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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: 2, Interesting) by Dogeball on Tuesday April 26 2016, @02:14PM
My pet theory? Psychological manipulation works most effectively on the training set. The current generation.
The next gen builds an immunity to existing manipulation techniques, at the cost of becoming more susceptible to something new - currently blind acceptance of plausible-sounding counter-narratives.
Sanders is popular with millennials because he is calling out established-but-self-evidently-wrong orthodoxy; Trump is similarly popular because he is similarly calling out orthodoxy. What many millennials fail to distinguish is that Sanders has a history of standing up for other people and fighting the establishment helps him to continue doing so, whereas Trump has a history of screwing people over for personal gain, and fighting the establishment helps him do continue to do so.
TL;DR: Older generation - everyone is saying it (astroturfing), so it must be true; younger generation - it contradicts 'the establishment', so it must be true.
(Score: 2) by patella.whack on Thursday April 28 2016, @06:19AM
Awww, shit man, you are perceptive up to a point, but you should channel your awareness into something more accurate.
Take your analysis and sophisticate it.