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The article points out PR firms in Nigeria, Egypt and UAE. > Increasingly, we're seeing more PR firms or strategic communication firms offer computational prop

The article points out PR firms in Nigeria, Egypt and UAE. > Increasingly, we're seeing more PR firms or strategic communication firms offer computational propaganda as a service for all sorts of clients, including governments. Now consider this, if this happens at this scale for the small cost of $150.000 how many pr-firms are engaging in propaganda against some commercial target right now without your ever noticing?

bilbo0s 7y ago
I think everyone has taken notice. The propaganda right now is too all encompassing so we can't help but to take notice. Even on HN the past few years the number of propaganda posts and comments has gone up and up and up. Continues to increase right now. What can people do though? Other people have the right to free speech. You just have to try to tune out all of the Anti-Tech, Anti-China, Anti-US, Anti-Amazon, Anti-Iran, Anti-Trump, Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Obama, Anti-minority, Anti-etc etc etc blather.
- A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
  But the list is growing and constantly updating internal firewall can quickly get exhausting. I definitely agree that a lot of previously unaware people took notice.
- jfengel 7y ago
  As has been pointed out, you don't have a right to free speech on other people's servers. Y Combinator and Facebook can ban them at their discretion, for any reason or no reason.
  - lostlogin 7y ago
    Things seem to be getting looser, not tighter. Facebook have just changed their policies to make it much harder to challenge false advertising by politicians. This appears to have been done to avoid trouble with Trump. https://popular.info/p/facebook-says-trump-can-lie-in-his https://popular.info/p/facebook-says-trump-can-lie-in-his
    - bostik 7y ago
      It would be simpler and more honest to stamp every single political ad with something like "Contains: lies, untruths, omissions and/or misinformation." Then at least something in a displayed political ad would be true.
  - r00fus 7y ago
    Facebook owns a lot of the virtual "space" where this discussion takes place. If they can willy-nilly make changes that favor some and disadvantage others, they can shape the debate pretty heavily. They're ok with lies that are paid advertisements.
- cmroanirgo 7y ago
  Yes, the biggest problem of these programs is that it's deliberately divisive and increases fragmentation into binary pro/anti factions. At the end of the day this always generates violence, hatred and distrust.
- xoa 7y ago
  >Other people have the right to free speech. Just to add on a bit to other replies, banning people from a private service, socially ostracizing them, vigorously criticizing them, attempting legal forms of economic retaliation (like boycotts), etc are all part of Free Speech too. Free Speech is about not having physical force used to shutdown the market of ideas, because of the millennia of proven destructive effects that has. That doesn't mean all speech and ideas are of equal value though, far from it. The point is to push judging of that into softer spheres, where minds can potentially change (sometimes over generations) and room can remain on the margins for new things to put down roots, and where hopefully eventually higher value ideas can grow. But constant judging is still there. Constant non-violent but vigorous efforts to resist propaganda and the like through revealing it and acting to counter and restrain it are real actions, and completely within the bounds of Free Speech.
- dang 7y ago
  > Even on HN the past few years the number of propaganda posts and comments has gone up and up and up. Continues to increase right now. How do you know this? What do you use to decide? As far as I can tell, the way most people decide this is: if I don't like it, it's propaganda. Nobody thinks that consciously, of course, but it matches what people say surprisingly closely. That has no evidentiary value, except as an indication of what someone dislikes. You learn this very quickly if you're responsible for the community as a whole, because people have such different likes and dislikes that basically everything contentious gets dismissed as 'propaganda' or some such abuse. Two things seem clear: (1) propaganda exists; (2) "I don't like it" is no way to identify it. There needs to be something more objective. When people are worried about abuse on HN and we look into it, our bar is that we have to see at least some evidence, somewhere, of something amiss. That's as low as the bar can get, yet even that is enough to reveal that way over 90%, probably over 99%, of perceptions of propaganda have no basis beyond the feelings of the perceiver.
  - yellowapple 7y ago
