Let's put aside freedom of speech and Meta v China for a moment:
Has anyone suspected foreign interference in our social media during the height of the culture wars in the last decade? We had people encouraging civil unrest on the Left (whenever there was some police shooting or event where racism was suspected), and we had people encouraging civil unrest on the right (an immigrant committed a crime, or similar). We had puppet trolls in Twitter, Facebook, Reddit etc.
Russia and the United States have been doing this to each other - stirring civil unrest with propaganda - since the 1950s. It's an old war.
Does that not merit consideration in this conversation?
I think it does, but you make it sound like it's a symmetric information war. It's not.
From your examples de difference is that we've witnessed police brutality in the us with countless examples of excessive force (the hood and the knee to the throat are example. Whereas the same cannot be said for immigrants, first because I think it's an opinion that wins votes for these anti-stablishment ultra right wing, second because it's totally different to compare immigrants and the police as an institution.
You completely missed the point. The point is that there appear to be foreign actors encouraging divisions in the American population. The point was definitely not, this side is naughty and that other side is wholesome, or vice-versa, or they're equal, and let's debate. Nope, let's not debate that please.
If it's that then it's even worse. There surely are powers dividing Americans but the biggest threat isn't foreign. It's internal, slowly manipulating public opinion to trap the country into an oligarchy.
I am aware of the irony here. I'm Brazillian and the vice president based his entire campaign on the false threat of an internal actor distabilizing the country, in this case the communists. It's the same thing in US but it's a foreign actor to blame. Curious how the narrative always fits the agenda.
Rule of thumb, if the political geist points one way the problem most likely lies in the opposite way.
I think there is a weakness in our societies that can be exposed by foreign actors via social media.
Just because of your Brazilian example of fake (who knows) internal threats, doesn't mean what I just said in this thread is fake:
"Update: After this story published, Facebook took down two of the five troll-farm pages we identified.
In the run-up to the 2020 election, the most highly contested in US history, Facebook’s most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were being run by Eastern European troll farms. These pages were part of a larger network that collectively reached nearly half of all Americans, according to an internal company report, and achieved that reach not through user choice but primarily as a result of Facebook’s own platform design and engagement-hungry algorithm."
Has anyone suspected foreign interference in our social media during the height of the culture wars in the last decade? We had people encouraging civil unrest on the Left (whenever there was some police shooting or event where racism was suspected), and we had people encouraging civil unrest on the right (an immigrant committed a crime, or similar). We had puppet trolls in Twitter, Facebook, Reddit etc.
Russia and the United States have been doing this to each other - stirring civil unrest with propaganda - since the 1950s. It's an old war.
Does that not merit consideration in this conversation?