I’m pretty convinced that Livejournal was Russia’s test bed for weaponizing social media. I think they used it against their own citizens first, and data-mined the English-speaking side to understand how it worked, and took what they learned to perfect the shit-storm of lies on modern social media (on Tumblr/Twitter/Reddit/everywhere.)
Reddit (this is repetitive and has happened before with LiveJournal) (lemmy.world)
Does anyone remember the livejournal? How it was sold to the SUP and the arrests and harassment of participants for free speech began in Russia?