edit - this TTP FM [0] (warning, PDF ahead) seems to be freely available, and gives a comprehensive overview of what PsyOp actually does in the modern US Army. Perhaps most relevant for today is propaganda analysis and the SCAME method, a multi-faceted approach to determining information about enemy capabilities and intentions.
Are sites like 4chan, facebook, reddit or twitter very influenced by governmental PsyOp operations, national or foreign?
To the average bloke like me it would seem like discussions on these pages are being "managed" A LOT, but i could not tell if that is the effects of standard propaganda on the population like the news or from deliberate/strategic postings.
Obviously the phrasing of my question is limited to platforms that operate in my known languages, but the question applies in a general sense to all social media platforms.
As many of us know, one of the most successful PsyOp propaganda tactics is that of controlled dissent. Funding organizations that present a fashionable yet controlled form of dissent in order to sway public opinion. How much of that is from private actors like Soros, Buffet, Gates, etc and how much is Govt funded? The state defends the interests of those with power, so is there a lot of overlap or is there a lot of internal disagreements?
I think it's safe to assume that there are a non-trivial amount of psyops happening on those platforms, since those sites are among the main sources of information for almost all people. It would be foolish to not target such low hanging fruit to manufacture consent if you are trying to influence populations.
I would go further and add wikipedia and google results to the list. Conflict of interest edits on wikipedia by companies and legislatures are nothing new. Check out CongressEdits[0] and the slew of bots that it inspired, which enabled monitoring of IP address ranges that edit wikipedia.
While I agree at a conceptual level, I don't believe US Army Psyop to have a hand in any of that. However, the government as a whole is not exempt from that claim - see Operation Mockingbird, for example [0].
[Edit] wording For -> Being.
1. Intelligence: building database. Lakes of warehousing metadata and then analysis of it.
2. Psyops: weaponized intelligence. Memetic warfare. Directly affecting the thoughts of clusters to whatever end is strategized.
Whether those people have been in turn influenced is a separate question.
That's a common tactic of propagadists: To paraylze people - make people feel powerless by convincing them that everything is a lie.
Everyone lies, but that doesn't mean there aren't honest people, sociopathic liars, and a big chasm between them. No publication is perfect, but there are plenty of very credible ones.
Everything really is propaganda, tho. Nearly.
It's also a basic tactic of propagandists to convince people that only approved narratives are good, and the forbidden ones are propaganda. To try normalize themselves a the self-anointed authority that decides which is which. Just like the liars, criminals and corrupt who say, "trust me, I'm honest. Some people lie a lot, but me, you can trust."
> sociopathic liars,
Like spies, conwomen/conmen and other professional liars?
> No publication is perfect, but there are plenty of very credible ones.[0]
"A bland, and in this case, meaningless statement." ;)
Safest bet is, as I said earlier: read widely!!!
The state department is not the same as the president. The previous president did not have a significant degree of control over the state department or any facet of the federal bureaucracy, in all reality.
I saw a wildly popular but politically embarrassing* article there get wiped from the front page for "just being commentary / a blog post with no evidence", when it was actually a Coundcloud link to the politician's actual words.
The story was wiped. It is no longer searchable by either Reddit or Google search. This is a post consisting of direct evidence with zero commentary, of the utmost public interest, with 20 thousand upvotes or so. Just memory-holed completely with no appeal.
* The Irish Health Minister at the time, Simon Harris, was saying that "we're on Covid-19, so there's been 18 other coronaviruses" .... In fucking MAY of last year. THe Health Minister. And this was AFTER those talking heads in America were reamed for the same mistake.
Plenty. Likely more than you or even I realize. That said...
> Are sites like 4chan, facebook, reddit or twitter very influenced by governmental PsyOp operations, national or foreign?
Foreign gov't, certainly. Ours? As honestly as I can claim, I never knew of any Psyop folks conducting operations on those sites, nor did I ever hear of any directives for Psyop folks to use those platforms as viable mediums.
