Government Shills

• The Guardian: British army creates team of Facebook warriors

• The Guardian: US military studied how to influence Twitter [and Reddit] users in Darpa-funded research [2014]

• The Guardian: The Ministry of Defence is developing a secret, multimillion-pound research programme into the future of cyberwarfare, including how emerging technologies such as social media and psychological techniques can be harnessed by the military to influence people's beliefs. [2014]

• Vice: Your Government Wants to Militarize Social Media to Influence Your Beliefs

• NY Times: The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda” and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to urge the public to back an Obama administration rule intended to better protect the nation’s streams and surface waters, congressional auditors have concluded.

• CBC News- Canadian government monitors online forums

• Slate on 2018 midterms interference: "Project Lakhta was a Russian influence campaign that had no particular ideological bent; it appears that the goal was simply to stir up conflict in online political debates by putting forth extreme arguments and inflammatory misinformation to incense both liberals and conservatives."

• NY Times: The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz (Cambridge Analytica)

• NY Times- From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.

• Washington Post: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

• New York Times: "Hundreds of people work at a so-called troll farm in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to smother the voices of dissidents like Mr. Khashoggi."

• CNN: Facebook announces first takedown of influence campaign with ties to Saudi government

• The Nation: US Officials Won’t Say if a New Anti–Russian Propaganda Project (shilling on social media) Is Targeting Americans. The newly created Global Engagement Center’s “focus and intent” is foreign audiences, but officials won’t rule out propagandizing Americans and funding American journalists.

• Ex -MMA fighter and ex-police officer exposes corrupt police practices, which includes infiltrating Reddit communities and becoming moderators in order to manipulate and censor information.

• Times of Israel: Israeli government paying bilingual students to spread propaganda online primarily to international communities without having to identify themselves as working for the government. "The [student] union will operate computer rooms for the project...it was decided to establish a permanent structure of activity on the Internet through the students at academic institutions in the country."

• The Intercept: Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies." TigerSwan attempted a counterinformation campaign by creating and distributing content critical of the protests on social media.

• WashingtonPost: Obama pick for NSA review panel wanted paid, pro-government shills in chat rooms (Thread with source paper.)

• Psy Group developed elaborate information operations for commercial clients and political candidates around the world, which included infiltrating target audiences with elaborately crafted social-media personas. The CEO of PSY Group was former commander of an Israeli psychological warfare unit. Tactics deployed by PSY Group in foreign elections included inflaming divisions in opposition groups and playing on deep-seated cultural and ethnic conflicts, something the firm called “poisoning the well." It has conducted messaging/influence operations in well over a dozen languages and dialects and employs an elite group of high-ranking former officers from some of the world’s most renowned intelligence units.

• Wired: Clinton Staff and Volunteers Busted for Astroturfing [in 2007]

• Vice: Amazon Requires Police to Shill Surveillance Cameras in Secret Agreement

• The Intercept: The Rise of the Net Center. How an Army of Trolls Protects Guatemala’s Corrupt Elite.

• The Independent: Massive British PR firm caught on video: "We've got all sorts of dark arts...The ambition is to drown that negative content and make sure that you have positive content online." They discuss techniques for managing reputations online and creating/maintaining 3rd-party blogs that seem independent.

• The Guardian: US spy operation to manipulate social media

• Washington Post: Why crafty Internet trolls in the Philippines may be coming to a website near you

• BBC: Vietnam admits deploying bloggers to support the Communist Party's policies, operates a network of nearly 1,000 "public opinion shapers".

• Glenn Greenwald: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations

• The Intercept: Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’S Effects and Online HUMINT Operations

• USA Today: The co-owner of a major Pentagon propaganda contractor publicly admitted that he was behind a series of websites used in an attempt to discredit two USA TODAY journalists who had reported on the contractor.

• Glenn Greenwald: Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek to Control the Internet

• The Guardian: Chinese officials flood the Chinese internet with positive social media posts to distract their population

• The Guardian: Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown - Social science is being militarised to develop 'operational tools' to target peaceful activists and protest movements. "Minerva"-funded social scientists tied to Pentagon counterinsurgency operations are involved in the "study of emotions in stoking or quelling ideologically driven movements," he said, including how "to counteract grassroots movements."

• Bloomberg: How to Hack an Election [and influence voters with fake social media accounts]

• USA Today: Businesses and organizations may refer to it as a tool for competitive advantage and marketing; but make no mistake, they are using the massive reach of social media and the Internet as a weapon. One U.S. 3-letter special agent said, "You could influence an election with this."

• Times of Israel - The internet: Israel’s new PR battlefield

• Arstechnica: GCHQ’s menu of tools spreads disinformation across Internet- “Effects capabilities” allow analysts to twist truth subtly or spam relentlessly.

