The Vietnamese military has an actual troll army and Facebook is its weapon • Hacker News Board

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

#111

Post by CapstanRoller » Tue, May 09, 2023, 8:01 PM UTC

flangola7 wrote: post #99

CapstanRoller wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I am under the impression that western governments don't do this but who knows... Is this sarcasm? We know the US absolutely does, and targets USAmericans as well. https://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-... https://northwesternlawreview.org/issues/apple-pie-propagand... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith%E2%80%93Mundt_Act

The US undoubtedly engages in widespread propaganda, but I think they use more "open" methods. They won't clandestinely pretend to be your local neighbor on a Facebook group, but they will gladly plaster enticing high production quality recruitment ads on every surface and openly foot the bill for the American tanks and fighter jets in the next action movie. The funny thing about propaganda is that it is still largel…

>They won't clandestinely pretend to be your local neighbor on a Facebook group

Of course they will, and do. They do both. And it's not "pretending" — your neighbor could very well be one, and truly believe in The Cause.

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

#112

Post by mistermann » Wed, May 10, 2023, 1:57 PM UTC

chrysler wrote: post #98

bllguo wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

you literally just scrolled past several comments with evidence to make this reply. not to mention how naive one's priors must be to think no western actors engage in these activities, given everything else we know about the US espionage apparatus and foreign propaganda efforts

This cynical take ignores that in free societies, such efforts are far less effective than in closed societies with no free media and no tradition of civic participation and civil disobedience. COVID showed that very well.

Watch out for correlation versus causation though.

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

#113

Post by mistermann » Wed, May 10, 2023, 8:16 PM UTC

bjourne wrote: post #79

mistermann wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a very good point.

It's a crap argument. We have evidence that certain states -- China, Russia, Israel, Vietnamn, etc. -- employs state-sponsored troll groups. We don't have evidence that most countries use such strategies. It's like claiming that Japan has the worst ninjas since good ninjas don't expose themselves and we haven't heard anything about other countries' ninjas.

> It's a crap argument. We have evidence that certain states -- China, Russia, Israel, Vietnamn, etc. -- employs state-sponsored troll groups.

Whether they do it is orthogonal to the particular point in this subthread: "I am under the impression that western governments don't do this."

> We have evidence that certain states -- China, Russia, Israel, Vietnamn, etc. -- employs state-sponsored troll groups.

We seem to have knowledge that it occurs more than zero. What we do not have is evidence for most of the specific claims in the media, which tend to provide either zero evidence, or link to the "wild card" single case where Russia "was" caught engaging in it.

> We don't have evidence that most countries use such strategies.

You are describing your opinion about what evidence "we" have.

https://astralcodexten.substack.com/p/the-phrase-no-evidence...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proving_a_negative

> It's like claiming that Japan has the worst ninjas since good ninjas don't expose themselves and we haven't heard anything about other countries' ninjas.

In what way do you believe that it is like this?

For example, it is also like having ham and cheese sandwiches for brunch, in that it involves human beings.