SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
On Tuesday, The Guardian posted an article about the US military pouring millions into researching how to become a Twitter-user-influencing, propaganda-spewing machine.
The program in question is known as Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC).
SMISC, which was announced in 2011, has been regarded as the means by which the US military can both detect and conduct propaganda campaigns via social media.
While DARPA's social media experiments well might have avoided breaking any law by using only publicly available data, some of its studies are sure to make people uncomfortable.
For example, some of the SMISC research has focused on the Occupy Wall Street protests and those in the Middle East, while other projects have analysed online memes and tweets from celebrities including Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga (described as "the most popular elite user on Twitter", according to The Guardian.
The manager of SMISC, Dr. Rand Waltzman, said in a post that understanding social media is just part of DARPA's "mission of preventing strategic surprise."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @02:39PM
LaminatorX to the rescue when janrinok fails to answer a simple question here http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2836&cid=67576 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by LaminatorX on Friday July 11 2014, @03:07PM
If someone is going to make unfounded accusations and harass my Editors, you're damn right I'll step in. If you have anything else to say about this, feel free to email editors@soylentnews.org or hop on IRC. Kindly stop dragging down the signal to noise ratio of the discussion thread.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @03:10PM
Is that the best you've got? Weak. "When the DOWNMOD truncheon is used in lieu of conversation", allowing downmods at all is the truncheon, and sockpuppets you can't control allows you to do "Freedom of Speech" alright. The freedom for you to hide what doesn't fit YOUR personal agenda is more like it. Who are you trying to fool here? Us? You're only fooling yourself.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @04:05PM
Harassment? More like you avoiding the truth and trying to fool others when all you are fooling is yourself (inclusive of your sock puppet janrinok) http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2836&cid=67613 [soylentnews.org] and avoiding telling us exactly how you would control sock puppets, which you can't, nor would you want to since you project you use them yourself. Flamewars? You should be glad to get even those after this exposure of your own low modus operandi pal. At least they would give you views. You've ruined that for yourself resisting the only thing that reveals patterns of sock puppet self upmod abuse, and downmod abuse (the truncheon YOU OBVIOUSLY USE in lieu of conversation that you cannot logically defeat, seeing as you are reduced to illogical off topic ad hominem attacks here now, tipping your hand and showing us your tell on that note also here http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2836&cid=67656 [soylentnews.org] it is unbelievable how unintelligent and transparent YOU are, little tin god dictator)