Fake forum comments are 'eroding' trust in the web

A article on the BBC pointing out a rising trend in companies and governments are using various forms of net infiltration for various purposes. This ranges from Companies using employees in a form of comment war (This is noted as occuring most commonly in China), the U.S. military and intel groups infiltrating various forums to "look for terrorists", companies using face book with false identities to spread viral advertising and stir up debate, and to various attempts to influence debate.

BBC Article Here

Things to discuss.

Before we even get into this discussion do not go around pointing out any on the fora as being one of these identities. If you suspect it and have proof you should report it to the mods. If not keep it to yourself please.

1. What are some of the legal ramifications of these practices?
2. What are some of the moral ramifications of these practices?
3. How much influence can these various bodies leverage in various spheres of the internet?
4. Do these practices pose serious issues for the internet community as a whole or are they of minimal concern in the big picture?
5. What if anything should be done/can be done? Please be reasonable on these solutions/suggestions.

edited 24th Nov '11 8:11:47 PM by TuefelHundenIV

Who watches the watchmen?

I don't think it's anymore sinister than garden variety lying.

Well considering the Pentagon had a division solely for the purpose of fabricating fake news, I doubt that this "erosion of trust" on the web is any different from trying to guard yourself from people spreading propaganda and lies in any other way.

^ Actually it's the same shit people have been pulling for a very long time. Before news comments and forums it was phone campaigns, before that it was letter campaigns.

So really, Same Shit Different Day.

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

Shouldn't make a difference. In an open forum where you can challenge claims, if you think someone is being a bullshit astroturfer, you don't call them out on it because that's an ad hominem distraction. If their position is bullshit astroturf, there will be flaws in it that you can identify and address appropriately without turning to attacks of the person.

Discuss the ideas, not the people. And don't trust unproven web sources in the first place anyways.

Well put.

edited 24th Nov '11 3:57:27 PM by RadicalTaoist

Share it so that people can get into this conversation, 'cause we're not the only ones who think like this.

Lack of trust is probably for the best... Web info is not to be trusted, but fact-checked.

Except for surveillance (it sucks and it's evil), the net being obviously untrustworthy is better than people blindly trusting what they find in it.

edited 24th Nov '11 5:05:27 PM by SavageHeathen

You exist because we allow it and you will end because we demand it.

> What are some of the legal ramifications of these practices ? What are some of the moral ramifications of these preaces?

None, i don't think its illegal. Morally on lying is not much, people lying all the time on the net. Corporate and Gov using their greater resources to manipulate people is morally wrong, even if their lying is no worse than other lie since they have greater resource on doing it.

> How much influence can these various bodies leverage in various spheres of the internet?

Not much, net users is very cynical.

> Do these practices pose serious issues for the internet community as a whole or are they of minimal concern in the big picture ?

It is minimal concern now, it might be greater concern in the future with more people using internet.

> What if anything should be done/can be done? Please be reasonable on these solutions/suggestions?

Improvement on facebook real name policy backed by legal authority could reduce corporate interference. I don't like current real name policy, i like to have several separate id on net, but limiting corporate fakeID with fine to corporation if they get caught is useful. And any corporation caught on this should be subjected to negative publication until its profit is damaged.

On government practice, legislature on democratic countries should ban any gov agencies doing this. secret government propaganda shouldn't be standard practice of democracy in peace. In many case it will unenforceable, but doing this and caught on it should be considered scandal and result in resignation.

I agree with this Ideal, but Casual net user, those who using it only for farmville and facebook is unlikely to be capable doing this. Gov and corporation with greater computing power could create "reality" that convince a lot of people that their word is the truth is very dangerous. Any community need minimal amount of trust to function. Attempt to expose this practice will be very beneficial for net community.

Does this matter?

It's not anything we haven't seen before.

go ahead and do every stupid thing you can imagine

It is a valid discussion to be having none the less.

Who watches the watchmen?

While in the ideal world, it'd be great if no one were lying, I'm not sure what there is to do about this. I suppose we can petition the government not to do this but I don't think that there is any specific anti-propaganda law, interestingly enough.

This subject has been creeping me out for some time. The Guardian posted a great article about Operation Earnest Voice, the US Military's exploration into large scale and sophisticated sock puppetry. They have framed it as a way of getting out the truth and to combat extremist propaganda with their own, but they could abuse it any way they like and you'd never find out. More info here.

Interestingly, I could be a Chinese 'Internet Water Army' paid poster who wants to make you frightened of your own military to decrease its funding (I'm not by the way. But then a paid poster would say that, wouldn't he...) and of course my reply could get followed by a dozen posters emphatically defending the military and attacking me, all sounding quite plausible, all from different, worldwide IP addresses...

Does it really matter whether you're a sock puppet or who you're a sock puppet for? On an open forum like this one, if you weren't being paid to say it, someone else would say it for free.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

I think it matters greatly. It's not such a big deal if just one or two sock puppets crop up on a forum, give their opinion and leave. But if, say, six plus come up at the same time, they can rapidly derail a conversation and steer it any direction they like, overwhelming moderators (most of whom are just doing it for fun and fairness, not money), ganging up on anyone who tries to debunk them, popping in legit sounding but bad sources etc. At best they can kill the forum thread, at worst they take it over, narrate their version of events and make it sound like most people agree with them (and while Appeal to Popularity is a logical fallacy, it's still very powerful).

