Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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."

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
DARPA Dissects Twitter, Facebook, Reddit to Extract Propaganda HOWTOs | Log In/Create an Account | Top | 78 comments | Search Discussion
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @08:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday July 11 2014, @08:17PM (#67807)

    Dude, you are having a breakdown.
    Get away from the computer for the rest of the day.
    Come back tomorrow when you've been able to put a little mental distance between yourself and today's events.

  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 12 2014, @05:16PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday July 12 2014, @05:16PM (#68165)

    Don't give advice until you answer this question how you'd control sock puppets (which you condone and obviously use) http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2836&cid=67595 [soylentnews.org] and answer HOW this http://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?sid=2813&cid=66810 [soylentnews.org] is still modded off topic still when it clearly isn't from the outset with examples of female illogic vs male logic colliding as a theory of why the article may be right. You're clearly Laminator X running from fair questions and trolling by anonymous coward posts now. How lame. You've single handedly destroyed yourself and your site buddy. No questions asked.