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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.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jmorris on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:20AM
Yes the spammy aspect pisses me off. But after fighting the spam wars for two decades now I understand that it was our (our being we UNIXheads who designed this crap) fault for assuming things about human nature that are self evidently not true. In my forebearers (I don't date to the beforetime of ARPANET) defense, the original design was for a network populated by reasonable adults with fairly reliable audit trails between posting accounts and real people with real jobs they didn't want to lose by abusing the network.
We have to take seriously the task of redesigning the Internet assuming everyone is hostile until proven otherwise. That includes assuming anonymous (or disposable account) forum posters are paid shills. As someone with controversial views (understatement, right?) I can sympathize with those who are afraid to post with a real name. But we can probably think up a persistent yet anonymized way to post with history and reputation. A VPN and a Gmail account get you most of the way there now unless you are resisting a 1st world nation state actor.
I hate Mrs. Clinton with the fury of an exploding Sun (and her asshole rapist husband too) but I can't bring myself to single her out for additional hate or abuse over this issue because it is a certainty that if the other candidates aren't doing likewise yet it we can assume they all will be up to speed by the general and all future cycles. They spend hundreds of millions of dollars massaging their coverage in print and TV, a million or two for social media and net fora is chump change.
Don't hate the player, hate the game. Change the rules if you don't like the way the players are taking advantage of the current rules.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 26 2016, @03:52AM
Oh I agree 110% we need to change the Internet, I was one of the first to argue that browsers in their current form are fucking retarded and about the worst possible way you could design a system for displaying information. I mean just accepting code from bumfuckistan on some server, code that can change at any second, and by default just treating that as safe and running it? It makes the shit we had to deal with in the 90s like BonziBuddy and Comet Cursors look like the pinnacle of security!
But until we have something better up and running we really need to protect what we have because if we don't? If the PTBs have their way the net will become a combination of Pravda, the STASI, and the Home Shopping Channel. And frankly it won't take much to fight back against this, if someone started showing up to Hillary rallies asking "Do you know PACs are paying trolls to slander in your name and stop discussion of the issues?" and posters online just keep hammering this home on every pro Hillary article and vid? Then we CAN force the issue.
But we have zero hope of changing anything if we just sit back and passively let them have it, after all that is the entire point of professional astroturfing and crapflooding, to signaljam the channels with so much noise that everybody gives up. And sadly if we don't fight back against this it has real world consequences, just look at how many people still believe that Iraq had anything to do with 9/11. If we don't fight back then they get to control popular opinion, bury dissent with noise, and basically steer the entire country any way they please.
What we have now isn't great, came from a bunch of pants on head dumbshit design choices, but its honestly all we have anymore that isn't 100% controlled by corporate interests and for that reason alone its worth fighting for.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 5, Informative) by jmorris on Tuesday April 26 2016, @04:28AM
If the PTBs have their way the net will become a combination of Pravda, the STASI, and the Home Shopping Channel.
Have you looked at the Internet in the last year? Look as a normie sees it, make a fresh VM, browse with the shields down and start at Yahoo!, Bing or some other lame ass start page for normals.
if someone started showing up to Hillary rallies asking
She has admitted to multiple felonies[1] in the email caper, the Clinton Foundation is transparently a money laundering shop and there are dead bodies pretty much anywhere you look in the history of the Clintons and Bill has abused at least as many women as Bill Cosby. Her supporters know all of these facts and are not voting for her in spite of those crimes. They are voting for her -because- of them; they demonstrate the ruthless lust for power and the willingness to do absolutely anything in service to the Party that they seek in a leader. Do you seriously believe learning that she has paid trolls operating on the Internet would be the final offense they couldn't abide?
[1] Since one of her troll shills will probably dispute the fact, I will go ahead and back it up now. Operating a mail server outside government control is a violation of the records retention laws (no FOIA possible, no historical record, etc.) Receiving classified material on that system and not reporting it as a security breach is itself a crime. Sending classified material over her system is obviously a crime and she turned over the email archives proving that herself. Ordering staff to remove classified markings so they could be sent to her mailbox is a crime, as was actually obeying that order a crime for the minions. She sent material not marked classified later deemed to have been classified, and as knowing the rules and correctly marking classified material is a duty of her office, she is criminally liable for the failure. Retaining the records after leaving office, both classified and even a lot of the normal traffic, is a crime. She destroyed records, which is of course another crime. She will of course not be indicted for any of it because our government is utterly corrupt.
