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Propagandists Use Automated Software to Spread Disinformation
Rampant Disinformation
NATO has announced that it is launching an “information war” against Russia.
The UK publicly announced a battalion of keyboard warriors to spread disinformation.
It’s well-documented that the West has long used false propaganda to sway public opinion.
Western military and intelligence services manipulate social media to counter criticism of Western policies.
Such manipulation includes flooding social media with comments supporting the government and large corporations, using armies of sock puppets, i.e. fake social media identities. See this, this, this, this and this.
In 2013, the American Congress repealed the formal ban against the deployment of propaganda against U.S. citizens living on American soil. So there’s even less to constrain propaganda than before.
Information warfare for propaganda purposes also includes:
- The Pentagon, Federal Reserve and other government entities using software to track discussion of political issues … to try to nip dissent in the bud before it goes viral
- “Controlling, infiltrating, manipulating and warping” online discourse
- Use of artificial intelligence programs to try to predict how people will react to propaganda
Automated Propaganda
Some of the propaganda is spread by software programs.
We pointed out 6 years ago that people were writing scripts to censor hard-hitting information from social media.
One of America’s top cyber-propagandists – former high-level military information officer Joel Harding – wrote in December:
I was in a discussion today about information being used in social media as a possible weapon. The people I was talking with have a tool which scrapes social media sites, gauges their sentiment and gives the user the opportunity to automatically generate a persuasive response. Their tool is called a “Social Networking Influence Engine”.
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The implications seem to be profound for the information environment.
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The people who own this tool are in the civilian world and don’t even remotely touch the defense sector, so getting approval from the US Department of State might not even occur to them.
How Can This Real?
Gizmodo reported in 2010:
Software developer Nigel Leck got tired rehashing the same 140-character arguments against climate change deniers, so he programmed a bot that does the work for him. With citations!
Leck’s bot, @AI_AGW, doesn’t just respond to arguments directed at Leck himself, it goes out and picks fights. Every five minutes it trawls Twitter for terms and phrases that commonly crop up in Tweets that refute human-caused climate change. It then searches its database of hundreds to find a counter-argument best suited for that tweet—usually a quick statement and a link to a scientific source.
As can be the case with these sorts of things, many of the deniers don’t know they’ve been targeted by a robot and engage AI_AGW in debate. The bot will continue to fire back canned responses that best fit the interlocutor’s line of debate—Leck says this goes on for days, in some cases—and the bot’s been outfitted with a number of responses on the topic of religion, where the arguments unsurprisingly often end up.
Technology has come a long way in the past 5 years. So if a lone programmer could do this 5 years ago, imagine what he could do now.
And the big players have a lot more resources at their disposal than a lone climate activist/software developer does. For example, a government expert told the Washington Post that the government “quite literally can watch your ideas form as you type” (and see this). So if the lone programmer is doing it, it's not unreasonable to assume that the big boys are widely doing it.
How Does It Work?
How does this work?
We have no inside knowledge, but we can imagine some possibilities:
- Any article that includes the words “Russia” or “Ukraine” automatically triggers comments accusing Russia of seeking to form a new empire, Putin of being the new Hitler, and the Russians invading and being responsible for all of the violence Ukraine
- Any article including the words “NSA”, “spying” or “mass surveillance” automatically triggers comments saying that the government is just trying keep us safe, and anyone who questions their actions is a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist who lives in his mom’s basement
- Any article mentioning the phrases”Federal Reserve” or “quantitative easing” automatically launches comments saying that the Fed is doing the best it can under difficult circumstances, and that the economy would be much worse without QE
So that moron who keeps spewing garbage - and doesn't seem like he's even listening to your responses - may actually be a bot.
How Effective Are Automated Comments?
Unfortunately, this is more effective than you might assume …
Specifically, scientists have shown that name-calling and swearing breaks down people’s ability to think rationally … and intentionally sowing discord and posting junk comments to push down insightful comments are common propaganda techniques.
Indeed, an automated program need not even be that sophisticated … it can copy a couple of words from the main post or a comment, and then spew back one or more radioactive labels such as “terrorist”, “commie”, “Russia-lover”, “wimp”, “fascist”, “loser”, “traitor”, “conspiratard”, etc.
Given that Harding and his compadres consider anyone who questions any U.S. policies as an enemy of the state – as does the Obama administration (and see this) – many honest, patriotic writers and commenters may be targeted for automated propaganda comments.
