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A global guide to state-sponsored trolling

Rejected submission by c0lo at 2018-08-16 01:52:11
Digital Liberty

Remember the good (not so old) time when trolling a tribute website could land you in jail [theguardian.com]? Well, don't expect this to last, today the states are catching up [bloomberg.com] and use vicious trolling (and a bit more) themselves.

Journalist Nedim Turfent was reporting on a brutal counterterrorism operation in Turkey’s Kurdish region when he published video of soldiers standing over villagers, who were face down with their hands bound. Soon, odd messages seeking Turfent’s whereabouts began appearing on his Facebook page.
Then, Twitter accounts linked to Turkish counterterrorism units joined in, taunting locals with a single question—“Where is Nedim Turfent?”—as soldiers torched and raided more villages.
The threat was clear: Give him up, or you’re the next target.
...
Combining virtual hate mobs, surveillance, misinformation, anonymous threats, and the invasion of victims’ privacy, states and political parties around the globe have created an increasingly aggressive online playbook that is difficult for the platforms to detect or counter.

Some regimes use techniques like those Russia deployed to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election, while others are riffing in homegrown ways. And an informal but burgeoning industry of bot brokers and trolls-for-hire has sprung up to assist. The efforts have succeeded in many cases, sending journalists into exile or effectively silencing online expression.
...
Tina Urso went to bed on April 21 pleased with the small protest she helped organize in London around the visit of Malta’s prime minister. She wanted to call attention to the country’s unusual practice of selling passports to foreigners and the money laundering it has engendered. By the time she woke up, her Facebook feed was deluged with threats of violence and misogynist insults, including the false charge that she ran an escort service.
...
Many of those findings are contained in a report [iftf.org] released this week [this was in July] by a global group of researchers that uncovered evidence of state-sponsored trolling in seven countries, and Bloomberg reporters documented additional examples in several others. The report is by the Institute for the Future, a non-partisan, foresight research and public policy group based in Palo Alto, California.

Guess this puts a perspective on the Trump's trolling LeBron and Melania countertrolling Trump [thewrap.com]: if he wants to stop people attacking him, he must hire a troll army.

Anyone here volunteering for that army? (large trollish grin)


Original Submission