I see this behavior everywhere on the internet, and I truly believe people become like this the more chronically online they are - whether they realize it or not.
The paid trolls want people to feel defeatist and tired, that’s the point.
This is from 2015 and it’s the most bang for your buck warfare:
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. (This uses the same social media graph built before.) We then either start flame wars with bots to derail the conversations that are influencing influential people (think nonsense reddit posts about conspiracies that sound like Markov chains of nonsense other people have said), or else send off specific tasks for sockpuppets (changing this wording of an idea here; cause an ideological split there; etc).
The goal is to keep opinions we don’t want fragmented and from coalescing in to a single voice for long enough that the memes we do want can, at which points they’ve gotten a head start on going viral and tend to capture a larger-than-otherwise share of media attention.
(All of the stuff above is basically the “standard” for online PR (usually farmed out to an LLC with a generic name working for the marketing firm contracted by the big firm; deniability is a word frequently said), once you’re above a certain size.)
I’m pretty sure there are court cases against these companies that hired them, there are also more interviews of Russians on video saying this stuff. You should look into that.
I would recommend looking at the years 2016 through 2019 , plus Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and other companies like that. Europe recently talked about going after a company doing this stuff.
What pisses me off is a lot of times these influence agents are not hard to spot but if they are with a powerful group they get a pass, and if you argue with them they will manipulate the rules or have your name sent to social media and they will ban you or violate you I should say for unrelated reasons. Especially about a certain country connected to our foreign policy but not just that and it’s going to get worse.
Not only do they allow fake accounts to violate their own rules and manipulate us, but they dishonestly violate people that have not broken rules at the behest of those powerful interests. The government and billionaires have their hooks well into social media, it is doomed, and there is no way to achieve anything big through it with it being fucked as so.
I think it comes down at least in part to a manifestation of self-awareness of one’s own lack of accomplishments, or to put that another way, jealousy.
When a single individual spends a lot of time and effort making something amazing, there are two ways to respond. You can either appreciate and congratulate their efforts, or you can shit all over it.
In many ways, being critical and dismissive is a lot easier on one’s own psyche, especially if you are a person who is secretly disappointed and depressed in yourself for not achieving anything. It’s a defence mechanism to reassure yourself that spending all that time was wasted pointless effort - that even if you spent that time, it would be equally wasted too.
Accepting that someone else actually set out and did something cool all by themselves, with no luck required, just willingness and effort, is accepting that YOU could have done that too, if you tried. You could have been that person. But you weren’t.
I see this behavior everywhere on the internet, and I truly believe people become like this the more chronically online they are - whether they realize it or not.
The paid trolls want people to feel defeatist and tired, that’s the point.
This is from 2015 and it’s the most bang for your buck warfare:
https://archive.is/PoUMo
Do you have any other journalism or leaks from these influence operations?
I’m pretty sure there are court cases against these companies that hired them, there are also more interviews of Russians on video saying this stuff. You should look into that.
I would recommend looking at the years 2016 through 2019 , plus Facebook, Cambridge Analytica, and other companies like that. Europe recently talked about going after a company doing this stuff.
Here’s a good portion of my bookmark vault: https://sh.itjust.works/post/33277983
What pisses me off is a lot of times these influence agents are not hard to spot but if they are with a powerful group they get a pass, and if you argue with them they will manipulate the rules or have your name sent to social media and they will ban you or violate you I should say for unrelated reasons. Especially about a certain country connected to our foreign policy but not just that and it’s going to get worse.
Not only do they allow fake accounts to violate their own rules and manipulate us, but they dishonestly violate people that have not broken rules at the behest of those powerful interests. The government and billionaires have their hooks well into social media, it is doomed, and there is no way to achieve anything big through it with it being fucked as so.
Thanks.
My negativity and cynicism definitely increase with my recent online time, yeah.
I think it comes down at least in part to a manifestation of self-awareness of one’s own lack of accomplishments, or to put that another way, jealousy.
When a single individual spends a lot of time and effort making something amazing, there are two ways to respond. You can either appreciate and congratulate their efforts, or you can shit all over it.
In many ways, being critical and dismissive is a lot easier on one’s own psyche, especially if you are a person who is secretly disappointed and depressed in yourself for not achieving anything. It’s a defence mechanism to reassure yourself that spending all that time was wasted pointless effort - that even if you spent that time, it would be equally wasted too.
Accepting that someone else actually set out and did something cool all by themselves, with no luck required, just willingness and effort, is accepting that YOU could have done that too, if you tried. You could have been that person. But you weren’t.
It’s a lot “safer” to be hostile.