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Comment by Dem_Boys | Hacker News Reader

If these findings are true, this should be no surprise. If I had to guess, it's big oil that is backing the bot propaganda efforts.

I assume if there is large amounts of money or power to be made, then there are most likely some type of digital propaganda efforts ongoing. This includes oil, big tech, and political parties just to name a few.

If a semi competent programmer can make a simple twitter bot in 4 hours, imagine what a well funded organization like a multi-billion dollar company can accomplish.

People are very easy to manipulate with propaganda, especially when most of the public are not aware that their social news feeds are likely filled with disingenuous information likely from, or influenced by, carefully crafted digital propaganda campaigns

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"Big oil" is not a person. These companies are made up of people, who are motivated differently than the entity (entities) as a whole would be.

Specifically, any change in public sentiment would be rather small and only accrue over the long term. It would therefore be of little use to, say, some PR executive at Shell.

"Big oil" is also made up of a number of companies. Any benefits would be spread out among all of them, while any costs would fall to just the one doing it.

As for costs: the big one would be the damage to your reputation, as an individual, company, and industry, that would follow if the public found out. I'm having trouble imaging a scenario where you run such an operation, certainly involving a dozen people or so, without ever pissing one of them off sufficiently to see them calling a reporter.

I don't know what's going on here. The tobacco industry comes to mind as one that engaged in such tactics even though a lot of the above was true for them as well. But "big oil" seems more diverse, including foreign firms and governments, companies that embrace the future such as Shell as well as more "conservative" donate-to-republicans-and-hope-this-will-blow-over kingdoms of darkness such as Exxon. Tobacco was a far more like-minded, sometimes family-owned community that would have been easier to co-ordinate in such conspiracies.

> Specifically, any change in public sentiment would be rather small and only accrue over the long term. It would therefore be of little use to, say, some PR executive at Shell.

I'd argue that's pretty easy to refute. Just look how quickly the Q-Anon nonsense has spread. And they weren't even trying to pretend to be legitimate, they just kept making up crazier and crazier statements "for the lulz".

> As for costs: the big one would be the damage to your reputation, as an individual, company, and industry, that would follow if the public found out. I'm having trouble imaging a scenario where you run such an operation, certainly involving a dozen people or so, without ever pissing one of them off sufficiently to see them calling a reporter.

They were already caught funding the climate science denial reports despite knowing what was really going on. There was almost no backlash, why do you presume it would be any different this time?

https://www.zmescience.com/ecology/climate-scientist-oil-com...

I am sure you meant it in good faith, but your link provides an appalling slander on the reputation of Dr. Wei Hock Soon, a solar physicist of good standing. The lurid claims that a coal company bribed him to produce results that were false and favourable to them is demonstrably untrue. In the interests of collegiality and civilised conversation, please retract it immediately.

Appalling slander? He was caught taking proverbial blood money thanks to the FOIA from companies like the Charles Koch foundation. I will absolutely not retract the statement, and unless you have a better explanation for his funding than he did, I'd suggest you retract your claim that he's been acting honorably or honestly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/22/us/ties-to-corporate-cash...

Big oil, Russia and maybe China. There's the money and then the political influence.

Your propaganda is defined by anything you don't agree with trying to persuade you. Big green isn't propaganda, only big oil right?

The bias you try to point out is not present within me. I also have no proof that big oil is behind this. It's only a guess.

I also agree with your thinking. I'm guessing green energy companies are likely running digital propaganda campaigns trying to sway people away from oil.

Propaganda as defined by the Encyclopaedia Britannica is the "dissemination of information—facts, arguments, rumours, half-truths, or lies—to influence public opinion." While organizations commonly characterized as "Big Green" or "Big Oil" may both have used propaganda-like strategies, that doesn't take away from the fact that an organized Twitter disinformation network definitely falls under this definition, whether "Big Oil" runs it or not.

You exactly described Big Green and Big Oil propaganda - to influence public opinion. Your definition explicitly mentions "facts" so therefore Big Green fits too.

Also Big Green likes to half-truth about how ethical or clean green is. Here's for cobalt, but not the only problem: https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/business/batteries/c...

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