1984: Thread
grarpamp
grarpamp at gmail.com
Sun Aug 7 23:32:01 PDT 2022
https://www.investmentwatchblog.com/u-n-recruits-110000-information-volunteers-to-correct-online-covid-wrongthink/
Google backed RAND report recommends infiltrating and subverting
online conspiracy groups from within.
https://sociable.co/government-and-policy/google-rand-report-recommends-infiltrating-subverting-online-conspiracy-groups-within
"Psychological Operations Officer," newspeak for Government Troll...
https://www.goarmy.com/careers-and-jobs/career-match/signal-intelligence/languages-code/37a-psychological-operations-officer.html
https://vault.fbi.gov/cointel-pro
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2020/11/misinformation-infodemic-world-vs-virus-podcast
"So far, we've recruited 110,000 information volunteers, and we equip
these information volunteers with the kind of knowledge about how
misinformation spreads and ask them to serve as kind of 'digital
first-responders' in those spaces where misinformation travels,"
Fleming says.
Google’s Jigsaw unit sponsors a RAND report that recommends
infiltrating and subverting online conspiracy groups from within while
planting authoritative messaging wherever possible. If authoritative
messaging is successful, moderate members flip to become influencers
and help guide the 'flock' to greener pastures as ‘brand ambassadors’
for the common good, teaching others the errors of their ways. Some
conspiracy group members will be persuaded by the bombardment of
content flagged by algorithms, and they will slowly come around to
believing that the fact-checkers are right by the sheer volume of
evidence and/or peer pressure to conform. Trying to infiltrate groups
and subvert certain members seems like a tactic that would be
perceived as an intrusion that furthers the divide and lead to even
less trust, but *we shall see how it all plays out.
Operation Earnest Voice
Operation Earnest Voice (OEV) is a communications program by the
United States Central Command (CENTCOM). Initially, the program was
developed as a psychological weapon and was first used in Iraq. In
2011, the US government signed a $2.8 million contract with the
Ntrepid web-security company to develop a specialized software,
allowing agents of the government to post propaganda. The aim of the
initiative is to use sockpuppets to spread pro-American propaganda on
social networking services.
Main characteristics of the software, as stated in the software
development request, are:
Fifty user "operator" licenses, 10 sockpuppets controllable by each user.
Sockpuppets are to be "replete with background, history, supporting
details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and
geographically consistent." Sockpuppets are to "be able to appear to
originate in nearly any part of the world."
A special secure VPN, allowing sockpuppets to appear to be posting
from "randomly selected IP addresses," in order to "hide the existence
of the operation."
Fifty static IP addresses to enable government agencies to "manage
their persistent online personas," with identities of government and
enterprise organizations protected which will allow for different
state agents to use the same sockpuppet, and easily switch between
different sockpuppets to "look like ordinary users as opposed to one
organization."
Nine private servers, "based on the geographic area of operations the
customer is operating within and which allow a customer's online
persona(s) to appear to originate from." These servers should use
commercial hosting centers around the world.
Virtual machine environments, deleted after each session termination,
to avoid interaction with "any virus, worm, or malicious software."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice
Also:
https://www.darpa.mil/program/social-media-in-strategic-communication
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_Internet_propaganda
And
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_farm
The show Homeland touched on this: https://youtu.be/owIsqj1Y1sk
The largest undercover force the world has ever known is the one
created by the Pentagon over the past decade. Some 60,000 people now
belong to this secret army, many working under masked identities and
in low profile, all part of a broad program called "signature
reduction." The force, more than ten times the size of the clandestine
elements of the CIA, carries out domestic and foreign assignments,
both in military uniforms and under civilian cover, in real life and
online, sometimes hiding in private businesses and consultancies, some
of them household name companies.
https://www.newsweek.com/exclusive-inside-militarys-secret-undercover-army-1591881
Much more info here: https://archive.ph/Ccz00
https://www.technologyreview.com/2020/10/08/1009845/a-gpt-3-bot-posted-comments-on-reddit-for-a-week-and-no-one-noticed/
No one really knows how many of these are here, anyone with access to
this tech could do it. This bot is still active.
Also:
When Reddit was first started, it was populated almost entirely
with content submitted by fake users.
In a video for online educator Udacity, Reddit cofounder Steve
Huffman explains both the method, and the reasoning behind it.
Essentially, Huffman set up a submission interface through which they
could pick not only the URL and the title, but also the user’s name.
Upon submission, the name would be registered, and make it look like
Reddit had more users than it actually did.
https://www.themarysue.com/reddit-fake-account-origins/
MORE INFO AND LINKS BELOW. COPIED FROM ANOTHER USER'S COMMENT. THANK
YOU CLARITYOFSIGNAL.
https://electronicintifada.net/content/inside-israels-million-dollar-troll-army/27566
Inside Israel’s million dollar troll army
A global influence campaign funded by the Israeli government had a
$1.1 million budget last year, a document obtained by The Electronic
Intifada shows.
Act.IL says it has offices in three countries and an online army of
more than 15,000.
Main PDF file exposing all global technocratic cabal links:
https://clubderklarenworte.de/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Netzwerkanalyse-Corona-Komplex.pdf
The German Club of Clear Words takes a deep dive into the network of
individuals and organizations responsible for the COVID scam
Whether blatantly visible or not, you can identify just about any
network by connecting dots between individuals and organizations.
