In Praise of the King: 1.7M Social Media Comments In Thailand
An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Prachatai.com: "Thailand's Rangers Task Force 45, in response to Army policy, has put its troops to the task of promoting and protecting the monarchy in cyber space, claiming to have posted 1.69 million comments on webboards and social media during a 4-month period of last year ... According to the video clip, the Army Chief has approved the establishment of an army internet network to promote and protect the monarchy by monitoring websites and webboards which have content alluding to the monarchy and countering them by posting comments which worship the institution. ...The unit's military operations personnel provide the troops with information, or what to post, and set them targets for the number of posts they must complete."
His Majesty King Bhumibol is the most respected one! The monarchy brings great glory to Thailand! Long live the King!
It is the most horrible dictatorship on earth. The Thai king is a douchebag and a giant piece of dogshit, and he sucks balls.
He has to pay people to say nice things about him. What a fucking loser. He's the Sony Playstation of all the monarchies.
Sounds more like a dictatorship. I don't know why I'm surprised by this, but I really am. I mean some presidents have been dictators, some prime ministers, some emperors and, of course, some kings. I guess I didn't realise that kings that actually held power still existed (there's no such thing as emperors any more for example).
we have Media Matters Action Network, NBC, NPR, the Washington Post, the AP, and the New York Times for this.
I, for one, welcome our new 50 Cent Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party Overlords (Thailand Branch).
Retweeting Private Ryan.
And yet that made sense to someone in their military.
I guess they can do what he wants.
It's one thing to require the troops to sing the king's praises. It's another to criminalize people who might justly criticize the king. From what I (might mis)remember, he's a popular king. But that doesn't mean every Thai likes him.
Stuff like this makes me wary of him though.
"To stop the terrorists."
The King of Thailand has long had an officially-backed, and in early years American-assisted, cult of personality. It's illegal to criticise the king in Thailand, and hundreds of people are convicted of insulting the King every year, and in many cases thrown in jail for extended periods of time.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I'd hate to see the money funding that going to, for instance, HIV/AIDS awareness so that maybe some day Thailand won't have the highest HIV infection rate in Asia. Good job, King Ramalamading-dong!
Fuck the King of Thailand!
once you have their souls, their hearts and minds will follow.
I propose their name be the butthurt squad.
Judging by his embarrassing fuckface, Bhumibol Adulyadej Ramadhibodi Chakrinarubodin Sayamindaradhraj Boromanatbophit loves gerbilling and practices it avidly.
Too bad he won't end like all bad monarchs deserve.
70% of Obama's twitter followers are fake and paid for.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/fashion/twitter-followers-for-sale.html?_r=0
we just get audited by the IRS.
Go to anywhere on the Internet where Obama's spying on the entire Internet is being discussed,and you'll see massive numbers of pro-NSA posts. The vast majority of these posts come from a large number of covert US government groups tasked with pushing 'positive' propaganda wherever Obama's abuses are discussed. Unlike the crude program in Thailand, all public forums on the Internet are under constant automatic analysis, and when appropriate, alerts are sent to real Humans so that they can troll these outlets.
All of you have seen the Internet shop spam, and the "my friend makes x thousand dollars a month" spam that appears on any forum without constant active Human moderation. An infinitely more powerful version of the same type of software probing is used by the American government to monitor forums in readiness for pro-police-state trolling.
The owners of Slashdot, and other such mega-forums, provide the government with specific tools (and in the case of Slashdot, 'karma' points) to up-rate pro-government propaganda, and down-rate information seen as problematic. The 'scoring' system on Slashdot was NOT implemented to hide spam or off-topic posts, but to ensure the 'right' kinds of messages would be those most seen by the average sheeple visiting this site.
Look at the nations Slashdot constantly attacks in its promoted stories. Look at the nations Slashdot constantly praises. Are you people really so dumb you think these two lists are random, or a true reflection of the world? By choosing to cheer the extermination of Humans in Syria by terrorists armed, funded, trained and transported by Obama, the owners of Slashdot engage in a propaganda campaign vastly more effective than any carried out by primitive regimes in primitive nations.
With the revelations about the total spying activities of the NSA, and the degree to which Microsoft's Xbox One is designed to move this spying into your own homes, of course Slashdot will be looking for stories that put the sheeple back to sheep. "Look at what those evil foreigners are doing" is the oldest tactic in the book. The sheeple told that of course THEIR regime is the exception in history, and exists only for the good of the people. The evil, of course lies in every other regime.
Organised religion uses the same pathetic trick. "Our god(s) is obviously the only true real one. Those heretic losers with their crazy religions are fools, and losers who need to be controlled, conquered or destroyed."
Anyone here that belongs to an organised religion (as opposed to having their own spiritual beliefs that arise through experiencing life) is a complete cretin, and an immediate danger to all other Humans, but you Yanks are so proud of having a society dominated by organised religion. You pretend to keep organised religion out of your schools, but you have your kids "seig heil" to a flag-god every day (originally, even, with the same hand gesture made famous by the Nazis).
Here's the thing every Yank should consider. America could have all the success it has enjoyed across the years WITHOUT the NSA, war-mongering across the planet, and the dominance of leaders of depraved organised religions. America's work ethic, willingness to find the best business models to exploit the ingenuity of Humans across the planet, and desire to create the possibility of the best standards of living in a free society are actually seen as a massively good thing by people across this planet of ours.
