SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
On Tuesday, The Guardian posted an article about the US military pouring millions into researching how to become a Twitter-user-influencing, propaganda-spewing machine.
The program in question is known as Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC).
SMISC, which was announced in 2011, has been regarded as the means by which the US military can both detect and conduct propaganda campaigns via social media.
While DARPA's social media experiments well might have avoided breaking any law by using only publicly available data, some of its studies are sure to make people uncomfortable.
For example, some of the SMISC research has focused on the Occupy Wall Street protests and those in the Middle East, while other projects have analysed online memes and tweets from celebrities including Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga (described as "the most popular elite user on Twitter", according to The Guardian.
The manager of SMISC, Dr. Rand Waltzman, said in a post that understanding social media is just part of DARPA's "mission of preventing strategic surprise."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 12 2014, @05:51PM
Mods resisting the ability to confront a downmodder screams of sock puppet use on the part of the staff and users here by not allowing us to see who upmods or downmods us. Even registered users are telling you they don't mind that feature being put in as apk noted it http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2836&cid=67599 [soylentnews.org] so why resist it? We know why, I just said it, and it's so obvious! They won't answer how they would control sock puppets here either http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2836&threshold=0&commentsort=0&mode=improvedthreaded&pid=67588#67595 [soylentnews.org] since the only way to do it is to allow us to see patterns of downmod and upmod by particular accounts (and sock puppets are abused for that to no end on slashdot, so don't you think we know which end is up here too? Yes, we do. You're no better than /. here at all and are unwilling to change since it benefits you somehow, as in propogating an agenda of yours and using the downmod truncheon in lieu of conversation. Your mod staff still says apk's post is off topic here, how so? See here http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2813&cid=66810 [soylentnews.org] Tell us if it was off topic or not!Answer = it is not, and apk the article submitter here today wrote that, and it is on topic, no questions asked. He asked them to review it, as I have yourself, and he complained how nothing was done there and apk is on topic right from that posts' outset yet rated off topic with examples of female illogic all thru his replies.