This goes back far, and I’ve even seen what appear to be shills for random B-list celebrities. Add SEO business as usual, political campaigns, international influence and the SnR is just radio static.

Absolutely, billions (or trillions) of dollars of value and the future of the parties and our trade relations are at stake.

For Paramount, I'd imagine they have no choice but to do this. It would be naive to think its opponents aren't astro-turfing the other side.

The opponents don't have to astro-turf. They can express their genuine feelings about the merger and the well known problems of media consolidation. Paramount has to astro-turf because there isn't any actual support for what they want outside of the small number of people who will make a ton of money in the deal.

The thing about saying "everyone does it" to justify yourself is that eventually you start believing it.

I've long thought _everything_ is already like this.

This seems very much in the wheelhouse of clandestine agencies like the CIA and the FSB. Use front companies to modify the perceptions of reality by doing things like shifting the Overton window of currently discussed topics, preparing custom datasets for future LLM training that bake in desired assumptions, manipulating or publishing public opinion polls and prediction markets.

You can see this in real time in our modern 'mainstream media', even MSNOW, the supposedly 'left-leaning' 'anti-foxnews' sounds more like a regan era republican than it's actual desired audience. If you turn on cnn it's just constantly drumbeating iran war/support for israel, etc.

Hardly need to add "Modern" on this statement. Hell - Chomsky's "Manufacturing Consent" is nearly 40 years old at this point (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent)

If anything - I actually think we're at a spot where the mask is slipping a bit, because the US was slow to adapt its media distortion to the internet, and the financial interests in the US are stretching even farther away from general sentiment.

So the notice is because they've fumbled, and now are beating the drum extra hard to try to make up ground.

A classic Yes, Prime Minister: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ahgjEjJkZks

People just randomly get excited and make up shit online. See Median Strategies aka Rahil Prakash just making up polls and publishing them this month. Then declaring it was a social experiment and shutting down his website. After affecting prediction markets in some minor ways.

How does that theory explain,

* So many people using the same nonsense talking points at the same time. Did they coincidentally make up the same lies? With no anchor in objective reality, why would they converge on the same talking points?

* The sophistication of the talking points: IME they are often very well-crafted - seemingly professionally crafted - public communication. They effectively frame the debate, shift attention (often attacking the messenger), use powerful emotional impact to bypass reasoned discussion, and acheive the main goal of disinformation - paralyze discussion. Did people invest the time and effort to craft these talking points on their own, and do it so effectively?

It's not exclusively random people doing random stuff, but it also doesn't require a large, well funded, conspiracy. People see a fake poll that confirms their preferences and then proceed to propagate the message.

Also, consider who controls what propogates and what nobody sees.

Social media operators are like news (newspaper, tv news) editors, deciding what gets covered and how, and what doesn't. But they operate on a far larger scale, more powerful scale, and very few realize they do it.

Haha, you think the CIA and FSB loves doing this stuff? Companies love doing this kind of stuff way more than your government employee shmucks. It is way more prevalent in private sector than you could ever imagine

It's both.

The older I get and the more old stuff I sieve through, the more I feel I grew up in an environment shaped by short-term persuasions, all added up like different archaeological layers. Every single ideal, value, word, and so on, just marketing that hit my parents, or propaganda that hit my grandparents. Which is why the Confucian rectification of names is appealing.

What is "Confucian rectification of names"? Thank you.

Like freezing requirements. Definitions of words change over time to suit a winning faction. This was especially dramatic in the last century or so. So for the Analects, it's something like making sure words mean what they meant when the land was run well.

"If names are not right then speech does not accord with things; if speech is not in accord with things, then affairs cannot be successful; when affairs are not successful, li and music do not flourish; when li and music do not flourish, then sanctions and punishments miss their mark; when sanctions and punishments miss their mark, the people have no place to set their hands and feet.

Therefore, when a junzi gives things names, they may be properly spoken of, and what is said may be properly enacted. With regard to speech, the junzi permits no carelessness.”

