inflammed because BIBI was worried a new D was going to condemn or stop the financial support to israel.
Yeah, the Russian trolls pretending to be “liberals” and constantly attacking only the Democrats for some weird reason are all over the place. And then there are the people stupid enough to fall for this nonsense, too…I know a few IRL, and man, they are so very tiresome.
Usually they have all kinds of excuses and absurd purity tests that no politician that is actually running would pass, and then they proudly do shit like stay home or throw their vote away on Jill Stein or whatever. They act like they won something by doing this, too.
But when it comes to the trolls and useful idiots, I’ve seen some places that seem to have been overrun with them. The comments on Boing Boing, once upon a time, used to be a pretty fun place. Some years go by and I come back later and try to engage in reasonable conversation and the little clique of self-reinforcing posters/ moderators that took over that place were having none of it. It was all maximalist identity politics and Oppression Olympics to the point of cartoonish levels, and constant ripping on the Democratic Party and “shitlibs”. Any deviation, most especially if you made one of the anointed look bad? Deleted, almost immediately. Didn’t matter how thoughtful.
Anyway, the comment section there seemed to be designed to create reactionaries. Anyone on the fence that happens to wander into some spectacle like that is bound to come away with some impressions about what liberals are like, and it’s not going to look good.
They have since taken their comments behind a paywall, go figure. I hope that little clique is happy with policing any all minute deviations from what they believe is the One True Way to think. I doubt anyone is going to pay for that kind of treatment for long, so… shrug?
those idiots thought by showing pics of people getting injured was a NEW phenomenon under biden, it has been happening for decades, lol. and almost no party got any flak for supporting israeli genocide, they decided to put it on the news to hurt bidens chances, it was purely that.
It was alarming the first time around. It isn’t now. This country is filled with blissfully stupid people.
KGB handbook describes this in great detail. Amplify and boost the loudest, worst voices on both sides of every political and social issue, so that people hate each other and everyone thinks the worst of each other, thus embracing the worst image the other side has of each other.
Further, by making literally every issue, no matter how small, into a contentious debate where you can’t tell what’s real or not, the average voter or citizen just starts to tune it all out.
Why do you think the general public is abandoning science and basic liberal democracy? Why do you think people suddenly seem to not care about basic empathy or rights for fellow citizens?
They’ve all tuned out, they don’t care anymore because everything is too stupid, too nonsensical, too contentious, so the alternative is to buy whatever the leadership says, keep your head down, and get back to work. Welcome to the end of the cold war. Victory to Russia.
While it’s definitely the KGB’s handbook, I think they got a little help from Al-Qaida with 9/11. They deserve some of the credit as well for helping steer America this way. Victory to Russia. Victory to Al-Qaida.
foundation of geopolitics.
anti-vaxxers was also pushed by russia too, it made sense since russias own people refused to take the machine, because it worked too well.
Fucking pathetic.
deleted by creator
It probably sounds so familiar to fox viewers
An alarming amount of Americans still believe civil war disinformation and propaganda. They ain’t got the critical thinking skills to deal with 250 year old shit, they sure as hell can’t think past new shit
even worst some of them dont even know ww2 happened.
What civil war propaganda? Where can I read more about this?
Edit: States rights, ofc. I was thinking there might be something more obscure and specific because I hadn’t heard of most of the falsehoods in the article before.
“The civil war wasn’t about slavery, it was about states rights”
For example, the confederate supporters say the war wasn’t about slavery, but rather about states rights. Now, you ask, states rights to what? And then they don’t have an answer somehow.
Bingpot
Yeah, lost cause bullshit. Not quite 250 years old, but pretty darned old.
The headline should read “Republicans believe misinformation to an alarming degree”?
Sure the numbers aren’t great for independents and Democrats… but it isn’t >50% bad, which clearly points to Republican ideology as brain worms.
it also falls in line with republicans falling for scams and crypto. i once followed a bunch of asian tubers that had a veneer of progressivism, but turned heel after a mysogynistic event, last i heard they are all drinking the trump kooaild, and one thing was common a right winger form the south was peddling crypto on the channel and they lost money on it when it crashed.
later on they tried to gaslight thier fans into believe california was messing with thier business accounts/employees. turns out people were calling them out for misclassfiying thier employees, salaried over contractors. they were asking how to “evade the laws”
Exactly. That’s why I highlighted that portion.