• The Guardian: Internet Astroturfing

• BBC News: US plans to 'fight the net' revealed

• Israel is paying internet workers to manipulate online content such as Wikipedia (2 minute video)

• Buzzfeed: Documents Show How Russia’s Troll Army Hit America

• NY Times: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

• Raw Story: CENTCOM engages bloggers

• Wired: Air Force Releases ‘Counter-Blog’ Marching Orders

• Wired: Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’

• The Guardian: Israel ups the stakes in the propaganda war

• BBC News: China's Internet spin doctors

• Raw Story: Air Force ordered software to manage army of fake virtual people

• DailyKos: HBGary: Automated social media management

• Huffington Post- Exposing Cyber Shills and Social Media's Underworld

Government Shills

• The Guardian: British army creates team of Facebook warriors

• The Guardian: US military studied how to influence Twitter [and Reddit] users in Darpa-funded research [2014]

• The Guardian: The Ministry of Defence is developing a secret, multimillion-pound research programme into the future of cyberwarfare, including how emerging technologies such as social media and psychological techniques can be harnessed by the military to influence people's beliefs. [2014]

• Vice: Your Government Wants to Militarize Social Media to Influence Your Beliefs

• NY Times: The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda” and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to urge the public to back an Obama administration rule intended to better protect the nation’s streams and surface waters, congressional auditors have concluded.

• CBC News- Canadian government monitors online forums

• Slate on 2018 midterms interference: "Project Lakhta was a Russian influence campaign that had no particular ideological bent; it appears that the goal was simply to stir up conflict in online political debates by putting forth extreme arguments and inflammatory misinformation to incense both liberals and conservatives."

• NY Times: The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz (Cambridge Analytica)

• NY Times- From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.

• Washington Post: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

• New York Times: "Hundreds of people work at a so-called troll farm in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to smother the voices of dissidents like Mr. Khashoggi."

• CNN: Facebook announces first takedown of influence campaign with ties to Saudi government

• The Nation: US Officials Won’t Say if a New Anti–Russian Propaganda Project (shilling on social media) Is Targeting Americans. The newly created Global Engagement Center’s “focus and intent” is foreign audiences, but officials won’t rule out propagandizing Americans and funding American journalists.

• Ex -MMA fighter and ex-police officer exposes corrupt police practices, which includes infiltrating Reddit communities and becoming moderators in order to manipulate and censor information.

• Times of Israel: Israeli government paying bilingual students to spread propaganda online primarily to international communities without having to identify themselves as working for the government. "The [student] union will operate computer rooms for the project...it was decided to establish a permanent structure of activity on the Internet through the students at academic institutions in the country."

• The Intercept: Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies." TigerSwan attempted a counterinformation campaign by creating and distributing content critical of the protests on social media.

• WashingtonPost: Obama pick for NSA review panel wanted paid, pro-government shills in chat rooms (Thread with source paper.)

• Psy Group developed elaborate information operations for commercial clients and political candidates around the world, which included infiltrating target audiences with elaborately crafted social-media personas. The CEO of PSY Group was former commander of an Israeli psychological warfare unit. Tactics deployed by PSY Group in foreign elections included inflaming divisions in opposition groups and playing on deep-seated cultural and ethnic conflicts, something the firm called “poisoning the well." It has conducted messaging/influence operations in well over a dozen languages and dialects and employs an elite group of high-ranking former officers from some of the world’s most renowned intelligence units.

• Wired: Clinton Staff and Volunteers Busted for Astroturfing [in 2007]

• Vice: Amazon Requires Police to Shill Surveillance Cameras in Secret Agreement

• The Intercept: The Rise of the Net Center. How an Army of Trolls Protects Guatemala’s Corrupt Elite.

• The Independent: Massive British PR firm caught on video: "We've got all sorts of dark arts...The ambition is to drown that negative content and make sure that you have positive content online." They discuss techniques for managing reputations online and creating/maintaining 3rd-party blogs that seem independent.

• The Guardian: US spy operation to manipulate social media

• Washington Post: Why crafty Internet trolls in the Philippines may be coming to a website near you

• BBC: Vietnam admits deploying bloggers to support the Communist Party's policies, operates a network of nearly 1,000 "public opinion shapers".

• Glenn Greenwald: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations

• The Intercept: Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’S Effects and Online HUMINT Operations

• USA Today: The co-owner of a major Pentagon propaganda contractor publicly admitted that he was behind a series of websites used in an attempt to discredit two USA TODAY journalists who had reported on the contractor.

• Glenn Greenwald: Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek to Control the Internet

• The Guardian: Chinese officials flood the Chinese internet with positive social media posts to distract their population

• The Guardian: Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown - Social science is being militarised to develop 'operational tools' to target peaceful activists and protest movements. "Minerva"-funded social scientists tied to Pentagon counterinsurgency operations are involved in the "study of emotions in stoking or quelling ideologically driven movements," he said, including how "to counteract grassroots movements."

