5 ms·

> How much warfare is currently happening on social media sites, nationally operated or otherwise? Plenty. Likely more than you or even I realize. That said..

> How much warfare is currently happening on social media sites, nationally operated or otherwise? Plenty. Likely more than you or even I realize. That said... > Are sites like 4chan, facebook, reddit or twitter very influenced by governmental PsyOp operations, national or foreign? Foreign gov't, certainly. Ours? As honestly as I can claim, I never knew of any Psyop folks conducting operations on those sites, nor did I ever hear of any directives for Psyop folks to use those platforms as viable mediums. US citizens are eternally out of scope for Army psychological operations, but I have almost no experience with influence operations conducted by a few Virginia-based agencies. Not saying CIA or NSA do such things, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were. > one of the most successful PsyOp propaganda tactics is that of controlled dissent I would mildly disagree here. Personally, in-group / out-group mentality is the easiest to manufacture and exploit, and serves as a fantastic emotional distraction from other areas.

twic 5y ago
> Ours? As honestly as I can claim, I never knew of any Psyop folks conducting operations on those sites I guess Reddit users in 2013's "most addicted city", Eglin Air Force Base, were just really keen on posting photos of cool leaves they found: https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.reddit...
obviouslynotme 5y ago
>Foreign gov't, certainly. Ours? As honestly as I can claim, I never knew of any Psyop folks conducting operations on those sites, nor did I ever hear of any directives for Psyop folks to use those platforms as viable mediums. They were smaller then and it was still illegal for the USGov to do domestic propaganda before 2014. Twitter is famous for having literal PsyOps officers on staff.[1] 1. https://www.newsweek.com/twitter-executive-revealed-psyops-soldier-spreading-disinformation-across-social-media-1462406 https://www.newsweek.com/twitter-executive-revealed-psyops-s...
- boston_clone 5y ago
  The article states that was a UK officer, and not the US.
  - obviouslynotme 5y ago
    That is a distinction without a difference.
    - wolverine876 5y ago
      That is easily written but what does it mean and why should we believe it?
    - boston_clone 5y ago
      I imagine there are at least a few differences in the legal boundaries for the US military and the UK. I can't speak to the latter, but I stand by my claim about the former. Here's the most concrete anything I could find [0] about relationships between the US media and any PsyOp personnel, but I don't much care to look very hard. You're welcome to look as well. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(United_States)#CNN_and_NPR_interns_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(Unit...
- wolverine876 5y ago
  Who publishes Newsweek? Last I knew it was the same as IBT, who were not really credible.
acapybara 5y ago
[flagged]
- boston_clone 5y ago
  I'm not a lawyer, but it looks like that piece of legislation was specifically for DHS, DoJ, and FBI - not DoD or DA.
- wwweston 5y ago
  > "White supremacist has now become a label for a larger and larger group of republicans/white cisgender traditional-valued people. " White supremacist beliefs aren't even illegal in the US (whether or not they should be), so the idea that the label of white supremacist itself absent of any other crime is somehow being used to legally prosecute people who are guilty of nothing more than "traditional beliefs" or "being Republican" is quite a stretch. Not as much of a stretch as placing white supremacists and BLM as category-similar examples, though. > "it just depends on who is in power" Also how the law is written.
- anon9384929 5y ago
  False equivalence between BLM and Republicans. They aren’t two sides of the same coin. Further, BLM activists don’t blow up federal buildings (and nurseries) or bring zip-ties and gallows to their riots trying to overthrow the government. You sound silly.
  - bobthechef 5y ago
- heavyset_go 5y ago
  > In the legislation above: "White supremacists and other far-right-wing extremists are the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States." This isn't just something the legislators made up, it's a factually true statement. From the CSIS[1]: > Far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators, including from far-left networks and individuals inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years. Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between January 1 and May 8, 2020. [1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-u...
twomoonsbysurf 5y ago
_ofdw 5y ago
>Personally, in-group / out-group mentality is the easiest to manufacture and exploit, and serves as a fantastic emotional distraction from other areas. My personal conspiracy theory is that the current shit storm of identity politics is the product of exactly this sort of psyop.
- raffraffraff 5y ago
  That conspiracy theory could be accurate, but humans are perfectly suited to lapping up tribal shit. You don't need to do any serious work after casually throwing a landmine into a peaceful debate. Social media is the worst drug.
- throwaway10242 5y ago
