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US Military Commissions Sock Puppet Program

Posted by timothy on from the and-I'm-learning-chinese-says-werner-von-braun dept.

chrb writes "The Guardian and The Telegraph are reporting that US based Ntrepid Corporation has been awarded a $2.76 million contract to develop software aimed at manipulating social media. The project aims to enable military personnel to control multiple 'sock puppets' located at a range of geographically diverse IP addresses, with the aim of spreading pro-US propaganda. The project will not target English speaking web sites (yet) but will be limited to foreign languages, including Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and Pashto. The project will be funded as part of the $200 million Operation Earnest Voice program run by US Central Command."

3 of 217 comments (clear)

  1. Re:I, for one, salute our new sock-puppet overlord by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But Voice of America is a branded product. You tune into VoA and it tells you you're listening to VoA. It's propaganda, but it's a million miles away from sock-puppeting -- sock puppets don't tell you they're sock puppets.

    --
    Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
  2. Re:I, for one, salute our new sock-puppet overlord by kilfarsnar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    As distasteful as it is, this is hardly a new thing. Pretty much everyone in history has done this to some degree. The only real "news" is that a new mechanism is going into place, but the machinery has been there all along.

    I agree. And yet, when I say that the US population is massively propagandized by its government, I get called a conspiracy theorist. I know the program in question is aimed at only foreigners, but we know how that can go don't we? I once heard that the difference between Soviet and American propaganda was that the Soviet people recognized it for what it was; the Americans, not so much.

    --
    "What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
  3. Re:I, for one, salute our new sock-puppet overlord by aaaaaaargh! · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Are you sure you have an idea what the term "propaganda" means? For a start, it doesn't imply any commitment to truth...

    There is nothing to object to propaganda that is clearly marked as such (see above comments about "Voice of America"), but if it comes in disguise then it is, of course, dishonorable.