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posted by takyon on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:11AM   Printer-friendly
from the just-my-hundred-million-cents dept.

Current Affairs published an in-depth editorial on recent revelations about a $1 million astroturfng campaign by Correct the Record:

Astroturfing makes me angry. It should make you angry. It should make you fucking well see red. It's marketing evolved into something incredibly scary, sophisticated, and evil. It's essentially thought warfare, or psychological warfare, which takes away much of what was supposed to make the internet a new and beautiful frontier of communication. Worse yet, if you actually identify and approach these operatives, they'll gaslight you and deny that they are such an operative. These are people who are paid to psychologically abuse you. Do you get this? It's an ugly and evil thing, and not only does it take away our ability to take information and fact at face value, but it takes away our ability to take opinions, feelings, and personal stances at face value as sincere and legitimate.

takyon: For some additional context, "Hillary-supporting super PAC invests $1 million to hit back at online Clinton critics":

Correct the Record, a super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton's bid to become US president, has promised to invest more than $1 million to respond to users criticizing its candidate on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, and other social media services. The super PAC says its new "Barrier Breakers digital task force" will to respond "quickly and forcefully to negative attacks and false narratives found online," in addition to thanking major supporters and "committed superdelegates" directly.


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  • (Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:38AM

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:38AM (#337216)

    This is the same story [soylentnews.org] from a couple of days ago.

    The only new information is reference to one reddit user complaining they got spammed via private messages. Which isn't even what this superpac is claiming to do - they want to publicly rebut unflattering posts about clinton. Is it really easier to blame a superpac than to believe that clinton does not have a ton of fans who are also internet assholes?

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:58AM

    by Scruffy Beard 2 (6030) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:58AM (#337295)

    It was new to me.

    When I posted this on another forum, I was linked to this reddit thread:
    Bernie Groups are GONE from Facebook!!!! URGENT! [reddit.com]

    • (Score: 2) by butthurt on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:00AM

      by butthurt (6141) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:00AM (#337335) Journal

      At a developer conference, the CEO of Facebook spoke of "fearful voices calling for building walls and distancing people they label as ‘others'." Employees of the company voted to ask him “What responsibility does Facebook have to help prevent President Trump in 2017?”

      http://gizmodo.com/facebook-employees-asked-mark-zuckerberg-if-they-should-1771012990 [gizmodo.com]

      • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @10:28AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @10:28AM (#337403)

        And, as the link shows, all the groups were restored within hours.

        So you are left with two choices:
        (1) Enough internet assholes flagged the groups and facebook's automated systems took them offline as a precaution and then queued them up for a human to investigate. Unlikely because that has never happened before on the internet.

        (2) Facebook is so absurdly partisan that they deliberately took down a bunch of high profile groups and then restored them a few hours later after the realized they couldn't get away with it. Totally likely because, despite zuckerberg saying they would not play partisan games they totally do not understand the streisand effect and their fascism got the better of them.