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>I'd be pretty surprised if the US employed people to do anything like this on domestic US sites at any scale. What would they post? Call me a conspiracy nut,
by fiblye 12y ago
>I'd be pretty surprised if the US employed people to do anything like this on domestic US sites at any scale. What would they post?
Call me a conspiracy nut, but now that social media is how most young people get their news, I wouldn't be surprised if the US gov paid people to post and promote bullshit fluff to keep people distracted from major events in the world. When those major stories do make it to the masses, there are people to comment about how it's a "non-issue" and "we need to focus on more important things" or that the US is doing what's necessary to protect its interests and the world's.
Just a couple examples:
All throughout the build up to the Manning trial, I distinctly remember most commenters on tech news sites supporting Manning. Upon conviction, I checked the comments on Ars Technica and the comments were overwhelmingly along the lines of "Let this be a sign to all future traitors.", "Lock HIM up and throw away the key!!" There was a comment about how suspicious the shift was, and the next three pages of comments were along the lines of, "How do we know YOU aren't working for someone?", "We never supported TRAITORS like YOU.", etc. It was bizarre.
The overwhelming coverage of The Interview days after the CIA torture report came out. People were outraged, but then every corner of the internet was plastered with patriotism and how we need to release some awful comedy to stick it to some dirt poor totalitarian state. Now people have forgotten about that movie, as well as the CIA's issues.
I also recall a huge amount of support for an invasion and increased funding of rebels in Syria back when the US government claimed Assad was using chemical weapons against his people. What shocked me was that the people most calling for war was liberal/feminist discussion circles. That all seems to be forgotten now that a group of rebels called ISIS is our enemy of the week.
- pyre 12y ago> dirt poor totalitarian state North Korea isn't dirt poor. All the wealth is concentrated at the top, and in the military-spending though.
- mikeyouse 12y agoNorth Korea -- Population 25 Million -- is estimated to have a GDP of $40B. Wyoming -- Population 550,000 -- is estimated to have a GDP of $40B. North Korea is extremely poor by any reasonable definition. The presence of a wealthy elite doesn't change their abysmal GDP per capita or poverty rates.
- xnull1guest 12y agoYou can't reasonably compare against the US which dominates the world financially and is 4% of the world population but has 25% of its wealth.
- mikeyouse 12y agoOkay.. North Korea -- Population 25 Million -- has the same estimated GDP as Botswana -- A poor African country ravaged by HIV with a population 2.1 Million.
- xnull1guest 12y agoA fair and informative comparison.
- freshhawk 12y agoIf you are a conspiracy nut for not being surprised what am I? I would be surprised if they aren't. Because ... why wouldn't they? It would be effective and easy. We know the tech exists already, we know it's used around the world. It would be less illegal than the things we know they do.
- Estragon 12y agoIn fact, it's known that there are organizations which do exactly this. Team Themis was developing a “persona management” system — a program, developed at the specific request of the United States Air Force, that allowed one user to control multiple online identities (“sock puppets”) for commenting in social media spaces, thus giving the appearance of grass roots support. The contract was eventually awarded to another private intelligence firm. http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/the-real-war-on-reality/?_r=0 http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/14/the-real-war...
- deleted 12y ago[deleted]
- jff 12y ago> Call me a conspiracy nut, but now that social media is how most young people get their news, I wouldn't be surprised if the US gov paid people to post and promote bullshit fluff to keep people distracted from major events in the world. Why pay people to do it when everyone else is already posting bullshit fluff anyway?
- jqm 12y agoI don't mean to be negative, but ARS Technica appears to have been for sale for a long time... I don't even bother visiting the site anymore.