It exercises the immune system against the ever flowing rubbish that is so much of the Internet, Press, Politician bit dribble...
In this case it was so very obvious that it wasn't that useful. I'd be happy to see it still there to give me a laugh.
Also a bit insulting, these guys seem to assume that I'm a weak minded fool who will get taken in by this obvious nonsense.
You may not be a weak minded fool, there surely are SOME people who are who will be genuinely moved by the now-banned content. Those people will then repeat credulously an idea, making it easier for folks who know better to repeat an idea. That's generally how propaganda starts. Eventually it becomes unquestionable.
Consider "Loose lips sink ships" or "Uncle Sam Wants YOU" Those are both classic propaganda lines and neither is promoting a falsehood.
I agree with this and these are good examples of what I was talking about.
I was responding specifically to the propaganda at hand and MikeGale's comment, "Also a bit insulting, these guys seem to assume that I'm a weak minded fool who will get taken in by this obvious nonsense."
It doesn't matter whether you're selling a product, a service or an agenda. The mechanics are the same, only the labels we assign them differ.
Creating false grassroots support for your product? Astroturfing. Creating false grassroots support for your agenda? Sockpuppeting.
An early episode of Motherboard's otherwise mediocre podcast "CYBER" did an interview with Gruqg.[1] That episode has an incredible amount of material about the nature of propaganda and modern information warfare. It's 40+ minutes, and well worth the time spent.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_public_relations
1: https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qv7wmv/former-exploit-bro... [warning: stupid consent modal; find the episode in podcast search instead]