  That's an evidenced conspiracy. Check out Space Communes "Will the revolution be funded?" It is a research piece about think thanks that do exactly this, although it focuses on the "leftist" liberal ones there are also the right wing, conservative or libertarian ones to play as the counter strike to these. Creating a cycle of culture war that serves to distract the population from more pressing perspectives.
jl2718 5y ago
Posse Comitatus only applies to title 10 organizations like the military.
- woodruffw 5y ago
  I'm not sure I understand why you've brought up posse comitatus. The US military can't enforce domestic laws, but that doesn't even remotely pertain to whether the US military performs operations on domestic citizens (which it doesn't for entirely separate reasons).
Sebb767 5y ago
> Foreign gov't, certainly. Ours? As honestly as I can claim, I never knew of any Psyop folks conducting operations on those sites, nor did I ever hear of any directives for Psyop folks to use those platforms as viable mediums. Wouldn't operating there also target a lot of non-US citizens? How would you actually go for non-US people that frequent English forums? Also, that the US completely leaves the field to the other guys seems unlikely to me, both from a tactical perspective and from the opinions I see. Not that I have any credentials, it just sounds very strange to me.
- boston_clone 5y ago
  Honestly, my hypothesis (as I have no discrete data) is that sites like reddit, twitter, HN, tumbler, etc. already have CIA / NSA / "DoD" people both on staff and as participatory users, likely volunteer moderators / admins as well. When you start to think about how many other foreign countries are doing the exact same thing, well, you start wanting to use social media a lot less.
  - bckr 5y ago
    > you start wanting to use social media a lot less fidgets for a minute about whether HN is a social media site
    - runnerup 5y ago
      We are lucky that HN effectively only has one staff person. Sort of hard for the CIA/KGB/CCP to seed it while it stays at this stage. Especially with strict moderation of participants.
      - sva_ 5y ago
        > We are lucky that HN effectively only has one staff person. False: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25235720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25235720
  - mike_d 5y ago
Kretinsky 5y ago
> US citizens are eternally out of scope for Army psychological operations When did you quit the force? Targeting US citizens has been allowed for almost 10 years, now. Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-domestic-propaganda-officially-aired-2013-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-domestic-propaganda-offic...
- wil421 5y ago
  Your only source is business insider?
- wahern 5y ago
  Per the article: "BBG spokeswoman Lynne Weil... stressed to Business Insider that the BBG is separate from Pentagon Information Operations (IO)." Also, from the actual legislation: "(a) IN GENERAL.--No funds authorized to be appropriated to the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors shall be used to influence public opinion in the United States." https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-112hr5736ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr5736ih.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-112hr5736ih/pdf/BI... AFAICT, the intention and purpose behind the law was to permit domestic distribution of material published overseas. Otherwise, there'd be no simple way for Americans to actually see and discuss the substance of our own propaganda.
- mike_d 5y ago
  That is a load of FUD someone fed you. All that really changed was that US funded media like Voice of America wasn't explicitly blocked in the US. VoA produces pro-US view point media in 46 languages. The most extreme thing they do is air a ton of classes on learning English and broadcast into other countries that don't want it.
User23 5y ago
> Personally, in-group / out-group mentality is the easiest to manufacture and exploit, and serves as a fantastic emotional distraction from other areas. Well somebody is running massive psyops on the American public then.
- dqpb 5y ago
  Well, it’s also Fox News’ business model.
- obscurette 5y ago
  We in the Baltic states near Russia are observing a massive shift of antivax, alternative medicine etc influencers, who have been exploiting this "us vs them" so successfully during last years, into Russian war propagandists.
  - saiya-jin 5y ago
    Not only you, Slovakia, Czech republic, Poland, Hungary and I am sure Romania, Bulgaria etc. All west flanks of Russian's wanna be new empire. To me those were clearly FSB (or related) psy-ops, pretty successful ones. 101 on how to weaken state and public discussions. Coupled with support of political parties / celebrities who very uncritically support anything pro-russian and fiercely attack anything else. Luckily, Putin managed to demolish most of it in couple of days.
- HWR_14 5y ago
  Well, yeah. It's pretty obvious that Russian troll farms have been running massive psyops. But beyond that, psyops that generate anger with ingroup/outgroup mentality drive eyeballs, and that means profit. There were reports about troll farms in the 2016 election, I think in Albania or the Balkans, that made a fortune making up us-vs-them stories on both sides.
  - mistermann 5y ago
    > It's pretty obvious that Russian troll farms have been running massive psyop Alternatively, this narrative is a massive psyop.