    Don't you know? Everyone on Hacker News is a bot. Even me. Even you. \end{jest} More seriously... The thing about propaganda is that once someone starts believing it, that someone can potentially (and often does) spread it organically. Hacker News can inadvertently be a hotbed for propaganda spreading of all sorts without even a single bot or paid poster/commenter. I know I've fallen victim to that before, parroting something that ended up being misleading at best because I had been convinced through disinformation that it was the truth and therefore needed spread. I therefore tend to be cognizant of when others appear to be doing the same, seeing in them the same patterns I expressed. In other words: just because it ain't violating the HN community guidelines doesn't mean it ain't propaganda.
    - dang 7y ago
      > just because it ain't violating the HN community guidelines doesn't mean it ain't propaganda That's certainly true. But what objective criteria are there for doing something about it?
- o_p 7y ago
  >Even on HN the past few years the number of propaganda posts and comments has gone up and up and up. True, the Rust shills are ruthless :-)
save_ferris 7y ago
Reminds me of a recent New Yorker piece where a local oversight group in a small California town tried to push out corrupt healthcare managers through elections, only to be subjected to massive online influence operations. Fascinating and terrifying[0] 0: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/private-mossad-for-hire https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/private-mossad...
pnako 7y ago
I would not even be surprised to learn that billionaires buy newspapers to push their views.
- CalChris 7y ago
  Or television networks.
  - TomMckenny 7y ago
    Even though both the Sinclair/Murdoch TV/radio web have vastly greater influence and audiences, explicit cultivate and advertise their bias and run stories uncorroborated anywhere else in the free world, they are not mentioned. This is because the complaint isn't about objectivity, it's about silencing information sources not in-step with the ruling party.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Since at least the 1600's. Except they weren't billionaires then. More like thousandaires. And instead of buying, they just started a new one.
- notduncansmith 7y ago
  Well then prepare to not be surprised: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/washington-post-closes-sale-to-amazon-founder-jeff-bezos/2013/10/01/fca3b16a-2acf-11e3-97a3-ff2758228523_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/washington-p...
reaperducer 7y ago
Now consider this, if this happens at this scale for the small cost of $150.000 how many pr-firms are engaging in propaganda against some commercial target right now without your ever noticing? You mean like the way certain east (and probably west) coast billionaires spending millions to influence elections in the flyover states?
jjtheblunt 7y ago
Your point to consider made me think how curiously common negative mention of Apple is in Forbes, for example.
Faark 7y ago
Notably absent in heap of recent articles about social media manipulations are western governments. I have a hard time believing that everyone is doing it but us, and our guys don't want/have that capability. This is hardly something that can be brought up to speed anywhere but in the field, so I'd expect there to be traces. Now there could be many of reasons for that absence of news. Media could be constrained by gov. More likely is social networks being forced to keep silent. Soft power of / direct access to those US companies might be good enough for US intelligence to not warrant further actions risking trust in the platforms. Actions might take place on battlefields far away & not observed by western media (like, how would you even start getting around e.g. ID requirements in china... seems kind of hard). Anyway, I just found noteworthy how well this one fits US geopolitical interests.
- thefounder 7y ago
  There are a lot of fake posts promoting one party or another. I doubt it's all foreign interference. I'm pretty sure most of the political advertising/consulting firms provide some kind of "organic" boost, that being fake account/posts instead of just ads management. This is really the new SEO.
Razengan 7y ago
Samsung for example was caught at it: https://www.google.com/search?q=samsung+paid+students+for+reviews https://www.google.com/search?q=samsung+paid+students+for+re... Happens on Reddit all the time once you know how to notice it, e.g. posts about the same topic on multiple subreddits getting over 10,000 upvotes in less than 3 hours, sometimes more than there are users of that subreddit! https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bb7t71/reddit_for_sale_how_we_bought_the_top_spot_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bb7t71/reddit_for_s...

