Tip of the iceberg:

Astroturfing Information Megathread

Government Shills

• The Guardian: US military studied how to influence Twitter [and Reddit] users in Darpa-funded research
• Vice: Your Government Wants to Militarize Social Media to Influence Your Beliefs
• CBC News- Canadian government monitors online forums
• NY Times: The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz (Cambridge Analytica)
• NY Times- From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.
• Washington Post: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election
• The Nation: US Officials Won’t Say if a New Anti–Russian Propaganda Project (shilling on social media) Is Targeting Americans. The newly created Global Engagement Center’s “focus and intent” is foreign audiences, but officials won’t rule out propagandizing Americans and funding American journalists.
• Ex -MMA fighter and ex-police officer exposes corrupt police practices, which includes infiltrating Reddit communities and becoming moderators in order to manipulate and censor information.
• Times of Israel: Israeli government paying bilingual students to spread propaganda online primarily to international communities without having to identify themselves as working for the government. “The [student] union will operate computer rooms for the project…it was decided to establish a permanent structure of activity on the Internet through the students at academic institutions in the country.”
• The Intercept: Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies.” TigerSwan attempted a counterinformation campaign by creating and distributing content critical of the protests on social media.
• WashingtonPost: Obama pick for NSA review panel wanted paid, pro-government shills in chat rooms (Thread with source paper.)
• Wired: Clinton Staff and Volunteers Busted for Astroturfing [in 2007]
• The Independent: Massive British PR firm caught on video: “We’ve got all sorts of dark arts…The ambition is to drown that negative content and make sure that you have positive content online.” They discuss techniques for managing reputations online and creating/maintaining 3rd-party blogs that seem independent.
• The Guardian: US spy operation to manipulate social media
• BBC: Vietnam admits deploying bloggers to support the Communist Party’s policies, operates a network of nearly 1,000 “public opinion shapers”.
• Glenn Greenwald: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations
• The Intercept: Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’S Effects and Online HUMINT Operations
• USA Today: The co-owner of a major Pentagon propaganda contractor publicly admitted that he was behind a series of websites used in an attempt to discredit two USA TODAY journalists who had reported on the contractor.
• Glenn Greenwald: Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek to Control the Internet
• The Guardian: Chinese officials flood the Chinese internet with positive social media posts to distract their population
• The Guardian: Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown – Social science is being militarised to develop ‘operational tools’ to target peaceful activists and protest movements. “Minerva”-funded social scientists tied to Pentagon counterinsurgency operations are involved in the “study of emotions in stoking or quelling ideologically driven movements,” he said, including how “to counteract grassroots movements.”
• Bloomberg: How to Hack an Election [and influence voters with fake social media accounts]
• USA Today: Businesses and organizations may refer to it as a tool for competitive advantage and marketing; but make no mistake, they are using the massive reach of social media and the Internet as a weapon. One U.S. 3-letter special agent said, “You could influence an election with this.”
• Times of Israel – The internet: Israel’s new PR battlefield
• Arstechnica: GCHQ’s menu of tools spreads disinformation across Internet- “Effects capabilities” allow analysts to twist truth subtly or spam relentlessly.
• The Guardian: Internet Astroturfing
• BBC News: US plans to ‘fight the net’ revealed
• Israel is paying internet workers to manipulate online content such as Wikipedia (2 minute video)
• Buzzfeed: Documents Show How Russia’s Troll Army Hit America
• NY Times: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation
• Raw Story: CENTCOM engages bloggers
• Wired: Air Force Releases ‘Counter-Blog’ Marching Orders
• Wired: Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’
• The Guardian: Israel ups the stakes in the propaganda war
• BBC News: China’s Internet spin doctors
• Raw Story: Air Force ordered software to manage army of fake virtual people
• DailyKos: HBGary: Automated social media management
• Huffington Post- Exposing Cyber Shills and Social Media’s Underworld
• Wall Street Journal: Turkey’s Government Forms 6,000-Member Social Media Team
• The Bush and Gore campaigns of 2000 used methods similar to the Chinese government for conducting “guided discussions” in chatrooms designed to influence citizens
• Salon: Why Reddit moderators are censoring Glenn Greenwald’s latest news story on shills

h/t quantumcipher