Who’s working with whom, where, and why? Who’s paying whom? And once
you’ve done that, you can more clearly identify the motivations behind
various decisions
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation appears to be near the top, or the
center, of this COVID plandemic network. Gates is also a major funder
of mainstream media, and his network extends into global food and
climate change policy
The Gates Foundation, through its funding of the WEF, also plays an
important role in The Great Reset, which was officially unveiled
during a WEF summit in May 2020
Every conceivable aspect of life and society is scheduled to be
“reset” according to their plan. Ultimately, that’s where this
criminal COVID enterprise is trying to take us.
Those people are now trying to reshape the world via the CV-19
fear-based agenda in order to gain more power and control for
themselves and bring about an AI-controlled dystopian future that
benefits them even more greatly. Ignore it at your own peril. They
call it The Great Reset. It involves travel restrictions, tracking,
tracing, mandatory vaccination, monitoring, surveillance, digital
currency, 5G to implement the global control, etc. Its all right there
on their own website... plain as day. They aren't even hiding it from
the public anymore.
https://intelligence.weforum.org/topics/a1G0X000006O6EHUA0?tab=publications
Many of the fake accounts, online narrative propagation accounts and
bots are tucked into the US budget from here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Agency_for_Global_Media
Excerpt:
Their operating budget for fiscal year 2016 was US$752 million.
U.S. Government Accountability Office Audit Report
https://www.gao.gov/products/gao-22-104017
Excerpt:
Amendments to legislation have affected USAGM's governing authorities
and organizational structure by shifting authority from a bipartisan
board to a Chief Executive Officer (CEO), with advice from an Advisory
Board. Network and USAGM officials said that previous members of USAGM
leadership took several actions that did not align with USAGM's
firewall principles. According to USAGM, the firewall protecting the
networks' independence is central to the credibility and effectiveness
of USAGM's networks (see fig.). However, the parameters of the
firewall are not specifically laid out in legislation. Delineation of
what is and is not permissible under the firewall may help ensure the
professional independence and integrity of the agency and its
networks.
Actions to ensure accountability of grantees, such as establishing
Standard Operating Procedures for Monitoring Grants , have not
corrected a longstanding significant deficiency in grants monitoring
reported by independent audits of USAGM's financial statements for the
past 5 years.
Also:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/31/british-army-facebook-warriors-77th-brigade
Ukraine and Turkey also have been reported to have large office
buildings filled with teams of online influencers with dozens of fake
accounts entirely dedicated to influencing nefarious government
policies. All The Worlds A Stage folks.
Intelligence agencies have a long history of this.
https://www.carlbernstein.com/the-cia-and-the-media-rolling-stone-10-20-1977
https://www.corbettreport.com/how-the-cia-plants-news-stories-in-the-media/
https://youtu.be/xF90EfuOOIw
These are all just a few examples of some of what's been disclosed,
what has not been disclosed?
Modern War Institute - Your Brain is the Next Battlefield
https://youtu.be/N02SK9yd60s
https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/szf78z/deleted_by_user/hy3op2y/
https://old.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/wgagug/beware_of_people_in_this_sub_some_are_paid_cia/iiztuzf/
https://clarityofsignal.com/
https://steemit.com/@clarityofsignal
https://odysee.com/@Randall_Aware:b/y2mate.com---The-Children-and-the-CIA---partial-report_360p:2
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mS4-aEYhLd8&list=PLH6skP8VqRDKZ-jUjSpR8pJA8NKBj73d4
https://old.reddit.com/r/shills/comments/4kdq7n/astroturfing_information_megathread_revision_8/
Hmmm, i think i already met a couple of dozens of those....
Edit to add that it is nothing new ofcourse:
Here is some evidence of a reddit CEO editing user comments...
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheRecordCorrected/comments/5elszg/reddit_ceo_caught_actively_editing_comments_then/
https://gizmodo.com/reddit-ceo-caught-secretly-editing-user-comments-chatl-1789342358
Here is some evidence of "s hills":
https://old.reddit.com/r/shills/comments/4kdq7n/astroturfing_information_megathread_revision_8/
Their guide: https://steemit.com/security/@tinfoilfedora/the-gentlemans-guide-to-forum-spies-spooks-feds-etc
Here is some evidence of an USA basis having a lot of redditors:
https://redditblog.com/2013/05/08/get-ready-for-global-reddit-meetup-day-plus-some-stats-about-top-reddit-cities-and-languages/
Here is some evidence that the military and other agencies are still involved:
https://www.darpa.mil/program/social-media-in-strategic-communication
https://usahitman.com/grhtdcrdcs/
https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
And last but not least, here is some info about original project
Mockingbird and the effects it has on education and the MSM:
http://documents.theblackvault.com/documents/cia/operationmockingbirdCIA.pdf
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cDCfTIapds0
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aIaFkR9uriU
https://stillnessinthestorm.com/2017/09/document-surfaces-showing-cia-s-plans-to-infiltrate-academia-change-university-college-curriculums/
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP88B00443R001500080042-1.pdf
https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/DOC_0005524009.pdf
https://stillnessinthestorm.com/2017/05/declassified-cia-documents-show-agency-s-control-over-mainstream-media-academia/
For those who do not quite get it yet; here is why this can be
extremely dangerous for a democracy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_fHfgU8oMSo
Oh, and i almost forgot, anybody "on the job" here might want to
consider a career change, there might be some health problems with
what you are doing now.
https://www.theverge.com/2019/6/19/18681845/facebook-moderator-interviews-video-trauma-ptsd-cognizant-tampa
https://www.theverge.com/2019/2/25/18229714/cognizant-facebook-content-moderator-interviews-trauma-working-conditions-arizona
Astroturfing Information Megathread- revision 8Must Read (self.shills)
submitted 6 years ago * by NutritionResearch - announcement
Government Shills
The Guardian: British army creates team of Facebook warriors
The Guardian: US military studied how to influence Twitter [and
Reddit] users in Darpa-funded research [2014]
The Guardian: The Ministry of Defence is developing a secret,
multimillion-pound research programme into the future of cyberwarfare,
including how emerging technologies such as social media and
psychological techniques can be harnessed by the military to influence
people's beliefs. [2014]
Vice: Your Government Wants to Militarize Social Media to
Influence Your Beliefs
NY Times: The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert
propaganda” and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to
urge the public to back an Obama administration rule intended to
better protect the nation’s streams and surface waters, congressional
auditors have concluded.