twic 5y ago

> Ours? As honestly as I can claim, I never knew of any Psyop folks conducting operations on those sites I guess Reddit users in 2013's "most addicted city", Eglin Air Force Base, were just really keen on posting photos of cool leaves they found: https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.reddit...

obviouslynotme 5y ago

>Foreign gov't, certainly. Ours? As honestly as I can claim, I never knew of any Psyop folks conducting operations on those sites, nor did I ever hear of any directives for Psyop folks to use those platforms as viable mediums. They were smaller then and it was still illegal for the USGov to do domestic propaganda before 2014. Twitter is famous for having literal PsyOps officers on staff.[1] 1. https://www.newsweek.com/twitter-executive-revealed-psyops-soldier-spreading-disinformation-across-social-media-1462406 https://www.newsweek.com/twitter-executive-revealed-psyops-s...

boston_clone 5y ago
The article states that was a UK officer, and not the US.
- obviouslynotme 5y ago
  That is a distinction without a difference.
  - wolverine876 5y ago
    That is easily written but what does it mean and why should we believe it?
  - boston_clone 5y ago
    I imagine there are at least a few differences in the legal boundaries for the US military and the UK. I can't speak to the latter, but I stand by my claim about the former. Here's the most concrete anything I could find [0] about relationships between the US media and any PsyOp personnel, but I don't much care to look very hard. You're welcome to look as well. [0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(United_States)#CNN_and_NPR_interns_incident https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(Unit...
wolverine876 5y ago
Who publishes Newsweek? Last I knew it was the same as IBT, who were not really credible.

acapybara 5y ago

[flagged]

boston_clone 5y ago
I'm not a lawyer, but it looks like that piece of legislation was specifically for DHS, DoJ, and FBI - not DoD or DA.
wwweston 5y ago
> "White supremacist has now become a label for a larger and larger group of republicans/white cisgender traditional-valued people. " White supremacist beliefs aren't even illegal in the US (whether or not they should be), so the idea that the label of white supremacist itself absent of any other crime is somehow being used to legally prosecute people who are guilty of nothing more than "traditional beliefs" or "being Republican" is quite a stretch. Not as much of a stretch as placing white supremacists and BLM as category-similar examples, though. > "it just depends on who is in power" Also how the law is written.
anon9384929 5y ago
False equivalence between BLM and Republicans. They aren’t two sides of the same coin. Further, BLM activists don’t blow up federal buildings (and nurseries) or bring zip-ties and gallows to their riots trying to overthrow the government. You sound silly.
- bobthechef 5y ago
heavyset_go 5y ago
> In the legislation above: "White supremacists and other far-right-wing extremists are the most significant domestic terrorism threat facing the United States." This isn't just something the legislators made up, it's a factually true statement. From the CSIS[1]: > Far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators, including from far-left networks and individuals inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years. Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between January 1 and May 8, 2020. [1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-u...

twomoonsbysurf 5y ago

_ofdw 5y ago

>Personally, in-group / out-group mentality is the easiest to manufacture and exploit, and serves as a fantastic emotional distraction from other areas. My personal conspiracy theory is that the current shit storm of identity politics is the product of exactly this sort of psyop.

raffraffraff 5y ago
That conspiracy theory could be accurate, but humans are perfectly suited to lapping up tribal shit. You don't need to do any serious work after casually throwing a landmine into a peaceful debate. Social media is the worst drug.
throwaway10242 5y ago
That's an evidenced conspiracy. Check out Space Communes "Will the revolution be funded?" It is a research piece about think thanks that do exactly this, although it focuses on the "leftist" liberal ones there are also the right wing, conservative or libertarian ones to play as the counter strike to these. Creating a cycle of culture war that serves to distract the population from more pressing perspectives.

jl2718 5y ago

Posse Comitatus only applies to title 10 organizations like the military.

woodruffw 5y ago
I'm not sure I understand why you've brought up posse comitatus. The US military can't enforce domestic laws, but that doesn't even remotely pertain to whether the US military performs operations on domestic citizens (which it doesn't for entirely separate reasons).

