It was so prevalent Facebook actually made a tool to identify it in 2017.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/22/facebook-tool-russia-troll-army-internet-research-agency

I actually have driven by a sign for it, yes, when I went through Kentucky, and it’s bizarre. And absolutely there are American oligarchs funding this, that’s why the book Dark Money is so good. Hell, American millionaire William Regnery openly funded Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute (https://calgary.citynews.ca/2021/07/17/william-regnery-who-funded-right-wing-extremism-dies-at-80/), and John Tanton has created the anti immigrant network the Tanton network (https://www.splcenter.org/resources/extremist-files/john-tanton/). Literally funding racists in the US. The Koch brothers fund a great deal of dark money activity.

And yes, absolutely people will spread health disinformation of their own accord, but it was a deliberate pattern across Livejournal in those days. That’s all I can say. Here is an article from a few years ago about how Russian trolls were so prevalent that Facebook made a tool to identify that you had liked Russian troll content, in which Brooke is quoted. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/dec/22/facebook-tool-russia-troll-army-internet-research-agency

Don’t think this tool exists anymore. But that’s how prevalent it is.

Ok, I don’t want to argue, and I’m sorry I don’t have more links. I really do recommend the podcast as it’s excellent in general. I trust Brooke with my life and everything disinformation related and I believe her. I was on Livejournal in those days and I can say that scary things happened because of the crunchy mom shit that seemed to originate from there. I don’t want to fight with you, and if you think differently that’s fine, I’m not against changing my mind or anything. This is a pretty good study though on the phenomenon of Russian trolls as well on vaccine disinformation that does prove the point that they do this.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6137759/?ref=quillette.com

Regarding Russian funding these things, dark money is a powerful thing. Honestly it’s so crazy to read about. The country being poor doesn’t mean that Russian wealthy people don’t fund disinformation. This is an article on Russian oligarchs and their dark money, about 1 trillion, hidden abroad.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-60608282

The best place to learn more about the early days of Russian weaponized disinformation on Livejournal is this podcast: https://soundcloud.com/replyall/100-friends-and-blasphemers

Re the shampoo and other crunchy shit, this is stuff my weaponized disinformation expert friend Brooke Binkowski and I have talked about extensively because we both used the site. Her professional opinion is that this was the early thought experiment stuff the Russians did to see what westerners would buy into, they dipped their toes into it with the crunchy mom stuff, and it really took off. This was later well documented. So some of this is just a professional’s opinion, but if you were there and saw it, you’d know is all I can say. I realize this isn’t the most satisfying answer, but see this article because Russian weaponized disinformation for vaccines is well documented.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-45294192

I don’t think I’m saying that at all, just that this is where it stems from and that Republicans and their supporters have glommed onto it. Obviously I’m saying it’s multifaceted.

It’s a global far right power grab fueled by money from Russia using weaponized disinformation. It’s been going on for decades at a smaller scale before Facebook, etc, even existed. It’s also fueled by conservative dark money groups funded by conservative billionaires. You should read the book Dark Money, I highly recommend it.

Even the antivax stuff is from Russia and it way predates the big platforms. It was started in the crunchy mom communities on Livejournal, where they first experimented with seeing if westerners would glom on to weird mommy trends like not using shampoo, nursing your kids to ridiculous ages, “unassisted birth”, which is where people deliver babies without any medical care at all, “unschooling”, etc. That took off in a big way and then they began with the antivax stuff, and used Livejournal as a tool of Russian government propaganda.

Then they started funding white supremacist groups, and the groups like the yellow vests, Moms for Liberty, etc. Really recommend learning about dark money and Russian weaponized disinformation.

How could you get a better name than this?

They’re actually an environmental nightmare. It takes 10000 pounds of rose petals to make a single pound of rose oil, for example. They are poisonous to aquatic life and house pets, flammable, lavender and tea tree oils are endocrine disruptors. I don’t know what problems you think they solve, but I only ever used peppermint oil when I worked in ER and someone rolled in who had shit their pants, a couple of drops inside a mask and you can continue working without throwing up.

I use Boost and it has ads. But they’re ignorable as a banner here and there, not constantly. I can live with that.