Last week, while I was doing a number of talks for Funzing.com in London, I was invited into RT to discuss a new report about the US military advertising for programmers who could develop software that targeted Iranian, Chinese and Russian audiences via social media.
The timing proved interesting. Only days before, it was revealed by @musalbas at the CCC and then via Wikileaks that the UK government listening post, GCHQ, had apparently been doing the same thing since 2009.
And then, coincidentally, only a couple of days after the US disclosure, it was reported that Russia was now trolling Wikipedia.
A war of words ensued — and let’s hope that is all it remains. However, this report in the NYT today fills me with dread.
Here is my contribution from last week:
Pentagon developing automated social media troll farms from Annie Machon on Vimeo.