RedHack leaks reveal the rise of Turkey's pro-government Twitter trolls | Hacker News Reader

RedHack leaks reveal the rise of Turkey's pro-government Twitter trolls

dailydot.com

> Simultaneously, Albayrak’s wife, Esra, who is a Ph.D. graduate from the University of California, Berkeley, arranged a social media monitoring agency for sentiment analysis of online content about the government, according to a June 22 email. The agency’s presentation, attached to that email, offered to set up a 60-member team for PR and crisis management on social media.

If we are training foreign leaders and their families in our universities, we need to have an ethics discussion. Banning abusive regimes could backfire by isolating them from our values. Perhaps this is a side effect of turning our universities into trade schools, where the "soft" arts are deëmphasised in relation to the "hard" core sciences.

"Troll armies" have been quite successful in quieting dissent the last years in Russia, Turkey and other authoritarian countries. There are also theories Russia is partly responsible for the whole Trump spam on Twitter and Reddit. It's time this is taken as a serious threat to democratic values instead of shrugging off "it's just the internet, 99 % of the comments is always garbage".

It's part of a successful information war now when the majority of the public gets their news from social media, which take popularity as a metric for what news is important. It's propaganda behind a proxy.

"It's propaganda behind a proxy."

The Democrats don't even need a 'Troll army'. They own all of the mass media and feed them the information that we see in many articles. The last batch of Wikileaks showed us this to be a fact. Even Obama is in on the Propaganda (no proxy needed) and used a fake name when emailing Hillary.

So, the only real way to defend against it is to create a grass-roots effort (IE: troll army). The only real way to stop it is to have less biased media.

Trump was the direct result of political correctness, biased media, and liberal policies run amok. I don't even think he will be a good leader, but it's a big fuck you to the current administration. It's a non-violent protest vote.

They aren't even trying to hide it anymore. Every mass-media outlet has trolled the world with articles about terrible Trump for the past week. Some going as far as calling him a 'rapist'.

When we have Wikileaks about the DNC, CNN and other news outlets ignore the real information leaked and only focus on Russian hackers. When the Washington post obtains illegal and private tax records or a private conversation illegally recorded, they immediately focus on the content, and brush aside the illegal activity involved in getting it (I seriously doubt there will be any investigation).

..and the involvement with Russia? It all comes down to a Russian VPN. Anyone in the tech industry knows that this doesn't mean the person resides in Russia. Yet I still see people on HN spreading this misinformation.

This is the definition of propaganda.

I actually hope Hillary wins at this point, so I can blame everyone I know that voted for her and when her evil and shitty behavior is aimed at the American people? Well, they get what they deserve.

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