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Comment by spcoll | Hacker News Reader

> Today it's Facebook PATENTS, tomorrow maybe it's nation-wide automatic license plate tracking. One thing is for sure, staying silent never changed anything.

On political issues, the three-letter-agency-mandated bots/shills in the comments of mainstream news outlets and on mainstream social media sites (twitter/reddit) will always be louder and more numerous than us.

It's only on issues that the powerful don't really care about that democratic change is possible.

EDIT: To the downvoters: may I know why you are downvoting me? Maybe you believe I'm a tinfoil hatter? Maybe you think governments, who have been controlling media "narratives" for as long as media has been a thing, don't care about social media even though it is dead easy to manipulate? Maybe you don't know that this has been heavily documented for a while, and is really happening on a large scale, all the time?

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Plot twist: Elected officials are realistically unable to exert power or influence over our federal agencies. These quasi-judicial, quasi-executive governmental machines are largely autonomous, developing their own policies to execute their mission. And they process offenders of their own policies, instead of reaching out to other government agencies to enforce law compliance.

If senators or representatives don't vote to fund agencies, it's career suicide. There are so many of these causes that martyrs would be burned up too quickly -- it would be dumb to sacrifice yourself for one of these causes, when there are hundreds up for vote each year. You'd just be replaced by someone with fewer morals.

On one side, it's the same issue as dealing with paid restaurant reviews on review sites; you have to wait for a large enough critical mass of comments/information outlets for true snippets to slip out.

On the other side, it's not like people are being killed. When they come for the Socialists, and these people start disappearing from our society, I will speak out. But this is not happening yet. So many Chickens Little, so few Eggheads Jr.

Maybe are the governments those who are downvoting you.

Really, I don't know why the GP is getting all bothered, it's just a bunch of bots, obviously.

I downvoted you because you exactly appear to be a tinfoil hatter. If it has been so well documented then provide some sources.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Astroturfing

I'm not the original poster, but I do believe that astroturfing of social media is a reality of our world. The only real source I can provide is http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-31070114

And point out the fact that many companies hire social media people. I can also point out old cases like https://i.imgur.com/LY5suhh.jpg

I'm not sure I'm as paranoid as op, but if you think that no agency has at least seriously experimented with this stuff (instigating flame wars etc.) then remember how you felt reading the few people saying "they're recording everything you're doing on the internet".

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