This is one such thing that happens on reddit pretty heavily, except the organised groups operate and organise from discords. They track keywords for discussions they want to bend the narrative...
This is one such thing that happens on reddit pretty heavily, except the organised groups operate and organise from discords.
They track keywords for discussions they want to bend the narrative on, for example, "transgender". They'll use reddit search features or tracking sites like trackreddit.com to pick up mentions of specific keywords in comments, these automatically get posted into their discord, and then the group hits the thread. I know because I've been in a couple as a quiet background lurker and have forwarded particularly dangerous things to authorities on occasion. One community I was in was closed by discord.
They work together and share strategies. They evolve in intelligence and savvyness to moderation approaches. They use moderator policies against the moderators and the subreddits. They intelligently bait people that would be against their views into emotionaly reactions that break rules of subreddits, this forces moderators to act.
It's a really really tough thing to deal with, and they get better and better at it all the time because they spend literally all day everyday in their communities doing this.... When they're not playing videogames. Many are unemployed with little else to do with their time.
EDIT: I should add that they particularly love a newer thing that occurs on reddit lately - thread locking. When a thread has been locked they become free to play with the votes in the thread without anyone out there being able to comment and shoot down things like bad-science or give counter arguments that would often cause what gets upvoted to get downvoted.
Once a thread is locked they've noticed that the voting activity of the thread drops drastically, so they can find things that they like in the thread and start pushing them up. They've become particularly good at seeing new trends in a service and asking themselves "How can we use this to manipulate discussion?".
Honestly, a lot of them would make exceptionally good social media marketers if they weren't such awful people that were so unemployable (the reason they're not employed in the first place). That's what is quite scary about them. They're better at the internet than most people because they make their daily lives "learning to be good at manipulating the internet".
I've suspected that something like this was the case. Do you have anything in the way of screenshots or articles? I'm not doubting you, I want to know more about it, because the degree of...
I've suspected that something like this was the case. Do you have anything in the way of screenshots or articles? I'm not doubting you, I want to know more about it, because the degree of organization some of this has is really insane.
I've always avoided screenshots because proving myself isn't worth losing access to a community where someone's life might at some point be threatened. I'd rather be in them where I can see stuff...
I've always avoided screenshots because proving myself isn't worth losing access to a community where someone's life might at some point be threatened. I'd rather be in them where I can see stuff and pass something directly to police if they decide to target a specific individual. That's how the one community ended up closed.
This is nothing new though. Deimos and other mods here will know of exactly the same thing occurring in "fun" parts of the reddit community, such as the circlejerk/circlebroke subs. They would organise and troll communities through IRC channels. There was once an organised back-channel of IRC groups that would troll hailcorporate into believing that Olive Garden was manipulating reddit with tasty tasty garlic bread advertisements. They would make threads, manipulate the votes, manipulate the comments, pretend to be corporate advertisers, etc etc. This is just one such example, they did this all over reddit.
Some even older redditors will recall that the same behaviour occurred in the Game Of Trolls subreddit, which was later banned by reddit because it threatened the integrity of the entire site. For those unaware - Game of Trolls was a subreddit community that awarded points to users for causing a reaction/problem WITHOUT being accused of being a troll. If you were accused of being a troll you lost points. They successfully trolled huge numbers of people on reddit for months before eventually admins acted and banned them, not because they were breaking any reddit rules (they weren't) but because their games were seriously affecting the site. This group had IRC chats that they organised in too.
Use of chat groups for the organisation of groups of people into comments sections and voting on reddit goes back a long way.
I agree. They also infiltrate the moderation teams of subreddits. I've had 3 accounts banned from /r/politics permanently for extremely light reasons, and the moderator (anonymous every time as...
I agree.
They also infiltrate the moderation teams of subreddits. I've had 3 accounts banned from /r/politics permanently for extremely light reasons, and the moderator (anonymous every time as they refuse to show their username) team refuses to act against this/these individual(s). They are closing off reputable members of the communities they infiltrate and then censor any form of aggressive resistance against them.
Read the content instead of just the site name and you'd see for yourself that it's a high quality piece. Buzzfeed's journalistic side is one of the best out there. They perform some of the best...
Read the content instead of just the site name and you'd see for yourself that it's a high quality piece.
Buzzfeed's journalistic side is one of the best out there. They perform some of the best journalism, period. They have numerous awards for it in fact.
Their fluff side is well known for the numbered clickbaity posts, which earns a lot of hits.
That's just one part of it, but yes. It was Buzzfeed News that published the 35 page Steele Dossier. An alarming amount of that dossier has also since been proven true.
That's just one part of it, but yes. It was Buzzfeed News that published the 35 page Steele Dossier. An alarming amount of that dossier has also since been proven true.
You're correct, it was an intelligence officer that wrote the Dossier that included the pee tape in it. But it was Buzzfeed News that was given the dossier to publish and break the news about it.
You're correct, it was an intelligence officer that wrote the Dossier that included the pee tape in it. But it was Buzzfeed News that was given the dossier to publish and break the news about it.
Do some superb journalism. As far as I can discern, the people behind buzzfeed figured that the way to make money from online journalism is to make the money from clickbait - like Enzo Ferrari...
Do some superb journalism. As far as I can discern, the people behind buzzfeed figured that the way to make money from online journalism is to make the money from clickbait - like Enzo Ferrari selling sportscars to fund the racing team.
It isn't a surprise. I've been on Disqus for about five years, and the uptick of these tactics is noticable and prolific. The only place they haven't managed to really get their hooks in is The...