I was literally just ranting about this yesterday regarding a reddit thread where the astroturfing was so obviojs and it is frustrating to see, because a large chunk of the population is in fact influenced by it.

isn't reddit mostly astroturf? Try to get a conflicting opinion on anything political.

The main traffic ones yes. News and politics definitely.

Niche ones aren't as mucb thankfully.

A large volume of content is downstream recycling of the tiktok feeds

People in niche subs participate in popular ones and thus are participant or influenced by astroturfing campaigns. It’s just much harder to tell at small scale, but it’s naive to continue perpetuating the meme that small Reddit subs are fine.

I never claimed as such

"your account has been suspended for promoting hate or violence"

The last few months, Reddit has been inundated with Islamophobic and pro-Israel content from young accounts in a way that wasn't visible before

It seems very clearly manipulated

With the shoehorning of certain topics into absolutely every conversation on every platform... agree.

Does anyone remember the FTC "comments" about net neutrality? And how completely made up it all was?

It must be that everything is like this nowadays.

https://ktul.com/news/local/data-center-scandal-who-sent-fak... - Naturally, data center projects are also getting in on this made up fun.

Now the propaganda is that the anti data center movement is a fake campaign by China.

Which, sure, maybe it's amplified by them but go visit any of these cities public council meetings. People are legit mad about them. Energy prices are already through the roof, they are massive facilities that don't provide much local employment after being built (even the construction crews are contracted in from elsewhere), they get massive tax breaks in exchange for 1 time local development fees, get exempted from noise ordinances, pollution laws, and crammed down communities in backroom deals.

Not hard for foreign adversaries to escalate what's already a terrible deal for the citizens of most cities.

You're very correct. It's much, much easier to amplify sentiment that already exists, as opposed to attempting to manufacture sentiment from nothing at all. That's been true for as long as propaganda has existed, afaik.

Brexit was the flagship of combining this approach with the cheap leverage available on social media at a time when people were more innocent/ignorant about it. Russia clearly influenced the UK vote, then applied those lessons elsewhere in the West.

(The Brits themselves seem to consider this subject somewhat taboo, even though Putin continued to mock them with operations like murdering people in broad daylight in Salisbury in 2018.)

I forgot to reply to your message last week. Thanks for this perspective. While I don't know much about the details of Russia's influence operation on Brexit, it seems highly plausible that exacerbating tensions between the UK and the EU would be in Russia's advertised interest. I'm curious to learn more.

I disagree. It seems just as easy to plant a seed for people to latch onto. In my experience, people are unlikely to express any kind of opinion that they haven’t seen someone (anyone) else express first.

Why do you believe it's "just as easy to plant a seed for people to latch on to"? Please provide some basis, whether it's first hand experience or published research. I'm open to the possibility that I'm misinformed. I just need more information to work with.

I'm honestly, pretty convinced that it's the opposite. I mean, people are spooled up? But I think the sentiment is entirely generated beyond the normal complaints?

Like, yeah, people are annoyed, so like you say, foreign adversary just dumps targeted gasoline on the issue until people are rabid. Meanwhile, I don't see dick about the Epstein files, the ice raids, or literally crazy levels of authoritarianism in the general zeitgeist... It's like that other stuff piqued the interests of people for 20 minutes in March, then they stopped caring as soon as some people got fired at DHS.

You guys remember "No Kings?" When is the next one of those? When is the next of any kind of protest? Where is the awareness?

I see all those topics brought up, both here (though usually flagged) and on the Fediverse.

Why wouldn't the tech companies, rich capitalists and current US government use these services to drum up support? I mean hell, why wouldn't they use the product they're building for this purpose? They have every incentive to.

To the public, data centers = AI. What material good has AI brought most people? Increased energy and RAM costs. Real and promised mass layoffs. More slop to read at work. Some good memes.

I am surprised opposition is not even stronger.

welcome to the post-truth world, where online manipulation are the "truths" like the world's greatest conman "posts," the (mal)intent seems intentional to me

One way to look at it: Why wouldn't they use this capability? (Moral qualms?)

