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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

#31

Post by praxulus »

prox wrote: post #26
falcolas wrote: post #3

Or, 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.

Yeah, I wonder what conversations of society would have looked like in an alternative universe without any distractors. I would assume a lot different. I once read is that if an activist movement rises they prop a flawed individual, find as much as info as they can, and at an opportune moment they ‘out’ the leader. Apparently this happened with the Occupy movement.

The occupy movement had a leader?

Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon

#32

Post by user764743 »

maksimur wrote: post #29

What does this have to do with trolling? Don't they actually mean censoring/silencing? As far as I know the definition of a troll is "someone who posts inflammatory, irrelevant, offensive or other disruptive content to get a (bad) reaction from others". Are they doing that ?

The word lost its meaning a long time ago. Now it's used to define anything from someone sending death threats to state actors censoring dissent.

Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon

#33

Post by whitemary »

tormeh wrote: post #4
falcolas wrote: post #3

Or, 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...

My poor sweet summer child...

Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon

#34

Post by iudqnolq »

maksimur wrote: post #29

What does this have to do with trolling? Don't they actually mean censoring/silencing? As far as I know the definition of a troll is "someone who posts inflammatory, irrelevant, offensive or other disruptive content to get a (bad) reaction from others". Are they doing that ?

You're right that the focus of the article arguably doesn't fit the classic definition of trolling[0].

However, I think that this is a reasonably extension of the classic definition to fit newer problems. Rather than post the specious argument directly to Facebook they're sending it to the moderators. The purpose is the same, to disrupt the discussion.

> 2. n. An individual who .. regularly posts specious arguments, flames or personal attacks to a newsgroup, discussion list, or in email for no other purpose than to annoy someone or disrupt a discussion.

Further down in TFA they do bring up conventional trolling

> She first noticed her pages getting targeted around a year ago, when a swarm of trolls began calling the Australia-based vlogger a prostitute or a loser, but never commenting on the actual content of her show, she said.

[1]: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/T/troll.html

Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon

#35

Post by prox »

praxulus wrote: post #31
prox wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I wonder what conversations of society would have looked like in an alternative universe without any distractors. I would assume a lot different. I once read is that if an activist movement rises they prop a flawed individual, find as much as info as they can, and at an opportune moment they ‘out’ the leader. Apparently this happened with the Occupy movement.

The occupy movement had a leader?

I have been trying to get a hold of the article, and since it’s been a while, I hope I am right. That said, I do think the principle is not weird or outrageous for nation stations.

Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon

#36

Post by hn_throawlles »

tokai wrote: post #10
xtian wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. https://theintercept.com/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/

this kind of stuff is OLD. much older that you think... it's been getting more and more sophisticated since (at least) the romans, and surely in medieval times.

they only different thing is now it happens online, hence it's all much closer to 'real time' unlike the historical versions

Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon

#38

Post by gondaloof »

falcolas wrote: post #3

Or, 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.

> it would shock me if Vietnam was a leader in this space

Don't be too shocked. Vietnam is little China in the region. People are still ok with it because Vietnam has been seeing tremendous growth in the last couple of decades… sounds familiar? Lots of tech companies are also setting up shop there… it's a 100% dejavu. I just hope it won't suffer the same fate in 20 years.

Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon

#39

Post by iudqnolq »

nrandlv wrote: post #18

The UK has the 77th Brigade for this: https://www.wired.co.uk/article/inside-the-77th-brigade-brit... It has allegedly targeted Covid policy dissenters like Peter Hitchens.

Your source is pre-covid. I did a cursory search into their Covid activities and found an expansive report based on an alleged whistleblower[1] and a narrower admission by the Secretary of State for Defense that they

> [use] publicly available data, including material shared on social media platforms, to assess UK disinformation trends. It is not to be involved in regulating, policing or even reporting opinion that it may or may not agree with.[2]

This is pretty damming, and makes me credit the whistleblower report more than I originally thought.

Obviously it is inappropriate for the Army to target anyone on the basis of their political opinion. I will point out, however, that Peter Hitchens is a loon. He's said that it's "simply not possible" the UK lockdown could have caused the subsequent fall in deaths because it's generally accepted that short-term mortality from Covid occurs 4 weeks after infection, and thus the reduction in mortality must have come from a reduction in infection before the start of the lockdown. [3] He claims his 4 week number is "pretty much accepted". This is false, he had one non-peer reviewed cite. [4]

Tangentially he also believes that the fall of the UK is imminent because of the permission of no-fault divorce. [5]

[1]: https://bigbrotherwatch.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/01/Mi...

[2]: https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2023-01-30/debates/F9C...

[3]: https://youtu.be/UTpJmT1KQrc?t=153

[4]: https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/no-the-nhs-was-not-overr...

[5]: https://www.thepinknews.com/2015/09/12/mail-columnist-peter-...

Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon

#40

Post by hutzlibu »

xtian wrote: post #6
tormeh wrote: post #4

Earlier 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.

Also, there are PR companies. They have their trolls and bots as well.
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