So uh apparently everyone agrees that the Russian gubmint, or subsidiaries, do pay people to shitpost other countries into following destructive choices at the polls (Brexit comes to mind).
I absolutely cannot believe no one else does it, but do we have proofs? Can we retaliate in cyber-guerilla?
Epin Russian trolls
Noah Cook
Other urls found in this thread:
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
motherboard.vice.com
cbc.ca
slate.com
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
thenation.com
timesofisrael.com
theintercept.com
wired.com
theguardian.com
theintercept.com
independent.co.uk
theintercept.com
theintercept.com
theguardian.com
npr.org
bbc.com
bbc.com
yahoo.com
usatoday.com
theatlantic.com
wired.com
techcrunch.com
money.cnn.com
theverge.com
vice.com
archive.nytimes.com
slate.com
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
medium.com
archive.is
archive.is
web.archive.org
archive.fo
archive.fo
archive.fo
newscientist.com
utsa.edu
phys.org
news.rpi.edu
techcrunch.com
sfgate.com
inc.com
thesaker.is
twitter.com
Liam Howard
Troll farms exist however they tend to focus on popular or influential forums. Reddit allows bots to do all sorts of shit like upvote and comment. hiro probably has an api for them on 4chan too now.
As for proofs there was a leaked report about a US military (airforce(?)) unit that was tasked with "informing" various forums about US foreign policy and military capabilities. It was a while ago though.
Dylan Cruz
Bourgeois press has occasionally covered this across the board. Here are just a few examples. This is widespread. The internet at large and the data people provide to sites is extremely weaponized by companies and governments in ways you probably never realize.
Here's a small taste:
Guardian: British army creates team of Facebook warriors
theguardian.com
Guardian: US military studied how to influence Twitter [and Reddit] users in Darpa-funded research
theguardian.com
Guardian: The Ministry of Defence is developing a secret, multimillion-pound research programme into the future of cyberwarfare, including how emerging technologies such as social media and psychological techniques can be harnessed by the military to influence people's beliefs.
theguardian.com
VICE: Your Government Wants to Militarize Social Media to Influence Your Beliefs
motherboard.vice.com
CBC: Canadian government monitors online forums
cbc.ca
Slate on 2018 midterms interference
slate.com
"Project Lakhta was a Russian influence campaign that had no particular ideological bent; it appears that the goal was simply to stir up conflict in online political debates by putting forth extreme arguments and inflammatory misinformation to incense both liberals and conservatives."
NY Times: The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz (Cambridge Analytica)
nytimes.com
NY Times: The Agency
nytimes.com
"From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities."
New York Times: "Hundreds of people work at a so-called troll farm in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to smother the voices of dissidents like Mr. Khashoggi."
nytimes.com
The Nation: US Officials Won’t Say if a New Anti–Russia Propaganda Project Is Targeting Americans
thenation.com
"The newly created Global Engagement Center’s “focus and intent” is foreign audiences, but officials won’t rule out propagandizing Americans and funding American journalists."
Times of Israel: ‘PMO stealthily recruiting students for online advocacy’
timesofisrael.com
Israeli government paying bilingual students to spread propaganda online primarily to international communities without having to identify themselves as working for the government. "The [student] union will operate computer rooms for the project…it was decided to establish a permanent structure of activity on the Internet through the students at academic institutions in the country."
Dominic Jenkins
The extent of Russian troll influence is greatly overstated.
It doesn't take a genius to figure out that a lot of the "Muh Russia" talk is coming from buttblasted Hilldrones who still can't accept that this wouldn't have happened if they went with Bernie. So instead they blame Trump presidency on Russia when it's no ones fault but their own stupidity.
Mason Johnson
No one here has mentioned Trump.
Daniel Gonzalez
great post, interesting stuff
Landon Murphy
While this is true, it's also generally true for ANY shilling organization carrying out activities over the Web (except for instance, the 50 Cent Army in China which are very widespread on mainland China's internet). I'd like to emphasize how all of it adds up though.
