The best thing about this is that anyone who disagrees with me can be called a paid actor.
The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
51–60 of 113 posts
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#52Taiwan and South Korea transitioned from military dictatorships to fairly robust democracies. Is there a similar future ahead for Vietnam? Why or why not?
Many of the western democracies were dictatorships (i.e.) monarchies, until long after their basic governmental frameworks were established. Many parts of the English government, for example, predate the Glorious Revolution.
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#53Or, 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...
Of course they do. On one hand Twitter was known to have FBI and CIA working inside them.
But here's Israel explaining[0] their troll army operations explicitly (see former Prime Minister Naftali Bennett directing the organization at 3:28 in video)
https://youtu.be/4xl30Re1EUI?t=208
Why wouldn't any powerful state do this? It is effective, and other countries do it so you can't abandon that "battlefield".
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#54Earlier 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.
Also, there are PR companies. They have their trolls and bots as well.
Yes, such as Black Cube
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#55Earlier 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...
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://foreig…
It's not a good look for us to be promoting international adoption of the internet while being caught using it to commit subterfuge abroad.
I've never heard of any such domestic department myself. Like the rest of our intelligence work, I assume we outsource that job to the Israelis.
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#56Or, 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...
We absolutely do. This is literally what psychological operations [1] are. In the US each branch of the military even has their own distinct psyop divisions with mottos like "Never Seen, Always Heard." Here's [2] a recruitment video from the Army's 4th Psyop Group [3], entitled "Ghosts in the Machine." It's really well done and, more importantly, not at all subtle about what they do.
And now add LLMs into the picture.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_operations_(Unit...
[2] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VA4e0NqyYMw
[3] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_Psychological_Operations_G...
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#57My guess would be the US is still the world leader in imperialism/psyops/cultural influencing in any form of media.
Or that's what their propaganda would have you believe, anyway.
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#58Or, 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.
Nightmarish
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#59The best thing about this is that anyone who disagrees with me can be called a paid actor.
I wish I was paid for wasting too much time around here, then I totally agree with your point.
Re: The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
Does Facebook have rules that are consistently applied to every country? AFAIK, Facebook complies with the local governments' requirements everywhere it operates even though they will occasionally publicize some resistance.
There is no local law in Vietnam that says "you must allow the state's army of troll bots to harass anyone in the world that speaks Vietnamese". Facebook isn't complying with any local law here, and the behaviour in question isn't isolated to users in Vietnam. They are turning a blind eye to avoid retaliation for applying the same rules they'd apply elsewhere.
> The law requires Facebook to set up offices in Vietnam (where operations can be controlled), hand over personal information to the government and remove content within 24 hours of government requests.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/global-opinions/wp/2018/...
The law doesn't explicitly state allowing troll bots, but it does have extremely strong opinions about how Facebook operates in Vietnam.