Hacked emails reveal China’s Internet propaganda machine

I'd be pretty surprised if the US employed people to do anything like this on domestic US sites at any scale. What would they post? Wouldn't a smart individual from a US site have detected this and shared, or a whistleblower have disclosed it?

That said, I'd be pretty unsurprised if we employed people to do it on specific, foreign sites in places like Iran, China, Syria, Lybia, etc. Monitoring + Posting + Commenting. That would be smart and part of normal intel gathering.

More interesting than the human commentary, however, would be bots running analysis on posts and comments, and then upvoting, downvoting, or spamming in the comments (with intent to ruin experience) based on content and sentiment -- allowing programatic and rule-driven propaganda effects.

I'm not sure which Muslamic country you're thinking about but Zionists had http://wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool which I personally think was a very clever and convenient tool to organize ideological driven people (given the time it was introduced 2006)

And I recall reading a couple of years ago about a software that enabled a person to control several user accounts on one site or different sites. And I think the US military or some other US agency actively used it.

Assange believes that Jared Cohen + Eric Schmidt + State Dept have been involved in extrastatecraft in Arab Spring-type protests, so that they could better "exercise the duty to protect citizens around the world" [0]:

Cohen’s directorate appeared to cross over from public relations and “corporate responsibility” work into active corporate intervention in foreign affairs at a level that is normally reserved for states. Jared Cohen could be wryly named Google’s “director of regime change.” According to the emails, he was trying to plant his fingerprints on some of the major historical events in the contemporary Middle East. He could be placed in Egypt during the revolution, meeting with Wael Ghonim, the Google employee whose arrest and imprisonment hours later would make him a PR-friendly symbol of the uprising in the Western press. Meetings had been planned in Palestine and Turkey, both of which—claimed Stratfor emails—were killed by the senior Google leadership as too risky. Only a few months before he met with me, Cohen was planning a trip to the edge of Iran in Azerbaijan to “engage the Iranian communities closer to the border,” as part of Google Ideas’ project on “repressive societies.” In internal emails Stratfor’s vice president for intelligence, Fred Burton (himself a former State Department security official), wrote,

Google is getting WH [White House] and State Dept support and air cover. In reality they are doing things the CIA cannot do . . . [Cohen] is going to get himself kidnapped or killed. Might be the best thing to happen to expose Google’s covert role in foaming up-risings, to be blunt. The US Gov’t can then disavow knowledge and Google is left holding the shit-bag.

[0] https://wikileaks.org/google-is-not-what-it-seems/

Ah yes, the Israeli shills. They're well documented in various NGO and also official formats, and any discussion of Israel on popular message boards is certain to draw their attention and attendant misdirection. You are correct in identifying that the Israeli shill army comes out most frequently during Israeli geopolitical moves, most recently in their invasion and bombing of Gaza.

The rabidity of the Israeli shills isn't even the problem-- they're easy to spot, and their attacks on almost anyone discussing the issue are transparently biased. The real problem is that even when Israel is not in wartime, the shills still operate at a reduced level, trying to shape a public discussion milieu that is pro-Israel and refuses to recognize any kind of subtlety.

People notice that they get attacked when they criticize Israel online, and eventually they keep quiet.

USG bids on Persona Management Software [1]

Fake Online Personae for Propaganda [2]

DARPA Social Media in Strategic Communication (SMISC) [3]

[1] http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/02/revealed-air-force-ordere...

[2] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope...

[3] https://www.fbo.gov/index?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=6ef1255...