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i figure these Trolls must be paid, and to that end i have sometimes publically offered my services, (though i have never pursued the possibility any farther) however if the price is right i would consider working as a paid Troll, for the reason that Trolling isn't very effective, and i could spend the money i made on WmB7 prints!
When it comes to politics or religion, I doubt they pay. When it comes down to profit from a commercial interest, they likely pay. The military has more people than they know what to do with, they are psychologically tested for indoctrination and they are already paid. You won't get paid unless you have been psychologically evaluated. You have already disqualified yourself, as they will see your posts.
"When it comes to politics or religion, I doubt they pay."
Wake from your slumber. Places like The UK government, DHS, hire paid propagandists. They admit this. You think they don't have political motivations? They just want to help rig markets? I got news for you. The market riggers are doing a bang up job. They have all the help they can use at the moment.
Then there's this
Confessions of a Zionist Paid Internet Troll
You're the one that needs to wake up. The article you linked to had no information. You couldn't tell what the person got paid, nor who he worked for. Totally worthless. And there is no reason to believe that it was either pro or anti zionist. Notice he was told to get nasty? What does that tell you? Nothing. It could just as easily be to discredit or to provoke a response. The actual controllers play both sides because they need the distraction. Ever heard of the fallacy of generalization? You're caught up in it. I've run into few, if any paid trolls. I've backed everyone down soon or later by resorting to nothing more than simple logic and cold hard facts. The ones who inhabit the forums like this do not do this exclusively. They have other duties, most likely. If they are any good at it, they wouldn't waste their efforts on useless forums to mess with an asleep populace.
Most MSM blog comment sections are obviously heavily patrolled and managed so I don't know where you are coming from with your last sentence.
... they wouldn't waste their efforts on useless forums to mess with an asleep populace.
What I mean is that if the propagandist has any talent, they would be moved up in the chain, and not waste their 'talents' at the low level of then comment sections, and give them positions that have more appearance of authority. The comment sections are a free for all.
what's with the double posts?
So you're a fucking whore, right?
The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation website is completely controlled by Information Operations/PSYOPS and the Harper Government. Furthermore, Steven Harper was a CSIS Operative prior to entering politics in CANADA. Harper now has over $5 Million of personal wealth accumulated since he entered politics and Bill C-51 is the 'Patriot Act' parallel he is pushing through Parliament as we write here. Propagandists are a Western World norm in terms of discourse and should be accepted as a part of social networking and anti-social networking.
couple aspects gw missed;
the posters who are here all day everyday with an opinion on everything; seriously, do fx and bond traders have that much free time? I won't mention any names, but they deserve suspicion
some bots zero in on certain posters who get a little too uppity,and summarily shit upon them
and the poster who has been a member for 5 years and 12 weeks suddenly has some counter drivel after being dormant for years
anyway, the strategy has mostly worked on me, I read zh mostly for the articles now because the comments are so infected
You can't judge someone's posting activity based on a search for their comments. Due to the archiving system, you are unable to see someone's comments that haven't been posted in a relatively recent time period. I don't post a ton but in my 4yrs 21weeks of membership I have posted well over 100 comments. However, if you search for my comments, you will only see 3 comments. I also think that they increased the rate of archiving and now you can only see comments that have been made in the past month or so. I don't know why archived comments can not be searched or why they made archiviving occur so much quicker but it creates situations where long time members and contributors appear to be accounts that were never used for comments.
I bet they only have a 3 month retention of comments, possibly less. So I may appear as a 5 year person while appearing dormant.... How certain people, i will just use Flakmeister as an example, always show up in botlike fashion on certain topics...
I don't post frequently because i think the level of discourse has degraded.
Gave me a good laugh - apparently the anti-America propaganda scumbags operating under the GW impostor brand are complaining about technological competition to their sewer feed !!!
In reply to anal prober: You just gave me a good laugh. Ha. Ha. Ha.
Aristotle coined the word “propaganda” and formulated its anti-logic structure in his book “Deductive Logic” written about 340 AD.
Propaganda is the enemy to Aristotelian logic (common sense) and propagandist cannot stand up to logic scrutiny and are soon exposed as anti-logic.
The hidden little bastards are toast to a person that has a classic education in Aristotelian Logic which is also the foundation of all science.
Aristotelian Logic has long disappeared in the education curriculum in the USA and is the primary reason that Americans are ranked 22 out of a possible 23 nations in the world in science and education.
Zero Hedge has its share of propaganda and bots but most ZH readers are discerning enough to smell the bull-shit. Bots and propaganda are more successful and flourish on “dedicated” sites.