bilbo0s 7y ago

I think everyone has taken notice. The propaganda right now is too all encompassing so we can't help but to take notice. Even on HN the past few years the number of propaganda posts and comments has gone up and up and up. Continues to increase right now. What can people do though? Other people have the right to free speech. You just have to try to tune out all of the Anti-Tech, Anti-China, Anti-US, Anti-Amazon, Anti-Iran, Anti-Trump, Anti-Immigrant, Anti-Obama, Anti-minority, Anti-etc etc etc blather.

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
But the list is growing and constantly updating internal firewall can quickly get exhausting. I definitely agree that a lot of previously unaware people took notice.
jfengel 7y ago
As has been pointed out, you don't have a right to free speech on other people's servers. Y Combinator and Facebook can ban them at their discretion, for any reason or no reason.
- lostlogin 7y ago
  Things seem to be getting looser, not tighter. Facebook have just changed their policies to make it much harder to challenge false advertising by politicians. This appears to have been done to avoid trouble with Trump. https://popular.info/p/facebook-says-trump-can-lie-in-his https://popular.info/p/facebook-says-trump-can-lie-in-his
  - bostik 7y ago
    It would be simpler and more honest to stamp every single political ad with something like "Contains: lies, untruths, omissions and/or misinformation." Then at least something in a displayed political ad would be true.
- r00fus 7y ago
  Facebook owns a lot of the virtual "space" where this discussion takes place. If they can willy-nilly make changes that favor some and disadvantage others, they can shape the debate pretty heavily. They're ok with lies that are paid advertisements.
cmroanirgo 7y ago
Yes, the biggest problem of these programs is that it's deliberately divisive and increases fragmentation into binary pro/anti factions. At the end of the day this always generates violence, hatred and distrust.
xoa 7y ago
>Other people have the right to free speech. Just to add on a bit to other replies, banning people from a private service, socially ostracizing them, vigorously criticizing them, attempting legal forms of economic retaliation (like boycotts), etc are all part of Free Speech too. Free Speech is about not having physical force used to shutdown the market of ideas, because of the millennia of proven destructive effects that has. That doesn't mean all speech and ideas are of equal value though, far from it. The point is to push judging of that into softer spheres, where minds can potentially change (sometimes over generations) and room can remain on the margins for new things to put down roots, and where hopefully eventually higher value ideas can grow. But constant judging is still there. Constant non-violent but vigorous efforts to resist propaganda and the like through revealing it and acting to counter and restrain it are real actions, and completely within the bounds of Free Speech.
dang 7y ago
> Even on HN the past few years the number of propaganda posts and comments has gone up and up and up. Continues to increase right now. How do you know this? What do you use to decide? As far as I can tell, the way most people decide this is: if I don't like it, it's propaganda. Nobody thinks that consciously, of course, but it matches what people say surprisingly closely. That has no evidentiary value, except as an indication of what someone dislikes. You learn this very quickly if you're responsible for the community as a whole, because people have such different likes and dislikes that basically everything contentious gets dismissed as 'propaganda' or some such abuse. Two things seem clear: (1) propaganda exists; (2) "I don't like it" is no way to identify it. There needs to be something more objective. When people are worried about abuse on HN and we look into it, our bar is that we have to see at least some evidence, somewhere, of something amiss. That's as low as the bar can get, yet even that is enough to reveal that way over 90%, probably over 99%, of perceptions of propaganda have no basis beyond the feelings of the perceiver.
- yellowapple 7y ago
  Don't you know? Everyone on Hacker News is a bot. Even me. Even you. \end{jest} More seriously... The thing about propaganda is that once someone starts believing it, that someone can potentially (and often does) spread it organically. Hacker News can inadvertently be a hotbed for propaganda spreading of all sorts without even a single bot or paid poster/commenter. I know I've fallen victim to that before, parroting something that ended up being misleading at best because I had been convinced through disinformation that it was the truth and therefore needed spread. I therefore tend to be cognizant of when others appear to be doing the same, seeing in them the same patterns I expressed. In other words: just because it ain't violating the HN community guidelines doesn't mean it ain't propaganda.
  - dang 7y ago
    > just because it ain't violating the HN community guidelines doesn't mean it ain't propaganda That's certainly true. But what objective criteria are there for doing something about it?
o_p 7y ago
>Even on HN the past few years the number of propaganda posts and comments has gone up and up and up. True, the Rust shills are ruthless :-)

save_ferris 7y ago

Reminds me of a recent New Yorker piece where a local oversight group in a small California town tried to push out corrupt healthcare managers through elections, only to be subjected to massive online influence operations. Fascinating and terrifying[0] 0: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/private-mossad-for-hire https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/02/18/private-mossad...

pnako 7y ago

I would not even be surprised to learn that billionaires buy newspapers to push their views.

CalChris 7y ago
Or television networks.
- TomMckenny 7y ago
  Even though both the Sinclair/Murdoch TV/radio web have vastly greater influence and audiences, explicit cultivate and advertise their bias and run stories uncorroborated anywhere else in the free world, they are not mentioned. This is because the complaint isn't about objectivity, it's about silencing information sources not in-step with the ruling party.
reaperducer 7y ago
Since at least the 1600's. Except they weren't billionaires then. More like thousandaires. And instead of buying, they just started a new one.
notduncansmith 7y ago
Well then prepare to not be surprised: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/washington-post-closes-sale-to-amazon-founder-jeff-bezos/2013/10/01/fca3b16a-2acf-11e3-97a3-ff2758228523_story.html https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/washington-p...

reaperducer 7y ago

Now consider this, if this happens at this scale for the small cost of $150.000 how many pr-firms are engaging in propaganda against some commercial target right now without your ever noticing? You mean like the way certain east (and probably west) coast billionaires spending millions to influence elections in the flyover states?

jjtheblunt 7y ago

Your point to consider made me think how curiously common negative mention of Apple is in Forbes, for example.

Faark 7y ago

Notably absent in heap of recent articles about social media manipulations are western governments. I have a hard time believing that everyone is doing it but us, and our guys don't want/have that capability. This is hardly something that can be brought up to speed anywhere but in the field, so I'd expect there to be traces. Now there could be many of reasons for that absence of news. Media could be constrained by gov. More likely is social networks being forced to keep silent. Soft power of / direct access to those US companies might be good enough for US intelligence to not warrant further actions risking trust in the platforms. Actions might take place on battlefields far away & not observed by western media (like, how would you even start getting around e.g. ID requirements in china... seems kind of hard). Anyway, I just found noteworthy how well this one fits US geopolitical interests.

thefounder 7y ago
There are a lot of fake posts promoting one party or another. I doubt it's all foreign interference. I'm pretty sure most of the political advertising/consulting firms provide some kind of "organic" boost, that being fake account/posts instead of just ads management. This is really the new SEO.

Razengan 7y ago

Samsung for example was caught at it: https://www.google.com/search?q=samsung+paid+students+for+reviews https://www.google.com/search?q=samsung+paid+students+for+re... Happens on Reddit all the time once you know how to notice it, e.g. posts about the same topic on multiple subreddits getting over 10,000 upvotes in less than 3 hours, sometimes more than there are users of that subreddit! https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bb7t71/reddit_for_sale_how_we_bought_the_top_spot_for/ https://www.reddit.com/r/videos/comments/bb7t71/reddit_for_s...