In addition to crackdowns on news media (including surveillance operations against journalistic outfits to dissolve their ability to work with confidential informants [1]) and both persecution and prosecution of journalists (e.g. Ibrahim Jassam [2], Laura Poitras [3], Glenn Greenwald [4], James Risen [5], many others), media partnership with the state (e.g. Ken Dilanian [6], Judith Miller and Michael Gordon [7]), the manipulation of US news media to achieve geopolitical goals (Zarqawi Psyop [8], Fallujah Psyop [9]) [note here that it has been recently anonymously removed from Wikipedia [10] that this happened - see this old version of the article where it was still present! [11]], the use of state pressure to prevent stories from circulating (Risen's NSA story 2004-05 [12]), the nonchalant sale of journalism to hide things as large as genocide by major media outlets (look up the CNN-Bahrain scandal), the pulling of journalists with unfriendly coverage on key international issues (e.g. Ayman Mohyeldin [13]), the use of journalism exclusion zones (foreign and also domestic [14]), death threats by the state against whistle blowers and their families (US held Binney's family hostage [15]; Binney by the way is a cripple), the capability to manipulate online discussions for geopolitical purposes [16], the use of false international cables to manipulate the press (both historical [17] and recent [18]), use of fake journalists during US press releases to direct conversation and ask softball questions ("Jeff Gannon"/Gannongate [19]) [a note here that this scandal has been covered up by a 'controversy over Gannon's sexual preferences' as though that's the scandal - the real issue is that he was a plant - looking to see coverage on Gannon is a good litmus test of journalists and media outlets to see whether they are covering real issues or just gossip] and similarly the blocking of journalists that don't "play ball", the payment for positive media coverage by the government (e.g. Armstrong Williams [20], Gallagher and McManus [21]), WCIA's injection of (hundreds of) unattributed fake news stories into local news channels by the US through the Office of Broadcasting Services [22], presumed ability to impersonate private citizens to influence other Americans [23], fake letters sent to media outlets from the US Army [24] [the article has been removed from the web but I was able to find a cached copy on the Internet Archive probject], invention of hero stories (e.g.fabricated Jessica Lynch fall and rescue story [25]; propagandized story enshrined by Hollywood Director Ridley Scott's 'infotainment' version ironically named "Body of Lies"), that the Smith-Mundt Act anti-propaganda law was eviscerated this year [26] (like many other important legislative changes and additions) with hardly any press coverage, use of coerced testimony to justify policy goals [27] when it is known to have been fabricated [28], that foreign aimed propaganda accidentally makes it in American media [29], and also that this is done on purpose to circumvent anti-propaganda law [30], that the government has a history of manipulating media and through the Cold War had over 800 American news networks and personel [31] (names you may know such as Austin Goodrich [32] and Frank Kearns [33]), that the United States hires [34] contractors [35] and has software [36] to manipulate social media[37] [note here that the last link shows formerly linked references to CENTCOM claims that Facebook and Twitter cannot be targeted are false], that research on vote manipulation have been done on both Google [38] and on Facebook (in the case of Facebook, 61 million American people were experimented on during the 2010 US congressional elections [39), that experiments have been done (successfully) on controlling emotions by manipulating Facebook feeds [40] (on a grant from the State Department), that beyond blocking third parties [41] from the presidential "debates" [42] (which American citizens consider extremely important to their vote) that the rehearsed questions, topics and terms are prenegotiated [43] by the joint Republican and Democrat owned organization [44], that agencies publish documents compelled of them by law at inconvenient times to discourage large press coverage [45], it is also true that the the now president and CEO of the Public Broadcasting Service Patricia Harrison testified before Congress that President Bush considered Office of Broadcasting Services (1/4 billion dollar) state sponsored propaganda powerful strategic tools for swaying public opinion [46].

Bush said "see, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda" some see him as a bumbling, silly fool. I see a (perhaps overly) honest and transparent man.

It's probably true that the revisions to the Smith-Mundt Act will not open the flood gates of government sponsored media manipulation. Given that Kenneth Tomlinson [47] (a chairman to the foreign media propaganda arm of the United States) was put in charge of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (NPR and PBS) before handpicking State Department official Patricia Harrison to supersede him, and that Harrison has brought in Cheryl Halpern, Tim Isgitt, Mike Levy, Helen Mobley, and other State Department officials formerly in charge of US overseas propaganda efforts [48], and that Tomlinson left after an internal investigation charged him with Ethics Violations for breaking the anti-propaganda law Public Broadcasting Act of 1967 [49] (but no arrest...) these things are probably nothing to worry about.

Propaganda exists in many forms in the United States but it is still held at bay to many degrees (when compared to some other nation states; it is by no means the worst) by the sorts of laws that the Smith-Mundt Act used to be. In my opinion every anti-propaganda law we lose or weaken is a big deal for liberty.

