TWITTER DRONES CONFIRMED

ABSTRACT

A 2016 review of literature about automation, algorithms and politics identified China as the foremost area in which further research was needed because of the size of its population, the potential for Chinese algorithmic manipulation in the politics of other countries, and the frequency of exportation of Chinese software and hardware. This paper contributes to the small body of knowledge on the first point (domestic automation and opinion manipulation) and presents the first piece of research into the second (international automation and opinion manipulation). Findings are based on an analysis of 1.5 million comments on official political information posts on Weibo and 1.1 million posts using hashtags associated with China and Chinese politics on Twitter. In line with previous research, little evidence of automation was found on Weibo. In contrast, a large amount of automation was found on Twitter. However, contrary to expectations and previous news reports, no evidence was found of pro-Chinese-state automation on Twitter. Automation on Twitter was associated with anti-Chinese-state perspectives and published in simplified Mandarin, presumably aimed at diasporic Chinese and mainland users who ‘jump the wall’ to access blocked platforms. These users come to Twitter seeking more diverse information and an online public sphere but instead they find an information environment in which a small number of anti-Chinese-state voices are attempting to use automation to dominate discourse. Our understanding of public conversation on Twitter in Mandarin is extremely limited and, thus, this paper advances the understanding of political communication on social media.

reddit propaganda

US Military Admits Spending Millions to Study Manipulation of Social Media

Posted on July 10, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog

Part of a Long-Term Effort to Spread Propaganda Through the Internet

The Guardian reports:

The activities of users of Twitter and other social media services were recorded and analysed as part of a major project funded by the US military, in a program that covers ground similar to Facebook’s controversial experiment into how to control emotions by manipulating news feeds.
Research funded directly or indirectly by the US Department of Defense’s military research department, known as Darpa, has involved users of some of the internet’s largest destinations, including Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Kickstarter, for studies of social connections and how messages spread.
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Several of the DoD-funded studies went further than merely monitoring what users were communicating on their own, instead messaging unwitting participants in order to track and study how they responded.
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The project list includes a study of how activists with the Occupy movement used Twitter as well as a range of research on tracking internet memes and some about understanding how influence behaviour (liking, following, retweeting) happens on a range of popular social media platforms like Pinterest, Twitter, Kickstarter, Digg and Reddit.
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Unveiled in 2011, the SMISC [Social Media in Strategic Communication] program was regarded as a bid by the US military to become better at both detecting and conducting propaganda campaigns on social media.
“Through the program, Darpa seeks to develop tools to support the efforts of human operators to counter misinformation or deception campaigns with truthful information.” [“Truthful” as in government-approved? ]
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Studies which received military funding channeled through IBM included one called “Modeling User Attitude toward Controversial Topics in Online Social Media”, which analysed Twitter users’ opinions on fracking.
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“As another example, when anti-government messages are spread in social media, government would want to spread counter messages to balance that effort and hence identify people who are more likely to spread such counter messages based on their opinions.”
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A study at Georgia Tech … concluded: “Breaking news stories and world events – for example, the Arab Spring – are heavily represented in social media, making them susceptible topics for influence attempts via deception.” [We can’t tell if the researchers were pro or anti-deception; but given that the U.S. and Britain have used Twitter to intentionally spread falsehoods in other countries, we can take a wild guess.]
***
One of multiple studies looking into how to spread messages on the networks, titled “Who Will Retweet This? Automatically Identifying and Engaging Strangers on Twitter to Spread Information” did just this.
The researchers explained: “Since everyone is potentially an influencer on social media and is capable of spreading information, our work aims to identify and engage the right people at the right time on social media to help propagate information when needed.”

This story can only really be understood with a little context:

• We noted 6 years ago that the Pentagon is using artificial intelligence programs to try to predict how people will react to propaganda

• We’ve documented for 5 years that the Defense Department uses disinformation and disruption  (and here) on the web to discredit activists and manipulate public opinion, just like it smears traditional television and print reporters who question the government too acutely

• We’ve long reported that the government censors and manipulates social media. More proof here

• Edward Snowden revealed NSA documents showing that the U.S. government is attempting to control, infiltrate, manipulate, and warp online discourse, and that spy agencies manipulate and disrupt web discussions to promote propaganda and discredit government critics