CBC News- Canadian government monitors online forums
Slate on 2018 midterms interference: "Project Lakhta was a Russian
influence campaign that had no particular ideological bent; it appears
that the goal was simply to stir up conflict in online political
debates by putting forth extreme arguments and inflammatory
misinformation to incense both liberals and conservatives."
NY Times: The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz (Cambridge Analytica)
NY Times- From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg,
Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all
around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.
Washington Post: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian
company during 2016 election
New York Times: "Hundreds of people work at a so-called troll farm
in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to smother the voices of dissidents like Mr.
Khashoggi."
CNN: Facebook announces first takedown of influence campaign with
ties to Saudi government
The Nation: US Officials Won’t Say if a New Anti–Russian
Propaganda Project (shilling on social media) Is Targeting Americans.
The newly created Global Engagement Center’s “focus and intent” is
foreign audiences, but officials won’t rule out propagandizing
Americans and funding American journalists.
Ex -MMA fighter and ex-police officer exposes corrupt police
practices, which includes infiltrating Reddit communities and becoming
moderators in order to manipulate and censor information.
Times of Israel: Israeli government paying bilingual students to
spread propaganda online primarily to international communities
without having to identify themselves as working for the government.
"The [student] union will operate computer rooms for the project...it
was decided to establish a permanent structure of activity on the
Internet through the students at academic institutions in the
country."
The Intercept: Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics
Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies." TigerSwan
attempted a counterinformation campaign by creating and distributing
content critical of the protests on social media.
WashingtonPost: Obama pick for NSA review panel wanted paid,
pro-government shills in chat rooms (Thread with source paper.)
Psy Group developed elaborate information operations for
commercial clients and political candidates around the world, which
included infiltrating target audiences with elaborately crafted
social-media personas. The CEO of PSY Group was former commander of an
Israeli psychological warfare unit. Tactics deployed by PSY Group in
foreign elections included inflaming divisions in opposition groups
and playing on deep-seated cultural and ethnic conflicts, something
the firm called “poisoning the well." It has conducted
messaging/influence operations in well over a dozen languages and
dialects and employs an elite group of high-ranking former officers
from some of the world’s most renowned intelligence units.
Wired: Clinton Staff and Volunteers Busted for Astroturfing [in 2007]
Vice: Amazon Requires Police to Shill Surveillance Cameras in
Secret Agreement
The Intercept: The Rise of the Net Center. How an Army of Trolls
Protects Guatemala’s Corrupt Elite.
The Independent: Massive British PR firm caught on video: "We've
got all sorts of dark arts...The ambition is to drown that negative
content and make sure that you have positive content online." They
discuss techniques for managing reputations online and
creating/maintaining 3rd-party blogs that seem independent.
The Guardian: US spy operation to manipulate social media
Washington Post: Why crafty Internet trolls in the Philippines may
be coming to a website near you
BBC: Vietnam admits deploying bloggers to support the Communist
Party's policies, operates a network of nearly 1,000 "public opinion
shapers".
Glenn Greenwald: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to
Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations
The Intercept: Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’S Effects and
Online HUMINT Operations
USA Today: The co-owner of a major Pentagon propaganda contractor
publicly admitted that he was behind a series of websites used in an
attempt to discredit two USA TODAY journalists who had reported on the
contractor.
Glenn Greenwald: Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies
Seek to Control the Internet
The Guardian: Chinese officials flood the Chinese internet with
positive social media posts to distract their population
The Guardian: Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown - Social
science is being militarised to develop 'operational tools' to target
peaceful activists and protest movements. "Minerva"-funded social
scientists tied to Pentagon counterinsurgency operations are involved
in the "study of emotions in stoking or quelling ideologically driven
movements," he said, including how "to counteract grassroots
movements."
Bloomberg: How to Hack an Election [and influence voters with fake
social media accounts]
USA Today: Businesses and organizations may refer to it as a tool
for competitive advantage and marketing; but make no mistake, they are
using the massive reach of social media and the Internet as a weapon.
One U.S. 3-letter special agent said, "You could influence an election
with this."
Times of Israel - The internet: Israel’s new PR battlefield
Arstechnica: GCHQ’s menu of tools spreads disinformation across
Internet- “Effects capabilities” allow analysts to twist truth subtly
or spam relentlessly.
