Now I know why I hate reading blog comments

[FMBI]

Link

 

Israel's recruiting people to spam online comment sections with pro-Israel opinions. Cool, huh?

 

This isn't the most serious topic in the world, but I figured I'd post it because of the possibility of an interesting discussion on invisible government-generated bias.

 

To start:

 

I think it's bad.

[Bak]

y dont we just ban isreal ips from internets

[Samapico]

Modern propaganda

[Sketter]

Modern propaganda

 

I have never thought about it like that, it's actually a scary thought, and easily controlled by the government. Hhm, makes me think of China now.

[FMBI]

Technically, every government uses a lot of propaganda (the White House Press Secretary's office does nothing but spit out dozens of pro-administration positions a day, after all), but what I find disturbing about this case is that you can't just say "Oh, there's Dana Perino / Bob Gibbs / Michael Deaver*, spewing more bullshit" - since it's on the internet, you have absolutely no idea of knowing where this stuff is coming from.

 

When you consider how much influence the internet wire-blogs (HuffPo, TPM, Drudge, etc) can have on the "real" media, it can be scary to think that some random government could flood comment sections with some tidbit and call it a "rumor in so-and-so country", get it picked up by a prominent blog, and then transfer it to the MSM. In a week or so, you could completely change your geopolitical position.

 

Ew.

 

 

 

*Who, of course, while not the Press Secretary himself, was one of the most effective spin-men of all time, back in the 80s.