SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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: 3, Interesting) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:13PM
I think "SJW" and "libtard" are codewords meant to signal like-minded people. In conversation you'd drop those terms and see if your interlocutors echoed them before you'd feel safe to tell a Jewish joke, or say something else non-PC. It's a common practice among people who express categorical hatred, but don't want to get called out for it.
I think it's a pointless practice, because it doesn't fool anyone, not the people they're afraid will call them out for it, and not them, themselves. But the psychological cover they think it gives them must be enough security blanket to proceed with their categorical hatred. And the codewords sure are popular, because they're always coming out with new ones. "Low-information voter" is a new one that sprang up after Mitt Romney's presidential bid failed, and is a codeword for "stupid and/or young and/or black."
Covering behaviors with liberals are different. They don't rely on name-calling so much as what I'd call credentials. For example, in about year 7 of the 8 years of the Bush & Cheney reign, liberals were tired of conservatives arrogating God and religion to themselves so they started talking up their own religion and faith traditions. They got tired of being hit for being weak and soft on defense, so they started joining the NRA and playing up the voices of liberals in the military. They were taking a shellacking with the issue framing that Frank Luntz and his ilk were so good at, so they tried to counter it with their own (issue framing being, essentially, boiling down complex issues into simple slogans with an emotional trigger, designed to defeat policy proposals. SEE: "Death tax"); that was a miserable failure but eventually the liberals found a potent counter-weapon in withering sarcasm.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 26 2016, @05:30PM
That's odd. I typically think of knee-jerk Republican voters as being "low information". Just my $0.02.