The Guardian: Internet Astroturfing
BBC News: US plans to 'fight the net' revealed
Israel is paying internet workers to manipulate online content
such as Wikipedia (2 minute video)
Buzzfeed: Documents Show How Russia’s Troll Army Hit America
NY Times: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation
Raw Story: CENTCOM engages bloggers
Wired: Air Force Releases ‘Counter-Blog’ Marching Orders
Wired: Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’
The Guardian: Israel ups the stakes in the propaganda war
BBC News: China's Internet spin doctors
Raw Story: Air Force ordered software to manage army of fake virtual people
DailyKos: HBGary: Automated social media management
Huffington Post- Exposing Cyber Shills and Social Media's Underworld
Wall Street Journal: Turkey's Government Forms 6,000-Member Social
Media Team
The Bush and Gore campaigns of 2000 used methods similar to the
Chinese government for conducting “guided discussions” in chatrooms
designed to influence citizens
Salon: Why Reddit moderators are censoring Glenn Greenwald’s
latest news story on shills
Shilling in the Private Sector
NPR: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good To Be Believed. They're Paid
For. "Much like Amazon itself is a marketplace for goods, a world of
separate, shadow marketplaces exists where reviews for Amazon products
are bought and paid for — private Facebook groups, Slack channels,
subreddits and more."
Fake five-star reviews being bought and sold online - Fake online
reviews are being openly traded on the internet, a BBC investigation
has found.
Yahoo News: Last month the FTC issued warnings to celebrities who
plugged products on their Instagram accounts without clearly
identifying their relationships with brands. The letters were meant to
educate the celebrities on posting without violating the
organization’s disclosure guidelines.
New York Times: Tobacco corporations are targeting young American
consumers with deceptive social media marketing in violation of
federal law. 123 hashtags associated with these companies’ tobacco
products have been viewed 8.8 billion times in the United States alone
and 25 billion times around the world.
PBS Frontline Documentary - Generation Like
USA Today: Lord & Taylor settles FTC charges over paid Instagram posts
Wired: Microsoft, through an outside agency, paid Machinima to
produce positive videos about the Xbox One game machine, and many of
the YouTube stars who accepted the deal failed to properly disclose
that they were producing paid, sponsored content, not independent
analysis.
CNBC: The Federal Reserve Bank is soliciting proposals from
developers for a "Social Listening Platform" that will monitor
"Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube...to "Handle crisis
situations, "continuously monitor conversations, identify and reach
out to key bloggers and influencers." [2011]
CNN: A PR firm has revealed that it is behind two blogs that
previously appeared to be created by independent supporters of
Wal-Mart. The blogs Working Families for Wal-mart and subsidiary site
Paid Critics are written by 3 employees of PR firm Edelman, for whom
Wal-Mart is a paid client. [2006]
The Verge: Anti-net neutrality spammers are impersonating real
people to flood FCC comments
Vice: Trolls Paid by a Telecom Lobbying Firm Keep Commenting on My
Net Neutrality Articles
The Guardian: In a New York investigation dubbed "Operation Clean
Turf," dentists, lawyers, an ultra-sound clinic, Staten Island bus
company US Coachways, a charter bus operator, a teeth-whitening
service, a laser hair-removal chain and an adult entertainment club
were caught buying fake reviews. The fake review companies posted on
sites like Citysearch, Google, Yahoo and Yelp.
New York Times: When a Company's Product Is Under Fire, One Option
is to Plant a Defender in the Chat Room
Time: Social Media Manipulation? When “Indie” Bloggers and
Businesses Get Cozy
New York Times: Give Yourself 5 Stars? Online, It Might Cost You
Chicago Tribune: Nutrition for sale: How Kellogg worked with
'independent experts' to tout cereal
The Atlantic: Kim Kardashian was paid to post a selfie on
Instagram and Twitter advertising a pharmaceutical product. Sent to 42
million followers on Instagram and 32 million on Twitter, this illegal
advertisement did not contain any risk information or language
specifying that it was a paid endorsement.
Warner Brothers fined for paying YouTube celebs to promote game
without properly disclosing that the videos were paid endorsements.
Gamers promote gaming-gambling site on youtube by pretending to
hit jackpot without disclosing that they own the site. They tried to
retroactively write a disclosure covering their tracks, but were
caught.
CSGO Lotto Owners Settle FTC’s First-Ever Complaint Against
Individual Social Media Influencers
"Internet Reputation Management," founded by three partners in the
New York area, recruits bloggers to write about clients on third-party
sites, without necessarily disclosing that they're paid
Slate: Want to Get Paid For TV Criticism? Shill for DISH.
Sony viral marketing campaign exposed (2006). The company admits
they ran the shady advertising campaign.
ADWEEK: Marketing on Reddit Is Scary, But These Success Stories
Show Big Potential
BBC news: Amazon targets 1,114 'fake reviewers' in Seattle lawsuit
New York Times: Lifestyle Lift, a cosmetic surgery company,
reached a settlement with the State of New York over its attempts to
fake positive consumer reviews on the Web. The company had ordered
employees to pretend they were satisfied customers and write glowing
reviews of its face-lift procedure on Web sites
Samsung Electronics Fined for Fake Online Comments [in Taiwan]
Shill Bots
Artificial intelligence chatbots will overwhelm human speech
online; the rise of MADCOMs
Russian bots were active on Reddit last year, from /r/RussiaLago
BBC- How online chatbots are already tricking you- Intelligent
machines that can pass for humans have long been dreamed of, but as
Chris Baraniuk argues, they’re already among us. The ramifications of
astroturfing are in fact so serious that the US Department of Defense
funded research to detect chatbots.
Wired: Powered by rapid advances in artificial intelligence,
propaganda bots will soon run on genetic algorithms that let their
ideas and messaging evolve, based on the resonance and effectiveness
of previous messages. We are likely to see versions of these bots
deployed on US audiences as part of the 2016 presidential election
campaigns.
