US Military Commissions Sock Puppet Program

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."

Comments

Re:I, for one, salute our new sock-puppet overlord

[Half-pint HAL]

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.