The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
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Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#2[flagged]
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#3Or, to put it another way, average commenters are fighting against coordinated groups of state actors just to have genuine discussions. And it would shock me if Vietnam was a leader in this space.
It's like how ads pit big bags of mostly water against billions of dollars worth of psychological manipulation. Us mere mortals have no chance.
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#4Or, to put it another way, average commenters are fighting against coordinated groups of state actors just to have genuine discussions. And it would shock me if Vietnam was a leader in this space. It's like how ads pit big bags of mostly water against billions of dollars worth of psychological manipulation. Us mere mortals have no chance.
Russia is known to have loads of trolls on the government payroll. I am under the impression that western governments don't do this but who knows...
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#5Or, to put it another way, average commenters are fighting against coordinated groups of state actors just to have genuine discussions. And it would shock me if Vietnam was a leader in this space. It's like how ads pit big bags of mostly water against billions of dollars worth of psychological manipulation. Us mere mortals have no chance.
Russia is known to have loads of trolls on the government payroll. I am under the impression that western governments don't do this but who knows...
From my experiences on Twitter with various anonymous accounts parroting the state department line, and US military doctrine for total domination of the battle space, I am absolutely sure they are doing this either via a contractor, ally, or inside cyber command or DIA etc. The 2012 NDAA removed the ban on US domestic influence operations.
https://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-propaganda-20...
https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-...
You gotta remember. These guys used to do COINTELPRO (and never documented stopping it either). You think they won't troll people on the internet?
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#6Or, to put it another way, average commenters are fighting against coordinated groups of state actors just to have genuine discussions. And it would shock me if Vietnam was a leader in this space. It's like how ads pit big bags of mostly water against billions of dollars worth of psychological manipulation. Us mere mortals have no chance.
Russia is known to have loads of trolls on the government payroll. I am under the impression that western governments don't do this but who knows...
The US has the 4th and 8th Psychological Operations Groups stationed at Ft. Bragg, and that’s just what’s acknowledged publicly.
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#7The current President, youngest President ever in Vietnam, was the head of Central propaganda department [0], and I believe his achievement was integrating those censorship tools into the government usage (this is my wild guess, and absolutely not official info). An impressive feat, technological or otherwise, but naturally a bit unfortunate for Vietnamese.
That said, the Viet Tan group is full of crap. They are not a reform group. And whatever writings their members put out are mostly even worse than breitbart. So if you believe fake news should be squatted, well then you agree with the Vietnam government. This is the other unfortunate things with Vietnam: we really need better dissenting group.
[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Propaganda_Departmen...
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#8So Facebook is complicit in allowing its platform to be weaponized by the state against all speakers of Vietnamese (in and outside of the country). When questioned, they simply shrug their shoulders and say "if we did anything to stop this, our platform would be banned in Vietnam."
I'm beyond the point of expecting anything more from Facebook, but I would think the US government should have some leverage here. Vietnam is not the powerhouse that China is (yet), so if a major US company were banned because it applied the same rules it applies to every other country, I'd expect that to be a violation of their WTO commitments.
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#9So Facebook is complicit in allowing its platform to be weaponized by the state against all speakers of Vietnamese (in and outside of the country). When questioned, they simply shrug their shoulders and say "if we did anything to stop this, our platform would be banned in Vietnam." I'm beyond the point of expecting anything more from Facebook, but I would think the US government should have some leverage here. Vietna…
The tool Facebook built has a worldwide effect, and we knew it because just 2 years ago the Vietnamese government banned a common hashtag (saltbae or something related), and it had a FB-wide effect on all countries. I find it hard to believe that Vietnam is the only one with access to it.
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Russia is known to have loads of trolls on the government payroll. I am under the impression that western governments don't do this but who knows...
The US has the 4th and 8th Psychological Operations Groups stationed at Ft. Bragg, and that’s just what’s acknowledged publicly.
Slides from the Snowden leaks described ways of disrupting online communities. So The US and its allies has possible done it for decades.