Sebb767 5y ago

> Foreign gov't, certainly. Ours? As honestly as I can claim, I never knew of any Psyop folks conducting operations on those sites, nor did I ever hear of any directives for Psyop folks to use those platforms as viable mediums. Wouldn't operating there also target a lot of non-US citizens? How would you actually go for non-US people that frequent English forums? Also, that the US completely leaves the field to the other guys seems unlikely to me, both from a tactical perspective and from the opinions I see. Not that I have any credentials, it just sounds very strange to me.

boston_clone 5y ago
Honestly, my hypothesis (as I have no discrete data) is that sites like reddit, twitter, HN, tumbler, etc. already have CIA / NSA / "DoD" people both on staff and as participatory users, likely volunteer moderators / admins as well. When you start to think about how many other foreign countries are doing the exact same thing, well, you start wanting to use social media a lot less.
- bckr 5y ago
  > you start wanting to use social media a lot less fidgets for a minute about whether HN is a social media site
  - runnerup 5y ago
    We are lucky that HN effectively only has one staff person. Sort of hard for the CIA/KGB/CCP to seed it while it stays at this stage. Especially with strict moderation of participants.
    - sva_ 5y ago
      > We are lucky that HN effectively only has one staff person. False: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25235720 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25235720
- mike_d 5y ago

Kretinsky 5y ago

> US citizens are eternally out of scope for Army psychological operations When did you quit the force? Targeting US citizens has been allowed for almost 10 years, now. Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-domestic-propaganda-officially-aired-2013-7 https://www.businessinsider.com/us-domestic-propaganda-offic...

wil421 5y ago
Your only source is business insider?
wahern 5y ago
Per the article: "BBG spokeswoman Lynne Weil... stressed to Business Insider that the BBG is separate from Pentagon Information Operations (IO)." Also, from the actual legislation: "(a) IN GENERAL.--No funds authorized to be appropriated to the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors shall be used to influence public opinion in the United States." https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-112hr5736ih/pdf/BILLS-112hr5736ih.pdf https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-112hr5736ih/pdf/BI... AFAICT, the intention and purpose behind the law was to permit domestic distribution of material published overseas. Otherwise, there'd be no simple way for Americans to actually see and discuss the substance of our own propaganda.
mike_d 5y ago
That is a load of FUD someone fed you. All that really changed was that US funded media like Voice of America wasn't explicitly blocked in the US. VoA produces pro-US view point media in 46 languages. The most extreme thing they do is air a ton of classes on learning English and broadcast into other countries that don't want it.

User23 5y ago

> Personally, in-group / out-group mentality is the easiest to manufacture and exploit, and serves as a fantastic emotional distraction from other areas. Well somebody is running massive psyops on the American public then.

dqpb 5y ago
Well, it’s also Fox News’ business model.
obscurette 5y ago
We in the Baltic states near Russia are observing a massive shift of antivax, alternative medicine etc influencers, who have been exploiting this "us vs them" so successfully during last years, into Russian war propagandists.
- saiya-jin 5y ago
  Not only you, Slovakia, Czech republic, Poland, Hungary and I am sure Romania, Bulgaria etc. All west flanks of Russian's wanna be new empire. To me those were clearly FSB (or related) psy-ops, pretty successful ones. 101 on how to weaken state and public discussions. Coupled with support of political parties / celebrities who very uncritically support anything pro-russian and fiercely attack anything else. Luckily, Putin managed to demolish most of it in couple of days.
HWR_14 5y ago
Well, yeah. It's pretty obvious that Russian troll farms have been running massive psyops. But beyond that, psyops that generate anger with ingroup/outgroup mentality drive eyeballs, and that means profit. There were reports about troll farms in the 2016 election, I think in Albania or the Balkans, that made a fortune making up us-vs-them stories on both sides.
- mistermann 5y ago
  > It's pretty obvious that Russian troll farms have been running massive psyop Alternatively, this narrative is a massive psyop.