https://www.businessinsider.com/meta-twitter-discover-pro-west-propaganda-network-criticized-russia-iran-2022-8
The report suggests it's not just authoritarian regimes like those in Russia and Iran that engage in foreign influence campaigns on social-media.
What, no way
"The network which included the NSA, CIA, FBI, and The US State Department was discovered when an anonymous Facebook accountant looked down at the checks they'd been cashing for the first time ever."
This may come as a shock to you, but this article is nowhere to be found on that sub.
The NYT version has been posted seven times, but has only received three comments.
https://old.reddit.com/r/chinanews/duplicates/wxe4uz/facebook_twitter_and_others_remove_prous/
Edit - Yeah, search "influence campaign" and you'll find more. The NBC News article has been posted in /r/technology and /r/news : https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/wxaxz2/researchers_discover_sprawling_prous_social_media/
https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/wxaxz2/researchers_discover_sprawling_prous_social_media/
Edit edit - Oh my god, the /r/news is just as bad as you'd expect.
Thanks. In lieu of an edit edit edit, here's what I meant to paste: https://old.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/wwzj2w/researchers_discover_sprawling_prous_social_media/
https://www.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/comments/wx5mbp/facebook_and_twitter_take_down_a_us_propaganda/
Check the comments for some seriously deranged stuff
Nobody here seems to have made the connection that if this is on Twitter and Facebook then it is also on reddit dialled up 10x.
The report identified 13,946 "densely connected accounts" for anyone wanting perspective on the scale of this manipulation.
The report is worth a read if anyone has the time, there's a lot in there to mine. A lot of it is actually genuinely fucking useful insight for anyone taking part in the posting wars, you SHOULD be aware of just how many fed accounts are out there taking part in these spaces and fucking around with the discourse.
I absolutely believe that there are tens of thousands of accounts on reddit engaged in this shit.
I mean yeah we've all talked about it for a long time but hardly anyone seems to be like "yeah this is just facebook and twitter it's way fucking worse on reddit".
We're probably being explicitly targeted by report farms run by the fed networks too.
100% this. Reddit is definitely more astroturfed than either Facebook or Twitter.
Nobody here seems to have made the connection that if this is on Twitter and Facebook then it is also on reddit dialled up 10x.
Reddit was originally pioneered with bot accounts used to generate a false sense of user engagement. There are full blown movie length documentary videos with interviews of company executives saying as much. The entire model of the business is to "Fake It Till You Make It".
it's already normal on reddit to accuse anyone you disagree with of being a bot for literally no other reason.
The posts often "Depicted Russia as a nefarious actor working to undermine independent democracies," the report said.
A few accounts used a similar mix of fake news, copy pasted posts, bad memes, and AI generated faces to needle China about the Uyghur genocide.
Posts targeting Iran often focused on Hezbollah and humanitarian issues like women's rights.
"Posts also noted that little has changed for women in Iran over time. Many posts highlighted domestic protests against hijab dress requirements," the report said.
Hahahaha remember that site of Uyghur "prisoner" photos a few months ago that had obvious errors and duplications? Remember this site had a pretty sizable debate about how legit that clear propaganda was
i think that was a state department hack job. it reminds me of tiananmen square propaganda that was funded by the US gov https://www.cecc.gov/sites/chinacommission.house.gov/files/documents/roundtables/2002/CECC%20Roundtable%20Testimony%20-%20Sharon%20Hom%20-%204.15.02.pdf
(64memo.com). i spent like 6 hours looking into their pictures. they released a clearly photoshopped photo of a guy with a giant hole in his head, and later retracted it. if you search enough you'll be able to find it online. a UK death metal band used it as an album cover.
Those were real people you jackass, real people look like that
white westerners stop mocking ethnic faces marred by hunger and medical issues challenge (impossible)
and they're also the most confident they don't fall for propaganda or are even really served it and love the "free" press
I've noticed suspicious Reddit accounts that seem to exist just to bash China or Russia, usually they have anecdotes of allegedly living there and talking about how evil the government is or arguing with people about them. Then their account gets deleted the same day.
Remember that AMA about a North Korean refugee that escaped from DRPK but couldn't speak Korean? That post and account got deleted so fast lmao
Is business insider considered mainstream? I'm surprised any American newscorp would publish anything remotely critical of the pro-ukraine propaganda machine
yes, but it's basically a content farm that just publishes tons of stuff constantly to get clicks, so not many people will see this.
It's in the big newspapers, too: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/24/technology/facebook-twitter-influence-campaign.html
(Archived - https://archive.ph/Id6W5 )
probably. the extent of state propaganda in the US and US-allied countries is far more than just 14k bot accounts.
Either fed infighting or admitting the undeniable to maintain an illusion of a neutral press for the masses.
Is this just something you do when it gets too obvious so you need to pretend to go along with it?
wheres the radical centrist bot farm at, come on i know there is one lmao
Eh, a lot of our "centrist" or "moderate" liberals seem to fucking love their ideas, even if some of them are non-starters outside of the US.
I honestly don't know much about Iran but if the west hates them they must be pretty based.
Iran 101
They had a literal autocratic monarchy, this was overthrown. Their PM, Mossadegh, was democratically elected. They wanted to audit the Anglo Iranian Oil company (now... BP I think) as they were legally entitled to but the AIOC said lol no. So Mossadegh prepares to nationalize the oil fields.
The CIA/MI5/Mossad went :porky-scared: over this and facilitated a coup against him edit: this was "operation AJAX"
This resulted in the Shah regaining power. Yay western oil profits!
This is public knowledge. What might be lesser known is the CIA and Mossad then helped train his SAVAK secret police. This included various methods of torture that literally made me feel ill and weep to imagine after reading, just, my god, I never want to be tortured because people are really creative in finding absolutely fucking horrifying ways to cause you pain.
Anyway, SAVAK tortured and otherwise disappeared tens of thousands of primarily leftist dissidents. Gotta keep those commies down, right? So by the time people had had enough, well, no surprise but the organized rebellion Iran got was the Islamic revolution, ousting the Shah but replacing him with overt theocracy.
So every time you see some reddit dipshit post images of the Shah's Iran with women dressed freely vs in burqas/hijabs/etc., remember, it's thanks to the west that this happened (and people weren't exactly free under the fucking Shah).
The Islamic revolution and subsequent theocracy is a western product and the west has the audacity to call Iran fucking evil over it.
