Paid digital mobs were a cheap, high-return political tactic worldwide
Evidence
In the nearby Philippines, President Rodrigo Duterte had swarms of particularly ardent defenders on social media (I found myself in their sights soon enough, as well), and it emerged that they were paid to do this kind of thing, just like some people in Russia, Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and many other places. This was a political tactic that would generate high returns on the low cost of digital labor. In countries like Myanmar, journalists and human rights activists had already learned the costs of a national conversation taking place on computers controlled in California. Fueled by racist fake news on Facebook, murderous riots continued unabated as desperate locals sought to locate whomever was supposed to be controlling the website. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 698
Categorization
- XREF: Connects to ch13’s claims about surveillance-funded platforms and the internet’s architecture. — connects to: Authoritarian states learned to use the internet for their own ends — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 297; Political disinformation was outsourced to low-cost global labor markets — W. David Marx, Blank Space: A Cultural History of the…, 485; Fake news transitions from a profit motive to political weaponization — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 213 (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Political disinformation was outsourced to low-cost global labor markets
#expands(0.95) — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 485 - Fake news transitions from a profit motive to political weaponization
#expands(0.88) — Lee McIntyre, Post-Truth, 213 - Online trading memes from Reddit and 4chan shaped offline neopopulist politics
#exemplifies(0.82) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 391 - Open-source labor mirrors paid guerrilla marketing in converting faux rebellion into market value
#expands(0.75) — Philip Mirowski, Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste, 397