Postscript:   We explained one aspect of this story – the importance of controlling which stories “go viral” – in February:

The government spends a great deal of manpower and money to monitor which stories, memes and social movements are developing the momentum to actually pose a threat to the status quo.  For example, the Federal Reserve, Pentagon, Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies all monitor social media for stories critical of their agencies … or the government in general.   Other governments – and private corporations – do the same thing.
Why?
Because a story gaining momentum ranks high on social media sites.  So it has a high probability of bursting into popular awareness, destroying the secrecy which allows corruption, and becoming a real challenge to the powers-that-be.
“Social proof” is a related concept.  Social proof is the well-known principle stating that people will believe something if most other people believe it. And see this.  In other words, most people have a herd instinct, so if a story ranks highly, more people are likely to believe it and be influenced by it.
That is why vested interests go to great lengths – using computer power and human resources – to monitor social media momentum.   If a story critical of one of these powerful entities is gaining momentum, they will go to great lengths to kill its momentum, and destroy the social proof which comes with alot of upvotes, likes or recommendations in social media.
They may choose to flood social media with comments supporting the entities, using armies of sock puppets, i.e. fake social media identities. See this, this, this, this and this.

reddit manipulation social media

Eglin Air Force Base Busted Gaming Reddit

Posted on July 15, 2014 by WashingtonsBlog

Evidence of Web Manipulation By a Specific Military Installation

The Pentagon and spy agencies have been busted manipulating the Internet – including social media – in order to promote false propaganda and to stifle dissenting information.
Earlier today, newly-released Snowden docs showed that British spies manipulate polls, website popularity and pageview counts, censor videos they don’t like and amplify messages they do.
We’ve documented for years that big social media sites like Reddit are censored and manipulated.
A Redditor calling himself “FreedomIntensifies”  just posted a fascinating analysis on military manipulation of Reddit by a specific base:

Check out this blog post with reddit statistics. Notice Eglin Air Force Base as the “most addicted” city. This is about a year ago, so reddit has been getting heavily sh!tp0sted by government employees for at least this long.
Here is a paper funded by Eglin AFB studying how to establish majority views, social control, influence conversations, contain unwanted information. Eglin AFB is a major hub for Pentagon domestic manipulation programs online.
A lot of this got established right when the war on terror started. Then in 2012 the Smith-Mundt Modernization Act legalized Pentagon / other agency domestic propaganda. That’s not to say what we think of as ‘propaganda’ or manipulation wasn’t going on before – just that they no longer have to plausibly believe the narrative they try to trick you into buying.
All this stuff is like 21st century cointelpro and project minaret.

Busted (?)

reddit propaganda eglin air force base

Reddit has removed their blog post identifying Eglin Air Force Base as the most reddit-addicted "city" - Eglin is often cited as the source of some government social-media propaganda/astroturfing programs

• The article as it was originally, now archived on archive.org: https://web.archive.org/web/20160604042751/http://www.redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html
• The page as it appears currently (archived a couple days ago): https://archive.is/7MY8D
• The original url: https://redditblog.com/2013/05/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day.html

It appears that reddit recently updated the styling/branding of the reddit blog to be more like the "Upvoted" website. In this process some of their old articles have been pruned while others remain.

Here's a paper about Eglin being used as part of a program testing the power of online astroturfing/propaganda: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1402.5644.pdf

Do a web search for Eglin AFB and astroturfing or propaganda for more information - if reddit is trying to obfuscate this, it is disconcerting. In all likelihood they just fucked up in moving the articles over to their new format or something stupid... but it still looks strange.

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/u/DonGeronimo has provided these links as additional context:

• http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/eglin-air-force-base-busted-gaming-reddit.html
• http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/pentagon-admits-spending-millions-study-manipulate-social-media-users.html

Update 9/10/2016: it appears the blog post has been restored.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/eglin-air-force-base-busted-gaming-reddit.html

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2014/07/pentagon-admits-spending-millions-study-manipulate-social-media-users.html

reddit american sockpuppets

A few years ago they showed that a suspiciously large amount of Reddit traffic originates from the Elgin US Air Force Base in Florida. https://i.redd.it/4sha8f3v1kf21.jpg I would like to remind everyone that the USAF is the branch of the US military tasked with cyberspace operations, including Operation Earnest Voice (pro-American sockpuppets). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice