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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: 1) by Osamabobama on Tuesday April 26 2016, @09:48PM

    by Osamabobama (5842) on Tuesday April 26 2016, @09:48PM (#337641)

    As I read the first post (with my pre-conceived opinion guiding me) I thought it was a reasonable way to call out the author for advocating anger. The article (well, the summary...) had two basic points: this is wrong, and be angry. Without addressing the first point, frojack artfully rejected the second point.

    I tend to agree; if the internet makes you angry, there is a bottomless pool of material to keep you that way. That might even be worse than being uninformed. Let's imagine one group (obviously nefarious) wants to keep voters clueless about what's really going on, so that they might retain power over others. Another group (are they nefarious?) wants people to realize this and get angry, so that they can remove the first group from power and install someone else. The anger furthers the goals of the second group, as it prods people to action. Perhaps not thoughtfully considered action, but action, nonetheless.

    With regard to the PsyOps only working if you let it, the same can be said for anger. Don't let it get to you.

    (All that being said, I haven't been keeping score against frojack. Maybe he does support astroturfing, but that is outside the scope of his First Post in this instance.

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  • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Tuesday May 03 2016, @08:05AM

    by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Tuesday May 03 2016, @08:05AM (#340709) Journal

    Uhhh...maybe they buried it but the first post at the top of the page when I wrote the above was an anon trying to start a gamergate flamewar by purposely insulting anyone who has a pro gamergate stance which stats show is the majority on tech sites...again right out of the pro trolling textbook as it derails discussion, had nothing to do with the PTBs that the article was calling attention to, and was posted anon so no looking at the history which I have zero doubt was the only post by that person.

    As for frojack? From what I can gather he is one of the "corporation yay!" flag waving types with a possible bit of Randian cheerleading thrown in, which is fine and dandy if that makes him happy. At least we know he is an actual person with actual views as we can plainly see from his posting history, which is why I always believed that anon posting shouldn't be allowed without some sort of reputation system built in. The anon post and TFA shows exactly why this is required, because using basic PsyOps you can completely derail discussion and deflect any and all criticism of a target by simply starting a flamewar on an unrelated subject.

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    ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.
    • (Score: 1) by Osamabobama on Thursday May 05 2016, @11:43PM

      by Osamabobama (5842) on Thursday May 05 2016, @11:43PM (#342300)

      I went back and skimmed the comments with my threshold set to -1, and now many of the comments have more context; I see what you meant. I wouldn't say I missed out on any valuable points the first time, though.
      I will try to remember the threshold setting next time...

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      • (Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday May 08 2016, @08:49PM

        by Hairyfeet (75) <{bassbeast1968} {at} {gmail.com}> on Sunday May 08 2016, @08:49PM (#343285) Journal

        The sad part was until I pointed out it was a classic corporate troll right out of the PsyOps playbook? It had already reached a +3 rating and had pretty much killed all discussion of the subject at hand which was a crooked politician.

        This is what makes that kind of shit really dangerous, and why i truly believe a reputation system for ACs is required, because people just don't seem to understand how easy it is to signaljam any and all discussion with just a bit of psychology. You post as AC, so nobody can see your history of doing this shit, you pick one of the many topics that don't have jack shit to do with TFA that often cause flamewars, and you post something insulting designed to start a fight....it really is THAT easy and because so many people think "Hur hur hur, stupid governments/politicians/corps spending millions on PsyOps online, they will NEVER affect me hur hur hur" it can be as blatant as the one I cited and they NEVER pick up on it until someone actually points out "You are being played".

        Now that social media is taking the place of the press this is something we REALLY need to be mindful of, remember these groups aren't spending millions of dollars just to put out a couple tweets, their goal is to completely derail any discussion that isn't propaganda beneficial to their "brand". This is big business now, as I linked to you have fricking governments employing thousands to do nothing but troll forums and social media and signaljam and push agitprop, which is why this is so insidious as just like every protest now you have to wonder "is that other person an agent for the ones we are rallying against here to wreck shit?". Lucky for us at this point they do tend to follow playbooks, in the future? Its gonna be ever harder to separate real person from wrecker.

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        ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.