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DARPA Dissects Twitter, Facebook, Reddit to Extract Propaganda HOWTOs

posted by n1 on Friday July 11 2014, @11:05AM   Printer-friendly
from the it's-all-an-experiment dept.

APK writes with an article via nakedsecurity.sophos.com:

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."

 
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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @03:14PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @03:14PM (#67615)

    "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.

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @08:05PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @08:05PM (#67794)

    Of conversation in another downmod? Keep proving his point. No wonder you don't allow others to see who issues downmods (or upmods too).