this isn't about people. this is about a drastic reduction in bots posting. and so we're clear, the disinformation mechanisms are also running botfarms on google hardware, too, just of a different flavor

There are a lot of committed liberals who really need dissenting opinions to be Russian propaganda, rather than their fellow citizens who genuinely find the policies and politicians they support to be morally abhorrent, lest they have to reevaluate their own views. Probably a major part of why "Russian shill" is one of the most common insults I see bandied about here, after calling anything and everything AI slop if it happens to seem at all remarkable to them. To be fair, I'm no fan of either AI or Putin, but I think demonstrated instances of Russian political interference in the politics of the US and other nations has served as something of a lifeline to a fair number of centrists, allowing them to avoid the cognitive dissonance of realizing their world view has genuinely become incredibly unpopular with the average person.

^looks like Yandex is back on the menu, boys