It's not the worst crime in the world but if governments and the US military are spending millions on paid posters and persona management services, there's probably something in it *

Although a bit out of date, the CoS did something like this to alt.religion.scientology. Fortunately that user group was too large for it to work.

Those who are swayed are those most susceptible to the worst of fallacies. If they hadn't been swayed by propaganda, they'd have instead been swayed by any of the other bullshit that runs rampant on the Internet, much of which is spouted for free.

And for all the effort a hired propagandist puts into this, I'd say the average troll in it for the lulz puts in almost as much, or perhaps more.

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

Indeed, and this represents another way to target and sway them, maybe get folks who either trust the Internet more than traditional media or are otherwise unreachable.

I can understand why the US government's trying this - there may be no better way to spoil online terrorism recruitment attempts than to point out logical and theological nonsense in the recruiter's spiel. Still creepy though.

Where I think astroturfers differ from trolls is in the quality of their arguments (as in make something sound very convincing) and the effort they can put into it. Not to say there ain't some really motivated troll assholes out there, but unlike paid forum posters they tend to give up when what they're doing stops being fun, plus they're about disruption while paid forumites are about persuasion, which feels way more insidious.

Yes, heaven knows the U.S. military is always extremely frugal and never wastes millions of dollars on things that don't do much good.

I would like to emphasize that my post was talking about open forums, like here at TV Tropes, where anyone can become a poster and there are topics about just about everything. Social media outlets where people come together for a common goal or ideology, infiltrating those is a whole 'nother story.

Oh, and the appeal to popularity fallacy can also backfire. Sometimes nothing gets my dander up more than seeing a lot of people agreeing on something, and I end up passionately defending the opposing viewpoint out of sheer contrariness.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

I don't think that it's that big of a problem, personally. It might involve a lot of dirty tricks, yes, but the majority of internet regulars will have learned how to identify this sort of behaviour by 2011, surely? Even if they're so good that we don't spot them, is it any different to the millions of dedicated idiots online that we've all learned to ignore?

In fact, I think that this is less of a problem online than offline because no one has a monopoly on information on the internet. Back in the days when TV, radio and local print were the only means of getting information out it would be easy to influence more people because people didn't have an alternative way of getting information.

But on the internet? Hell, this is the largest repository of updated-in-real-time information since God wrote his users manual. Unless you live in a country where the internet is heavily censored - in which case advertising techniques are hardly your biggest problem right now - there's no excuse for not doing some basic research and coming to your own conclusions about something you care about.

And let us pray that come it may (As come it will for a' that)

Another interesting point. No sense perceiving the U.S. military as Magnificent Bastards given the nonsense that goes on within it.

edited 25th Nov '11 8:21:16 AM by HiddenFacedMatt

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

Indeed - those countries are where paid forum posts are instead used to attack dissidents and flatter the government. Though it's also where people are very experienced with recognising 50-cent party people too :)

I love the Internet, and the fact it scares people in power so much they have to try to subvert it in this way - and are so far failing.

Yes but sometimes they build things that are extremely important, like the (now sadly axed) robot dragon ta... what do you mean The Onion is just satire?!? Damnit!

edited 25th Nov '11 8:58:01 AM by betaalpha

I continue to meet people who think that the Onion is real news. It can be fun to spin them up with an article, but I take time to tell them that 'lol, fake', and they walk away a bit smarter after that.

But just look at the explosion in internet urban legends. There are a lot of people who fall victim to misinformation or outright fabrications, and then spam my inbox with "OMG [Internet-based shock story here] HIDE UR KIDZ!" and yeeargh. A bit of fact-checking later, and I shoot off a replay saying 'lol, fake'.

Comments? Comments are basically opinions. Everyone has them, and we shoudl all know what they smell like, right? Grain of salt, folks.

Happiness is zero-gee with a sinus cold.

People complaining that the governments watching them on forums needs to remember Rule #2 of the internet. Someone could always be watching you. (You know what rule #1 is.)

None of this is really surprising too me.

Ah, the onion. I remember sitting in class once when one kid found an article on CNN from them saying Beiber is an 84 year old peodo. Everyone believed it until I took a look and saw it was from the onion.

The dragon tank is one of my favorite though. Right up there with the high-speed bus plan. The little bar at the bottom is the best though. 'Obama reverses environmental stance after raccoon steals his sandwich.' Ah, satire.

edited 25th Nov '11 10:35:07 AM by Joesolo

I'm baaaaaaack

Whilst I don't approve of this sort of thing, anyone who relies on forum posts as a source of unbiased information is pretty naive. I'm more worried about evidence of corporations or governments trying to insert propaganda into sites like Wikipedia, which people do often rely on. However, all forms of media are subject to this kind of manipulation to some extent - the only real solution is buyer beware.

"Well, it's a lifestyle"

I thought that was Rule 34 rather than rule 1.

Yeah, it's hard to tell who to trust anymore, and paid disingenuousness on the Internet is only a small fraction of this broad problem.

edited 25th Nov '11 2:44:26 PM by HiddenFacedMatt

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

Do NOT talk about /b/?

"Allah may guide their bullets, but Jesus helps those who aim down the sights."

I don't really see a reason to be scared of "fake forum comments". Dedicated efforts to slip covert advertising/propaganda into informational websites are already a serious problem, though (as the "Wikipedia has been declining in quality since 2007 or so" crowd likes to point out).

edited 25th Nov '11 2:56:41 PM by silver2195

Currently taking a break from the site. See my user page for more information.