Yes. I followed a group of Russian trolls around for a bit and they will systematically seed right wing social media with shit stories. It'll start on far-right sources and if the story picks up steam, it'll migrate to more mainstream sites, like twitter, where it's usually repeated by right wing politicians.
Fake news sites are built and referenced until a site with better standing quotes the articles and is listed as the original source.
If you did deep enough, you can usually trace stories back to Kremlin run outlets as well. However, by the time you have done all the digging and research, the next new conspiracy is already topping the charts.
Many of the mega-posters on .ml follow the same patterns, actually. You can guess their timezones by when they post and comment and their day job seems to be posting on social media between 9-5. In the case of Lemmy, it seems to be used as a jump-off point for actual fake news sites. (Fake news sites are rarely used as headlines and are more used as comment fodder during any arguments.)
While I am picking on right wing and tankie stuff here, this applies to any opportunity to spread shit with a variety of agendas and no political views are immune.
Exactly. That's what the liberals don't realize is that every political alignment is being used to spread Russian propaganda. The main goal is spreading division everywhere and make the US completely dysfunctional.
Well, I would say that some groups are more vulnerable than others. There are a multitude reasons for this and it depends on education level, religious standing, geolocation and plenty of other factors.
It's kind of an odd generalization to say that "the liberals don't realize". Certainly some don't. All parties have their version of "Karen" or grandparents that post insane Facebook rants, after all.
Some groups are far more vocal when repeating Kremlin propaganda verbatim, though. That could easily skew the perception of who is actually believing what.