BBC: More than four times as many tweets were made by automated
accounts in favour of Donald Trump around the first US presidential
debate as by those backing Hillary Clinton, a study says.
Discover Magazine: Researchers Uncover Twitter Bot Army That’s
350,000 Strong
The Rise of Social Bots
Forbes: From Tinder Bots To 'Cuban Twitter', Welcome To 'Cognitive Hacking'
Wired: Pro-Government Twitter Bots Try to Hush Mexican Activists
Information about shilling on Reddit
/u/slaterhearst spammed Reddit with links to The Atlantic. "The
Daily Dot has confirmed that slaterhearst was Jared Keller, the
associate editor and social media editor at magazine giant The
Atlantic."
Forbes: Reddit Is Being Manipulated By Big Financial Services Companies
User pushes InfoWars links on Reddit, eventually admits to working
for Infowars.
Shareblue accounts caught in /r/politics posting links to
Shareblue without disclosing their affiliation, which caused the mods
to create a new disclosure rule and an official Shareblue account was
registered. About a month later, Shareblue was again caught shilling
on /r/politics without disclosing ties to the outlet, which caused
them to ban Shareblue links to the sub.
Hillary Clinton Super Pac and "strategic research and rapid
response team designed to defend Hillary Clinton from baseless
attacks" openly admits to shilling on Reddit.
User posts video using GoPro, gets video to front page, admits in
comments that GoPro sent him free cameras in exchange for advertising.
(archive: http://archive.is/ICGrl)
Top mod of /r/Mechanical_Gifs tries to sell subreddit on ebay for
999.00 dollars.
How Reddit Got Huge: Tons of Fake Accounts - According to Reddit
cofounder Steve Huffman, in the early days the Reddit crew just faked
it ‘til they made it.
Shill posts picture of a dog in a hammock with the brand clearly
visible without indicating that it's an ad in the title of the post,
making it an illegal advertisement. Later, he posts a promo code in
the comments for 20 percent off his hammocks.
Redditor who works for a potato mailing company admits to being a
shill. He shows off his 27 thousand dollars he made in /r/pics
(Screenshot because he deleted his posts.) [Here's the thread.]
/r/netsec talks about gaming reddit via sockpuppets and how online
discourse is (easily) manipulated.
Reddit is being gamed by professional shills every day. We
investigate how widespread the problem of fake comments and fake votes
is in our Reddit For Sale follow-up. [11:48]
Reddit For Sale: How We Bought The Top Spot For $200 [8:27]
Some websites use shill accounts to spam their competitor's
articles, causing their competitors to become banned on Reddit.
Wikileaks: Reddit cofounder consulting for Stratfor to bring in
the social media dollars
Shilling on Reddit is openly admitted to in this Forbes article
What I learned selling my Reddit accounts
Reddit automation bot: "Run Up To 100 Threads, Checks For Valid
Proxy Access & Also To Check If Banned From Site, Keyword Based
Submission Finder & Vote Up/Down Capabilities, Mass upvote or downvote
Mode..."
Boostupvotes.com
Reddit Secrets, buy upvotes
Reddit Secrets, buy pre-aged and high karma accounts
Science
New Scientist: Sock puppet accounts unmasked by the way they write and post
Researcher's algorithm weeds out people using multiple online
accounts to spread propaganda - Based on word choice, punctuation and
context, the method is able to detect whether one person or multiple
people are responsible for the samples.
Fake product reviews may be pervasive, study finds
When grassroots activism becomes a commodity - UCLA sociologist
investigates 'astroturf' campaigns
Content-Driven Detection of Campaigns in Social Media [PDF]
Additional information
Shill Confessions and Additional Information (most confessions are
unverifiable due to NDA's and possible trolling.)
Clinton Campaign used "grass-roots tweeters" to post tweets and
graphics at strategic times during the 2016 election campaign.
Meme Warfare Center (PDF. Proposal written in 2006)
WAR.COM: THE INTERNET AND PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATIONS (Proposal
written in 2001 by Angela Maria Lungu - Major, US Army.)
The Gentleperson's Guide To Forum Spies
Corporate and governmental manipulation of Wikipedia articles
TEDx Astroturf and manipulation of media messages (Sharyl Attkisson)
"Changing the hive mind -- How social media manipulation affects
everything" by Tim Weninger at TEDxUND
What you should do about this
I made this thread in the hopes that it could be used as a citation.
There isn't much we can do to stop the manipulation, but we can spread
this information so that people can at least become aware of it.
The previous generation became somewhat aware of the manipulation in
the media. Imagine how effective it would be if few people knew about
it? That is what is happening today. We are being advertised to and
subjected to propaganda without being aware of it, which is very
dangerous. The only reason why this type of propaganda works so well
is because most people trust comments and posts with a lot of upvotes
and likes. People trust that the information they are looking for will
be at the top of threads or on the front page of a subreddit,
oblivious to the fact that certain types of information may become
buried in artificial downvotes or buried using a "forum slide." Not
only that, but this is becoming automated. We must educate others
about this problem before we are drowned out by bots.
Some of this stuff is automatically removed by Reddit, so you have to
link to a thread that was manually approved in order to cite the
information.
Share this thread where you can or cite small bits of this post in your travels.
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[–][deleted] 153 points 6 years ago
Just thought I'd contribute to this thread
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[–]NutritionResearch[S] 84 points 6 years ago*
I assume that a lot of shills are losing their jobs to bots, as most
of us are. With that being the case, many of them will probably come
out and release some details about their jobs.
