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.
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...
My personal conspiracy theory is that the current shit storm of identity politics is the product of exactly this sort of psyop.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
And this is even before we attempt to tease apart why you think that conservatives would be confused with White supremacists.
Further, BLM activists don’t blow up federal buildings (and nurseries) or bring zip-ties and gallows to their riots trying to overthrow the government. You sound silly.
White supremacist beliefs aren't even illegal in the US (whether or not they should be), so the idea that the label of white supremacist itself absent of any other crime is somehow being used to legally prosecute people who are guilty of nothing more than "traditional beliefs" or "being Republican" is quite a stretch.
Not as much of a stretch as placing white supremacists and BLM as category-similar examples, though.
> "it just depends on who is in power"
Also how the law is written.
This isn't just something the legislators made up, it's a factually true statement.
From the CSIS[1]:
> Far-right terrorism has significantly outpaced terrorism from other types of perpetrators, including from far-left networks and individuals inspired by the Islamic State and al-Qaeda. Right-wing attacks and plots account for the majority of all terrorist incidents in the United States since 1994, and the total number of right-wing attacks and plots has grown significantly during the past six years. Right-wing extremists perpetrated two thirds of the attacks and plots in the United States in 2019 and over 90 percent between January 1 and May 8, 2020.
[1] https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-u...
You don't know how big this goes. It started with 9/11 and eventually gave the president unlimited power to use all forms of necessary and appropriate force against all forms of aggression. This includes using agencies to spy on their own people.
Right after the 9/11 terrorist attack, overwhelmed by mourning, congress gave the executive branch broad powers related to terrorism that still exists to this day. That power is scoped in a 60 word document voted on by congress.
That document effects how the government operates to this very day.
To see how it all started listen to this podcast: https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/radiolab/episodes/60-wo...
There was one person in that podcast who saw the future for what it was before anyone else. She made a stand and risked her entire career to stop what was to come. Ultimately she failed and that's why we are where we are today.
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.
The websites you have viewed, assuming they are in English, likely have a userbase that is primarily from the United States and countries that are part of the Western world. It's reasonable to believe that these countries (which have shared values) have genuinely shifted in public opinion in support of the invaded country.
If you're looking for the other side, you can find it in forums which have a userbase from countries that are not part of the Western world, and share different values. However, the views are more neutral for pragmatic purposes (due to prior relationships with Russia), rather than actively in support. [1]
Pragmatically, the war is not in the interest of most users across the globe. It represents an escalation that could plausibly lead to nuclear war if a NATO country were to intervene, which is in nobody's interest. It also affects daily life in other countries as gasoline prices are up across the world, and the sanctions will damage to economies outside of Russia. Emotionally and ethically, it's hard to see the footage of civilians dying and getting blown up by missiles as part of the attack.
I genuinely don't see a framing where it's a reasonable position to support the war without a massive logical leap or emotional stretch, and believe that other users in Western nations have arrived at the same conclusion.
[0] https://exhibitions.ushmm.org/americans-and-the-holocaust/us...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/02/world/asia/asia-russia-uk...
That suggests some conspiracy. Instead of complaining about persecution - a common tacitc to change the subject from the weakness of one's argument - because people disagree with you, how about making your argument and listening to others?
That's only one theory (a very attractive to the human mind one).
Another is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence#Living,_biological_s...
> Instead of complaining about persecution
I'm not.
> a common tacitc to change the subject from the weakness of one's argument - because people disagree with you, how about making your argument and listening to others?
Falsely framing people you disagree with as being conspiracy theorists or suffering from delusions of persecution is also an incredibly common tactic....although I suspect most of the time the person doing it doesn't even realize they're doing it.
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?