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There is no hell - if we want them to ever face some kind of punishment for their actions, we’re gonna have to do it ourselves…

More black bars than New Orleans…

In a broad sense sure, and that’s a great reason to use a VPN (especially if you listen to VPN ads on youtube)!

It really isn’t a good reason in this example, though. At least, not as an explanation for setting your location to be outside of the US. Use of a VPN is identifiable (unless you set it up yourself, which isn’t anonymous) so it will make no difference where you’re located if the authoritarian government you’re supporting gets replaced with an even more authoritarian one that decides to prosecute people being mean to them online, and it can only serve to incriminate you if the data ever gets leaked (like what happened here).

Generally this is true, but within the scope of this hypothetical it doesn’t really change that this fundementally doesn’t make sense.

No the troll kingdom has been at war with the lizard cabal for centuries, I’m very careful to never confuse the two groups.

Seriously though I don’t think you’re trolling, I just think this question is kinda dumb. While there are reasons to use a VPN yes, you have yet to present a reason for why a huge number of legit US-based maga-influencer VPN users would want to set their location to something other than the US instead of just using a US node, which would be both faster and less suspicious.

It’s just silly to think they’d be doing that, there legitimately isn’t a reason to pay money to do a less convincing job (unless this is a false flag)

It’s also possible that this is all being orchestrated by the lizard cabal (prove me wrong, I dare you) but hopefully we can agree that our time is going to be much better spent discussing things that are actually likely instead of what the lizard pope might be planning next.

An unironic use of “just asking questions”, dang.

And so is tweeting about a fire while in a crowded theater, but defamation/libel are famously hard to even show standing for, let alone prosecute. And they (oversimplifying) generally do not apply to speech critical of a public figure, which is why we can say things like “Stephen miller is a collective of sentient bugs stuffed into a skin suit made from stitched-together horse foreskins that’s embezzling millions of dollars that he then spends on underage sheep and recreational bidets” without worrying about legal repercussions.

Commercial VPN services aren’t particularly cheap.

Hold you accountable for what? Nothing being done here is remotely illegal. I shill hard for my political beliefs and Warl0k3 isn’t my real name, how is what they’re doing (if they were really from the US) any different?

As for a foreign group using VPNs, why bother? This information hasn’t ever been reported before, and any investigation into it is both unlikely under the current administration and has the resources to blow thru any cheap VPN you might be using for large scale commerical work like this. And even if that happens, nothing will happen to you. So why spend the money?

But why use a VPN to appear from outside the country? Why not just use a VPN node within the US, so it’s not obviously russian but still obscures your location? For that matter MAGA, who they’re supporting, currently is in power and in the US there’s nothing illegal about posting vile political rhetoric online. So there’s no reason to not simply make up usernames and create a bunch of twitter accounts. You’d save a great deal of money and make yourself appear a great deal more credible if you just made yourself appear as though you were in the US, not in countries known for having whole industries centered around online astroturfing services.

As in, could they be using VPNs so they appear to be from outside the US, but actually aren’t?

… I mean I guess? But that seems like an expensive way to make yourself less credible.

It’s depressingly predictable that this article doesn’t talk at all about the push to restore the Brazilian military presence in Ecuador. That was a huge aspect of the national discourse around this topic that is strangely ignored in pretty much all the english-language reporting on this issue. It feels very much like this was written not to celebrate the victory for Ecuadorian independence, but to claim a loss for the US on a topic I do not know if a single major american news outlet has even mentioned. Most people in the US can’t find Ecuador on a map, the trump officials doubtlessly included. It’s a damn miracle Kristi Noem managed to land in the right country.

There was little real push from the US to even allow bases again, which is part of why this failed so spectacularly - nobody, noem seemingly included, is entirely clear on why Noboa was so heavily invested in getting the US back except because it was the only way he could see to signal his allegiance to trump. It was just extremely odd all around, and a spectacular demonstration that Noboa and his far right cronies have no idea what the hell they’re doing.

It is a mall, being a broad street lined with shops and a promenade (though not wholly closed to traffic), but it’s not a classic “shopping mall” as the term is most commonly used in the US (that being a massive temple complex built to honor consumerism and featuring some very bad food). Which makes it even more patently absurd for trump to want to send troops to defend what is essentially just… a street.

(note that trump never actually calls it a mall, he describes it as a “Shopping Center”, adding to my annoyance over this headline…)

According to the article, he’s talking about Magnificent Mile (which is apparently more of a street with stores on it than a classic shopping mall, just to add to the weirdness of him offering to deploy the military to defend it)

I haven’t accused you of anything.

I’ve repeatedly explained my reasoning and position.

And now you’re trying cheap bait and personal attacks. Charming.

Ah, so now we’re pivoting from discussing my actual criticism of the article and how it spawns meaningless discussions to… another meaningless discussion, but this time with random gatekeeping thrown in.

Not exactly sure what your point is but okay.

Was this in any way consequential? Does this show any evidence of anything besides mispeaking? Wait no don’t answer that, I spectacularly don’t care. Instead of talking about something that actually matters you’re starting to drag us both into a debate about the evidentiary value of an old guy briefly mixing up two names that both start with ‘m’.

Isn’t, just maybe, that he’s trying to get troops deployed in US soil once again perhaps a little more important to discuss? But somehow that’s getting overshadowed by your eagerness to spar over the meaningless bullshit I’m criticizing, in a perfect example of my entire godsdamned point.