Here is a list of shill confessions:
"Once we isolate key people, we look for people we know are in
their upstream -- people that they read posts from, but who themselves
are less influential. We then either start flame wars with bots to
derail the conversations that are influencing influential people, or
else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of
an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc)."
What I learned selling my Reddit accounts
Confession of Hillary Shill from /r/SandersForPresident
Shill whistleblower, claims to have derailed discussions and
called people anti-semites, ruined reputations of users by searching
their account history, amongst other things.
Fracking shill whistleblower spills the beans on Fracking Internet PR
/r/netsec talks about gaming reddit via sockpuppets and how online
discourse is (easily) manipulated.
Whistleblower and subsequent investigation: Paid trolls on /r/Bitcoin
Redditor comes clean about being paid to chat on Reddit. They work
to promote a politician, although they don't specify which one.
(Admins claim this wasn't a shill)
Screenshot of post since it was removed.
I'm not certain that all of these are legit confessions, which is why
I chose to omit them from the above post, but some of these are very
interesting.
Edit:
Alleged paid shill leaks details of organization and actions.
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[–]apistograma 13 points 5 years ago
Oh, god. I'm sure I was arguing with one person in a similar position
to the one in your screenshot some weeks ago in a youtube video about
GMOs.
I'm not even completely against GMOs, I was mainly arguing that people
should be aware of the problems that the current loose regulation in
the US and EU could bring long-term. I understand that every people
has it's own opinion, and most of them were nice and wanted to add to
the discussion, including some of the most adamant supporters of GMOs.
But there was one dude that was making me mad. He just spend all the
time twisting my points, defending the industry (even when I didn't
attacked any firm in particular), and derailing all my topics. He
followed most of the points you mentioned, included the one about
conspiracy theories (when he asked me if I believed in the lunar
landing lol).
I didn't know exactly why, but that commenter left me with a very
uncomfortable feeling that he wasn't being honest, like when you see a
politician talking in an interview. Now I'm pretty sure why. Thank
you, you're doing a very nice service to everyone on the internet.
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[–]EvilBananaPt 4 points 5 years ago
I found a similar guy and made a post in /r/hailcorporate
See if you can spot the similarities:
https://www.reddit.com/r/HailCorporate/comments/4yl0ce/paid_shill_ufactbasedorgtfo_who_cant_go_a_day/
It started with this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Norway/comments/4ybvz5/was_chatting_with_a_norwegian_last_night_who/d6n2aj0
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[–]apistograma 6 points 5 years ago
He's a shill, or either a really devoted GMO defender. This user seems
more toxic though. The one I found was much more soft-spoken and less
trollish
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[–][deleted] 9 points 6 years ago
Great info man, thank you and saved.
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[–]NutritionResearch[S] 20 points 6 years ago
My pleasure. I just re-read the first shill confession I linked you to
and I noticed something; This confession was from like a year ago
(archived link, so the timestamps are misleading).
He mentioned Facebook...
Do you think everyone on the data team at Facebook is a sociopath?
I don't work at Facebook; however, what do you think promoted posts,
the selection of posts to show in your timeline, etc are, if not
exactly the same as what I do? Remember, not long ago, Facebook got
caught experimenting on humans using their website, intentionally
trying to make their users happy or sad with their Timeline post
selection algorithm.
It just came out a few weeks ago that FB does manipulate the trending
news section, severely stretching the definition of "trending."
Facebook news selection is in hands of editors not algorithms, documents show
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[–]tha_dank 2 points 5 years ago
That whole conversation between that guy and the others in that thread
is super creepy.
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[–]pairedox 1 point 7 months ago
My favorite shill is Otto Skorzeny. Went around touting how Hitler got
away and his part in killing Nikola Tesla. That scar damage must have
fucked with the voltages in his body, nope it was the drugs. Still a
rather large beast of a man. Who knows how far a man can twist himself
and rationalize to other his own sanity.
I think the comedian in watchmen is made after him
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[–]DirectImageLinkBot 7 points 6 years ago
Here is a direct link to your image for the benefit of mobile users
Feedback | Already a direct link? | Why do I exist? | Source
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[–]Lord_Draconia 6 points 5 years ago
I actually feel bad for all the shills and hope they find better jobs.
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[–]elypter 1 point 6 years ago
the image is offline
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[–]NutritionResearch[S] 3 points 6 years ago
I see it just fine, but I saved a copy just in case it is taken down
in the future.
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[–]elypter 1 point 6 years ago
thanks, i can see it too now. i even saw this original post but didnt
click it, or maybe it was i repost, i dunno. do you have an idea what
the ratio between professional und unprofessional shills is?
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[–]comrade-jim 35 points 6 years ago
Posting one of my old comments:
People are in denial that they're being manipulated...
Operation Earnest Voice is an astroturfing campaign by the US
government. The aim of the initiative is to use sockpuppets to spread
pro-American propaganda on social networking sites.
The US government signed a $2.8 million contract with the Ntrepid
web-security company to develop a specialized software, allowing
agents of the government to post propaganda on "foreign-language
websites", but recently the law preventing them from using this in
America was repealed, allowing them to spread pro-American propaganda
even on American media.
Main characteristics of the software, as stated in the software
development request, are:
50 user "operator" licenses, 10 sockpuppets controllable by each user.
Sockpuppets are to be "replete with background, history,
supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically,
culturally and geographically consistent". Sockpuppets are to "be able
to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world."
A special secure VPN, allowing sockpuppets to appear to be posting
from "randomly selected IP addresses," in order to "hide the existence
of the operation."