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday April 26 2016, @10:23AM
Dude I'm from Bill's home state, we know ALL about the bodies...but how many of the general public know? Again this is PsyOps 101, keep nasty questions out of the mainstream as much as possible and use words like "nutter" and "conspiracy theory" to cover up the few that slip out...but the nice thing about the Internet is you can get a groundswell going with frankly very little effort. As much as I hate the org I have to give that 15 year old girl with BLM credit, by simply bringing up her "brought to heel" comments on camera she forced the issue into the limelight and its frankly STILL going, just a couple weeks back Bill was on camera trying to defend her remarks because others picked it up and REFUSE to let it die!
Maybe its because I'm a child of the 70s, when we saw a US president toppled by people refusing to accept his corruption and illegal acts, but I've seen enough these past few years to know that we don't HAVE to buy the bullshit, we don't HAVE to accept the lies they are pushing as truth, but it requires actually fighting back and refusing to let them control the conversations!
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Wednesday April 27 2016, @04:54AM
The current problem is that frequently the "groundswell" itself was astroturfed. A great many "activists" do it for a living. At this point there's no good way to distinguish. My solution is to regard "groundswells" with the same suspicion as any other "movement" until I'm completely sure who and what motivations are behind it.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 26 2016, @01:16PM
It's more accurate to characterize the Clinton Foundation as an influence laundering shop. Rich "Friends of Bill" give the operation a chunk of money, say $40 million. Bill creates an "Initiative" to use that money to "help" people somewhere, in some way. Maybe $10K of that $40 million goes to buy some kids in Haiti some backpacks. The rest goes to salaries for the friends and family of other Friends of Bill who need to pad out their resumes in some way, operating expenses for the rest of the "Foundation," and fees paid to consulting companies run by Friends of Bill.
The donor gets access to Bill Clinton's rolodex of Friends of Bill and PR value of co-founding a philanthropic venture with Bill Clinton. That latter part is particularly attractive if you're a heinous mofo from the 3rd world. That access, in turn, results in favorable legislation/trade deals, government contracts, etc.
No money actually goes directly through the Foundation to Bill or Hillary Clinton's pockets. They make their money from honoraria for speeches. Those $250K speeches Hillary gave to Goldman Sachs? That is the form that kickbacks take, but that's a direct transaction between the company and the Clintons.
By the way, the whole scheme is not of the Clinton's making. Their pal, Vernon Jordan came up with it.
Yes, she committed multiple felonies. She must go to jail. The email server episode demonstrates how inept she is when it comes to technology and law. Her decision to set it up in the first place was entirely political. She wanted to control the narrative of what was said about her stint as Secretary of State when it came time to run for President again. A private email server has a much different discovery process than a government server. I would not be surprised if she had incriminating messages on that server wherein she was peddling influence, or at least setting up the in-person meeting when she said the really good stuff.
The million dollar question is, will the FBI prosecute her? It is rather a litmus test for the Rule of Law in the United States at this point. Do they let a brazen felon into the Whitehouse? If they do, then We the People will have final confirmation of what we have long suspected, and increasingly know.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday April 26 2016, @04:58AM
People keep ignoring a simple fact [youtube.com].
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday April 26 2016, @06:55AM
You forgot copyright violations.... often, but not always, involving porn. But that is history, now the Internet is for Netflix.
(Score: 2, Funny) by c0lo on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:03AM
Copyright violations?
"What's taters, precious?"
I can only see fair use... as in: if it's on the internet, it's fair game; the information wants to be free anyway.
(grin)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:09AM
Yea well... don't even. Folks knew what they were doing. I herded a Usenet server and the canonical newsgroup descriptions for most of the alt.binary.* groups began with "Copyright violations involving...."
Good times.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Tuesday April 26 2016, @05:39PM
I think you need to give credit to where this really comes from. The WoW cover of it is fun, but Avenue Q is hilarious, this is another one they did that I stumbled on a while back before I knew where the WoW song came from. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RovF1zsDoeM [youtube.com]
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 27 2016, @05:35AM
Some of us just don't like having to maintain accounts with every website and/or someone being able to track down everything we've ever said on the net.
Don't go claiming you verify every poster of every post you read. You don't know a throwaway account just by looking at the user name and shills can post meaningful posts to build up their reputations before shilling for their company. I could create an account, post this exact same message as not an AC, and some people will view it with much more weight than they view it now. Some of us know that's bullshit and don't bother creating accounts. I'm not interested in playing social games. I don't need friends to follow me. Each of my posts stand on their own. Accounts can be sold or hacked at any time too. You never know who is posting something even with user names.