I was voted down for pointing out that what Russia does is not exactly unique(except they're not really good at what they do since they're easy to spot)... so here are some links.
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media
Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda
Reading your links, the known footprint between these governments seems quite different. Russia seems unique in its usage of these media. Faking a chemical disaster in the US, attempting to incite discord by faking a police shooting video, turning their own special LOIC on a NYT reporter...in comparison, the writeups on other nations' efforts (that we know about) leave a lot of room for this to be a false moral equivalence at this point. This NYT story is a pretty big deal in terms of providing evidence to that effect.
Ludmila Savchuk sounds very brave. I hope that the next time we hear about her, it won't be some news about her body being found in a dumpster.
That said, I'd be curious to know which countries do the same thing on a comparable scale. China is well-known to be one, but there were indications that the NSA/GCHQ were not above this sort of thing either.
Indications? Sorry, but there is absolutely no question that the NSA/GCHQ and indeed all the others of the Anglo-intelligence sphere have groups just like this operating, daily, to manipulate opinion and influence group dynamics.
No question about it: if your country has an Internet industry, it has government spy agencies involved in the Internet industry.
Spy Agencies - people who give themselves more rights and privileges than the rest of us in general, in fact - are a hidden society within every civilization that ever attempted to defend its right to define itself. Without a spy agency, you'll never quite know if you turned Japanese, for how will you know what a Japanese is, until you've become one?
Alas, this beautiful quandry seems to endear our species to its pitfalls, and we continue to allow classes in our societies to rule and dominate us by extending their privileges.
Were we to be able to turn off the secrecy bit - for all, and not just a few privileged - we may just find that we don't need to keep killing each other over the same things, over and over again, just because we don't really truly understand each other. All secrecy is a degree of none-understanding, held in place with force, to rule you.
And Operation Earnest Voice wouldn't be targeting US Citizens. Yes I understand they would still end up being part of it, but that isn't the primary goal, it also isn't being used in the same expressly political manner.
I'm pretty sure I can use this article to get funding in DC to make sure there is no troll gap. Being that we're America I'll of course go overboard and use machine learning, big data, and drones.
In the UK: I'd imagine some people from Cheltenham are having tea with some senior civil servants and a couple of dons in an Oxford college somewhere while chatting about the need to keep our end up.
Talking about machine learning... I'm not interested in western-sponsored sockpuppets fighting it out with Russian trolls, but surely a lot of these accounts could be flagged by fraud detection systems?
"Well paid trolls", hmm... the monthly salary of Savhuk was 37,000 roubles monthly after taxes (by her words) what equals to ~$750. This is not a lot in St. Petersburg.
And there's a lot of trolls around russian web resources (don't know, on salary or not), especially when some politic issues are being discussed. Actually, it is not possible to do a constructive discussion at any russian forum, no matter if this is pro-Russian or pro-West. So, I prefer to not visit any places where political issues are being discussed.
What caught my eye in this article was this phrase:
"Today an ISIS supporter might adopt a pseudonym to harass a critical journalist on Twitter, or a right-wing agitator in the United States might smear demonstrations against police brutality by posing as a thieving, violent protester."
Are there really such "right-wing agitators" out there or it's just a hypothetical case? Any investigations, perhaps? Or is it just a usual political struggle? I noticed that the most favored comment also was against the conservative party.
False flag riot-inciting operations by police are extremely common at protests, at least. And police supremacy is a right-wing tenet, as far as the silly wing analogy goes.
They're doing a terrible job misinforming about fake terrorist attacks and so on.
However,Western media and forums end up becoming quite biased in their own PC. Different points of views are often ignored or nonexistent(strong herd mentality).
If Russians limited their actions to showing another side of the story, I don't think it'd be a bad thing.
[+] [-] B-Scan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jackgavigan|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hugh4life|10 years ago|reply
Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope...
Israel to pay students to defend it online http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-s...
HACKING ONLINE POLLS AND OTHER WAYS BRITISH SPIES SEEK TO CONTROL THE INTERNET https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-o...
[edit] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_Internet_sockpu...
[+] [-] themodelplumber|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mercurial|10 years ago|reply
That said, I'd be curious to know which countries do the same thing on a comparable scale. China is well-known to be one, but there were indications that the NSA/GCHQ were not above this sort of thing either.
[+] [-] fit2rule|10 years ago|reply
No question about it: if your country has an Internet industry, it has government spy agencies involved in the Internet industry.
Spy Agencies - people who give themselves more rights and privileges than the rest of us in general, in fact - are a hidden society within every civilization that ever attempted to defend its right to define itself. Without a spy agency, you'll never quite know if you turned Japanese, for how will you know what a Japanese is, until you've become one?
Alas, this beautiful quandry seems to endear our species to its pitfalls, and we continue to allow classes in our societies to rule and dominate us by extending their privileges.
Were we to be able to turn off the secrecy bit - for all, and not just a few privileged - we may just find that we don't need to keep killing each other over the same things, over and over again, just because we don't really truly understand each other. All secrecy is a degree of none-understanding, held in place with force, to rule you.
[+] [-] ino|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] verroq|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nickbauman|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 1337biz|10 years ago|reply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice
[+] [-] bwilliams18|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] GabrielF00|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianstallings|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] keithpeter|10 years ago|reply
And so it goes...
[+] [-] mercurial|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] custo15|10 years ago|reply
And there's a lot of trolls around russian web resources (don't know, on salary or not), especially when some politic issues are being discussed. Actually, it is not possible to do a constructive discussion at any russian forum, no matter if this is pro-Russian or pro-West. So, I prefer to not visit any places where political issues are being discussed.
[+] [-] jpatokal|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mikhail_Edoshin|10 years ago|reply
"Today an ISIS supporter might adopt a pseudonym to harass a critical journalist on Twitter, or a right-wing agitator in the United States might smear demonstrations against police brutality by posing as a thieving, violent protester."
Are there really such "right-wing agitators" out there or it's just a hypothetical case? Any investigations, perhaps? Or is it just a usual political struggle? I noticed that the most favored comment also was against the conservative party.
[+] [-] reagency|10 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dataker|10 years ago|reply
However,Western media and forums end up becoming quite biased in their own PC. Different points of views are often ignored or nonexistent(strong herd mentality).
If Russians limited their actions to showing another side of the story, I don't think it'd be a bad thing.