alt Hacker NewsMakes sense. Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK.
It seems to me most social platforms (not just big tech, smaller UGC sections like the BBC) have many puppet accounts that are triggered by certain content.
Anecdotally looking at BBC comment sections of Scottish content, the "highest rated" comments are almost unilaterally pro-British/anti Scottish National Party which deviates a long way from historical voting preferences. The SNP have performed very well in Scottish and Westminster elections and the weakest barometer for them is/was the 45%/55% vote split in the Scottish independence referendum 12 years ago. I think if anyone took a "sentiment score" of what's there vs how people generally think or behave there'd be a large deviance.
More generally, any platform seems to have systemised abuse and this pattern goes all the way back to generic content management systems being abused in the early 2000s.
I do wonder, are these accounts being accessed via proxy? i.e. someone claiming to be from the UK and having a residential IP- if the platform doesn't care about the location of access, maybe start checking for latency?
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The SNP have won a lot of seats through the voting system because the other parties split the non-independence vote. The SNP have never had a majority of votes, even with an overwhelming majority of parliamentary seats.
> Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK.
Famously, Alex Salmond (at the time, the leader of the Scottish National Party) was given a regular programme on Russia Today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alex_Salmond_Show
Say what you want about Scottish independence (its for the Scots to decide), but a break up of the UK would serve Kremlin interests no end.
A survey of online posts is usually not representative of a population at large, either within the online community or the society as a whole. There are so many biasing and selection effects at work, even before talking about anything deliberate which is probably also going on.
Presumably BBC comments also contain comments from English people who might not follow the same 45/55 split on Scottish indeoendence as Scottish people do?
The problem with this argument is that it is very simplistic.
And a very simple way of de-legitimising any anti-establishment position, and protecting the status quo.
We can look at independence movements in Europe, Brexit, Trump, republicanism in the UK, any sort of heterodox economic or foreign policy.
Even if you disagree with these positions, it is helpful to you to steelman your position and your arguments. And just dismissing them as Putin's work drops you into a trap. It's arguably one reason why Trump got re-elected. People spent his entire first term assuming he'd be exposed in some complicated Russian plot and put in jail; rather than thinking hard about why he got elected in the first place. Same thing happened to some degree with the Brexit vote.
Assuming everyone on a BBC comment section is from the UK, that's 90% not Scottish and 10% Scottish
In 2024 the SNP got 30% of the vote, the big unionist parties having more than 2 votes for every 1 nationalist.
>Makes sense. Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK.
Do they? Since Independent Scotland is very likely to rejoin EU it seems to me Russia & co would be interested in keeping it on the sinking ship that is post-brexit UK(economy wise).
> Russia and friends would seem to have an interest in Scottish independence as it undermines the UK.
But so do Scottish people.