I am not a history-bot, but if I were I would point out that Aristotle wrote nothing circa 340 AD. He died 322 years Before the Christian Era.
In reply to Geek: Pardon me, about 340 BC would have been more appropriate.
We live in the 21st Century, what difference does it make or are you just looking for something to snivel about?
Hold on, are you employing Aristotlean Logic?
When you pull your head out of the sand you'll see that believing America can do no wrong IS the "anti-American propaganda". They are desroying us from within and it's "patriots" like you who cheer them on!
I agree that American politicians are screwing Americans in many ways
BUT
the islamic cult-worshiping vermin
and the russian gangster invaders
that the GW impostor anti-America propaganda team
are always defending and positioning as morally superior to the USA politicians
ARE MUCH MUCH MUCH WORSE THAN THE AMERICAN POLITICIANS - NOT BETTER !
You a REAL person because you think. What's the difference between Putin and Stalin or Saddam Hussein?
Here's one for you. What's the difference between Netanyaoo, Charlie Manson and Atlia the Hun?
Weak argument.
The "islamic cult-worshipping vermin" and "russian gangster invaders" that you reference literally cannot do to this country what those who run it can do. What has been done offically is by far the more dangerous problem. The damage caused this way lies by definition at only one group's feet, and that group lives here.
Papa Sofa, what follows is a reply to Prober, not you. How it wound up here I don't know. Appologies for any confusion. I like your posts. #####
Re. Prober - "russian gangster invaders"? Lkke Behrezovsky, who invaded England and then hung himself?
These are the Khazarian enemies of Russia that Putin chased out. For now, they still hold sway in Ukraine. Hopefully that will change soon. These oligarchs are your dirt bags. Stop trying to smear good people by associating them with your garbage.
Who is "morally superior", those feeding the "islamic cult-worshiping vermin" weapons and resupplying their bullets or the vermin pulling the trigger?
America is the most propagandized nation on the planet. While for weeks Americans debated a silly video that ellegedly sparked benghazi, the rest of the world was laughing at how gullible we are and knew Benghazi was the result of the State Department's gun running efforts.
Gun running, yes. Something about WMD's too.
The only anti-American propaganda scumbags around here are the bastards from various government and political agencies who absolutely refuse to honor the US Constitution and all that it stands for. Yeah, people like you. How much are they paying you to be a traitor? Do you know what happens to traitors? They get hung, either by the real patriots or by their own superiors once the traitors are no longer of any use.
Either way, you are going to go down. Seems you picked exactly the wrong side. We don't have to kill you. We just need to wait until you offer no value to your masters and they'll do it for us.
I'll be cheering.
get back to Drudge, ya tedious dooj.
Well, since you say it's anti-Murikan, it must be untrue.
Right.....
This concerted effort to filter bubble people into predefined interest groups and then destroy every forum for discussion via tactics that George Wash, here has linked time and again is the worst thing to happen to the internet. Spamming threads, disrupting conversation, attempting to seize the moderatorship of the forum, all these things have served to nearly destroy the free communication of people who use the internet. Instead, hordes have been filtered into antisocial media where opinions can be carefully foisted on the masses.
The psychopaths and their pseudo-psychopath wannabe henchmen always attempt to keep people from talking to each other and comparing notes. If you have had the misfortune of dealing with these individuals in your personal life, you'll find that nobody in their sphere of influence is allowed unfettered access to talk to each other. Psychopathic "governments" work the same way.
Early on the internet was a wonderful place to meet like minds and have interesting discussions. There were always trolls of course, but you could find good places to chat and post. These days you don't even know if the web page you clicked on is actually the web page you wanted- your traffic can be intercepted and redirected and you'd never know. Your email can be intercepted and rewritten to cause fights between activists or just for the perverse pleasure of the hidden little bastards who work for our glorious masters.
One of the worst things that happens is that the paid trolls will target a person who has a status with the netizens, like George Washington here on ZH, and attempt to tie them up with fighting. They attack incessantly, hoping to troll you into responding so as to smear your reputation should you stoop to defend yourself. They try to tear you down and generally make it unpleasant to log in every day. The idea is to exhaust the person so they quit, and then can be replaced by a shill. The same unpleasantness is directed towards any thoughtful poster who stands in the way of turning the site into the desired establishment echo chamber or limited hangout.