But know this, Americans- prior to 1939 the people of the world bent over backwards to see the good achievements created by the Nazi regime in Germany, and desperately hoped that all the bad would pass in time as German people became more powerful and prosperous. We now know the good did not out-weigh the bad, and never could have. America is choosing, of its own free will, to walk down the darkest path possible. Yes, America is not alone in its evil- the UK has actually (since the time of visible Tony Blair) worked in every way possible to move America to this posi
Meh. Hire some Russian dudes to write a KingBot and install it on compromised workstations. They'll praise the crap out of your ruler. 1.7 million? Chicken feed.
Yep, and his PRISM program and his 3 month deal with Verizon
Long live Emperor Obama !!
I fart in king Bhumibol's general direction. His mother was a binturong and his father smelt of durians.
Circumcision is child abuse.
The Thais are just copying the last Obama campaign.
"The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old......They literally know nothing." - Ben Rhodes
It reminds me of the comments that understand my frustration with unusable things, but personally find that Windows 8 is an incredibly usable operating system and I just don't understand how usable it truly is.
maybe they can come help us in Afghanistan.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
Like a king.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
..and it's been going on for years. I posted about the false-flag terrorist operation September 11th 2001 in a Norwegian forum. Some guy sent me a private message there asking for more details about what I knew about it. I gave him a specially crafted link to one of my webservers and it was interesting, but not very shocking, to see this "17 year student" visiting from IP 158.112.84.2 - which belongs to the Norwegian military. I suspect most countries has a disinformation / "cyperspace" unit. It's all jolly to talk about how they do this in Thailand here in the west, but cyberwar and torture of people who write "wrong things" on the Internet, like Norway does on a regular basis, is apparently not newsworthy in the "free" western world.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
What a huge waste of money regardless of your feelings towards the king.
Nothing like some good old-fashioned astroturfing!
Let's take a step back for a second and just accept that other countries have different cultures and in the case of Thailand, the monarchy is actually very respected by a large portion of the population because the king, unlike many other monarchs, is not only quite well educated but really did a lot for his country and his people. Not only has Thailand never been a Western colony, they only started to open more towards the West and Western culture at around the turn of the 20th century. To top that off, "democracy" has so far been more of a process in Thailand for a lot of reasons.
What you are seeing now and saw a few years back in the riots and rapid changes of government is essentially a struggle between the old and dying benevolent constitutional monarchy which still had a lot of power and the new ultra-capitalistic push for power of none other than Thaksin Shinawatra; he has been challenging the king these last years, something that has pretty much not happened before. Thaksin likes to present himself as a "humble" down-to-earth man, yet he is by far the richest and one of the most powerful man of the country and it is safe to assume he did not get to that height without bodies in his cellar; some of those he was convicted for and had to stay in exile.
There were no wrong-doings by the monarchy prior to the military coup but Thaksin was pushing for power with TRT to grow his huge business empire at that time and buying voters and that's when through the monarch the military put a foot down and he was trialed for nepotism and corruption amongst others.
Now I know, you are going to argue these were wrong allegations and he is pretty much a "saint" trying to bring freedom to the population against an oppressive regime. The reason you are saying so is because this is the picture Thaksin's followers were very busy painting for the international media throughout the military coups. It is essentially a calculated way of presenting the Western media with an image everyone here can easily understand - the oppressed farmers fighting against their oppressors. Yet, in the case of Thailand this just is not true. Thailand clearly has a lot of issues but it is wrong to blame the king and the monarchy for that and the people in Thailand are not oppressed, they are somewhere stuck between the old ways of the monarchy and moving toward bona-fide western democracy, they just are not there yet. Like I said, democracy is not yet 100% there in Thailand and it is going to take them a while longer... much like what you saw as outcomes of the "Arab spring". You don't drop the democracy bomb and everything is going to be great and wholesome in a week.
And before you argue in favor of the rebels and Thaksin voters, consider the fact that a huge portion of the votes were just bought from poor farmers. That's what I mean, that's how Thaksin is challenging the monarchy. He presents a new feeding hand and asks absolute loyalty in return. For nothing but his own gain in power and to grow his businesses and influence. Imagine Larry Ellison buying the presidency. This is not democracy either, yet with a huge part of the population being poor you will find it hard to establish a real democracy because starving people want food and they don't care who gives them bread.
So don't be too quick to side against the king and the monarchy and for Thaksin and his henchmen just because the romantic Western idea of oppressed people fighting against an abusive state feels good in your rebellious first world tummies.
As ridiculous as what they are doing may seem to you, essentially they are pushing back against what Thaksin and his henchmen have been doing ever since the riots. Thaksin has grown huge in media, he knows how to influence the international opinion and how to twist things the right way. You are getting front row seats to an internal political power struggle, that's all this is. There is no "good" and "evil" side, if anything it is the conservative and well educated against the poor under the leadership of greed
"Only one thing is impossible for God: To find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." - Mark Twain
They are terribly efficient. What how they make this comment dissappear instantly.
Poof!
But what's worse is that some anti-semites might compare this to what Israeli is doing. Clearly such a comparison would be unwarranted.
Given the volume, I do not know whether I shall call this propaganda or spam. If it is propaganda, I suspect it is so blunt that it is rather ineffective.
MUCH better than what the US used its military for most of the time since WWII.
Thailand is imperfect; the United States is imperfect. As my father said many years ago, you pays your money and takes your choice. I decided twenty years ago that I would rather die in Thailand than live in America. I'm still here.
Any of you are welcome to come and take a look.
All Glory to the Hypnotoad
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zHU2RlSCdxU
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70% of Obama's twitter followers are fake and paid for.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/fashion/twitter-followers-for-sale.html?_r=0
Parent Score +1 ON topic. "And ida been able to get away with my Obama astroturfing... if it weren't for those meddling kids." Must! suppress! dissent! for! Obama!
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