Tek Fog: An App for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends
1–10 of 23 posts
Re: Tek Fog: An App for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends
#2Share apk. All will be revealed.
Re: Tek Fog: An App for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends
#3Site has weird history re-writing behavior, link should be:
Re: Tek Fog: An App for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends
#4The alleged "antagonist" refutes this article [1] as a lie.
I'm not saying it isn't true.
Re: Tek Fog: An App for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends
#5Focus on "right-wing propaganda" is important enough to be included in headline, but never mentioned again. Suggests to me that this article is scaremongering. Do you really think any organized group isn't using social media automation at this point, be that left or right?
Re: Tek Fog: An App for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends
#6I consider myself an ex-anonymous guy from the days of the yore. Think back in 2010. Around the same time, twitter was heating up as a "troll war" between three major groups. 1. Pro India. 2. Pro Pakistan. 3. Pro Kashmir independence.
I was in the 3rd group and I remember spending time, 14 hours at times to fighting trolls. There was some sort of flame wars but nothing too difficult. I remember learning a lot of stuff, improving my capabilities. I've doxed people but that was not fun.
The point is, I would have loved to have something like this back in 2009-2012.
Re: Tek Fog: An App for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends
#7The alleged "antagonist" refutes this article [1] as a lie. I'm not saying it isn't true. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/DevangVDave
The article does mention that they contacted him, he denied all claims, and then subsequently their sources twitter account was hacked and changed.
Re: Tek Fog: An App for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends
#8Anecdotally, I feel that some sort of tool like this is being used on YouTube as well. I don't use other 'social media' platforms.
I've created two accounts, one where I mostly watch left-wing videos and one where I watch more right-wing videos. Mostly local news and political discussions.
From the comment sections, it seems that the left-wing videos are very often 'under attack', as if someone sees a new upload from a channel and shares the link in a group, where group members comment (and dislike, RIP) in a negative way and about semi-related topics. Mostly conservative rhetoric and lately conspiracy stuff as well. Also upvoting of similar comments and negative replies to comments from 'normal' viewers.
I don't see it that often anymore in the past few months, but last year it looked like an obvious pattern to manipulate the discussion. Maybe the comments are all from unconnected individuals, but it felt unnatural and coordinated.
Actually you don't need sophisticated tools for this, just create a WhatsApp/Telegram group with a couple hundred fanatics that share links with each other to bash/hate on.
Re: Tek Fog: An App for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends
#9The company that built this (as per the article) is Persistent Systems, a public company with close ties to the Indian Government.
Their shareholders absolutely deserve an explanation.
Re: Tek Fog: An App for Cyber Troops to Automate Hate, Manipulate Trends
#10nothing new, this kind of tool, has been in the wild for long time without a name, used to manipulate behavior during political elections