~60% vs ~20% is a staggering difference. This really shows the much bigger problem of how conservatives gain power. They use the large masses of unintelligent, manipulative gullible people to get votes, and enrich themselves.
This is not freedom. This is not democracy. It’s psychopaths, controlling and keeping people stupid, so they can stay in power and wealth.
Our system is so fucked.
Anyone who has ever talked to a Republican knows this. Whenever you point out half the bullshit coming out of their mouth has been debunked, they just spout some bullshit about the MSM and source being “biased”. Friend, reality is biased against your 🤡 ass.
Literally every time. I’m so sick of giving people (conservatives) the benefit of the doubt when they talk about something I haven’t heard of and realize that yes, in fact, this current issue they’re crying about is also made up or wildly misinterpreted just like every other issue they’ve ever pretended to care about.
The funny thing is the electoral college was created to protect us from this, but it’s kinda the whole reason we’re where we are.
Uh, no. The electoral college was created because the slavers wanted representation for their slaves without giving them the vote.
Edit: Source
No. The electoral college was created because the founders didn’t trust the uneducated general population to not elect a tyrant, so the EC was supposed to be made up of educated people who wouldn’t be stupid enough to vote against the best interests of the people.
It also had a bit to do with how long it took to count votes at the time.
Are you sure you’re not thinking about the 3/5 compromise?
See the source I posted in the edit.
That article says it was created to prevent a populist president, and that it should’ve been scrapped after the 12th amendment but the 3/5 compromise incentivized the South to keep it.
The Federalist Papers talk about this a bit and slavery was not a concern.
I agree the electoral college is part of the problem, but we’ll all benefit from ditching plurality voting and replacing with ranked choice voting or even star voting.
I was in favor of ranked choice voting until Trump came out against it. Now I’m even more in favor of it.
aka kleptocracy
Yes, this level of control over how the populace thinks is a step along the path toward turning human beings into livestock. I’m not fond of it.
Republicans live in a world of lies in their Fox News + Church bubble.
- newsmax, oan, brebart and any of the right wing grifters like POOLE, shapiro, owens, ROEGAN, j peterson.
the last 2 having the most significant impact on men.
I do think that is giving liberals and the left too much credit.
A lot of the infighting from among the left during the past election felt pretty artificial, to be perfectly honest, and most of the “Genocide Joe/Holocaust Harris” types seemed to just evaporate after the election ended. Maybe just because there was nothing really left to say after all was said and done, but I just find it hard to believe much of that discourse was in good faith. I’m surprised to read a number as low as 18%, but almost 1 in 5 still isn’t nothing.
it was artificial, early on in the gaza genocide, the protests were taced right back to putin, it was so blatant that a “muslim, claimed they arnt supporting biden anymore”, the only influence muslim has was in michigan, and not the whole voting population.
and then it came out some of the protest were also funded by the likes of seinfelds WIFE.
the absolute rage and betrayal felt by a non-trivial number of diverse, dem leaning coalition members was not artificial in the least and needed no outside aggitation to make it one of thousands of dem self-inflicted papercuts that bled the soul out of dem support.
my family has consistently voted against the fascist monster, but the dems have helped hand the country over to them for decades. the republicans made the monster, but the dems failed to bar the door and seal the windows. neo-liberalism (even by the most gentle definition) is imploding globally in a spectacular way.
the dems were always center right, thier plan was to always grift from the shadows of what the gop is doing blatantly, thats why they have the same donors.
The very real push to vote for Trump or not vote at all due to Biden’s botched (to say the least) handling of Palestine was not in good faith, though, and I saw that type of rhetoric everywhere.
part of it was voter machine manipulation too
yeah, agreed on that - gotta consider those as actual bad actors. “on the ground, irl” I didnt see much of it though. not saying in super close races it made no difference, but around here, even the ones disgusted by abhorrent dem behaviour, held their noses and pulled straight dem ticket.
what I do think had a meaningful negative impact was the lack of enthusiasm for the harris campaign as the election neared - not enough outreach and “bring 5 friends” moments. the early relief of “thank fuck its not biden!” was systematically snuffed out.
just a ton of misreading and lost opportunity by Democratic functionaries and we are left with an even more broken world. I am hoping beyond hope that there is a remaking of the Democratic party and a concerted effort, at least on the state level, for an end to first past the post.