US citizens are eternally out of scope for Army psychological operations, but I have almost no experience with influence operations conducted by a few Virginia-based agencies. Not saying CIA or NSA do such things, but I wouldn't be surprised if they were.
> one of the most successful PsyOp propaganda tactics is that of controlled dissent
I would mildly disagree here. Personally, in-group / out-group mentality is the easiest to manufacture and exploit, and serves as a fantastic emotional distraction from other areas.
They were smaller then and it was still illegal for the USGov to do domestic propaganda before 2014. Twitter is famous for having literal PsyOps officers on staff.[1]
1. https://www.newsweek.com/twitter-executive-revealed-psyops-s...
Here's the most concrete anything I could find [0] about relationships between the US media and any PsyOp personnel, but I don't much care to look very hard. You're welcome to look as well.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(Unit...
My personal conspiracy theory is that the current shit storm of identity politics is the product of exactly this sort of psyop.
Wouldn't operating there also target a lot of non-US citizens? How would you actually go for non-US people that frequent English forums? Also, that the US completely leaves the field to the other guys seems unlikely to me, both from a tactical perspective and from the opinions I see.
Not that I have any credentials, it just sounds very strange to me.
When you start to think about how many other foreign countries are doing the exact same thing, well, you start wanting to use social media a lot less.
fidgets for a minute about whether HN is a social media site
Especially with strict moderation of participants.
False:
Also ask yourself... why? Foreign intelligence resources are much better spent on foreign networks like VK, WeChat, and TikTok.
When did you quit the force? Targeting US citizens has been allowed for almost 10 years, now.
Source: https://www.businessinsider.com/us-domestic-propaganda-offic...
Also, from the actual legislation: "(a) IN GENERAL.--No funds authorized to be appropriated to the Department of State or the Broadcasting Board of Governors shall be used to influence public opinion in the United States." https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/BILLS-112hr5736ih/pdf/BI...
AFAICT, the intention and purpose behind the law was to permit domestic distribution of material published overseas. Otherwise, there'd be no simple way for Americans to actually see and discuss the substance of our own propaganda.
VoA produces pro-US view point media in 46 languages. The most extreme thing they do is air a ton of classes on learning English and broadcast into other countries that don't want it.
Well somebody is running massive psyops on the American public then.
Coupled with support of political parties / celebrities who very uncritically support anything pro-russian and fiercely attack anything else. Luckily, Putin managed to demolish most of it in couple of days.
Alternatively, this narrative is a massive psyop.
It's clearly more likely than not that both are true.
Very few people seem to have the ability to realize this, on certain topics. It is a major bug in evolved consciousness.
When the invasion was launched, there was a huge pro-Putin contingent in the US who said it was justified. You can also look historically at how well it worked in Russia's other wars of aggression over the past decade. The fact that it was not able to overcome the images coming out of Ukraine is kinda irrelevant.
pro-vax:
#VaccinateUS You can’t fix stupidity. Let them die from measles, and I’m for #vaccination!
#vaccines cause autism—Bye, you are not my friend anymore. And try to think with your brain next #VaccinateUS
anti-vax:
Dont get #vaccines. Iluminati are behind it. #VaccinateUS
Did you know there was a secret government database of #vaccine-damaged children? #VaccinateUS
I wonder what sort of bad actors were behind the divisiveness we saw over COVID. It's absurd how quickly that became such a partisan political issue when it was so self-evident that making it a partisan issue would kill people. It seems you can make any issue into a partisan issue these days, you just need to convince some suckers to believe the other side made it a partisan issue, and they'll make it into a partisan issue.
Those examples seem low quality.
The election interference from 2016 is laughable.
https://i2.cdn.turner.com/money/dam/assets/171101163247-russ...
Just guessing: It is easier to create division, when you manipulate both sides. It is easier to manipulate both sides, if you genuinely do not care which side wins.
As an example, consider vaccination. Trolling only on the anti-vax side would be a rookie mistake. A few bad arguments get made, then they get debunked, for most people it's game over.
