Hardly our first. The US has been doing this stuff for years.
Miriam
-----Original Message-----
From: blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:blind-democracy-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Carl Jarvis
Sent: Monday, December 18, 2017 10:35 AM
To: blind-democracy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [blind-democracy] Re: NY Times Frets About Russian Propaganda, Ignores
the Massive Troll Farms Run By America and Its Allies
"Step right up, Ladies and Gents. Keep your eye on the little ball as I place
it under the shell. Now you see it and now you don't.."
Yup, it's that old slight of hand game once again. But instead of peas under
shells, it's our first Dictator covered by Lies...multiple lies.
And the trick is to hide that Dictator until the Coup is complete.
Carl Jarvis
On 12/18/17, Miriam Vieni <miriamvieni@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Alternet
Published on Alternet (https://www.alternet.org)
Home > NY Times Frets About Russian Propaganda, Ignores the Massive
Troll Farms Run By America and Its Allies NY Times Frets About Russian
Propaganda, Ignores the Massive Troll Farms Run By America and Its
Allies By Adam Johnson [1] / FAIR [2] December 16, 2017, 2:29 PM GMT
An op-ed by the president of the right-wing human rights group Freedom
House, published in the New York Times Monday (12/11/17 [3])-later
boosted [4] by New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter
Baker-warned of the menace of "commentators, trolls, bots, false news
sites and propaganda,"
and their negative effects on democracy. Missing from its analysis was
any account of how the government that funds its organization ( 86
percent of Freedom House's budget [5] comes from the US government,
primarily the State Department and USAID) uses social media to stir
unrest and undermine governments worldwide.
What the reader was left with was a very selective, curated impression
that online social media manipulation is something done exclusively by
brown and black people and those dastardly Slavs. The column condemns
"surreptitious techniques pioneered in Moscow and Beijing to use the
internet to drown out dissent and undermine free elections," going on
to cite online skullduggery in the Philippines, Kenya, Turkey, Mexico and
Iran.
Missing from the piece by Freedom House's Michael Abramowitz is any
mention of numerous reports detailing online manipulation by US and
allied governments and Western PR firms.
No mention of the Defense Department's $100 million program Operation
Earnest Voice [6] software that "creates fake online identities to
spread pro-American propaganda." No mention of the US Air Force's 2010
solicitation [7] of "persona management" software designed to create
hundreds of sock puppets, "replete with background, history,
supporting details and cyber presences that are technically,
culturally and geographically consistent."
No mention of USAID (the same government agency, incidentally, that
funds Freedom House) secretly creating an entire social media platform
[8] to "stir unrest" in Cuba. No mention of the US State Department's
newly created
$160 million Global Engagement Center, targeting English-language
audiences [9] with unattributed Facebook videos combating, in part,
"Russia propaganda."
Nor was there mention of the UK's "team of Facebook warriors [10],"
"skilled
in psychological operations and use of social media to engage in
unconventional warfare in the information age," or reference to the
half-dozen [11] reports of Israeli troll farms promoting pro-Israel
propaganda online.
The op-ed had a particular focus on "governing parties" using covert
online tools to "inflate their popular support and essentially endorse
themselves,"
warning that this "devastating new threat to democracy" is used to
"undermine elections, political debate and virtually every other
aspect of governing." Yet there was no acknowledgement of the fact
that the Hillary Clinton campaign spent $1 million in the 2016 primary
[12] to promote its candidate using unattributed social media
personas. Nor was there mention of a torrent of pro-Trump bots [13]
that infected the 2016 campaign on social media.
Instead, the piece primarily consists of little insight or larger
discussion as to the scope of the problem. "The United States and
other democracies"
are positioned as the victims of online manipulation, never its author.
Amid
platitudes about "the future of democracy" and "malevolent actors,"
the West's place as noble defenders of Real Information online is
simply taken for granted, with, by implication, their ideological
satellites-like Freedom House-as neutral arbiters of what is and isn't
propaganda, never practitioners of propaganda themselves.
The US Department of Defense admitted [6] in 2011 that it runs fake
social media accounts in Farsi; the vast majority of Farsi speakers live in
Iran.
What were these accounts doing? Did they influence any elections there?
Does
Freedom House ask the question, much less attempt to answer it? Of
course not; Iran can only be guilty of "[manipulating] discussions.on
social media," never the victim of it.
Should the New York Times have disclosed that the author of a piece
about government propaganda runs a group overwhelmingly funded by the
US government? The reader could theoretically do research on their own
time to find out who backs the benign-sounding "Freedom House" (who
doesn't love freedom?), but this is a fairly tall order for the
average media consumer, doubly so when one considers the whole point
of the piece is criticizing unattributed propaganda.
Also missing from Freedom House's cartoon narrative of Good Western
Democracies vs. Bad Governments in the Global South is the issue of
sophistication. One of the reasons groups like Freedom House know
about clandestine attempts by these governments and affiliated parties
to influence online messaging is they're mostly bad at it. Hacky,
easily identifiable bots, sloppy knock-off websites, transparent "fake
news." The software solicited by the US Air Force in 2010, which would
allow each user to control up to ten social media personas at once
"without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries," would
presumably be much more difficult to detect.
Social media manipulation is a major problem in urgent need of robust
discussion. But outlets like the New York Times-and others, such as
Buzzfeed [14]-that focus only on attempts by Official US Enemies, and
never direct any criticism inwards, aren't concerned with having an
earnest discussion of the problem. They are, instead, using the
specter of online manipulation to smear those in bad standing with the
US State Department while deflecting any conversation about what the
most powerful country in the history of the world may be up to online.
Adam Johnson is a contributing analyst at FAIR and contributing writer
for AlterNet. Follow him on Twitter @AdamJohnsonNYC [15].
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Source URL:
https://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/nyt-prints-government-funded
-propa ganda-about-government-funded-propaganda
Links:
[1] https://www.alternet.org/authors/adam-johnson-0
[2] http://www.fair.org
[3]
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/11/opinion/fake-news-russia-kenya.html
?smpro
d=nytcore-iphone&smid=nytcore-iphone-share&_r=1
[4] https://twitter.com/peterbakernyt/status/940278250730934274
[5]
https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/FINAL_Basic_Financial_Sta
tement
s_2016.pdf
[6]
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-so
cial-n
etworks
[7]
https://www.rawstory.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/personamanagementc
ontrac
t.pdf
[8]
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/03/us-cuban-twitter-zunzune
o-stir
-unrest
[9]
https://www.thenation.com/article/us-officials-wont-say-if-a-new-anti-
russia -propaganda-project-is-targeting-americans/
[10]
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jan/31/british-army-facebook-
warrio
rs-77th-brigade
[11]
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2013/08/14/israel-students-s
ocial-
media/2651715/
[12]
http://beta.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-trolling-201605
06-sna
p-htmlstory.html
[13]
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/11/01/social-media-ads-russia-want
ed-ame
ricans-to-see-244423
[14] https://twitter.com/CraigSilverman/status/935537517478023168
[15] https://twitter.com/adamjohnsonNYC
[16] mailto:corrections@xxxxxxxxxxxx?subject=Typo on NY Times Frets ;
About Russian Propaganda, Ignores the Massive Troll Farms Run By
America and Its Allies
&body=URL:http://www.alternet.org/grayzone-project/nyt-prints-governme
nt-fun ded-propaganda-about-government-funded-propaganda
[17] https://www.alternet.org/
[18] https://www.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B