Powerful interests, including corporations and foreign powers, have long worked effectively to frame public perceptions, even when their access to the members of the public was as limited as newspapers and a few broadcast TV stations, and filtered through editors. And they did it effectively.

Have they stopped for some reason?

And would they be less effective for some reason? The new tools - direct access to billions of individuals, wide bandwidth, no filters - should make them far more effective.

It's amazing to me that the fact of them doing it isn't well-known (there is plenty of research and evidence) and assumed, but still a question even on HN. Bring it up to most people and they will ostracize/ridicule you - an odd response which I can't explain well, given the evidence, likelihood, and very serious consequences which those same people are unhappy with.

Interestingly, over the last several years powerful interests have worked - successfully - to shut down research on this issue, including at places like Stanford and Harvard.

Man, I would love to hear more about the Stanford and Harvard research chicanery.

Do you mean, how they were shut down? It is well documented, including in the NY Times.

> It's amazing to me that the fact of them doing it isn't well-known (there is plenty of research and evidence) and assumed, but still a question even on HN. Bring it up to most people and they will ostracize/ridicule you - an odd response which I can't explain well, given the evidence, likelihood, and very serious consequences which those same people are unhappy with.

an explanation would be that these voices doing the ostracizing/ridiculing [anyone who tries to increase awareness of astroturf] are also astroturf. because astroturf is only effective while people are unaware of it. it also seems compatible with the shutdown of research you mention.

> an explanation would be that these voices doing the ostracizing/ridiculing [anyone who tries to increase awareness of astroturf] are also astroturf.

I've thought of that too: 1) I haven't seen evidence, and 2) the people who repeat it are so many and so unaware. That doesn't rule it out, but wow.

I guess it shouldn't be surprising - people believe even transparently dangerous nonsense that costs lives by the hundreds of thousands.

This has been ramping up like crazy the past 2 decades ever since the conservative ruling on Citizens United vs FEC where they decided it's a corporations right, as a person (with zero input or approval from it's actual employees), to donate unlimited funds to politicians. The main stream media has whitewashed this topic so much over the years, and now we're seeing government actually suppressing factual reporting, and/or threatening them with lawsuits so they conform.

It's insanity, but that's the new GOP for you, all the good people have left or been forced out. The only people pushing back on this are the Bernie Sanders and AOC types, which IMO is far less dangerous, and better for the common person, than a radicalized right wing.

Goes all the way back, beyond the printing press, beyond writing. Mass communication is mass control. The shaman/priest/king/commissar/marketing exec literally shape and control the reality of their flock. They have absolute power to make them march even to their certain deaths against all their best interest. And they will do it singing and smiling as they are slaughtered for you and your gain, and will tell stories of heros who made your profit possible.

Truly terrifying technology, the real darker implications of what is possible from mass communication. What strange animals we are: make the right combination of sounds at us and we will turn and kill our kin.

It's increasingly practiced in the open in the music industry these days.

There was a recent row over the revelation that Chaotic Good, a music marketing company, was astroturfing on behalf of the bands Geese and Sombr.

I had a meeting last week with a well-known record producer who tells me labels are increasingly leaning into astroturfing.

Just two days ago a colleague told me about his bandmate who's day job is managing five Instagram accounts to astroturf for Mk.Gee. According to her, "Mk.Gee is not allowed to know about it", with the implication that he would reject it if he did.

Makes payola seem quaint. In fact, past crimes all seem quaint these days.

They used to serial kill one person at a time, now they do millions

I worked in PR for a bit. I'm confident in saying most of our information ecosystem is the product of numerous competing (or cooperating) PR agencies pushing their clients' products, policies, narratives, and national agendas.

If it's in a big news outlet, there's a pretty good chance someone put it there. Most news stories start life as press releases. Astroturf groups provide the quote-fodder.

If you're into this stuff, I can't recommend All the Worst Humans by Phil Elwood enough, fantastic read (to be taken with a pinch of salt, the guy's a PR hack after all). NYT review here: https://archive.md/cNmdV

That's why it is good to have MORE investigative media outlets, not less. Wikileaks and the Panama papers are outliers which must be facilitated.