Comment by hugh4life | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hugh4life | Hacker News Reader

I was voted down for pointing out that what Russia does is not exactly unique(except they're not really good at what they do since they're easy to spot)... so here are some links.

Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social media Military's 'sock puppet' software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope...

Israel to pay students to defend it online http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-s...

HACKING ONLINE POLLS AND OTHER WAYS BRITISH SPIES SEEK TO CONTROL THE INTERNET https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/07/14/manipulating-o...

[edit] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_Internet_sockpu...

Reading your links, the known footprint between these governments seems quite different. Russia seems unique in its usage of these media. Faking a chemical disaster in the US, attempting to incite discord by faking a police shooting video, turning their own special LOIC on a NYT reporter...in comparison, the writeups on other nations' efforts (that we know about) leave a lot of room for this to be a false moral equivalence at this point. This NYT story is a pretty big deal in terms of providing evidence to that effect.

The more important distinction is that Russia's sockpuppet propaganda is aimed primarily at its own people.

Yes, but I wouldn't underestimate their foreign propaganda. It's very obvious in some countries, for example mine (Bulgaria), where trolls affiliated with Russia regularly flood articles with anti-EU and anti-US comments.

I feel like I hear this comment every time the subject comes up. Are there people with stories about anti-Russian British sockpuppets on Vk or whatever? I never hear that story, but maybe it's because I don't spend time on Runet.

In USA, regular Americans do that.

Regular people are by definition not sockpuppets.

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