“According to FEC filings, the Synapse Group has worked for Republican Governor Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who ran for the GOP presidential nomination this cycle, as well as GOP candidates for Congress. Synapse has also been paid hundreds of thousands of dollars for field and canvassing work by America PAC, the outside spending group started by allies of Musk that has spent millions of dollars this election cycle to boost Trump and oppose Democrats.”
With all the news about the Russian campaign with influencers, I had to wonder if the Feds are even aware enough of the Fediverse to even begin to look at what’s happening here. We certainly know state sponsored misinformation campaigns are active and in place and targeting folks who are disaffected for a variety of reasons, so if Russia and China had networks specifically targeting various corners of the Fediverse, I wouldn’t be surprised at all. Theoretically we’re a much richer ground for them than corpo-sponsored sites filled with normies (which we now have proof they’re already active with).
In an election where the margin of victory in some states will be on the scale of a few thousand (or maybe even hundreds), it would seem a likely strategy.
Yeah I definitely think you are onto something. The audience is much smaller but the advantage is that a lot of people here really are so left they despise Democrats and would probably be easier to convince not to vote than your typical Democratic voter. Trolling campaigns here would have a much more concentrated target audience. They already know they don’t need to convince conservatives on mainstream social media.