To do it properly, you must also have your trolls on the pro-vax side. Their purpose is to provide stupid arguments in favor of vaccination, so that anyone who remembers their high-school education will go like "wait a moment, this doesn't actually make sense". They will also make such nasty attacks on their opponents, that many decent people will go like "hey, I am technically on side of vaccination, but these guys are assholes; I would rather not be associated with them publicly". -- This creates the situation where you have lots of confused young people documenting the mistakes of the pro-vax side, and pointing out their horrible behavior. Much better (from the attacker's perspective) than if one side is merely wrong.
The important thing is that (to the attacker) it doesn't matter which side wins. The goal is to create conflict. If the pro-vax side wins, by doing something that will make the losing side mistrust and hate them forever, mission accomplished. A few more conflicts like this, and the society is ready for a civil war.
Now when the two sides are pro-Russia and anti-Russia, would you want to be the Russian troll assigned to write anti-Russian articles? It's a lose/lose situation, because if you are too good at doing your job, instead of a bonus you might actually get a bullet, if you boss starts suspecting that you actually mean it. But your boss is even more scared of his boss, which is why he will probably assing all trolls to write pro-Russian comments. The entire troll department will play it safe, but as a result they will be much less effective.
Evidently the anti-Russia side is doing a fine job already, so why wouldn't Russian propaganda operations in the West just focus on the completely occulted pro-Russia side? And rest assured there is a pro-Russia side, we just don't get to hear it. If Russian "troll farms" were effective they'd manage to get it out. They observably haven't, so we can conclude they're incapable of doing so. Furthermore, the powers that be in the West act as though we are children that can't risk exposure to dangerous Russian media. This offends me and it ought to offend everyone else that has any intellectual self-respect. Regardless which side, if any, is in the right, the infantilization of the subject in the West is depressing.
How many people here have even heard of the Azov Battalion[2]? What is behind the apparent absurdity of an openly neo-Nazi unit fighting for the Jewish President of Ukraine? There's a lot going on here to be curious about and we're not permitted to be.
[1] I estimate it's around 1% right now.
Still I’ll give an example of very effective propaganda. I was linked to this video a few years back made by “independent Canadian Journalist” Eva Bartlett. She oozed credibility, she was a westerner speaking at the UN and had legitimately been to Syria herself. It appealed to all my biases, she spoke against a mainstream media conspiracy to coverup war crimes to promote war in the Middle East. She even got featured by modestly popular pundit Jimmy Dore. Her video has been watched around a million times or so on YouTube.
https://youtu.be/g1VNQGsiP8M https://youtu.be/Z9F-cHc5Qog
Regardless of her sincerity, what isn’t obvious at all from these videos is that she’s on Russia Today’s payroll:
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/370618-syria-sources-bartlett-rt/am...
Now I won’t comment on the credulity of her claims, but I found it remarkable how when I first watched her video I had NO IDEA she was on RT’s payroll. She was called “Independant Canadian Journalist”. I like to think I’m hard to manipulate but man the Russians played me like a fiddle with this propaganda!
Lucky you! I hear a lot of it. Here is a summary, if you wish -- everything is USA/NATO's fault; war is horrible and the best way to end it is to stop supporting Ukraine and convince them to give up; if you say anything negative about Putin or doubt his words, then you are a hysterical warmonger and the good and decent people should make sure that you will be properly punished for that.
> the infantilization of the subject in the West is depressing.
For me the depressing thing is the assumption that 50% of media in the West should be the voice of Russian trolls, otherwise something is wrong with the West.
I guess Reddit users in 2013's "most addicted city", Eglin Air Force Base, were just really keen on posting photos of cool leaves they found:
https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.reddit...
Is that a fair description of psyops - the information equivalent of more 'physical' tactics? How do they differ? Also, do you notice groups - political groups, companies, governments, etc. - using psyops outside military contexts?