More!
The Intercept: Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies." TigerSwan attempted a counterinformation campaign by creating and distributing content critical of the protests on social media.
theintercept.com
Wired: Clinton Staff and Volunteers Busted for Astroturfing [in 2007]
wired.com
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
theguardian.com
Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda
The Intercept: The Rise of the Net Center. How an Army of Trolls Protects Guatemala’s Corrupt Elite.
theintercept.com
The Independent: Massive British PR firm caught on video…
independent.co.uk
One of Britain's largest lobbying companies has been secretly recorded boasting about its access to the heart of the Government and how it uses the "dark arts" to bury bad coverage and influence public opinion.
The Intercept: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations
theintercept.com
The Intercept: Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek to Control the Internet
theintercept.com
The Guardian: Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown
theguardian.com
^ This one interests me in particular.
Also I've mainly posted ones about government shills. Shills in the private sector we tend to have much less information about even though I'm pretty sure they're much more active, especially ones promoting particular brands or products. There are Amazon shills noticeably active on Twitter that defend Lord Bezos's honor for instance.
Jack Anderson
Here's some about the ones in the private sector we do know about though. Some still active, some may or may not still be.
NPR and BBC: Fake Amazon reviews
npr.org
bbc.com
bbc.com
Yahoo, USA Today, The Atlantic: Celebrities often paid to shill products on social media without disclosing they were paid for it
yahoo.com
usatoday.com
theatlantic.com
Wired, TechCrunch: YouTubers paid to shill gaming products without properly disclosing they were paid
wired.com
techcrunch.com
CNN: PR firm admits it's behind Wal-Mart blogs [2006]
money.cnn.com
"A PR firm has revealed that it is behind two blogs that previously appeared to be created by independent supporters of Wal-Mart. The blogs Working Families for Wal-mart and subsidiary site Paid Critics are written by 3 employees of PR firm Edelman, for whom Wal-Mart is a paid client."
The Verge, VICE: Anti-net neutrality paid shills
theverge.com
vice.com
Peak "I wonder who could be behind this post" isn't it?
NYTimes in 1999: When a Company's Product Is Under Fire, One Option is to Plant a Defender in the Chat Room
archive.nytimes.com
Slate: Paid commenters shill for DISH TV online
slate.com
Hudson Perry
Last big post.
Earlier I mentioned shills in mainland China's internet. There's corporate shills in Taiwan.
NYTimes: Samsung Electronics Fined for Fake Online Comments
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
Misc. links on this general topic from bourgeois press, scientific outlets, direct sources, or individuals:
Artificial intelligence chatbots will overwhelm human speech online
medium.com
Info on various groups shilling on Reddit, including InfoWars, ShareBlue, pro-Hillary super-PAC
archive.is
archive.is
web.archive.org
(CTR actually openly admits shilling on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram in addition to Reddit, on that page)
Direct sources: Reddit upvotes, aged accounts, accounts with karma openly for sale
archive.fo
archive.fo
archive.fo
UTSA, New Scientist: methods developed to detect people using multiple accounts
newscientist.com
utsa.edu
Phys: Fake product reviews may be pervasive
phys.org
By the way I did come across public results to a study from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute similar to the one the Pentagon was doing which I mentioned at the end here.
news.rpi.edu
Meaning the tipping point at which an opinion begins to gain traction is when roughly 10% of the population staunchly holds and defends said opinion.
So what's my point with showing you all this? Be more skeptical of who you're talking to online, more critical of what you're consuming on your screen, how it affects your emotions, thoughts, and behaviors. Also, get friends or acquaintances of yours who might be interested in this information I've posted to become more informed and skeptical in the same way. Especially if they're normie liberals active on social media. This kind of shit really paints a picture for how the capitalist institutions want to morph the Internet into even more of a dystopian consumption machine than it already is. If they're the sort of liberal who goes on about Russian trolls often, this may help them to see the wider picture.
