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Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

theguardian.com

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Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#61

Post by nomel »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #54
nkozyra wrote: post #43

This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.

Google has largely solved the spam problem for end users. What I can't figure out is why platforms like Facebook and Twitter couldn't mark these sort of posts as, essentially, spam, by the same sort of rules and heuristics as email spam. Why can't they look at the metadata of verified troll-farm-generated clickbait/junk/spam/fake news, and make their own filters, and demote that content? Simple. Because they're makin…

I think you’re trivializing the difficulty in categorizing the low quality, and extremely brief, comments of social media.

Go look at a political subreddit, or some controversial tweet. There’s little conversation or context. Most users could be bots.

Google often has the advantage of having hard (url) or soft (product/key word mention) links that point to something extremely rare and “unimportant”. Everyone is bitching about politicians and policy in a way that’s not far from a Markov chain.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#62

Post by Twixes »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #42
A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't say it surprises me. But I think by now every government is using such farms. I find it difficult to believe otherwise based on recent FCC issues ( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/net-neutrality-f... ). Yes, sadly, I am invoking everyone is doin' it.

I don't think it's just government, but also likely industries as well. I've seen what could only be trolling for support of nuclear power and the medical industry.

What do nuclear power trolls look like? I support nuclear power (instead of fossil fuels and in addition to renewables) and, sadly, I haven't got a cent from the nuclear industry yet.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#63

Post by 12xo »

nkozyra wrote: post #43

This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.

The real issue here is that FB allows post boosting via payment. The public will never be able to decipher the difference and so with FB and other social media companies, there is no way for the avg user to tell the difference between an ad and organic content. Since FB makes billions from the practice of boosting posts, they are never going to back away from the practice.

Its no wonder they dont want to ban political ads. They would have to remove their post reach boosting and super refined targeting and that's their entire business.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#65

Post by ineedasername »

RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #56

It is not just foreign governments using paid trolls. Apparently Hilary Clinton used paid trolls against Bernie Sanders in 2016. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll... >Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton…

US campaigns doing it is, while still bad, is vastly different. One is an issue of sleazy election campaigns. The other is a matter of foreign interference with a country's fundamental sovereignty.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#66

Post by curious_fella1 »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #54
nkozyra wrote: post #43

This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.

Google has largely solved the spam problem for end users. What I can't figure out is why platforms like Facebook and Twitter couldn't mark these sort of posts as, essentially, spam, by the same sort of rules and heuristics as email spam. Why can't they look at the metadata of verified troll-farm-generated clickbait/junk/spam/fake news, and make their own filters, and demote that content? Simple. Because they're makin…

Detecting Gmail spam is a wildly different problem than detecting paid shills on a forum.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#68

Post by throwaway_law »

gpm wrote: post #8
d4mi3n wrote: post #4

I 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…

>A PR person hired to promote ULA promoting ULA on reddit under 10 different pseudonyms: Completely unacceptable, this should probably be made outright illegal. The only purpose of using pseudonyms like this is to trick people into thinking you have support that you do not.

Isn't this how Reddit itself became a platform? I understand they had no traffic/users and the Reddit Platform was seeded with bots to post, comment, upvote, etc... This false illusion of a user base and community gave the platform the credibility it needed to gain real users.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#69

Post by RobertRoberts »

Twixes wrote: post #62
RobertRoberts wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it's just government, but also likely industries as well. I've seen what could only be trolling for support of nuclear power and the medical industry.

What do nuclear power trolls look like? I support nuclear power (instead of fossil fuels and in addition to renewables) and, sadly, I haven't got a cent from the nuclear industry yet.

You will see "we need nuclear power because it's the greenest/most renewable/etc... energy" type posts dispersed all through social media almost anywhere there's a discussion about climate change, renewable energy, etc...

Even if the original topic was only tangentially related it will get changed. A post with puppy photos can turn into a climate change discussion because "nuclear power is so green".

It's so common now that it's uncanny.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#70

Post by atmosx »

ineedasername wrote: post #65
RcouF1uZ4gsC wrote: post #56

It is not just foreign governments using paid trolls. Apparently Hilary Clinton used paid trolls against Bernie Sanders in 2016. https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-clinton-digital-troll... >Hillary Clinton's well-heeled backers have opened a new frontier in digital campaigning, one that seems to have been inspired by some of the Internet's worst instincts. Correct the Record, a super PAC coordinating with Clinton…

US campaigns doing it is, while still bad, is vastly different. One is an issue of sleazy election campaigns. The other is a matter of foreign interference with a country's fundamental sovereignty.

> US campaigns doing it is, while still bad, is vastly different.

How so?

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