Absolutely it is. From a historical perspective, the tactic has known many names: Psychological Warfare, Psychological Operations, Military Information Support Operations, etc. By definition, however, only 37-series (e.g. MOS 37F, MOS 37A) folks trained out at Ft. Bragg are able to conduct PsyOp.
Political groups, private sector companies, etc. certainly conduct influence operations - sometimes at the direction of former PsyOp personnel - but there are legal distinctions and differences. It's one reason I enjoy limiting how much television I watch: advertisements are just watered-down influence operations with the goal of "spend money on X".
Absolutely. I've no delusion that I can combat the manipulation. The best defense is to not absorb the data to begin with.
The despair that can result from this is almost unimaginable though. When you separate yourself from the propaganda infrastructure then try to have conversations with people and at the slightest prompting they start vomiting talking points and a viewpoint that's purely based on propaganda... oh god, it's unbearable. And you can't call them stupid because they're not stupid they're just... outmatched by a professional force.
Despair is a good word. I couldn't think of a better one to describe the dropping of emotion that I feel when I hear people repeat verbatim.
Wish there were something we could do.
As an engaged citizen, I notice that local media over the past 10 years have not given this significant change to our town the scrutiny that any similarly sized development would receive.
scandals such as sexual assault are reported by outlets in other cities, but not locally.
what advice can you share to help me understand what is being done to so effectively manage the otherwise useful local media?
It’s not that local media is paid to shut up, it’s that many of the viewers and advertisers directly benefit from the big entity and will become angry at the news unless it has irrefutable and overwhelming evidence of some wrong doing.
when I moved here last century, NSA were already well established, there were bi-annual R&R USA ship visits, and annual joint airforce training.
The USA started to develop a USMC base in 2012
At the time we were instructed that they co-locate and personnel rotate, so you can't call it a base. not a base. definitely not a base.
They began permanently locating USAF assets at our airport a coupla years later.
They are investing $$big in USAF facilities a few hundred km south
AUKUS announcements have included: new bases for five branches of the USA military, including a second USMC MAGTF.
- and with that big step they've given up gaslighting locals with insistence that these are not foreign war bases.
Suddenly the growth of usa war bases switches from being fake news ('notabase') to not news ('they've been building over ten years').
I'm afraid that, given Darwin's location, allied military activity is going to be 'big business'. But the stanadard argument is that China has shown they are going to be aggressive, and that the alliances are much better than facing China alone. But living where a lot of that activity will likely be happening, what is your perspective?
The 'good' news for you, perhaps, is that the US's strategy now is not to concentrate in large bases, which can be overrrun by new and future long-range precision missiles, but to spread out on many smaller facilities.
my perspective is that it is a great indignity to host foreign war bases during peace time. But if they are here, even to visit, then I want better protections against the reality of crimes committed by visiting service personnel; and I want to close the loopholes allowing the USA to bring illegal weapons.
Presumably they'd know what levers you're pulling, and they may be able to pull the same levers in YOU.
Is it just a pay cheque and finding people who already believe what you believe?
Virtually all of the motivations of folks I knew could be abstracted to "things are truly bad for these people; how can we fix it?".
Manipulation and influence can look very similar, and naturally skilled manipulators tend to go elsewhere (I think there's enough research about career preference and correlation of "dark triad" traits to substantiate this).
In my experience, most of the enlisted folks doing PsyOp had little idea of what it truly involved when they first began; however, the Army remains eager to redirect the passion of 20 year olds into counterinsurgency / foreign policy tactics.
How well were you able to leverage automation and the internet to scale the effectiveness of your mission?
The most interesting stuff falls into the “almost!” category.
My experiences in Afghanistan were almost entirely on-ground, working directly with local village leaders and OGAs (i.e. other governmental organizations, such as USAID). Perhaps unsurprisingly, direct communication with people provides the best avenue for learning / sharing / influencing. Most of the media we disseminated (whether print or radio) was purpose-made for various objectives like decreasing the prevalence of IEDs.
