Manipulation of Reddit. The /r/conspiracy "call to arms" in battling propaganda on Reddit.
55 2014-09-03 by [deleted]
I have a question, why are terrorist beheading video's suddenly receiving so much attention? I realize this is the second video now, but I'm referring to the first video as well. Al qaeda has released many videos like this. I don't remember this reaction when Daniel Pearl of the Wall Street Journal meet a similar fate in 2002. People are starting to beat the drum beat of war over this, and that makes me a little suspicious. Especially considering it were just a year ago Obama tried (unsuccessfully) attacking Syria. There are members of congress who are already steering the debate back to Syria. Not long after the first beheading the pentagon said the ISIS threat couldn't be addressed without addressing the part of the organization in Syria. This ISIS threat could give the US the justification it needs to make that happen. And how convenient that it has changed the opinions of those in the homeland who have begun to support a military escalation that will in all likelihood include Syria, despite the homelands overwhelming opposition to military intervention in Syria just a year ago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Pearl
I've been trying to spread this message across Reddit, but it really does appear a lot of the ones beating this drumbeat of war on the site (especially /r/worldnews) could be examples of sock puppet software in use. When I see these sort of posts I try to make a habit of looking into the account. I VERY often find brand new or relatively new accounts that have posted nothing but comments similar to these since joining the site. I have seen this in regards to pretty much every major world event going on at the moment including ISIS, both the US and Russia in regards to Ukraine, and Israel with the fighting in Gaza. This incredibly relevant and incredibly overlooked article on The Guardian from 2011 explains this sock puppet software. The software is used to spread pro US propaganda on social media.
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-operation-social-networks
I'm really not a "conspiracy" guy to be honest with you. But after seeing this manipulation on the site for a very long time now, I've found this to be one of the only subreddits actually discussing it. /r/undelete was great for a while but it seems like there was some drama with mods in the subreddit and it just hasn't been the same since. I've read quite a few intelligent and insightful posts on this subreddit. We should really try to make that the norm here. This should be an open forum on the site for INTELLIGENTLY questioning everything, but that doesn't mean we should lose our sensibility in the process. Some of you guys get a bit carried away sometimes. Not everything is a conspiracy. There are some really great things posted here sometimes. There are other times where there's some straight up batshit insane stuff posted. Don't entertain this with upvotes and speculation, this sort of stuff really shouldn't be encouraged. I say that because of the Snowden revelation "How Covert Agents Infiltrate the Internet to Manipulate, Deceive, and Destroy Reputations". After this came out, I took another look at /r/conspiracy and looked a little harder this time. I highly suspect some of the crazy shit posted here about lizard people and what not is this at work. It really is an effective way of silencing any truth that may be posted here. It really seems like a clear attempt to obfuscate the truth. If you're going to share a story, maybe first research the story elsewhere. You guys are good at challenging validity, do the same thing when looking into a website. Spend the time to look into the site a little closer. Can you find a source on a more reliable site? The MSM has...it's problems...to say the least, but I'm often surprised to read some of the things published that simply slip under the radar sometimes. Spend the extra moment to do this, and if you see something that doesn't check out politely and intelligently explain so in the comments. Having confirmation that the government manipulates online communities for the purpose of destroying reputations, I think it's time to have a serious talk about rebranding the image of conspiracy theories. At least this is a place to start?
https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipulation/
Sorry for rambling. Would love to hear your thoughts.
Edit
Forgot to link to Greenwald article.
19 comments
12 EnoughNoLibsSpam 2014-09-03
Never forget that Wesley Clark told us Somalia and Syria were on a Pentagon hit list after 9/11. General Wesley Clark: Wars Were Planned - Seven countries in 5 years.: http://youtu.be/9RC1Mepk_Sw
8 HS_00 2014-09-03
Ask yourself: Who does the negative portrayal of Islam benefit?
3 EnoughNoLibsSpam 2014-09-03
War mongers?
4 Avigdor_Lieberman 2014-09-03
He is implying Israel has something to do with it. I don't think Israel has anything to do with IS, but it is a great gift to them. IS is turning all Muslim fighters into evil terrorists. They have been desperate to conflate IS and Hamas. Many propaganda pictures on twitter saying they are basically the same. There are shills on worldnews who try to conflate them too.
