Moscow and Beijing use Internet trolls to manipulate social media in a way that is favorable to them and to harm the United States and other adversaries.
Beijing’s focus is largely inward and on controlling its population, while Russian trolls seek to influence foreign and domestic audiences.
The Russians have been adept at exploiting Western social media, successfully trolling using “chatbots,” computer programs that masquerade as participants in online discussions to automatically amplify and expand the reach of propaganda.
Both countries use democratic guarantees of freedom of speech to maximize their reach to Western audiences, including full-page ads in leading newspapers, or even full-length segments from news networks, actions that would have been unthinkable during the Cold War.
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