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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) by Gravis on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:23AM

    by Gravis (4596) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:23AM (#337251)

    advertising is propaganda because they only show to good side of what you are promoting and leave out the nasty bits that people would really care about. full on psychological warfare is the natural evolutionary progression of propaganda because they are tearing down the opposition with half-truths and when they can get away with it, outright lies.

    so now that we have identified it, the question is what can be done about it. i think the answer lies in automation to rapidly identify and expose accounts created for the express purpose of psyops. labelling every post they make seconds after it's made will start to make waves and may lead to the host network terminating accounts for possible ToS violations.

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  • (Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 26 2016, @08:14PM

    by khallow (3766) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 26 2016, @08:14PM (#337613) Journal

    so now that we have identified it, the question is what can be done about it. i think the answer lies in automation to rapidly identify and expose accounts created for the express purpose of psyops. labelling every post they make seconds after it's made will start to make waves and may lead to the host network terminating accounts for possible ToS violations.

    I think instead a delayed response combined with retroactive labeling of postings would be more strategic. If you act promptly, then propaganda efforts would have fast feedback on how to defeat your measures. But if it happens much later, then they might not know what triggered the response. It also gives you more time to collect data so that you can have a stronger justification for the response.