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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: 3, Insightful) by LaminatorX on Friday July 11 2014, @03:02PM
Letting users see who down-modded them would only lead to ugly vendettas and flamewars. I've looked over the moderation on your posts from yesterday. While several of them were from the same user, I don't think any of them were inappropriate. You were being rambling and antagonistic, much like now.
If moderation abuse were to become a problem, meta-moderation could be turned on. In this case though, I'd say the system worked just fine.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @03:14PM
"When the DOWNMOD truncheon is used in lieu of conversation" it allows "little tin god" dictators like yourself to hide the fact you use sockpuppets, that you can't really control from others as well, so you can DICTATE what fits your personal agenda, not really "freedom of speech" which disappears when the downmod truncheon is allowed at all. You are SO resistive of allowing us as users to spot patterns of sock puppet abuse it literally SCREAMS you do it yourself. You are fooling nobody, but yourself. Period.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @08:05PM
Of conversation in another downmod? Keep proving his point. No wonder you don't allow others to see who issues downmods (or upmods too).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @03:19PM
How do YOU propose to stop sockpuppets (you can't) that you obviously use, yourself? http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2836&cid=67595 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @03:40PM
For revealing yourself and single handedly driving off everyone here little tin god dictator that you are that's been exposed in sock puppetry using his truncheon the minus moderation http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2836&cid=67615 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @07:10PM
"I've looked over the moderation on your posts from yesterday. While several of them were from the same user, I don't think any of them were inappropriate" - by LaminatorX (14) on Friday July 11, @11:02AM (#67609)
Answer the question. Look who you are replying to: Anonymous Coward. WTF do you mean there, Laminator X? Cat got your tongue here too now?? Parent post is by an ac. Do you mean APK (whom you have allowed bad moderation to here as he was complaining about and I looked it over, he is on topic here and yet modded off topic http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2813&cid=66810 [soylentnews.org] and he says he complained to your staff here of it and yet nothing ws done: Explain that. I can. You are full of shit!)