Keep up the good work GW, your efforts are much appreciated! =)
Think about it. You find something incredibly informative and meaningful. You decide to share on Facebook. Facebook decides "Yeah, we don't really need that to gain traction", and your post will just fly down the pecking order, on your 'friends' page... You think you have shared something important, meanwhile no one else even saw it...
Pictures of your neighbors cat, on the other hand...
Talk about the pot calling the kettle black.
The all article doesn't even mention Russia which as we know does exactly the same and has been at it forever.
Have you heard of the KGB ( Putin alma mater). They were extremely good at it. And guess what, they are still in place and in power.
So I know ZH has become a bit of an USA bashing forum but a little balance would not go amiss
Read this article from the Economist : http://goo.gl/jDACxQ
Europe is belatedly waking up to Russia’s information warfare ( but I guess this is american propaganda)Quit being a douche.
Quit trying to deflect attention away from your DC masters of evil.
Nobody cares about Putin. He's in Russia. Russia is on the other side of the world.
We do care about the traitors working for the evil masters in DC. We do care about you. You are the problem.
"Nobody cares about Putin. He's in Russia. Russia is on the other side of the world."
excuse me? I wish I could write something funny to it, like "I can see Russia from the roof of the ECB Building in Frankfurt"
the US is a global force with global interests, remember? Even your currency is "our problem". Just saying
Thank you for proving the point of the article :
Unfortunately, this is more effective than you might assume …
Specifically, scientists have shown that name-calling and swearing breaks down people’s ability to think rationally … and intentionally sowing discord and posting junk comments to push down insightful comments are common propaganda techniques.
Indeed, an automated program need not even be that sophisticated … it can copy a couple of words from the main post or a comment, and then spew back one or more radioactive labels.....................
Other than calling you a douche, which is pretty appropriate, I think he's making some explicit points, which you would do better to address.
Nobody cares what the Russians are doing. The fact that the wimps in DC are constantly bringing up Putin's manliness is amusing too. Someone feels threatened, lol.
You are absolutely right: nobody cares what Russia is doing :
Russia warns Denmark its warships could become nuclear targets http://goo.gl/4O29Vh,You're right: not important at all
I think you left out some context.
Was that deliberate?
I don't know about context.
When someone states "Nobody cares what the Russians are doing" when whether you are for or against them, you cannot deny what has been happening this last year and when somebody starts to talk about launching nuclear weapons in Europe, you cannot say " Nobody cares"
The propaganda war is but one aspect of the all situation
Interesting story, back in the day, vikings from Norway and Denmark almost NEVER raided to the East, ie towards Russia. They almost always went west. Wonder why that was? No low hanging fruit, to the East?
(Swedish vikings did go East, Russian 'vikings' went south, down the Volga, portaged to the Don, and into the Black Sea)
more like "not many fruits in the East". they even took their boats overland, and reached the Black Sea. from their point of view, Russia at that time was vast expanses of... nearly nothing. too few people to raid much, but they did have very interesting trade routes
as a reminder, St. Petersburg was founded in 1703 as a "Russian Window to the West"
Cerulean, you seem to be very propaganda bot-like. Beep once for yes and twice for no.
If you can prove Russia isn't currently funding, supplying and training fascist groups in Canada or Mexico then fine.
I've noticed that demands to prove negatives are a choice derailment technique.
I thought they were paid traitors. Live and learn.
Live person = paid traitor.
Bot programmer = paid traitor.
Either way, ropes need stretching.
"So that moron who keeps spewing garbage - and doesn't seem like he's even listening to your responses - may actually be a bot."
perhaps, but from a professional propaganda unit I'd expect bots being monitored by humans, and software flagging comments/replies for special human care
so I would expect to be perfectly normal to have a bot replying, and then after you answer again having a bot handler giving a further reply
of course the simplest bots would be well suited for that "upvoting/downvoting" stuff
150323 12:00:55 [ERROR] /usr/libexec/mysqld: Table './zh_users/Ghordius' is marked as crashed and should be repaired
Yeah and the Euro is great too.
Beep.
You apparently have no idea of what AI is up to these days. You might think that posting on the interwebs is hard but it probably isn't as hard as, say, driving a car or flying a plane and firing rockets at targets on the ground. Heck, it probably isn't as hard as trading billions of stocks every single damn day.
That's just a guess of course.
Replacement - yes all those things are impressive, but not as impressive to me as the systems they surely have going over the bits and bytes they suck up every day. Maybe when they develop more complete knowledge from their analysis, they will realize they should have been more ethical beings all along?