3 ms·

Media Hacking

49 points by r721 12y ago

j_s 12y ago
The author didn't mention the ISIS twitter app. the app will post tweets to your account—the content of which is decided by someone in ISIS’s social-media operation. The tweets include links, hashtags, and images, and the same content is also tweeted by the accounts of everyone else who has signed up for the app, spaced out to avoid triggering Twitter’s spam-detection algorithms How ISIS Games Twitter http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-iraq-twitter-social-media-strategy/372856/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isi...
rdtsc 12y ago
The ColombianChemicals timeline is fascinating. Just the effort put into the long play there is interesting. A lot of mentions of "Russian" bots. Does it mean these are all Russian or just that Russians have good quality BaaS (Bots As A Service). Clearly it showed the effort didn't work as well. I wonder if that is just a call to action for bot operators. Enlist AI experts to create an army of intelligent sock puppets. That can actually have personalities, interests, can harvest pictures and modify or crop them to make them unique. It would be ironic if a more advanced AI evolved from collaborating Twitter socket puppet accounts instead of from universities or self driving cars.
vonnik 12y ago
The most fascinating part is the Russian angle for both of these hacks. Hacking media is hacking democracy. It's intriguing to see a deeply undemocratic regimes trying to do that in the US.
- soperj 12y ago
  Really there's an easier way, embrace capitalism and just buy the media.
- xnull6guest 12y ago
  I've posted this before and there are a large number of other examples, but the United States also engages in this activity against its targets [1][2]. (The US has been known to target democracies as well.) In addition there has been a number of studies and campaigns on Americans inside the US during elections linked to the DoD and to political parties [3][4]. This isn't to say that this behavior is justifiable because the US also does it - or that the US is evil for doing it. It's important to know that this is how 21st century propaganda works and also that all powers, including those with myths of 'liberty', participate. [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/usaid-effort-to-undermine-cuban-government-with-fake-twitter-another-anti-castro-failure/2014/04/03/c0142cc0-bb75-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/usaid-effort-t... [2] http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf [3] http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/massive_turnout.pdf http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/massive_turnout.pdf [4] http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/computer-scientist-warns-of-social-media-manipulation-in-us-election?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+IeeeSpectrumFullText+(IEEE+Spectrum+Full+Text) http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/computer-scientist...
bramgg 12y ago
I love the quote “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on", but I think a more modern version would be "a lie circles the world a thousand times before the truth has a chance to get its pants on, at which point everybody's moved on".

49 points by r721 12y ago

j_s 12y ago

The author didn't mention the ISIS twitter app. the app will post tweets to your account—the content of which is decided by someone in ISIS’s social-media operation. The tweets include links, hashtags, and images, and the same content is also tweeted by the accounts of everyone else who has signed up for the app, spaced out to avoid triggering Twitter’s spam-detection algorithms How ISIS Games Twitter http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isis-iraq-twitter-social-media-strategy/372856/ http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2014/06/isi...

rdtsc 12y ago

The ColombianChemicals timeline is fascinating. Just the effort put into the long play there is interesting. A lot of mentions of "Russian" bots. Does it mean these are all Russian or just that Russians have good quality BaaS (Bots As A Service). Clearly it showed the effort didn't work as well. I wonder if that is just a call to action for bot operators. Enlist AI experts to create an army of intelligent sock puppets. That can actually have personalities, interests, can harvest pictures and modify or crop them to make them unique. It would be ironic if a more advanced AI evolved from collaborating Twitter socket puppet accounts instead of from universities or self driving cars.

vonnik 12y ago

The most fascinating part is the Russian angle for both of these hacks. Hacking media is hacking democracy. It's intriguing to see a deeply undemocratic regimes trying to do that in the US.

soperj 12y ago
Really there's an easier way, embrace capitalism and just buy the media.
xnull6guest 12y ago
I've posted this before and there are a large number of other examples, but the United States also engages in this activity against its targets [1][2]. (The US has been known to target democracies as well.) In addition there has been a number of studies and campaigns on Americans inside the US during elections linked to the DoD and to political parties [3][4]. This isn't to say that this behavior is justifiable because the US also does it - or that the US is evil for doing it. It's important to know that this is how 21st century propaganda works and also that all powers, including those with myths of 'liberty', participate. [1] http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/usaid-effort-to-undermine-cuban-government-with-fake-twitter-another-anti-castro-failure/2014/04/03/c0142cc0-bb75-11e3-9a05-c739f29ccb08_story.html http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/usaid-effort-t... [2] http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf http://minerva.dtic.mil/doc/samplewp-Lieberman.pdf [3] http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/massive_turnout.pdf http://jhfowler.ucsd.edu/massive_turnout.pdf [4] http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/computer-scientist-warns-of-social-media-manipulation-in-us-election?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+IeeeSpectrumFullText+(IEEE+Spectrum+Full+Text) http://spectrum.ieee.org/telecom/internet/computer-scientist...

bramgg 12y ago

I love the quote “a lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on", but I think a more modern version would be "a lie circles the world a thousand times before the truth has a chance to get its pants on, at which point everybody's moved on".