Most of these sites already moderate with a pretty heavy hand - they just refuse to do so against an overwhelming propaganda operation with real-world consequences.
I've had comments removed from news sites for questioning the provenance of a photograph or the credibility of a source, but these trolls spew racist tirades, call for World War 3 against the West on Western media news sites, and are left alone. It's insane.
It would be one thing if these sites were ordinarily free-for-alls, but mostly they're moderated up the ass - just not when the offender is a Kremlin troll spamming totalitarian propaganda through six dozen sockpuppet names simultaneously for the past four months.
Unless these sites are simply being overwhelmed, and have for some reason done nothing about it for months, I'm hard-pressed to come up with explanations that don't involve caving to undisclosed threats or accepting bribes. Maybe a handful of the people who run those systems could be so delusional as to think they're somehow standing up for free speech by tolerating overwhelming floods of government spam from a fascist state, but it's just too widespread.
This is not normal. If they did the same thing in the flesh, it would be akin to a team of Russian information officers showing up in every town in Western civilization to blare propaganda from loudspeakers 24/7.
= new reply since forum marked as read