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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) by HiThere on Tuesday April 26 2016, @07:41PM
Well, there's an answer, but it's another arms-race kind of evolutionary cycle. Just like spam filters "sort-of" work against spam, there could be analogous things added to other channels of communication. But each thing you add will be worked around as it becomes popular, so you'll need to work around their work arounds, and then...
With web pages I use a combination of ad blocker and not installing flash. But note the continual approaches to making ad blockers useless. And my wife won't give up flash, because some sites she dotes on demand it. So avoiding intrusion is countered by its requirement that certain features be avoided. At one time I just had javascript turned off, but too many sites now require it...so I enabled it and use an ad blocker...but that creates a weakness in my system that can be a wedge for entry.
Eventually we'll be required to have an powerful AI dedicated to nothing but screening attempts at communication...the way people used to use a secretary, only more integrated into the internet. But if it's not locally hosted, someone will take advantage of it. (And even if it is, there's likely to be some EULA or law that requires vulnerabilities built in.)
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.