I tried to look through a lot of cases. It seemed like most every case was leaking information, threats of actual violence, stolen valor, or other generally agreed upon crimes. There’s truth to the notion that a government is more likely to look for crimes if you’re a specific person, but I don’t know of anyone in the modern US who goes to jail for lying about things the army has done. I use the word “lying” because Russia courts make the claim that that’s what happened here.

Also, there are more recent cases of Russia imprisoning someone for essentially this same crime.

I read the previous comment. I tried to find a source they would prefer.

If you need a Russian source:

https://newizv.ru/news/2023-08-30/sud-v-peterburge-prigovoril-aktivistku-olgu-smirnovu-k-shesti-godam-za-feyki-ob-armii-418023

It’s interesting that they include phone brands like MobiWire and Blackberry, but not Google.

You can’t easily beat volume. I think people like to compare this to Digg’s death, but the Internet was much smaller back then and how many normal people even knew about Digg?

Official news outlets are sort of forced to call it by its official name. I feel like Western society has sort of agreed to that general rule.

Terrible luck, but she’ll have the wildest story for her friends.

I haven’t experienced this.

Unfortunately, there’s no real way for any of us to know if it’s actually happening organically.