50 static IP addresses to enable government agencies to "manage
their persistent online personas," with identities of government and
enterprise organizations protected which will allow for different
state agents to use the same sockpuppet, and easily switch between
different sockpuppets to "look like ordinary users as opposed to one
organization."
9 private servers, "based on the geographic area of operations the
customer is operating within and which allow a customer's online
persona(s) to appear to originate from." These servers should use
commercial hosting centers around the world.
Virtual machine environments, deleted after each session
termination, to avoid interaction with "any virus, worm, or malicious
software."
The US also operates in conjunction with the UK to collect and share
intelligence data, and the GCHQ has their own internet shilling
program.
There is not enough evidence to say without a doubt that the US
government manipulates American social media, but we can say without a
doubt that they do have sophisticated software for the purpose of
spreading propaganda, they do manipulate social media, there are no
longer propaganda laws preventing them from doing so in America, and
multiple world governments have these programs in place (including but
not limited to: Russia, China, Israel, and the UK.)
You can keep telling your self the US government would never
manipulate social media, or violate the 4th amendment, or collect data
en masse, or you can wake up and accept that this is the world we live
in and ignoring it will never solve the problem.
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[–]NutritionResearch[S] 8 points 6 years ago
Wired wrote about some disturbing stuff in 2008.
Wired: Air Force Releases ‘Counter-Blog’ Marching Orders
In that article, they cite this:
http://www.webinknow.com/2008/12/the-us-air-force-armed-with-social-media.html
Capt. Faggard and his Air Force Emerging Technology team is
responsible for developing strategy, policy and plans for an
ever-changing communication landscape for communicators worldwide.
What was most interesting is that with Capt. Faggard leading the way,
the Air Force employs 330,000 communicators! Their mission is to use
current and developing Web 2.0 applications as a way to actively
engage conversations between Airmen and the general public. Yes,
that’s right, the goal of the program is that every single Airman is
an on-line communicator.
Besides Twitter, Capt. Faggard writes The Official Blog of the
U.S. Air Force; has pages on YouTube, MySpace and Facebook; helps
publicize a Second Life area called Huffman Prairie; contributes to
iReport (user name USAFPA); and is on Friendfeed, Digg, Delicious,
Slashdot,Newsvine, Reddit. There’s Air Force widgets. And there's even
a video mashup contest for high schools to show school spirit
sponsored by the Air Force.
It's not just the Air Force. Several months ago I led a training
session organized by SSgt Alexis Mulero, Public Affairs Chief for the
communicators in the 1st Marine Corps Recruiting District. Since most
teenagers and young adults spend lots of time on Facebook, YouTube,
and other social media sites, a major challenge in recruiting young
people into the Marines is reaching them online. As a result of a
focus on social media, SSgt Mulero says that his team has greatly
increased the positive exposure of the Corps across the Northeastern
U.S.
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[–]Square-Custard 1 point 4 months ago
Captain what ?
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[–]BANMEIKEEPCOMINGBACK 24 points 6 years ago
And people will still vote for Hillary :-)
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[–]lordofthebanZ 11 points 6 years ago
What did you do to get banned? Lol
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[–]TheBeefClick 7 points 6 years ago
Well to be fair, reddit is very anti hillary. Wouldnt it make sense to
try and get a few voters from reddit?
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[–][deleted] 12 points 5 years ago
Oh how times have changed. The $6MM spent on astroturfing did quite a
number here
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[–]TheBeefClick 12 points 5 years ago
Yes /u/utstudent4trump. That money worked a lot, where we have subs
like /r/thedonald and /r/hillaryforprison frequently reaching the top
of /r/all. How much money has trump used for spamming reddit? I guess
we can leave out the fools who post nothing but HIGH ENERGY COMMENTS.
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[–][deleted] 5 years ago
[deleted]
[–]peppaz 2 points 5 years ago
Simple demographics
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[–][deleted] 5 years ago
[deleted]
[–]TheBeefClick 7 points 5 years ago
Or because she was the only viable liberal canidate once bernie lost?
If you search for bullshit hard enough, you will find it even if it
isnt there.
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[–][deleted] 5 points 5 years ago
I think a turd would poll better against Trump right now.
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[–]elpajarito7 14 points 6 years ago
Fantastic write-up. How do you go about archiving this? I'd like to
see a website that pertains to shills and astroturfing specifically,
or something of the sort.
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[–]Chicken1337 10 points 6 years ago
Jesus. Never realized it was this widespread.
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[–]Psydonk 8 points 5 years ago
Israeli shills are ubiquitous on /r/worldnews. It's actually
fascinating to watch really. You see posts that are critical of Israel
to begin with, have like +30 upvotes, then you come back several hours
later, any post critical of Israel has -500 downvotes while anything
that plays to Israel's narrative is upvoted by the hundreds if not
thousands.
On /r/politics, astroturfers from both sides are all over the place.
It's actually interesting to watch the Trump side's strategy, is to
constantly post negative articles about Clinton, so people distrust
her. It's on a board that actually leans center-left, you get top
voted articles from Briebart and other far-right sources.
Mostly though, I see Astroturfers on news website comment sections and
specialized boards. For example, here in Australia, one of our major
forums is Whirlpool, which is just swimming in such blatant
astrotufers I wonder how people continue to fall for their bait when
they literally post like they are copy-pasting from a manual. Comment
sections are always fun to watch astroturfers all use the same "key
words" and "key statements" over and over again, then, by the end of
the week, the Politicial group they are shilling for, starts to use
those same key words.
