Where do I even begin?

1. I believe twitter (and others) is in cahoots with the NSA. I never had a twitter, wasn't interested in twitter, but it seems like from the moment twitter started it was being shoved down my throat by the media, who made it seem like everyone was on it, yet no one I knew irl actually used twitter. Everything they reported was about some post on twitter that some public figure (or revolutionary) posted. Twitter was forced down peoples throats during the Arab Spring too, and I think we all remember that it was being used by protesters to organize events/etc.

Now why is half the Arab nation suddenly uploading their sensitive data to an American based company? Do people really think the NSA isn't using twitter as a data collection hub? Do people really believe the NSA (and other organizations) had no hand in making twitter popular the world over? Well I think that's a naive viewpoint.

2. I recently realized twitter, reddit, facebook, even HN are filled with people/bots/paid shills, that are just here to push some corporate agenda. They realized we block most ads so they just invade our social media with ads disguised as legitimate discussion. Twitter and reddit are the worst (although I don't use facebook). Make a post about monsanto on reddit? It'll be filled with "experts" who know monsanto has never broken the law. The monsanto shilling is blatantly obvious on reddit. Then there are other posts from people being paid by investors from Microsoft, Spotify, tons of film studios, tons of game studios. Half of the posts on reddit feel like they're exposing me to some product by some company. I just don't really go to twitter that much but it's hard to deny the twitter admins/corporate don't give a fuck about ads/bots/paid shills for the most part unless they're really abusive. There is probably monetary incentive for companies to allow these forms of advertisement and manipulation of political narrative.

Right now on the front page of HN 488m fake chinese social media posts a year, yet some how people believe America is immune, or "a corpration would never ever ever do that!, sure a government would but a business, you gotta be outta your mind man!". Best case scenario you get called insane for believing this and posting it on the internet.

It's naive to believe that there aren't people being paid to post on social media (or even doing it for free). It's naive to believe that multiple governments don't have organizations dedicated to spreading certain narratives and propaganda online.

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 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])

You can keep telling your self the US government would never manipulate social media, or violate the 4th amendment, or collect data en masse, or you can wake up and accept that this is the world we live in and ignoring it will never solve the problem.

That is just the evidence of state-sponsored shilling. If the state is willing to do it it's naive to believe large companies and their investors wouldn't do it too.

[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...