More generally speaking, how do you defend yourself against PsyOp in this age with heavily degraded trust in the government and judiciary system in the west particularly?
Short answer is that PsyOp is not used domestically.
There are a number of criteria for something to be considered actual factual psyop activity, and a private company attempting to influence US citizens would automatically fall short of those criteria. My work was done exclusively and entirely in Afghanistan.
Still waiting on proof that Saddam bayoneted babies in Kuwait, and hid WMDs in the desert.
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(Unit...
Operation Mockingbird is one example:
All too often, great ideas are communicated poorly and end up going nowhere, I think. Knowing how to frame something for a particular audience, or helping people feel like they're heard / acknowledged / part of a team, or seeing through pervasive political fogs, and a bunch of other little skills that really boil down to "good communication" and "psychology" have undeniably helped.
Somewhat unfortunately, I'm working on convincing myself that not all persuasive communication is bad!
By a series of unfortunate events I've been victim to gaslighting from a lot of people in my personal and work lives, so I struggle with this too.
No problem convincing my guys of this. We start with public health and safety campaigns like the famous Stop. Look. Listen. that ran through the 1970s with Darth Vader actor David Prowse here in the UK.
Prowse, who fell out with George Lucas, once said that Vader was not his greatest work as a body actor by any means, but the Green Cross Man, which is estimated to have saved 500,000 children's lives.
When I did influence work it was in a similar vein, directed towards the kind of things you'd have no moral objection to, like stopping kids from picking up cluster bombs or preventing rape as a weapon of war.
There's plenty of for-good psyops work out there.
There's also what I'd call "Counter-Pysops", which is just Intellectual Self-Defence. This can range from training people to spot and deflect phishing or blackmail scams, all the way to message analysis to spot and neutrally evaluate foreign psyops messages.
That said, I think our intelligence community and executive branch did an incredible job of establishing themselves as a high-credibility source from even before the invasion, allowing them to easily counter propaganda sponsored by Russia or whomever else. In my opinion, honest communication and appeals to morality / humanity will always remain effective.
I noticed that too, and I've seen a few experts other than you say it. I've always thought that the US fell far behind on information operations. Others like the Russians seemed to run circles around the US, which would produce anodyne responses much too late. I despaired that the US didn't seem to prioritize it, and would inevitably lose contests for hearts and minds, and lose them gradually in the long run. Organizationally, what do you think was the difference that motivated this change? Will it happen again?
There are numerous reports to dig up about how the former admin flat-out ignored or went directly contrary to what the IC was saying, and I think that hurt us more than we will ever know.
However, my (vague, inexpert) impression goes back long before Trump. Obama, etc. seemed always a day late and a dollar short. Remember Obama's response to Russian interference in our elections? Not the actions (which I doubt many remember), but the words? Neither do I.
https://www.defensenews.com/congress/2022/03/03/congressman-...
(I don't agree with the claim that it failed, but that's not the part of the article I'm insterested in.)
Is there a reason for this?
In my mind it would be to attract better talent that actually wants to do PsyOps rather than Communications, so it’s a good filter to attract smart people that want to do spy-like work.
Also, how big is podcasting and youtube?
Also, what sort of tasks are "new recruits" put on when they don't have much experience?
This is a fascinating AMA :)
How closely related are PsyOp and Public relations/marketing/communications?
Is PsyOp analogous to strategic sophisticated trolling?
What possible ethical basis do you have as an individual have to mess with people (lots of them), lying, misleading, misinforming, etc in order to achieve a goal?
Who decides what is a 'good' goal? Does it matter, or do you just do what you are told?
I know the answers - you're just following orders, you believe you are working for the good, etc. These are not valid answers - you cannot pretend the actions you take against others are ok, because you were just following orders.