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[–]FastAsLightning747 1 point 4 months ago
I once commented on Israeli policies and before I knew it I was
swamped with Reddit traffic that completely overwhelmed my ability to
respond.
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[–]SUCH_AS_SEALS 9 points 5 years ago
Thank you so much for this. Just found this thread (and sub) and am
awash with thoughts and emotions. You've confirmed what I've known
deep down for a while now but had no evidence of. Perhaps I wasn't
looking hard enough, because it's clearly there. A lot of it. I wasn't
naive enough to think this wasn't happening but this... this is...
vilely rampant.
I suppose being forewarned is the first step to being forearmed but
I'm still reeling with what to do with this knowledge.
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[–]NutritionResearch[S] 11 points 5 years ago
Don't be hard on yourself. Actually, this information is not really
easy to find. It is hidden because most people don't know the right
words to search. I'm not sure if that is deliberate or not, but it
wouldn't surprise me if it was. If you google "shills" or
"astroturfer," most of the stuff in this thread will never be seen.
Words that you have to plug into google:
Political Bots
Reputation Management
Online Marketing or online native advertising
Social Media management or manipulation
Paid Trolls
Paid comments
Here's the thing about "reputation management": This includes
manipulating the search ranking of a google search. The people who are
involved in this shadowy world of semi legal and illegal online
marketing know tricks to pushing certain results to the 3rd or 4th
page of a google search. Not only do you have to know the correct
words to search for, you might not find it until you dig deep enough.
I am also certain that I haven't found everything. This post took me a
very long time to put together.
Anyway, thanks for the message. I could use some help spreading this
knowledge around if you get the chance. I've been spreading this stuff
for years over multiple Reddit accounts and I still get people who are
surprised.
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[–]secretly_an_alpaca 2 points 5 years ago
Look up Search Engine Optimization. I used to work for a company that,
among other things, offered SEO services, but it wasn't always subtle.
Like, imagine an apartment website where they changed the website
title to "apartments in [town]" instead of the name of the complex and
at the bottom, in small light grey letters, would say things like
"equal opportunity housing affordable housing safe neighborhood pet
friendly" despite being none of those things.
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[–]gustoreddit51 7 points 6 years ago
"Freedom of speech and its democratic corollary, a free press, have
tacitly expanded our Bill of Rights to include the right of
persuasion. This development was an inevitable result of the expansion
of the media of free speech and persuasion, defined in other articles
in this volume. All these media provide open doors to the public mind.
Any one of us through these media may influence the attitudes and
actions of our fellow citizens." - Edward Bernays in "The Engineering
of Consent" (1947).
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[–]d3fi4nt 6 points 5 years ago
With regards to HRC/CTR astroturfing ops, it's worth noting that CGI
partner Palantir (along with Berico and HB Gary) developed a "Persona
Management System" in the past designed to allow single operators to
bulk manage social media accounts, etc. - May be worth investigating
too.
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[–]sper_jsh 5 points 6 years ago
This is great! Good work!
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[–][deleted] 3 points 6 years ago
I think I am encountering hedge fund / financial shills in /the_donald...
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[–][deleted] 5 years ago*
[deleted]
[–]buffaloranch 1 point 5 years ago
How do you distinguish between shills and genuine supporters?
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[–][deleted] 5 years ago*
[deleted]
[–]vodzurk 3 points 5 years ago
Direct question: Do you get paid to defend Hillary Clinton, US
Presidential Candidate online?
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[–]Baconaise 2 points 5 years ago
I got accused of being a shill for Israel during the last war with
Gaza they had. I was just trying to defend what I saw as very
tactfully executed bombings. They would call hours ahead and ensure
everyone left the building. They would monitor to see that everyone
left. I would remind people of the instances where the terrorists
there were caught on drone video dragging children into the buildings
to become the next martyrs. The bombs that did drop only leveled the
building they needed to level, caused almost no damage to nearby
buildings. It was like controlled demolition.
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[–]TheAmazingSkeptic 3 points 5 years ago
Sad.
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[–][deleted] 2 points 6 years ago
10/10 thread
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[–][deleted] 2 points 5 years ago
Fantastic thread.
When people talk about the "good ol days" of media before the
internet, I think, the main thing that was different is that we didnt
have threads like this.
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[–]Daytwah 2 points 5 years ago
Here's a shill confession I had saved a year ago:
https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/31wo57/the_chevron_tapes_video_shows_oil_giant_allegedly/cq5uhse
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[–]doppleprophet 2 points 5 years ago
tagged for later reference
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[–]qv51 2 points 5 years ago
Vietnam employs nearly 1000 public opinion shapers online:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-20982985
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[–]NutritionResearch[S] 2 points 5 years ago
Added to the list. Thank you!
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[–][deleted] 5 years ago
[removed]
[–]BigPharmaSucks 1 point 6 months ago
Do you still remember this thread? I don't expect a reply, you haven't
been on reddit in almost 5 years.
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[–][deleted] 1 point 5 years ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/564qvd/so_apparently_people_found_undisclosed_public/
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[–]BigPharmaSucks 1 point 6 months ago
This is a very important thread.
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[–]3risX 1 point 4 months ago
I wonder if it's possible to buy youtube stream donators, similar to
buying instagram followers. Something I've noticed for a while now is
that mid-sized streamers will get at least one $100+ donation per
stream from an account with no comment or participation in chat. I'd
guess the reason for doing so would be to seem more relevant than one
actually is to increase the likelihood of followers donating more and
increasing subs, but this could just be in my head. Can anyone
confirm? I haven't looked into this much but am planning to soon.
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