Russia and China target U.S. protests on social media

They have been doing stuff like this for years, they basically have groups who do nothing but sit in a room create fake accounts and then start posting propaganda, misinformation or anything that could help divide.

Of course they do!

Under attack both internally and externally. So, are these social media companies platforms or publishers? "...in 1995, a federal judge found Prodigy, an early online service, liable for content on its message boards because the company had advertised that it removed obscene posts. The court reasoned that “utilizing technology and the manpower to delete” objectionable content made Prodigy more like a publisher than a library."

"Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act immunizes online platforms for their users’ defamatory, fraudulent, or otherwise unlawful content. Congress granted this extraordinary benefit to facilitate “forum[s] for a true diversity of political discourse.” This exemption from standard libel law is extremely valuable to the companies that enjoy its protection, such as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, but they only got it because it was assumed that they would operate as impartial, open channels of communication—not curators of acceptable opinion."

Since they are actively censoring content I believe thay are in the publisher business. These are not closed eco-systems when I can see 90% of anyone and their posts. It is not being neutrally censored either.

Now, on the flip side, we have the consumers. Most of which will believe almost anything that they see on twitter/facebook/youtube/et al. If these platforms were closed, i.e.: You got an account, you followed someone, all you saw was what those friends posted to their friends, the echo chamber would be quite muffled. About 8 or 9 years ago though we were introduced to friends of friends. And now we enter the 6 degrees of separation. All it takes is time at this point, until one friend of a friend posts a friend of a friend's meme.

Now introduce PR actors, both domestic and foreign. You have one hell of an "ad engine" now. All you need is to get to a few dozen friends of a friend and whatever you posted will blast out exponentially. 24 becomes 576 becomes 13,824 becomes 331,776. And this happens in minutes. Not days. Minutes!

So, I no longer blame the PR actors. I blame a platform that has the sole purpose of making money and the poor education of the consumers.