Well twitter is a project indirectly controlled by the NSA and other organizations across the world. Most of the accounts aren't even real and are probably used to push political narratives (everyone is a racist, everyone is a terrorist). Ever notice how often the people who get arrested for terrorism have a twitter account? Most of the "terrorists" are fake accounts trying to lure radicals onto social media so that they can more easily be tracked. The "good ole southern boys" aren't posting on twitter and most don't even know how to use it, yet there's all this "racism". It's really just other world governments trying to cause social unrest. Unfortunately our news media reports on social media as if it were an accurate representation of society, thus further pushing certain political narratives. This in turn molds society creating a self fulfilling prophesy.

Operation Earnest Voice[0] is an astroturfing campaign by the US government. The aim of the initiative is to use sockpuppets to spread pro-American propaganda on social networking sites.

The US government signed a $2.8 million contract with the Ntrepid web-security company to develop a specialized software, allowing agents of the government to post propaganda on "foreign-language websites", but recently the law preventing them from using this in America was repealed [1], allowing them to spread pro-American propaganda even on American media.

Main characteristics of the software, as stated in the software development request, are:

* 50 user "operator" licenses, 10 sockpuppets controllable by each user.

* Sockpuppets are to be "replete with background, history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographically consistent". Sockpuppets are to "be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world."

* A special secure VPN, allowing sockpuppets to appear to be posting from "randomly selected IP addresses," in order to "hide the existence of the operation."

* 50 static IP addresses to enable government agencies to "manage their persistent online personas," with identities of government and enterprise organizations protected which will allow for different state agents to use the same sockpuppet, and easily switch between different sockpuppets to "look like ordinary users as opposed to one organization."

* 9 private servers, "based on the geographic area of operations the customer is operating within and which allow a customer's online persona(s) to appear to originate from." These servers should use commercial hosting centers around the world.

* Virtual machine environments, deleted after each session termination, to avoid interaction with "any virus, worm, or malicious software."

The US also operates in conjunction with the UK to collect and share intelligence data[2], and the GCHQ has their own internet shilling program[3].

There is not enough evidence to say without a doubt that the US government manipulates American social media, but we can say without a doubt that they do have sophisticated software for the purpose of spreading propaganda, they do manipulate some social media, there are no longer propaganda laws preventing them from doing so in America, and multiple world governments have these programs in place (including but not limited to: Russia, China, Israel, and the UK.[4])

###RUSSIA

The web brigades[5], commonly known in English media as the troll army, are state-sponsored Internet sockpuppetry groups linked to the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation. They are purported to be teams of commentators that participate in Russian and international political blogs and Internet forums using sockpuppets to promote pro-Putin and pro-Russian propaganda.

Putins trolls are reportedly operating outside of the Russian region and manipulating western media[6]:

>The nondescript building has been identified as the headquarters of Russia’s “troll army”, where hundreds of paid bloggers work round the clock to flood Russian internet forums, social networks and the comments sections of western publications with remarks praising the president, Vladimir Putin, and raging at the depravity and injustice of the west.

In 2013, a Freedom House report stated that Russia has been using paid pro-government commentators to manipulate online discussions and has been at the forefront of this practice for several years[7].

[0] http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-ope...

[1] http://foreignpolicy.com/2013/07/14/u-s-repeals-propaganda-b...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UKUSA_Agreement

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joint_Threat_Research_Intellig...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State-sponsored_Internet_sockp...

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_brigades

[6] http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/02/putin-kremlin-i...

[7] https://freedomhouse.org/sites/default/files/resources/FOTN%... (bottom of pg.6)