I'm not sure if you'd agree with it or not, but I'd want to emphasize something: this behavior is not limited to foreign governments that have antithetical interests to the USA. Even publicly, the CIA recognizes that it has teams of employees working on social media to push people (particularly in the Middle East) to support positions more consistent with American interests.

And it'd surely be pretty damn profitable in the USA domestically to offer a service where a bunch of trolls would push your product, service, or candidate on the Internet.

(This comment may or may not be brought to you by the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service.)

Israel commands a small army of these as well, it's almost comical to see them appearing in social media and comment sections, but I have no doubt they're effective.

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-s...

Comparing an army of mis-information trolls pushing lies to students who are paid to "combat anti-Semitism and calls to boycott Israel" by telling the truth is pretty silly, and intellectually dishonest. There is a wave of antisemitism resurfacing in Europe, as well as antisemitic calls for the destruction of the state of Israel. And there is nothing wrong or dishonest about a country fighting back against attempts to delegitimize its existence with information.

and you've just conflated anti-semitism and calls to boycott Israel, which I would certainly class as intellectually dishonest.

Actually, no I did not. This is the purpose of the Israeli students being recruited, quoted verbatim in the article - not my conflation. Can I assume that you agree with my characterization of you comparison as intellectually dishonest (and factually inaccurate) since you did not disagree with my point about your post?

I do think it's strange that when Israel promotes nationalism in it's clearly more controversial status -- being defamed by all of its neighbors and a large segment of the western left and right -- suddenly this is a bad thing. If we had (serious) pressure to dissolve the U.S., I think we would see a backlash of equal or greater measure. Your use of language here also clearly shows your position: 'army' is a very harsh word to use for some students posting on social media.

...said the israeli agent.

Not sure if this is joking or not, but the fact that I can't tell is itself indicative. This is an example of just how toxic state- and corporate-sponsored trolling is to communities. Any given position will promote winners and losers, and any position anyone takes could, in theory, be the result of dishonest, arational, apersonal influencers who lack the desire or drive for a rational civil society. And I think it's even fair to discount all potentially corrupted opinions because of that risk--but the end result is having to give up on the Internet as a forum for discourse, which pretty much kills off its liberatory potential.

We need to find a way around this ASAP, before it gets worse. And it will most certainly get worse.

(This message has been bought and paid for by... well, who knows?)

>This is an example of just how toxic state- and corporate-sponsored trolling is to communities.

Rather, this is an example of how toxic the fear of it is. It's like that episode of the Twilight Zone, "The Monsters are Due on Maple Street," where the invaders only have to sow a tiny bit of paranoia and mistrust and watch people teach each other apart. Except in this case, there don't even need to be shills, the result would be the same either way.

Every opinion is potentially corrupted, especially when propaganda exists. The result isn't giving up on the Internet as a forum for discourse, it's giving up on discourse.

I like the results of having a civil society with rational discourse. Not simply that it's the result of the inalienable rights of thought and speech, but because society as a whole has massively benefited from it. The marketplace of ideas bubbles to the top the "best" ideas, but it is almost a requirement that its constituent agents at least recognize the value of reason, even if they themselves are flawed and biased implementations of reason.

It may be the case that it's impossible to save discourse, and the future is a world where brute force, power, and hierarchy drive which ideas dominate society. We'd be lesser for it, though, and I don't think we've explored many ideas for preventing that end result.

I agree that a society with rational discourse is clearly the best option, and that this is an extremely difficult problem, notably because everyone likes to think that they're rational. We're always going to be subject to external inputs that change how we perceive reality and the world around us, and not always in a rational way. Some people recognize the value of reason, and make it their business to exploit it, while others recognize the value of reason but fail to acknowledge that the world they live in affects their views and perception of reality, and a third group recognizes the value of reason but sees their identity as immutable -- this is the most dangerous group, in my opinion, and a group I regret to say I've been a part of.

My point is only that our opinions are swayed and altered by propaganda, media, and the world around us in general. To say an opinion has been 'corrupted' is a murky concept to me, because I'm not sure how much of our opinions I believe are original, and what corruption actually means in this instance.

Israel's recruiting power in Georgia is unrivaled. I know at least twelve other Georgia natives who are part of the shadow cabal, using our WASP heritage as cover!