Revealed: US spy operation that manipulates social mediaMilitary’s ‘sock puppet’ software creates fake online identities to spread pro-American propaganda.
The US military is developing software that will let it secretly manipulate social media sites by using fake online personas to influence internet conversations and spread pro-American propaganda.
A Californian corporation has been awarded a contract with United States Central Command (Centcom), which oversees US armed operations in the Middle East and Central Asia, to develop what is described as an “online persona management service” that will allow one US serviceman or woman to control up to 10 separate identities based all over the world.
The project has been likened by web experts to China’s attempts to control and restrict free speech on the internet. Critics are likely to complain that it will allow the US military to create a false consensus in online conversations, crowd out unwelcome opinions and smother commentaries or reports that do not correspond with its own objectives.
The discovery that the US military is developing false online personalities – known to users of social media as “sock puppets” – could also encourage other governments, private companies and non-government organisations to do the same.
The Centcom contract stipulates that each fake online persona must have a convincing background, history and supporting details, and that up to 50 US-based controllers should be able to operate false identities from their workstations “without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries” …
Raise your hands if you’re surprised. That’s right. I see no hands.
News from back at the beginning of this year, but it’s important you all know, especially those who might not have heard about it since then; that there in itself would be proof, of how more ‘murky’ exploits by the US government, can pass by unaccounted/unchallenged - with little coverage from institution media…