• Bloomberg: How to Hack an Election [and influence voters with fake social media accounts]

• USA Today: Businesses and organizations may refer to it as a tool for competitive advantage and marketing; but make no mistake, they are using the massive reach of social media and the Internet as a weapon. One U.S. 3-letter special agent said, "You could influence an election with this."

• Times of Israel - The internet: Israel’s new PR battlefield

• Arstechnica: GCHQ’s menu of tools spreads disinformation across Internet- “Effects capabilities” allow analysts to twist truth subtly or spam relentlessly.

• The Guardian: Internet Astroturfing

• BBC News: US plans to 'fight the net' revealed

• Israel is paying internet workers to manipulate online content such as Wikipedia (2 minute video)

• Buzzfeed: Documents Show How Russia’s Troll Army Hit America

• NY Times: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

• Raw Story: CENTCOM engages bloggers

• Wired: Air Force Releases ‘Counter-Blog’ Marching Orders

• Wired: Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’

• The Guardian: Israel ups the stakes in the propaganda war

• BBC News: China's Internet spin doctors

• Raw Story: Air Force ordered software to manage army of fake virtual people

• DailyKos: HBGary: Automated social media management

• Huffington Post- Exposing Cyber Shills and Social Media's Underworld

• [Wall Street Journal: Turkey's Government Forms 6,000-Member Social Med

Government Shills

• The Guardian: British army creates team of Facebook warriors

• The Guardian: US military studied how to influence Twitter [and Reddit] users in Darpa-funded research [2014]

• The Guardian: The Ministry of Defence is developing a secret, multimillion-pound research programme into the future of cyberwarfare, including how emerging technologies such as social media and psychological techniques can be harnessed by the military to influence people's beliefs. [2014]

• Vice: Your Government Wants to Militarize Social Media to Influence Your Beliefs

• NY Times: The Environmental Protection Agency engaged in “covert propaganda” and violated federal law when it blitzed social media to urge the public to back an Obama administration rule intended to better protect the nation’s streams and surface waters, congressional auditors have concluded.

• CBC News- Canadian government monitors online forums

• Slate on 2018 midterms interference: "Project Lakhta was a Russian influence campaign that had no particular ideological bent; it appears that the goal was simply to stir up conflict in online political debates by putting forth extreme arguments and inflammatory misinformation to incense both liberals and conservatives."

• NY Times: The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz (Cambridge Analytica)

• NY Times- From a nondescript office building in St. Petersburg, Russia, an army of well-paid “trolls” has tried to wreak havoc all around the Internet — and in real-life American communities.

• Washington Post: Facebook says it sold political ads to Russian company during 2016 election

• New York Times: "Hundreds of people work at a so-called troll farm in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia to smother the voices of dissidents like Mr. Khashoggi."

• CNN: Facebook announces first takedown of influence campaign with ties to Saudi government

• The Nation: US Officials Won’t Say if a New Anti–Russian Propaganda Project (shilling on social media) Is Targeting Americans. The newly created Global Engagement Center’s “focus and intent” is foreign audiences, but officials won’t rule out propagandizing Americans and funding American journalists.

• Ex -MMA fighter and ex-police officer exposes corrupt police practices, which includes infiltrating Reddit communities and becoming moderators in order to manipulate and censor information.

• Times of Israel: Israeli government paying bilingual students to spread propaganda online primarily to international communities without having to identify themselves as working for the government. "The [student] union will operate computer rooms for the project...it was decided to establish a permanent structure of activity on the Internet through the students at academic institutions in the country."

• The Intercept: Leaked Documents Reveal Counterterrorism Tactics Used at Standing Rock to “Defeat Pipeline Insurgencies." TigerSwan attempted a counterinformation campaign by creating and distributing content critical of the protests on social media.

• WashingtonPost: Obama pick for NSA review panel wanted paid, pro-government shills in chat rooms (Thread with source paper.)

• Psy Group developed elaborate information operations for commercial clients and political candidates around the world, which included infiltrating target audiences with elaborately crafted social-media personas. The CEO of PSY Group was former commander of an Israeli psychological warfare unit. Tactics deployed by PSY Group in foreign elections included inflaming divisions in opposition groups and playing on deep-seated cultural and ethnic conflicts, something the firm called “poisoning the well." It has conducted messaging/influence operations in well over a dozen languages and dialects and employs an elite group of high-ranking former officers from some of the world’s most renowned intelligence units.

