4 ms·
It's quite wide spread. There were reports about Israel doing it, Russia doing it and now Vietnam. I'm sure it's done by many many more. In Turkey Erdoğan's pr
by mrtksn 4y ago
It's quite wide spread. There were reports about Israel doing it, Russia doing it and now Vietnam. I'm sure it's done by many many more.
In Turkey Erdoğan's presidential communications office has budget of 100 million dollars and 30 story building. He has also 11 million registered members and the word on the street is that they are granting jobs based on social media trolling performance and pay for tweets. When Musk announced the Twitter Blue subscription, Erdogan said he will ask him for discount and regional pricing.
You think you can catch trolls by IP or geolocation? Nope, those people work from home or wherever they are. You think you can catch them by requiring government ID or payment? Nope, they have the budget and they are real people.
The content created by these people is nor organic but it's not a bot generated crap too. They do utilise bots to manipulate trending topics but the wast majority is real people following orders.
Maybe large scale monitoring over trends can be helpful to identify inorganic campaigns nut the lines are very blurry. After all, arguably, marching behind a leader with agenda is an organic behaviour.
Humans are simply not equipped with defense mechanisms for the era of mass communications. Tiny issues can be easily amplified to push an agenda. If you look at the social media you would think that half of the youngsters are trans, the other are fascists or something.
It gets unhealthier and unhealthier as the in person relationships are breaking down, people start living in imaginary worlds where the life is about culture wars.
Techies like to imagine that they are going to "defeat the government with tech" but they are wrong, the governments can have the tech because they have the money and the power to design the landscape. For example, here is the Turkish interior minister boosting to a Youtuber about this special app which has total overview of the social media and takes a photo of him to run face recognition in seconds: https://twitter.com/Darkwebhaber/status/1655561171900964865 https://twitter.com/Darkwebhaber/status/1655561171900964865?
- CapstanRoller 4y ago>Techies like to imagine that they are going to "defeat the government with tech" but they are wrong, the governments can have the tech because they have the money and the power to design the landscape. IMO some of the most effective government propaganda is stuff that portrays government as inherently bumbling and clueless, unable to engage in effective repression due to sheer incompetence, and effortlessly bested by scrappy kids/activists/etc.
- trasz4 4y ago>It's quite wide spread. There were reports about Israel doing it, Russia doing it and now Vietnam. And of course leaving out USA doesn't make you a shill, right?
- mrtksn 4y agoYou got me, I usually write comprehensive lists when giving examples but this time I was paid to leave out the USA. It's a very lucrative business, I can write hundreds of lists a day and for each list I'm getting paid by the governments who would like to stay out of my lists.
- kwere 4y agoIt is not cost effective or politically savy at least in the US Region to employ hordes of wumaos, but it could be done through bots or media campaigns, in what we call now the "culture war"
- trasz4 4y agoThe culture war was always there, you just see it now because your media can no longer be censored by capital like they used to.