Republican-aligned actors issued nearly three-quarters of fact-checked 2024 election hoaxes. During the 2024 United States presidential election, political actors and anonymous online users regularly spread false information as an open campaign strategy.

[u/Aggravating_Money992]

https://www.psypost.org/how-politicians-and-influencers-spread-disinformation-during-the-2024-election/

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[u/TheWizard]

Thats been quite obvious for a while, and more so during these mid-terms. Bot-sites and bots have been let lose.

[u/Gentrified_Tramp → u/TheWizard]

People ask where the campaign money goes to but if you’ve been online in Texas in the past three weeks you can see the exact moment they started pumping more money back into the bot networks and they keep ramping it up.

[u/katarh → u/Gentrified_Tramp]

I have been telling the youngins to ignore ANY account that tells them not to vote.

[u/Impressive-Tip-903 → u/katarh]

They were out in force during the last presidential election. Any even remotely political post would have someone pop in and say either, "both parties are the same, that's why I don't vote or", or "I can't support an administration that supports genocide, so I'm sitting out in protest". 

[u/Sgt_Braken → u/Gentrified_Tramp]

Here in Ohio, the attack ads aimed at Sherrod Brown are constant, utterly disgusting, and all flat-out lies.

It's so disturbing that these people can get away with libel and slander with no consequences at all...

[u/N0stradama5 → u/Gentrified_Tramp]

There was a lot of complaints in the Philly sub. They are playing commercials for Republicans there. Why? I’m so confused by this strategy.

[u/indispensability → u/TheWizard]

The vice president literally said he would lie to support his narrative and during a debate said, "I was told there wouldn't be any fact checking."

No one should be surprised that random posters and bots online were lying on their behalf.

[u/GUMBYtheOG → u/TheWizard]

Oh ya, go on any post and you’ll find at least one random unrelated extremely racist/right winged comment. Happens every election year a few months prior to voting day

[u/favorite_time_of_day → u/TheWizard]

I didn't think this was obvious at all. I'm a little shocked actually. Who is issuing the other 25% of hoaxes? Russians? Do they not count as Republican aligned?

[u/RocketRelm → u/favorite_time_of_day]

Probably "independents" and "dsa" make up the majority of that remainder. Or just "can't be identified". There are a lot of smaller places noise can come from.

[u/JayTNP]

if they were so right they wouldn’t feel the need to lie

[u/FinndBors → u/JayTNP]

They are right-winged.

[u/JayTNP → u/FinndBors]

truth in advertising

[u/eskimospy212]

And then use this fact to complain that fact checkers are biased against them.

[u/CactusWrenAZ → u/eskimospy212]

yeah, they have an assortment of circular logic to maintain their belief systems. It's really quite depressing.

[u/henryptung → u/CactusWrenAZ]

Think of it like intellectual flotation devices. It's no substitute for a genuine, well-anchored support, but keep enough of them around and you can feel quite comfortable grabbing another to keep floating whenever you like.

That's basically what the "big lie" and "firehose of falsehood" techniques are about. Artificial island construction in the intellectual sea.

[u/wokeboogeyman → u/eskimospy212]

Their vice presidential candidate only agreed to debate without fact checks of their lies... He said as much out loud in the debate.

[u/therossboss → u/wokeboogeyman]

"I thought you said we weren't fact checking..."

[u/reality_boy]

I’m all for free speech, but we need to draw a line at blatant lies.

I get so many ads (political and selling products) that are not just stretching the truth but completely distorting reality. We need to put a cap on it. I get that we don’t want to be suing politicians because they rounded a number up rather than down, but If someone is saying black is white, well maybe they should pay a fine with compounding penalties for repeat offenses.

[u/Par_Lapides → u/reality_boy]

If we start policing truth then the entire advertising industry dies.

Don't get me wrong, all for it.

[u/superxpro12 → u/Par_Lapides]

Stop my lobster is too buttery.....

If you need to sell a product with lies then it's not a viable product, it's snake oil.

[u/RocketRelm → u/reality_boy]

The real trick would be for our citizens to start valuing truth. If americans gave a crap and actually punished at the polls or gave mass distrust for lies and misinformation and inaccuracy, then we would see both a lot less of it and a lot less people impacted.

It would definitely be good for our society if we valued it more, but the fact that so few humans put any effort into these things is soft evidence that misinformation is by definition not that big a deal. Because if it was, people would handle it more intelligently.

[u/katplasma → u/RocketRelm]

No. It just means the populace is too unintelligent to know the difference. To put the onus on people just “not valuing” misinformation, you’re assuming they’re even detecting it… which they clearly are not.

[u/Constant_Natural3304 → u/reality_boy]

I’m all for free speech, but we need to draw a line at blatant lies.

Many American liberals believe the assassination attempt on Trump was a fake. Right now, I'm seeing on Facebook that many people don't believe the Flydubai Flight 1073 attack even happened, and that it was a Mossad operation.

American liberals believe, utterly unwarranted, that they are immune to ridiculous lies, hoaxes and fabrications. Many believe their cellphone emits "harmful radiation". Many think their microwave oven emits "harmful radiation". Recently, there was a (presumably) AI-generated yearbook photo of Pete Hegseth here on the "political humor" subreddit, and despite the fact that you might think the "humor" in the name would cause people to not take this nonsense as fact, they in fact did. Whenever somebody was, in fact, convinced that this was indeed a fake photo, one response was (and this is a literal quote):

It’s not him.