It isn't a surprise. I've been on Disqus for about five years, and the uptick of these tactics is noticable and prolific. The only place they haven't managed to really get their hooks in is The Atlantic Discussion Board - not for lack of trying. They're very heavily moderated, though, and I think it's in part because those groups took over the Atlantic Comments section and turned it into a total troll fest.
This is one such thing that happens on reddit pretty heavily, except the organised groups operate and organise from discords.
They track keywords for discussions they want to bend the narrative on, for example, "transgender". They'll use reddit search features or tracking sites like trackreddit.com to pick up mentions of specific keywords in comments, these automatically get posted into their discord, and then the group hits the thread. I know because I've been in a couple as a quiet background lurker and have forwarded particularly dangerous things to authorities on occasion. One community I was in was closed by discord.
They work together and share strategies. They evolve in intelligence and savvyness to moderation approaches. They use moderator policies against the moderators and the subreddits. They intelligently bait people that would be against their views into emotionaly reactions that break rules of subreddits, this forces moderators to act.
It's a really really tough thing to deal with, and they get better and better at it all the time because they spend literally all day everyday in their communities doing this.... When they're not playing videogames. Many are unemployed with little else to do with their time.
EDIT: I should add that they particularly love a newer thing that occurs on reddit lately - thread locking. When a thread has been locked they become free to play with the votes in the thread without anyone out there being able to comment and shoot down things like bad-science or give counter arguments that would often cause what gets upvoted to get downvoted.
Once a thread is locked they've noticed that the voting activity of the thread drops drastically, so they can find things that they like in the thread and start pushing them up. They've become particularly good at seeing new trends in a service and asking themselves "How can we use this to manipulate discussion?".
Honestly, a lot of them would make exceptionally good social media marketers if they weren't such awful people that were so unemployable (the reason they're not employed in the first place). That's what is quite scary about them. They're better at the internet than most people because they make their daily lives "learning to be good at manipulating the internet".
I've suspected that something like this was the case. Do you have anything in the way of screenshots or articles? I'm not doubting you, I want to know more about it, because the degree of organization some of this has is really insane.
I've always avoided screenshots because proving myself isn't worth losing access to a community where someone's life might at some point be threatened. I'd rather be in them where I can see stuff and pass something directly to police if they decide to target a specific individual. That's how the one community ended up closed.
This is nothing new though. Deimos and other mods here will know of exactly the same thing occurring in "fun" parts of the reddit community, such as the circlejerk/circlebroke subs. They would organise and troll communities through IRC channels. There was once an organised back-channel of IRC groups that would troll hailcorporate into believing that Olive Garden was manipulating reddit with tasty tasty garlic bread advertisements. They would make threads, manipulate the votes, manipulate the comments, pretend to be corporate advertisers, etc etc. This is just one such example, they did this all over reddit.
Some even older redditors will recall that the same behaviour occurred in the Game Of Trolls subreddit, which was later banned by reddit because it threatened the integrity of the entire site. For those unaware - Game of Trolls was a subreddit community that awarded points to users for causing a reaction/problem WITHOUT being accused of being a troll. If you were accused of being a troll you lost points. They successfully trolled huge numbers of people on reddit for months before eventually admins acted and banned them, not because they were breaking any reddit rules (they weren't) but because their games were seriously affecting the site. This group had IRC chats that they organised in too.
Use of chat groups for the organisation of groups of people into comments sections and voting on reddit goes back a long way.
I agree.
They also infiltrate the moderation teams of subreddits. I've had 3 accounts banned from /r/politics permanently for extremely light reasons, and the moderator (anonymous every time as they refuse to show their username) team refuses to act against this/these individual(s). They are closing off reputable members of the communities they infiltrate and then censor any form of aggressive resistance against them.
It's truly psychological warfare, in my mind.
A good question is how do we keep that from happening here
Buzzfeed.
Read the content instead of just the site name and you'd see for yourself that it's a high quality piece.
Buzzfeed's journalistic side is one of the best out there. They perform some of the best journalism, period. They have numerous awards for it in fact.
Their fluff side is well known for the numbered clickbaity posts, which earns a lot of hits.
now was it their journalism side that posted the story of Trump's Russian watersports adventure?
That's just one part of it, but yes. It was Buzzfeed News that published the 35 page Steele Dossier. An alarming amount of that dossier has also since been proven true.
I'm pretty sure it was a retired intelligence officer who first wrote about that.
You're correct, it was an intelligence officer that wrote the Dossier that included the pee tape in it. But it was Buzzfeed News that was given the dossier to publish and break the news about it.
Reactionary comment!
See, I can do it again!
Judge the content, not the source.
Do some superb journalism. As far as I can discern, the people behind buzzfeed figured that the way to make money from online journalism is to make the money from clickbait - like Enzo Ferrari selling sportscars to fund the racing team.
Buzzfeed News is funded by the clickbait part of Buzzfeed, however Buzzfeed News is a hard news outfit.
https://www.poynter.org/news/digital-digging-how-buzzfeed-built-investigative-team-inside-viral-hit-factory
No, Buzzfeed News. Learn the diference.
https://www.poynter.org/news/digital-digging-how-buzzfeed-built-investigative-team-inside-viral-hit-factory
It isn't a surprise. I've been on Disqus for about five years, and the uptick of these tactics is noticable and prolific. The only place they haven't managed to really get their hooks in is The Atlantic Discussion Board - not for lack of trying. They're very heavily moderated, though, and I think it's in part because those groups took over the Atlantic Comments section and turned it into a total troll fest.