Earnest Voice: > Operation Earnest Voice is an astroturfing campaign by the Federal government of the United States.[1] The aim of the initiative is to use sockpuppets to spread pro-American propaganda on social networking services based outside of the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice
and
JTRIG: > The scope of the JTRIG's mission includes using "dirty tricks" to "destroy, deny, degrade [and] disrupt" enemies by "discrediting" them, planting misinformation and shutting down their communications https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig... https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
I look for balance in my news sources and since many powerful governments employ online propaganda ops, I look for signals of relative neutrality or non-bias. ZeroHedge used to have those in abundance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_Internet_propa...
Really need to find that article again, it was a real eye-opener to the motives of people financing these sites.
I used to read ZH a bit during the FC, but recoiled in horror the last time I was there.
The comment section used to be an equal opportunity Fight Club with omnidirectional contempt for mainstream orthodoxy regardless of source. The U.S., Chinese, and occasionally the Russian governments met with distrust and ridicule. So balanced was ZH that ZH (and HN) used to be available in China without a VPN. But now both ZH and HN are blocked there.
But, over the past two years or so, ZH content has become much more partisan and white nationalist; and the comment section has morphed from Fight Club into Racist and Anti-Semitic Sewer nonpareil.
The racism free-for-all in the comment section could be laid at the feet of non-moderation if ZH's comments section were indeed a free-fire zone. But ZH manually approves all commenter accounts and it consistently violates its stated policy on racism by refusing to remove blatantly racist comments or commenters.
> Racism, to include any religious affiliation, will not be tolerated in ANY FORM on this site, including the disparagment of people in the comments section.
> To report any form of discrimination, please right click on the comment number, copy the link to the comment, and send the comment link to abuse [at] zerohedge.com.
> Any user found to be discriminating against ANY race, religion, or affiliation, will be banned immediately, and have their comments removed from the system. https://www.zerohedge.com/help/notice-racism