In case you're wondering how they accomplished some of that there was a piece of software called Megaphone[0] released during the 2006 Lebanon war that automatically cast votes for users on online polls on the internet concerning their favourite middle eastern country. It even received attention and support from their Foreign Ministry.

The developers went on to form a company[1] "to influence ratings on sites which allow users to rate articles or other items" with $2m in funding from Sequoia. Not sure if they still up-and-running.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collactive

US does it Metal Gear Solid 2 style, by manipulating context and censoring information (outright and using chilling effect).

I will be sure to read the book that you suggested, as this topic is of great interest to me.

A few thoughts:

1. Astroturfing has been the norm for a few years now-- probably more years than I suspect, but the biggest difference was pre-2011.

2. Most people don't even have astroturfing on their radar, and if the public ever did get any ideas, you can be sure they would be astroturfed into actually believing that astroturfing is a legitimate marketing technique rather than repugnant lying.

3. Astroturfing varies wildly in quality, and I'm sure that some people could spot the weaker campaigns-- the most recent major campaign that was weak was probably the pro-Russia astroturfing of Reddit during Russia's invasion of Crimea.

4. The quality of astroturf is inversely proportional to the time and thus money it requires to produce. A cheap statement "X is great, support X" blasted into every topic is easy to spot, whereas custom tailored shilling and misdirection is often far more insidious.

5. I'd expect that most governments engage in astroturfing and shilling heavily-- if not on their own population (which is extremely likely) then on other populations. As evidence, consider that Eglin AFB is the "most addicted to reddit" community. I'm not sure what to do about this other than call it out when I see it, which is woefully ineffective.

It is very widely used. It's one of the most cost effective PR strategies out there for some businesses. A good PR person might still be better, a story in a big blog/newspaper affects opinion much more than reddit comments, but if you can manipulate how many shares and comments those stories get you can guarantee more of those stories will get written, especially with modern analytics driven news blogs like BuzzFeed/Gawker/HuffPo).

The term to google for is "Reputation Management", and they will mostly publicly offer services to watch for conversations about your brand and help you take down fake reviews from competitors, which they will present as a huge problem, and do SEO on your press releases. But who did your competitor hire to post all these fake reviews?

It's like the SEO business, they all have some consultants that offer to "motivate and organize your brands fans in order to make their own positive opinions more prominent" or some other BS they can put on an invoice instead of "astroturf the crap out of the important sites with our bot army".

Here's an uneven article about the business that links to a lot of good info: http://www.businessinsider.com/reputation-management-2013-12

It's now a normal thing to do, like SEO and PR, among insiders it's not ethics that separate white from black hat, it's the risk of your client being exposed and the severity of the blowback. Fake reviews on Yelp/Amazon were the first big business. Giant astroturfing campaigns have become fairly normalized. They work very well and are very cheap. It's easy for sites like reddit or HN to spot a bunch of brand new accounts all spamming similar text, it's very hard to spot the accounts that are all real people, with good english, who are paid to write about mostly whatever they want all day on these sites under a bunch of accounts - who then take a specific position on a specific subject when told to.

I've just come to accept that I won't be able to detect the good ones, no one can. And it's easily available and cheap and effective, so I also assume that the ethics of it won't stop people and so it's probably pretty rife.

Also, "persona management software" is some pretty cool stuff - that's how you remember which political opinions and brand preferences and subculture each of your accounts is supposed to be presenting and managing the appropriate proxy configurations, scheduling posts/comments and so forth.

I know less about the political side of things, as far as I know there is no proof of it being deployed at scale inside the US (except during political campaigns obviously, but for some reason people care less about that and it's always done through a PAC or blamed on a rogue PR firm) but there is a lot of proof of contracts to develop the capability thanks to the HB Gary leaks and the Snowden leaks, and it is being done semi-openly outside the US (where it is legal). Pre-Snowden people doubted the NSA was doing bulk surveillance inside the US, but people in the know assumed they did because there had been other leaks and whistleblowers and they had the motivation and the means. This is where I'd say we are with astroturf propaganda. If it's not being done at scale right now then it's known to not be cost effective.

It never explicitly states that the "this size or bigger" refers to its population, it could be area.

> It never explicitly states that the "this size or bigger" refers to its population, it could be area