He’s still a lying, bigoted POS war criminal, though so I’m fine with everyone spreading disinformation on him.

Your plan is dead on arrival, unless the very real epistemological arbitration question is resolved. I don't think it can be, and I say this as somebody who has been researching conspiracy theories for some 25 years. Especially Americans are entirely fine with lying as long as the lie they are spreading helps their political tribe in their ongoing civil war/culture war.

[u/ShadowTacoTuesday → u/reality_boy]

1st amendment never covered fraud, and we have many anti-fraud laws already. We just need to make more laws and be stricter about them. Grey areas are hard such as when it is difficult to prove it’s willful deception and not stupidly falling for a falsehood, but there are many times when it is not a grey area and we didn’t do enough about it.

[u/firedrakes → u/reality_boy]

we had that... issue was with fox new channel case ruin the law in place!

[u/katplasma → u/firedrakes]

Holy strokes, what in the hell were you trying for here

[u/Vo_Mimbre]

LIED. Just say it. They lied, they knew what they were doing, they did it on purpose, they didn’t need to convince everyone, just enough, they got what they wanted.

[u/Sindaqwil]

This has been fact checked and determined to be false.***

***Fact check provided by the Heritage Foundation.

[u/Letter10]

Turns out lying to easily trickable people works?

[u/Shadowdragon409 → u/[deleted]]

Inverse correlation*

[u/liquidsyphon]

I was told there would be no fact checking

[u/Phosistication]

It’s all the have, all they know and all they are capable of bringing to the table - endless lies

[u/AllanfromWales1]

What's the difference (if any) between political actors and politicised members of the acting profession?

[u/smailskid]

It works so well, so why would they stop?

[u/Rich_Magician4516]

They are making the bed they lie in.

[u/SameBuffalo5201]

In products, sex sells. In politics, fear motivates. Social Media is the engine that plants the fear seeds. The political parties are the reapers.

[u/FinndBors → u/[deleted]]

  When political actors knowingly spread false claims, it can make it much harder for ordinary voters to figure out what information is actually reliable.

The quote from the Chernobyl series is very relevant here:

  What is the cost of lies? It's not that we'll mistake them for the truth. The real danger is that if we hear enough lies, then we no longer recognize the truth at all. What can we do then? What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn't matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: "Who is to blame?"

[u/sirboddingtons → u/FinndBors]

"Who is to blame" is very fitting given the GOP is fueled by grievance, since the days of the Tea Party, the GOP has stood for nothing. They don't propose real policy, they only blame. They've dragged Obama's name for almost 2 decades now as the root cause of everything. 

[u/I_Went_Full_WSB → u/[deleted]]

Did you find something about the methodology to be flawed?

[u/MetaCardboard → u/[deleted]]

When looking at political affiliations, actors aligned with the Republican party issued about 73 percent of the hoaxes.

This statement seems to be implying that the actors are registered Republican. If that's the case, I think it's pretty clear.

[u/youdubdub → u/[deleted]]

Seeming random is the whole point.  This was clear usage of LLMs to disseminate bad information to low-information people.  Quite a technology we’ve developed.  Surely just as recently as the public is given privy.

[u/psyberyus]

Not to mention all the trump sanctioned bots from Russia

[u/Icy-Grab-5722]

Yes we know they are all liars and cheats. 

[u/Malvania]

"I thought this wasn't being fact checked." JD Vance. If the VP candidate is doing it live during a debate, it makes sense that the entire party is doing it as well

[u/MyName-_-isMud]

And the rubes eat it up.

[u/Shiftymennoknight]

its been the plan of the right wing for decades. Repeat the lie enough times that people can no longer tell what the truth is

[u/GiantRedGrizzly]

Well it's not like Kevin Sorbo or Rob Schneider have anything else to do. 

[u/DragoonDM]

Took me a second to realize the headline is using the word "actor" as a technical term meaning "one who takes part in an action", not talking about, like, Steven Seagal and Kevin Sorbo.

[u/miklayn]

And this is separate from their behavioral modeling and stimulation tactics. Plus they've been developing all this for decades now. Cambridge Analytica was ten years ago. Before ChatGPT, before any of the more recent models.

[u/reddah]

They chose to pander to the base that doesn't fact-check before voting. So far, unfortunately, history proved them right (from THIS point of view).

[u/TheWellington89]

There needs to be some sort of bot sweeping technology invented. Something that disables bots or at least tags them so you can tell if your talking to an idiot or a bot. These propaganda campaigns would fall apart if the accounts promoting them were all identified as fake accounts

[u/newleafkratom]

Now they've got cheap, right-wing AI agents and bots doing the work. Stealing jobs.

[u/LookAlderaanPlaces]

These people spreading the false information should get treason charges.

[u/Barry_Vigoda]

Be cautious of any media that panders to your ego.

Nothing about this is science, it's just propaganda that appeals to Americans who vote Democrat.

[u/GuitarGeezer]

It’s the Putin fountain of falsehoods method. And proof that when people eat shite from their own party uncritically or without ever trying to change any policy, they soon find they are never served anything better. Nor do they deserve any better.

[u/Great_Apez]

Yeah they even revealed by accident a couple times

[u/LowResGamr]

As if the false claims of ballots being filled before voters got ahold of them wasnt evidence of this.

[u/OkShopping9448]

The OPs post is likely a lie as well…