0 EnoughNoLibsSpam 2014-09-03
americans are famously ignorant of world geography.
http://www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/middle_east_and_asia/n_africa_mid_east_pol_95.jpg
http://www.antiwar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/1.-us-bases-in-the-middle-east-a.jpg
2 Avigdor_Lieberman 2014-09-03
Sorry I don't get what you mean? Map gives you an idea of why Iran might want a nuke, if they do. Iraq? Down. Afghan? Down. Syria? Pending.
That's an out of date map by the way.
-1 [deleted] 2014-09-03
[deleted]
2 laborinvain 2014-09-03
Speaking of propaganda...
Shut up troll. It's not "legal in mainstream Islamic thought". That's a bald face lie. The overwhelming majority of Muslims believe it is wrong to harm anyone.
4 AyeEarnCoins 2014-09-03
Couldn't agree more. Stay vigilant and raise the bar of discussion here. Love this sub, and the more potent it is, the stronger the message we send to others.
3 Klutzy_BumbleFuck 2014-09-03
There was plenty of attention on Daniel Pearl. That situation was a kidnapping and just later display of a severed head, however. The big one was Nick Berg. The first incident of it's kind. Snippets of that thing were played everywhere around the clock.
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi started the trend with Nick Berg in 2004. ISIS, The successor to AQI, is now carrying on what Zarqawi and AQI began.
2 Macbeth554 2014-09-03
I certainly remember there being a lot of talk about it. At that time though we were already ramping up for war due to 9/11, so it probably wasn't talked about in that context since there were better reasons in people's minds for going to wary (not saying we should have attacked or anything).
1 Nolfator 2014-09-03
Because 12 years ago much less people had easy daily access to uncensored internet streams/videos and knew where such videos can be found.
Beheading videos from chechnya/afghanistan/random countries were not rare.
But newspapers are not going to earn money from showing a beheading of unknown Chechen man that happened in a local conflict no one is interested in.
But showing a beheading of US citizen in currently well known conflict is for sure going to increase sales.
Easy as that imho.
0 treerat 2014-09-03
Bingo! Its all about selling ad space. It has nothing to do with real news analysis.
TV news is toxic to truth. Truth is elusive enough without all the sensationalism and spin.
0 EnoughNoLibsSpam 2014-09-03
Sean Hannity keeps repeating the phrase "ISIS is beheading their way to Baghdad"
Hannity is mainstream media, yet the sensationalism injected into is propaganda is so blatant that it would get deleted if it was submitted to reddit for having a sensationalist title.
0 tripsick 2014-09-03
Sell space.. More like Push an Agenda that is paid for with your tax dollars.
1 mindhawk 2014-09-03
The beheading videos remind me a lot of the historical reports I learned about leading up to World War I(which maybe hasn't even ended btw...)
All of these preachers and speakers spread out over the country calling germans 'huns' and accusing them of raping everyone in the netherlands, crucifying nuns, etc.
With the yazidis(or whatever), we are reliving that historical moment and with only one or two more big attacks every farmboy in Iowa is going to be enlisting to go fight in the desert and get himself a new camaro.
So basically at this point, if it would be easy to fabricate, I don't believe it. And ISIS is something that would be easy for these people to fabricate, it's the same old story of the anti-soviet mujahadeen/al qaeda/ISIS/nebulous desert islamic bandits and if you fall for it, you are, basically, proving you were born yesterday.
The bigger the ISIS state gets before it is defeated, the bigger the state Israel gets to control, and the fewer people who have claim to the oil underneath it.
1 SaxonWitch 2014-09-03
Very well written post. Only one thing that bugged me a bit, where OP says that some here get carried away and not everything is a conspiracy. How will we know what is what without putting it out there and disscussing it?
This is after all /r/conspiracy and who are you to know which conspiracies are true and which one aren't?
0 ol_greggory 2014-09-03
With regards to Syria, what's the benefit for US involvement in that country? Is it the oil deposits? Rare Earth metals? Taking down ISIS can't be the only reason for invading, right?
1 ronintetsuro 2014-09-03
Regional hegemony.
1 SatyapriyaCC 2014-09-03
Syria also still does not have a Rothschild central bank. Some theorize that this is a major motivation for the power elite:
http://imgur.com/wR9Rh32
1 ronintetsuro 2014-09-03
Regional hegemony.
1 SatyapriyaCC 2014-09-03
Syria also still does not have a Rothschild central bank. Some theorize that this is a major motivation for the power elite:
http://imgur.com/wR9Rh32