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There are quite a few people and organisations analysing social media accounts. They have, on occasion, exposed botnets, or networks of fake accounts that are m

There are quite a few people and organisations analysing social media accounts. They have, on occasion, exposed botnets, or networks of fake accounts that are manually run. I know of a few here in Germany, and I have no doubt that they would gleefully publish any US government networks they come across. And with the extreme polarisation in the US, there should be plenty of people or publications on either side to do the same. The fact that, as far as I can tell, these tend not to be bots but manually-run fake accounts might point to an explanation of the relative lack of such activity: it might just be too expensive. And when it comes to networks targeting other countries, every country that isn't natively English- or Spanish-speaking is relatively save because you aren't going to find hundreds of Americans speaking Russian willing to work for low wages and reliably keep quiet about it. That, of course, is in addition to the obvious reason that democratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that. But I have a hunch the ever-cynical crowd here would take offence at the idea that some countries and governments sometimes don't behave in the worst possible way.

nitrogen 6y ago
democratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that I am afraid I don't have a reference, but some years ago I read about a request for bids on persona management software on fbo.gov, so one person could run many accounts.
littlestymaar 6y ago
> democratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that Democracy isn't a black and white things. Turkey is a democracy, no matter how corrupt and authoritarian Erdogan is. And democracy-wise France is arguably closer to Turkey than to the UK anyway.
- atemerev 6y ago
  Really? With UK’s oppressive anti-privacy laws? Anyway, I live in Switzerland, and we are the only real (direct) democracy out there. :)
  - efreak 6y ago
    Democracy doesn't preclude oppression or promote privacy. It also doesn't require that all citizens have the ability to vote, that all living in the country are citizens, or that citizens be free. Just like most forms of government (so far as I know, the only pure forms of communist/republican/democratic/etc government in current use are small scale town/village level, so this doesn't really mean much). I also don't have much knowledge on how most current governments work at any level of detail, so feel free to tell me if I'm wrong.
raxxorrax 6y ago
> democratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that. Being too cynical is certainly as wrong as being too naive. This sound a bit like that latter. I would think the Russian influence stories were a form of simple propaganda. That was not a mistake by intelligence because they already knew long before. They didn't plant bots though, that is too expensive for most countries, especially if the language barrier is that high. China might employ some people, but it is unfeasible for most countries. To be honest, I think people accusing others to be bots are wrong in 99.9% of cases.
- viraptor 6y ago
  It's not like your need a lot of text. Do you really think that producing 10k different messages is "expensive" for an intelligence group? (Not that you need to write that many with some templates and randomisation) Yes, lots of people heard about bots and use the accusation incorrectly. But in many cases actual sockpuppets are easy to spot. There's lots of accounts used only for propaganda for example and switch from Chinese-supporting messages when there's something happening in China to Russia supporting content following some news, to Trump supporting the next month before elections. They don't even bother deleting old messages, because most people don't check / doesn't care.
pjc50 6y ago
> That, of course, is in addition to the obvious reason that democratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that They absolutely do, with varying levels of transparency. I remember getting annoyed when the Scotland Office were posting anti-independence propaganda in the form of Buzzfeed listicles: https://www.buzzfeed.com/youdecide2014/scotland-the-uk-10-myths-10-facts-oykn https://www.buzzfeed.com/youdecide2014/scotland-the-uk-10-my... Now, a couple of clicks will reveal that "you decide 2014" do say that they're the UK government, but it's not instantly obvious when you're looking at the Buzzfeed article. The current UK Transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has previous for running a firm to game Google AdSense: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/sep/02/grant-shapps-google-howtocorp-adsense https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/sep/02/grant-shapp... There have been several announcements of UK web propaganda operations: https://www.realwire.com/releases/British-Army-to-present-at-SMis-9th-annual-conference https://www.realwire.com/releases/British-Army-to-present-at... / https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/31/british-army-facebook-warriors-77th-brigade https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/31/british-army...

nitrogen 6y ago

democratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that I am afraid I don't have a reference, but some years ago I read about a request for bids on persona management software on fbo.gov, so one person could run many accounts.

littlestymaar 6y ago

> democratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that Democracy isn't a black and white things. Turkey is a democracy, no matter how corrupt and authoritarian Erdogan is. And democracy-wise France is arguably closer to Turkey than to the UK anyway.

atemerev 6y ago
Really? With UK’s oppressive anti-privacy laws? Anyway, I live in Switzerland, and we are the only real (direct) democracy out there. :)
- efreak 6y ago
  Democracy doesn't preclude oppression or promote privacy. It also doesn't require that all citizens have the ability to vote, that all living in the country are citizens, or that citizens be free. Just like most forms of government (so far as I know, the only pure forms of communist/republican/democratic/etc government in current use are small scale town/village level, so this doesn't really mean much). I also don't have much knowledge on how most current governments work at any level of detail, so feel free to tell me if I'm wrong.

raxxorrax 6y ago

> democratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that. Being too cynical is certainly as wrong as being too naive. This sound a bit like that latter. I would think the Russian influence stories were a form of simple propaganda. That was not a mistake by intelligence because they already knew long before. They didn't plant bots though, that is too expensive for most countries, especially if the language barrier is that high. China might employ some people, but it is unfeasible for most countries. To be honest, I think people accusing others to be bots are wrong in 99.9% of cases.

viraptor 6y ago
It's not like your need a lot of text. Do you really think that producing 10k different messages is "expensive" for an intelligence group? (Not that you need to write that many with some templates and randomisation) Yes, lots of people heard about bots and use the accusation incorrectly. But in many cases actual sockpuppets are easy to spot. There's lots of accounts used only for propaganda for example and switch from Chinese-supporting messages when there's something happening in China to Russia supporting content following some news, to Trump supporting the next month before elections. They don't even bother deleting old messages, because most people don't check / doesn't care.

pjc50 6y ago

> That, of course, is in addition to the obvious reason that democratic countries by their very nature just don't do stuff like that They absolutely do, with varying levels of transparency. I remember getting annoyed when the Scotland Office were posting anti-independence propaganda in the form of Buzzfeed listicles: https://www.buzzfeed.com/youdecide2014/scotland-the-uk-10-myths-10-facts-oykn https://www.buzzfeed.com/youdecide2014/scotland-the-uk-10-my... Now, a couple of clicks will reveal that "you decide 2014" do say that they're the UK government, but it's not instantly obvious when you're looking at the Buzzfeed article. The current UK Transport secretary, Grant Shapps, has previous for running a firm to game Google AdSense: https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/sep/02/grant-shapps-google-howtocorp-adsense https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2012/sep/02/grant-shapp... There have been several announcements of UK web propaganda operations: https://www.realwire.com/releases/British-Army-to-present-at-SMis-9th-annual-conference https://www.realwire.com/releases/British-Army-to-present-at... / https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/31/british-army-facebook-warriors-77th-brigade https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/31/british-army...