Mason Powell
Would like to quickly provide links about this with proof, wish I was making this shit up:
techcrunch.com
sfgate.com
inc.com
Landon Reed
Yes, Russia does engage in cyber-warfare but there is no special character to it whatsoever, it's just like America's or France's cyber-warfare. To blame the Russians for knowing how to capitalize on neoliberal discontent in the US is absurd. There is no rational explanation for singling Russia out.
Camden Ross
I got excused to be that when I posted on vox and vice news vid on youtube for that.
Luis Jackson
It's our own fault for being so vulnerable to meme warfare in the first place. We value aesthetics over truth, and the Russians played it like a damn fiddle
Kevin Russell
US Government designed this technology to crush dissidents. There's no fucking way Russia is better at this than the trillions of USD and billions of black money that goes into US Imperialism.
theguardian.com
Christopher Gutierrez
Not to mention in a few years I bet we'll be paying more for our military than Russia's entire GDP. The military of USA is already 56% of Russia's entire GDP.
We should honestly give up if they're _this_ good.
Camden Parker
You fool.
With all that power if a Communist coup happens the entire world will be Communist.
Thomas Butler
Plot-twist: It's Ukrainian Nazis but they think only Russians type Cyrillic.
David Perez
Read Surveillance Valley by Yasha Levin. The US invented Tor to fuck with other countries
Hudson Lewis
But when a presidential candidates campaign team speaks to the russian government, and the russian government may have used the exact same tactics as everyone else to support the candidate that would benefit them, its a scandal the likes of which this country has never seen.
Our beautiful, just, legitimate democracy has been compromised and infiltrated by kremlin agents oh god im a fucking paranoid cold war republican now HILLARY WOULDN'T DO THIS REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
Jaxon Smith
...
Oliver Sanders
This is why Zig Forums thinks "leftist" are corporate shills.
Because progressive liberals genuinely are.
Ayden Nelson
Elaborating: I dont want to bother digging up his twitter, but he probably either works in the webshit industry or has friends who do or listens to some fucks who do some other way.
The instant these pepole get a job in some toxic shit industry or friends who have one they instantly reason from is to ought and rewire their values to support it. In one example, someone who'd apparantly liked richard stallman in the past claimed to now "disagree with a lot of what he says" because "sometimes proprietary is just the right choice", that is the right choice for his boss.
I despise these fucking cuckolds.
In warped, unreliably mythology of "generations", my gen X parents tell me this is more or less what happened when boomer hippies got into finance and shit in the 80s, too.
Isaiah Ramirez
it disgusts me that there are people on this earth who unironically think privacy is bad. it just goes to show how classcucked people have become.
Austin Sanders
This is the megathread from r/shills isn't it
Sebastian Brooks
Intense retardation I'm not even sure how to address. Fascism is always the go-to when shit hits the fan, effectively asking an authoritarian to just fix the problems at hand. If presented no other real alternative, the working class will pick someone like Trump, to give them a wall and tariffs, etc.
Oliver Peterson
Debunked rubbish.
thesaker.is
Aaron Price
Their shilling is pretty minor, it's just used as an excuse to ramp up anti-Russian sentiments and to avoid any introspection on the collapsing neoliberal order.
Pic related, it's the Russians.
Ian Thompson
/thread
Jordan Murphy
Both USA and Russia do this. It is just another warfare between two capitalist states, but in the Internet.
Joshua Ortiz
Russia obviously has paid shills (just like the US, Israel and so on), but they're not even 1% as effective as US propaganda makes them out to be. For fucks sake, our internet censorship agency blocked its own website trying to block Telegram. Russia is run by tech-illiterate boomers out of touch with everything.
Michael Russell
The russian troll shit is another case of psychopathic projection from the countries most responsible for astro-turfing and propaganda.
Dominic Ross
Mostly yeah, I just wanted to reformat it because a lot of people on that reddit are schizo and believe someone posting "I'm a shill for x" is proof that x hires shills. Also there were some things it didn't have which I added like the Amazon shills on Twitter.