Bloomberg is covering a report from the Institute for the Future (IFTF) on an attempt to describe the phenomenon of state-sponsored trolling from a qualitative and quantitative standpoint. While partially conflating trolling with astroturfing in the body of the report, the IFTF defines online trolling as deliberately targeting an individual for "hate" and harassment. Since it is only occasionally possible to attribute the attacks, the IFTF's aim with the report is to empower individuals, researchers, and policy makers to spot the phenomenon in the wild and at least attempt to combat it.
The report itself is entitled, State-Sponsored Trolling: How Governments Are Deploying Disinformation as Part of Broader Digital Harassment Campaigns (warning for PDF)
Ed: How accurate does the report appear to be and are the suggested countermeasures harmful or helpful or both?
(Score: 1) by exaeta on Friday July 27 2018, @12:46AM
I don't really see any state sponsored trolling from the United States. Looks like Trump was being a dick, but that's all. (I mean, maybe he's trolling, but I wouldn't call it "state-sponsored" just because he's the president.)
And here's my problem with the lefties bitching about this, we have bigger problems and there is NOTHING we can do about this because of the First Amendment. Which, mind you, I don't support repealing. There is no non-Orwellian solution to this problem, so we should trash this stupid conversation about "fake news" already.
The Government is a Bird