• Wired: Clinton Staff and Volunteers Busted for Astroturfing [in 2007]

• Vice: Amazon Requires Police to Shill Surveillance Cameras in Secret Agreement

• The Intercept: The Rise of the Net Center. How an Army of Trolls Protects Guatemala’s Corrupt Elite.

• The Independent: Massive British PR firm caught on video: "We've got all sorts of dark arts...The ambition is to drown that negative content and make sure that you have positive content online." They discuss techniques for managing reputations online and creating/maintaining 3rd-party blogs that seem independent.

• The Guardian: US spy operation to manipulate social media

• Washington Post: Why crafty Internet trolls in the Philippines may be coming to a website near you

• BBC: Vietnam admits deploying bloggers to support the Communist Party's policies, operates a network of nearly 1,000 "public opinion shapers".

• Glenn Greenwald: How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations

• The Intercept: Behavioural Science Support for JTRIG’S Effects and Online HUMINT Operations

• USA Today: The co-owner of a major Pentagon propaganda contractor publicly admitted that he was behind a series of websites used in an attempt to discredit two USA TODAY journalists who had reported on the contractor.

• Glenn Greenwald: Hacking Online Polls and Other Ways British Spies Seek to Control the Internet

• The Guardian: Chinese officials flood the Chinese internet with positive social media posts to distract their population

• The Guardian: Pentagon preparing for mass civil breakdown - Social science is being militarised to develop 'operational tools' to target peaceful activists and protest movements. "Minerva"-funded social scientists tied to Pentagon counterinsurgency operations are involved in the "study of emotions in stoking or quelling ideologically driven movements," he said, including how "to counteract grassroots movements."

• Bloomberg: How to Hack an Election [and influence voters with fake social media accounts]

• USA Today: Businesses and organizations may refer to it as a tool for competitive advantage and marketing; but make no mistake, they are using the massive reach of social media and the Internet as a weapon. One U.S. 3-letter special agent said, "You could influence an election with this."

• Times of Israel - The internet: Israel’s new PR battlefield

• Arstechnica: GCHQ’s menu of tools spreads disinformation across Internet- “Effects capabilities” allow analysts to twist truth subtly or spam relentlessly.

• The Guardian: Internet Astroturfing

• BBC News: US plans to 'fight the net' revealed

• Israel is paying internet workers to manipulate online content such as Wikipedia (2 minute video)

• Buzzfeed: Documents Show How Russia’s Troll Army Hit America

• NY Times: Effort to Expose Russia’s ‘Troll Army’ Draws Vicious Retaliation

• Raw Story: CENTCOM engages bloggers

• Wired: Air Force Releases ‘Counter-Blog’ Marching Orders

• Wired: Military Report: Secretly ‘Recruit or Hire Bloggers’

• The Guardian: Israel ups the stakes in the propaganda war

• BBC News: China's Internet spin doctors

• Raw Story: Air Force ordered software to manage army of fake virtual people

• DailyKos: HBGary: Automated social media management

• Huffington Post- Exposing Cyber Shills and Social Media's Underworld

• Wall Street Journal: Turkey's Government Forms 6,000-Member Social Media Team

• The Bush and Gore campaigns of 2000 used methods similar to the Chinese government for conducting “guided discussions” in chatrooms designed to influence citizens

• Salon: Why Reddit moderators are censoring Glenn Greenwald’s latest news story on shills

Shilling in the Private Sector

• NPR: Some Amazon Reviews Are Too Good To Be Believed. They're Paid For. "Much like Amazon itself is a marketplace for goods, a world of separate, shadow marketplaces exists where reviews for Amazon products are bought and paid for — private Facebook groups, Slack channels, subreddits and more."

• Fake five-star reviews being bought and sold online - Fake online reviews are being openly traded on the internet, a BBC investigation has found.

• Yahoo News: Last month the FTC issued warnings to celebrities who plugged products on their Instagram accounts without clearly identifying their relationships with brands. The letters were meant to educate the celebrities on posting without violating the organization’s disclosure guidelines.

• New York Times: Tobacco corporations are targeting young American consumers with deceptive social media marketing in violation of federal law. 123 hashtags associated with these companies’ tobacco products have been viewed 8.8 billion times in the United States alone and 25 billion times around the world.

• PBS Frontline Documentary - Generation Like

• USA Today: Lord & Taylor settles FTC charges over paid Instagram posts

• Wired: Microsoft, through an outside agency, paid Machinima to produce positive videos about the Xbox One game machine, and many of the YouTube stars who accepted the deal failed to properly disclose that they were producing paid, sponsored content, not independent analysis.

• [CNBC: The Federal Reserve Bank is soliciting proposals from developers for a "Social Listening Platform" that will monitor "Facebook, Twitter, Blogs, Forums and YouTube...to "Handle crisis situations, "continuously monitor conversations, identify an