Order following and misleading others at scale, makes you part of the problem.
eh? probably much the same as anyone else who isn't perfect.
there seems to be a misconception here that psyop == lying. the majority of psyop is well-presented truths as opposed to intentional deceit. credibility counts, and is easily eroded with careless lies.
we did have a fair amount of latitude which objectives we would pursue, however, based on the relevance and estimated effectiveness for the demographics in the area. that said, reducing roadside bombs is an objectively good goal, in my opinion. as is encouraging people to participate in an election. as is informing the public about free medical services.
> I know the answers
well that's no fun! honestly, it seems your "known answers" are a bit off-base. try to keep an open / curious mind; we're still on HN after all :)
Well-presented 'truths', according to whose perspective?
eg: "reducing roadside bombs is an objectively good goal"
Well, from one perspective - who wants more roadside bombs?!
But if the road side bombs are being put in place by the natives of a country to make things harder for what the natives perceive to be an invading force, to help prevent the occupation and destruction their country, perhaps this is a valid act? Perhaps you would think defending your country against an invader is valid. So, from that perspective, what is the problem with a road side bomb when you are fighting an invading force that can call in airstrikes. Taking action against a far more powerful force in defence of your country is heroic.
The problem with all 'presentations of the truth' is that its not a presentation of truth at all. There is no unbiased perspective. But if you are able to broadcast your message via a megaphone (via the media) loudest you probably 'win' - by lying to everyone.
So, who has 'the truth'? Does the government that pays your paycheck?
You are simply creating and broadcasting the message you have been told to - it is your job - you do what you are told for money. Right or wrong and truth have nothing to do with it. You may think you are doing 'right' but all your are doing is accepting the comforting provided illusions that your paymasters are providing you with to enable you to do that job. They say it is 'right' because it suits their agenda, and you accept that because it suits yours (money and not feeling bad about what you do).
You are not expressing truth, nor is what you are doing aligned with your personal morality, if you even have a personal morality.
but in all seriousness, no. don't join the Army unless you truly want to dedicate a chunk of your life to an organization like that.
be a good neighbor, stay politically informed, vote, take care of your friends, help others in need, create art and support artists, etc.
We worked to build schools, teach farmers about modern agricultural practices, provided medical services, and let women vote or shop by themselves in the local bazaar without fear. We helped reduce IEDs placed in the area to prevent civilian casualties, encouraged safe driving practices, and worked to convince young kids to stop fighting.
I cried when I read that the city in which I lived for a year was recently retaken by the Taliban after we left. I could only hope that the people with which I shared hot tea on cold desert mornings, or potluck style meals, or laughs around a hookah, were able to stay safe.
Does any of that sound evil to you?
Lol jk (somewhat). How much would you say the US mission in Afghanistan is influenced by this kind of humanitarian directive vs. some nebulous geopolitical motivations?
We stopped pushing that around the time I was there, as regular Army folks can do a fantastic fucking job of erasing months of progress in one patrol or meeting.
I $till haven't landed on a $ati$factory explanation for our geopolitical motivation$ to $tay in Afghani$tan, though.
You are probably familiar with the work of Dale Carnegie. A large part of HN find his work to be overrated and obvious at best, while personally so far I found it enlightening and found that the world would be a better place if people actually followed its advice. What is your opinion on his work?
Information should be freely accessible. I held that belief long before I joined the military. If you're interested in the SCAME approach, check it out. Baseless accusations about my integrity are uncalled for, though.
edit - for what it's worth, my calling it "PsyOp" versus "PsyOps" is a good indicator that I am what I say to be.
Anyhow…here’s a question for you. Leading up to Jan 6, it was quite clear to me that someone with PsyOp knowledge was involved with Donald Trump’s Twitter account. Any thoughts or comments on that?
But to your question - could you share a tweet in particular, or a theme before I answer? I'm not entirely sure what you're describing. Most of his tweets seemed from the hip, unpolished, and frankly without any point other than to stir up controversy.
I think that’s just textbook political ideologue.
That would fit the on-going GOP/reactionary tactic of always creating disruption, fear, and crisis. Even reasonable, but controversial, communication might create more sense of calm.