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Ok, I don't want to argue, and I'm sorry I don't have more links. I really do recommend the podcast as it's excellent in general. I trust Brooke with my life and everything disinformation related and I believe her. I was on Livejournal in those days and I can say that scary things happened because of the crunchy mom shit that seemed to originate from there. I don't want to fight with you, and if you think differently that's fine, I'm not against changing my mind or anything. This is a pretty good study though on the phenomenon of Russian trolls as well on vaccine disinformation that does prove the point that they do this.
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6137759/?ref=quillette.com
Regarding Russian funding these things, dark money is a powerful thing. Honestly it's so crazy to read about. The country being poor doesn't mean that Russian wealthy people don't fund disinformation. This is an article on Russian oligarchs and their dark money, about 1 trillion, hidden abroad.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60608282
But we also have oligarchs and dark money, yeah? Even if they are bots, how could someone possibly know that they're specifically Russian bots? Have you considered the possibility that these bots could be funded by American billionaires, either true believers (because, again, there is a very old and deeply rooted mistrust of science especially in rural conservative areas) or for some ulterior motive, same as the Russians would be?
This is where, to me, to be frank, it makes more sense to treat the claim as more of a psychological coping mechanism. It has to be specifically Russian bots because the point is to externalize the problem as far as possible. American billionaires funding health misinfo would create the same psychological discomfort as if it didn't come from bots at all.
To be clear, I don't dispute that bots exist, or that bots have spread health misinfo. But I think the extent is exaggerrated, and I think it serves as an all too easy excuse to dismiss stuff that's incongruent with one's worldview. And I'm not inclined to think that people need some sort of external force to believe and spread health misinfo or distrust of science. Like, there's a full-on creationist museum in Kentucky, this isn't just some new online thing.
I actually have driven by a sign for it, yes, when I went through Kentucky, and it's bizarre. And absolutely there are American oligarchs funding this, that's why the book Dark Money is so good. Hell, American millionaire William Regnery openly funded Richard Spencer's National Policy Institute (https://calgary.citynews.ca/2021/07/17/william-regnery-who-funded-right-wing-extremism-dies-at-80/), and John Tanton has created the anti immigrant network the Tanton network (https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/john-tanton/). Literally funding racists in the US. The Koch brothers fund a great deal of dark money activity.
And yes, absolutely people will spread health disinformation of their own accord, but it was a deliberate pattern across Livejournal in those days. That's all I can say. Here is an article from a few years ago about how Russian trolls were so prevalent that Facebook made a tool to identify that you had liked Russian troll content, in which Brooke is quoted. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/22/facebook-tool-russia-troll-army-internet-research-agency
Don't think this tool exists anymore. But that's how prevalent it is.
I hope you understand that you are off the deep end into conspiracy land to the same degree as Qanon types.
It was so prevalent Facebook actually made a tool to identify it in 2017.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/22/facebook-tool-russia-troll-army-internet-research-agency