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Government Trolls Are Using "Psychology-Based Influence Techniques" On YouTube, Facebook And Twitter
Submitted by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,
Have you ever come across someone on the Internet that you suspected was a paid government troll? Well, there is a very good chance that you were not imagining things. Thanks to Edward Snowden, we now have solid proof that paid government trolls are using “psychology-based influence techniques” on social media websites such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. Documents leaked by Snowden also reveal that government agents have been conducting denial-of-service attacks, flooding social media websites with thinly veiled propaganda and have been purposely attempting to warp public discourse online. If we do not stand up and object to this kind of Orwellian behavior, it is only going to get worse and worse.
In the UK, the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) is a specialized unit within the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). If it wasn’t for Edward Snowden, we probably still would never have heard of them. This particular specialized unit is engaged in some very “questionable” online activities. The following is an excerpt from a recent piece by Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman…
Though its existence was secret until last year, JTRIG quickly developed a distinctive profile in the public understanding, after documents from NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden revealed that the unit had engaged in “dirty tricks” like deploying sexual “honey traps” designed to discredit targets, launching denial-of-service attacks to shut down Internet chat rooms, pushing veiled propaganda onto social networks and generally warping discourse online.
We are told that JTRIG only uses these techniques to go after the “bad guys”.
But precisely who are the “bad guys”?
It turns out that their definition of who the “bad guys” are is quite broad. Here is more from Glenn Greenwald and Andrew Fishman…
JTRIG’s domestic and law enforcement operations are made clear. The report states that the controversial unit “currently collaborates with other agencies” including the Metropolitan police, Security Service (MI5), Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA), Border Agency, Revenue and Customs (HMRC), and National Public Order and Intelligence Unit (NPOIU). The document highlights that key JTRIG objectives include “providing intelligence for judicial outcomes”; monitoring “domestic extremist groups such as the English Defence League by conducting online HUMINT”; “denying, deterring or dissuading” criminals and “hacktivists”; and “deterring, disrupting or degrading online consumerism of stolen data or child porn.”
Particularly disturbing to me is the phrase “domestic extremist groups”. What does someone have to say or do to be considered an “extremist”? For example, the English Defence League is a non-violent street protest movement in the UK that is strongly against the spread of radical Islam and sharia law in the UK. So if they are “extremists”, how many millions upon millions of ordinary citizens in the United States would fit that definition?
When conducting operations against “extremists”, psychology-based influence techniques are among the tools that JTRIG uses to combat them online. The following comes from one of the documents that was posted by Greenwald and Fishman…
In other words, these government trolls try to mess with people’s minds.
And here is another document that was posted by Greenwald and Fishman that talks about how JTRIG uses YouTube, Facebook and Twitter to accomplish their goals…
It is very disturbing to think that some of the people that we may be interacting with on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are actually paid government agents that are purposely trying to feed us propaganda and misinformation.
And of course this kind of thing does not just happen in the United Kingdom. In Canada, it has been publicly admitted that the government uses paid trolls to warp Internet discourse. The following comes from Natural News…
You’ve probably run into them before — those seemingly random antagonizers who always end up diverting the conversation in an online chat room or article comment section away from the issue at hand, and towards a much different agenda. Hot-button issues like illegal immigration, the two-party political system, the “war on terror” and even alternative medicine are among the most common targets of such attackers, known as internet “trolls” or “shills,” who in many cases are nothing more than paid lackeys hired by the federal government and other international organizations to sway and ultimately control public opinion.
Several years ago, Canada’s CTV News aired a short segment about how its own government had been exposed for hiring secret agents to monitor social media and track online conversations, as well as the activities of certain dissenting individuals. This report, which in obvious whitewashing language referred to such activities as the government simply “weighing in and correcting” allegedly false information posted online, basically admitted that the Canadian government had assumed the role of secret online police.
You can actually watch a video news report about what is happening up in Canada right here.
Needless to say, the U.S. government is also engaged in this kind of activity as well. For instance, the U.S. government has actually been caught manipulating discourse on Reddit and editing Wikipedia. When it comes to spying, there is nobody that is off limits for our spooks. It just came out recently that we even spied on three French presidents, and they are supposed to be our “friends”.
And just like the UK, the U.S. government has a very broad definition of “extremists”. This has especially been true since Barack Obama has been in the White House. If you doubt this, please see my previous article entitled “72 Types Of Americans That Are Considered ‘Potential Terrorists’ In Official Government Documents“.
All of this is very disturbing. Why can’t they just leave us alone and let us talk to one another? Why do they have to spy on everything that we do and purposely try to manipulate public discourse? Why do they have to be such control freaks?
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Nice that you at least admitted yourself in public. Where are other putin regime propaganda trolls - stoogie, maxi, etc.?
Hey News, how do I get to be a paid Putin troll? Is there an application form or something.
I figure they must pay better than the anti-Putin troll shops because it looks like those guys will let anybody in.
I ain't gonna waste my time trolling unless I get some alligator shoes out of the deal.
Thank god they're not active on ZH.
/sarc
Puts another light on the whole arab spring thing, doesn't it?
The foundation of the West is immersed in surveillance.
God knows what you think… Santa is watching you… The tooth fairy knows…. Not to mention backpack searches in kindergarten.
Here's a ZH troll: Magnum
Same bullshit story every time he posts on gold, about his complete knowledge of the gold market obtained by supposedly walking around China.
Dear Tylers@ZH:
In the spirit of outing and squashing state-sponsored trolls wherever they may be found, would you PLEASE ban "newsoutlet?"
I can barely navigate through the comments due to the ad nauseum ZATO agitprop the little bitch keeps posting here.
Pff. Tell me something I don't know.
They can't risk any sort of mass thought that's in collusion against the evil empires of the world. They want it splintered. Too many people are finding out what fuckheads they really are.
The entire business model of Facebook, Twitter, Google, and other social media corps isn’t all that much different either. Most users don’t realize that 95% of all social media amounts to one big mind fuck.
For all we know, Zero Hedge is a blog front sponsored by………
Hey! Who just shut down my computer?
TROLLS on Youtube !!! Say it ain't so. lol, it's not just Governments it's anybody with an agenda and there are a ton of them. Believe nothing of what you hear and only half of what you see.
A classic chicken-egg situation. Which comes first, the troll, or the counter-troll? After awhile, everybody forgets what has become ancient history, and everybody is using the Interned to manipulate public perception regarding policies and actions they feel are unfairly under attack by the trolling of their adversaries.
I can see no reason to single out the USA for using trolling to influence the public. I'm sure everybody does the same thing. I sure wish that all human interaction was based on nothing more than the whole truth and the triumph of the most enlightened philosophies and leaders, but I'm not holding my breath while doing so.
Old news... go look up SMISC
How hard is it to put trolls on ignore?
Remember to, don't feed the trolls.