The sentence 'There is no such thing as bad publicity' Talks exactly about cases like this.
The polish PR firm is about to get a wave of leads from this 'negative PR'
Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm
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Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm
#22Most telling part of their statement is the defense that the company operates "like like any other agency of its kind"—as if that is a defense.
As disgusting as this is, there are so many layers to regulating, much of which stems from the nature of social media platforms vs. traditional media platforms. Are the platforms they're posting on subject to the same propaganda regulations as news outlets? Are they as individuals liable for the spread of misinformation, as a result?
Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm
#23The existence of paid trolls and shills has been a known fact for many years on various imageboards and forums. It's become a bit of an inside joke. I even suspect that some memes have been generated by private institutions. For example, the 30 year old boomer and his association with Monster has been great advertising for Monster Energy (https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/30-year-old-boomer)
Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm
#24Reminds me 18th century Paris where professional applauders and influencers were paid to influence the crowd.
Or the retro seo trick where you ask a question on yahoo questions so you can answer it with another account to backlink "relevant" website.
Literally nothing new, internet has of course changed the scale and took away the monopoly from newspapers and tv.
Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm
#25Now about the left's troll farm
Nytimes, CBS, NBC, abc, CNN, etc.
Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm
#26I really don't like PR operations like this, but here's a thought experiment: Presumably it's OK to voice one's opinions on social media, but: 1. Is it acceptable for private interests to do the same? 2. At what point does something turn from personal opinion to propaganda? 3. Is it more problematic that a private entity (e.g. a PR firm) is _pretending_ to express an honest opinion? Would this be acceptable if this w…
Disclaimer: I'm not saying any of these except the first has happened - Tory Bruno (CEO of ULA) promoting ULA on reddit under his own name providing useful information: Definitely ok (thanks Tory! https://old.reddit.com/user/torybruno ) - Tory Bruno promoting ULA on reddit under a pseudonym: Almost acceptable, not the best since he has money involved and isn't disclosing it, but he probably honestly thinks most of wh…
I find it pretty interesting that this comment is on HN. A few years ago, I think it was pretty widely accepted in SV that the last method you mention was just part of the grind. Maybe not the most straight-shooting approach, but still accepted. We even had a title for it: growth hacking. People hired growth hackers! I'm going to refrain from asserting a value judgement; I just thought it was interesting
Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying any of these except the first has happened - Tory Bruno (CEO of ULA) promoting ULA on reddit under his own name providing useful information: Definitely ok (thanks Tory! https://old.reddit.com/user/torybruno ) - Tory Bruno promoting ULA on reddit under a pseudonym: Almost acceptable, not the best since he has money involved and isn't disclosing it, but he probably honestly thinks most of wh…
Seems like the key (obvious?) difference between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" is the speaker's transparency about the source of the message. Disclosing who you are and your relationship to the topic: Acceptable. Hiding or obfuscating who you are or pretending to be someone else: Unacceptable.
I think it's about the divide between what a reasonable person might infer from the comment and what the person making the comment believes to be true.
1. A Senior member of this company is saying this company is awesome.
2a. A random person is saying this company is awesome
2b. Same as 2a, but the person actually posting doesn't actually think this company is awesome.
3. 10 random people are saying this company is awesome.
Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm
#28I really don't like PR operations like this, but here's a thought experiment: Presumably it's OK to voice one's opinions on social media, but: 1. Is it acceptable for private interests to do the same? 2. At what point does something turn from personal opinion to propaganda? 3. Is it more problematic that a private entity (e.g. a PR firm) is _pretending_ to express an honest opinion? Would this be acceptable if this w…
Personal take: any government that can selectively silence speech is too powerful. Troll farms are a problem, but government is a horrible solution to that problem. What we need is a mechanism for digital proof-of-human. Ideally this would be decentralised, but there's no obvious way to do this well (I consider the web of trust model easily exploitable if used at scale). Estonia has a system for verifying humans that's available to non-citizens, but then we're trusting the Estonian government. The best solution I have to propose would be a series of independant governments/corporations identifying people, and an open source system for checking credentials against the APIs provided by a group of these institutions. If you're verified by Estonia, Russia, Facebook, and WeChat, you're unlikely to be a fake human. If Facebook is refusing to verify humans that seem real and get verified by other sources, we can drop them from the list of verifiers. I want a better solution, but this is the best I have so far.
Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm
#29Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying any of these except the first has happened - Tory Bruno (CEO of ULA) promoting ULA on reddit under his own name providing useful information: Definitely ok (thanks Tory! https://old.reddit.com/user/torybruno ) - Tory Bruno promoting ULA on reddit under a pseudonym: Almost acceptable, not the best since he has money involved and isn't disclosing it, but he probably honestly thinks most of wh…
Seems like the key (obvious?) difference between "acceptable" and "unacceptable" is the speaker's transparency about the source of the message. Disclosing who you are and your relationship to the topic: Acceptable. Hiding or obfuscating who you are or pretending to be someone else: Unacceptable.
Being ten or fifty fake personas - pretend people who don't exist - is poisoning the limited capacity information channel that we all have available to interpret the outside world. Bad information drives out good, to paraphrase a classic.
Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
Disclaimer: I'm not saying any of these except the first has happened - Tory Bruno (CEO of ULA) promoting ULA on reddit under his own name providing useful information: Definitely ok (thanks Tory! https://old.reddit.com/user/torybruno ) - Tory Bruno promoting ULA on reddit under a pseudonym: Almost acceptable, not the best since he has money involved and isn't disclosing it, but he probably honestly thinks most of wh…
I find it pretty interesting that this comment is on HN. A few years ago, I think it was pretty widely accepted in SV that the last method you mention was just part of the grind. Maybe not the most straight-shooting approach, but still accepted. We even had a title for it: growth hacking. People hired growth hackers! I'm going to refrain from asserting a value judgement; I just thought it was interesting
I've seen the job ads, but never knew that this was what it meant. Thanks.