What is Reddit's opinion of The Smear: How Shady Political Operatives and Fake News Control What You See, What You Think, and How You Vote?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Been a lot longer then 5 years since free speech and anti-censorship was a liberal aka progressive value. Libertarian yes. Classical liberal yes. The people you're talking about on the right pretty much tossed those people out 20 years ago in most western countries. In the late 90's, you could see this pro-censorship stance in the left here in Canada with the Liberal Party, and NDP.

What you missed, and a lot of people missed is that the right moderated itself tossed out a lot of the shitty people. Many of those shitty people however were welcomed with open arms by the left no less. There were various reasons, they were big names(had media pull), were well known pundits, had access to lots of donors for money and so on.

If you need an example over the last 10 years just in the US? Look at the RINO's who were 'big time bush' people, and couldn't find a war they didn't like. Yeah, open arms by the left. Probably one of the big names you'll recognize is David Frum. Progressives absolutely love him now that he's on their team, but his policies haven't changed. He sure was screeching that "the republicans left me!" They sure did, that was the point of the Tea Party groups, despite the attacks by the media. Something every GG should recognize by now.

While I'm at it, I'm going to plug Sharyl Attkisson's book, The Smear. Read it.

I think it's fine if he means it. If not, I agree he shouldn't be saying it. However, ISIL has lost 1/3 of its territory under President Trump's strategy for the military. President Trump also wasn't afraid to bomb a Syrian airbase after Bashar al-Assad used chemical weapons.

He's clearly not very patient--and nor should he be.

> Hence, other world-leaders could use mere words as a prod, rendering Don-Don's actions & replies as both predictable and VERY susceptible to being twisted and used for propaganda.

Well, as a matter of fact, HR 6393 passed by Obama in 2016 legalizes counterintelligence propaganda to be used on American citizens and against foreign countries such as Russia (Russia is especially specifically stated in this bill). So you're right about it being twisted and used for propaganda.

This was when Obama found of the pre-existing evidence of Trump's relation to Russia. There is no "new evidence" of the past; the tailored ops group had already captured and analyzed it.

The media are playing games. Some members of Congress acknowledge this (i.e. Trey Gowdy).

Yea that's a problem but it's definitely not the problem with Reddit. The real issue is the fact that this site is an astroturfer's paradise. Create a thousand bots, have them create a thousand accounts, post a thousand reposts, then post comments from the original posts in the reposts and upvote upvote upvote. Do this for 3 months and sell the accounts to social media marketing companies. The absolute worst aspect isn't even the corporate advertising which I think is as benign as commercials. The real sinister astroturfing is the political type. Whether it was r/the_donald posts on the front page daily during the election or the daily anti-trump r/politics posts today. These are almost certainly not organic and there is evidence for it. It is propaganda pure and simple. Social and political manipulation on a mass scale.

I strongly recommended anyone who reads this post check out the book The Smear by Sharyl Attkisson. The book is truly eye opening and you will never look at social media the same way again. The media in general too. There's a reason the media seems to reflect reality so poorly, it's because it doesn't.

In the book she outlines how partisan political groups game internet algorithms to put their content in front of as many eyes as possible. She even interviews some of the people involved in the work. Reddit really makes it easy for them. They even prepared for 2020 by quarantining the only pro Trump sub on this site so that democrats are the only ones who can successfully game the system during the next election.

A large percentage of viral events on the internet are staged these days. Considering the potential profit of making something go viral, why wouldn't they? It's like a multi-million dollar ad campaign that costs a few thousand dollars. It seems people have no imagination when it comes to these things. A perfect example is that Popeye's chicken sandwich that people were mysteriously obsessed with beyond rationality.

Here's the thing about the world of counterintelligence: it has the effect of making people seem delusional after a while.

I agree that USG often puts spins on stories to assist the media in creating their biased interpretation of a "fact-based narrative" (HR 6393, Title V, Sec. 501 (1) (C) lead to legalizing counterintelligence propaganda against certain countries to be used on American Citizens, for instance (signed in 2016, became effective 2017)), however, I think you should realize that sometimes these spins are one step ahead of your thoughts--such as to make you seem a fool of yourself (again, please refer to this book).

Often times, facts are mixed with lies. For you to say that the government has 'created extremism' and 'did 9/11', for instance, is a conspiracy theory--a word propagated by the USG to refer to someone who is often paranoid or delusional. That's what you seem to be when you say these things, and that's why no one will take it seriously. 10% of whistleblowers are said to be diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia (I forgot where I got that statistic, I'll go find it if you ask me to though).

Alex Jones, for instance, is very often mentioned in conversations of intelligence within the intelligence community (also depending on the job and the operation, but namely psychological and/or informational ones as far as I'm aware).

My point is, Orwellian governments are very real and current, but just be careful about what how you go about assuming things. I really recommend you read this book.

It's not strange at all. Sharyl Attkisson wrote a book about this called The Smear. In it she outlines how partisan political groups game internet algorithms to put their content in front of as many eyes as possible. She even interviews some of the people involved in the work. Unfortunately Reddit makes it particularly easy for them. They even prepared for 2020 by quarantining the only pro Trump sub on this site so that democrats are the only ones who can successfully game the system during the next election.

A large percentage of viral events on the internet are staged these days. Considering the potential profit of making something go viral, why wouldn't they? It's like a multi-million dollar ad campaign that costs a few thousand dollars. It seems people have no imagination when it comes to these things. A perfect example is that Popeye's chicken sandwich that people were mysteriously obsessed with beyond rationality.

Edit: Holy moly, -9 in only 18 minutes. I really pissed them off lol.