US Military Commissions Sock Puppet Program 217
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."
Re:I, for one, salute our new sock-puppet overlord (Score:3, Informative)
You can opt out of the newspaper market, I certainly have. Can't easily opt out of tax paying.
Re:I, for one, salute our new sock-puppet overlord (Score:5, Informative)
The technical term for the whole process run by the rich to sway decision-makers is "astroturfing," because they're creating an artificial grass-roots effort. Sock puppetry is only one tool in their toolbox.
Nicky Hager's book Secrets and Lies [amazon.com], has terrific detail on how such a campaign is run, documenting the New Zealand timber industry's bought-and-paid-for efforts to run roughshod over the environmentalists in order to log the islands.