You and me both. I am still upset by the fact that my state had RCV on the ballot several years ago but voted it down because the majority-Democrat politicians in office here were afraid to endorse anything that might erode the party’s dominance.
God forbid a left-leaning state run the risk of electing actual leftists.
That and all the bad faith arguments about “the Republicans did something terrible; this is all the Democrats’ fault”.
Sorta, but not to let the Democrats off the hook either, with their uncanny ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Chuck Schumer and his conspirators can never be forgiven for agreeing to pass the Trump budget that is now funding his agenda.
Schumer’s entire argument that they should play along until Trump’s approval rating hits some arbitrarily low number is infuriating, and reeks of the sort of calculated politicking where the only priority is to do whatever it takes to stay in power, rather than to do the right thing. Hope that bites him and the others who voted with him in the ass.
I agree that Schumer’s political approach and public rationale is awful, but not voting for the budget would’ve given the Trump admin free reign to do worse on top of blaming the Democrats for it and convincing their supporters. A government shutdown would’ve given the executive branch more power to manipulate funding, including to things they can’t touch without legal challenges otherwise. I’d rather people be able to go after them in the courts, even if they’re doing awful stuff that takes longer to reverse.
This is why those senators broke with the party, because a no vote would’ve been performative and made the situation worse. The yes votes are mostly in states where deprogrammable independents are a meaningful part of the electorate for 2026.
A lot of the infighting from among the left during the past election felt pretty artificial, to be perfectly honest, and most of the “Genocide Joe/Holocaust Harris” types seemed to just evaporate after the election ended.
They didn’t go anywhere, I am one of those people, I will happily refer to Joe Biden as “Genocide Joe” for the rest of my life because of what he did in opening the door to the Palestinian Genocide. I also will keep labelling Trump, and Bush and Cheney and the whole lot of them as war criminals and in particular Trump is also even more in support of the Palestinian Genocide than Biden (which isn’t a surprise to leftists that centrists think it is? Stop strawmanning the left).
Shame on you for letting the lazy narrative in your head that feels satisfying to pin on leftists become something you actually believe without evidence.
Hasan Piker making a speech to Pro-Palestinian anti-Genocide protestors from two weeks ago.
Sure, I am sure there are Russian bots exploiting the centrist inability to understand how cataclysmic the Palestinian Genocide is for the U.S. and the world, but the centrist position of y’all just casually asking whether most of the anti-genocide voices during the run-up to the election weren’t genuine is bullshit.
Do you understand how pathetic and divorced from your humanity it makes you look? This isn’t a sports game where you pick teams based on what colors you like or where you are from, this is about being against genocide… of anybody anywhere.
Edit Downvote me and don’t bother responding you coward who can’t face up to the genocide being directly facilitated and endorsed by the U.S.
You seem well reasoned. I would not complain about downvoting though as it looks bad.
Edit Downvote me and don’t bother responding you coward who can’t face up to the genocide being directly facilitated and endorsed by the U.S.
I didn’t downvote you, for what that’s worth, so I hope that’s not directed at me. But shame on me regardless I guess.
Im sorry, that is intended for the silent down voters then, my point still stands tho.
Downvoted for the pure fact you whined about people downvoting you.
We are talking about a genocide and you want to focus on tone policing me?
sorry, some of the redditors still kept their attitude while going to lemmy
Yup
*disinformation.
No, because many Americans who are not republicans still believe this.
Not only Americans. This is a global problem…
But it’s amplified in countries with undemocratic election systems, like first past the post. You just need a plurality of morons to fuck it up for everybody else.
True. But even in a state with a good election system the right wing nuts are on the rise.
thats why right wingers in european countries are gaining so much ground at the same time, muska nd putin is pushing the propagandas.
Yes. That’s why i said amplified.
The US rarely exports its bright ideas at the rate of the shittiest ones…
To be honest, this is not directly caused by the US. Reason for this is propaganda/misinformation by states like Russia and China and (a)social media like Twitter, Facebook, TikTok,…
I would definitely count the US as part of the misinformation sources.
TBH, I could list 5 lies the US and Russia is spreading online, not sure what China is trying to make us believe.
That’s also a big contributing factor, that’s true.
Enough to elect a Russian agent, twice
If any population needs help with media literacy, it’s Murcans and Canucks.
So many people are repeating Putin’s narratives that even anti-cons are believing them.
