TheSoul Publishing

[alien42]

a few weeks ago i was curious as to what the most popular YouTube channels were and came across the fourth most subscribed channel, 5-Minute Crafts with 63 Million subscribers. the videos aren't really of my interest but i have seen the same style of video ads on various websites. i also noticed the same company had a lot of highly subscribed and heavily viewed channels. my thought at the time was that some relatively small company was making bank on YouTube and i didn't put any more thought into it.

thanks to tonight's Rachel Maddow Show i now know that TheSoul Publishing is the 3rd largest presence on YouTube and Facebook behind Disney and Warner Bros. according to their website they have more than 250 Million FB followers and 300 Million YT subscribers and their YT channels have all been created in the past 3 years. not only are they a Russian company run out of Cyprus but they are now publishing Russian propaganda videos. they have essentially built a massive global network with access to hundreds of Millions of people around the world based on innocuous videos with the ability to change the content whenever and however they please.

Lawfare published this article two days ago - https://www.lawfareblog.com/biggest-social-media-operation-youve-never-heard-run-out-cyprus-russians

Forbes published this article two years ago - https://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrap...ews-outfits-get-billions-of-hits-on-facebook/

anyone else think this will all be tied back to Putin and the Kremlin, maybe even lead to White House connections?

 

[sandorski]

I have noticed strange coming and goings of "News" related channels. Been going on for a few years now. Usually with some awkward name containing 30+ minutes of snippets of actual News sources vaguely related to some overstated Clickbaity title.

 

[soulcougher73]

All of human intelligence is on the internet and it's just making us dumber it seems. Too easy to manipulate us.

 

[pmv]

That is quite, quite bizarre.

It's unnervingly peculiar. Makes me wonder whether it's something really clever or just bonkers.

Clearly there's pro-Russian propaganda in there, but the high proportion of apolitical oddness, and the crudeness of the propaganda bits (Krushchev gave Alaska to the US?? Russia's going to eventually absorb China and India and all of Europe bar the UK and Ireland?) makes it all so surreal I find myself wondering if there's some brilliant psychological manipulation in there that I can't see. Or is it just a patriotic Russian who's also a bit mad?

Of course that's assuming the linked articles are themselves genuine! Increasingly I don't know what to believe any more.

 

[whm1974]

That is quite, quite bizarre.

It's unnervingly peculiar. Makes me wonder whether it's something really clever or just bonkers.

Clearly there's pro-Russian propaganda in there, but the high proportion of apolitical oddness, and the crudeness of the propaganda bits (Krushchev gave Alaska to the US?? Russia's going to eventually absorb China and India and all of Europe bar the UK and Ireland?) makes it all so surreal I find myself wondering if there's some brilliant psychological manipulation in there that I can't see. Or is it just a patriotic Russian who's also a bit mad?

Of course that's assuming the linked articles are themselves genuine! Increasingly I don't know what to believe any more.

A little bit strange considering that the sale of Alaska by the Russians to the US happen well before Krushchev and the Soviet Union. For that matter well before the 20th century.