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Friday 3 August 2018

UK government leads 'fake news' & cyber manipulation - new report

If you listened to the noises coming from Whitehall, Westminster and the MSM about the manipulation of social media, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was all being distorted by Aaron Banks and the Russians pumping out fake news and running thousands of bots. This is indeed the rationale being drawn, the narrative the government is seeking to establish, in order to introduce draconian controls over the armies of Burke's little platoons such as this blog that offer a countervailing voice to the mandarins' Big Lies. 

In fact, lost in the silly season, is a new and authoritative report from the prestigious Oxford Internet Institute that finds that the UK government is itself in the forefront of social media manipulation through 'fake' content creation, distraction, trolling and harassment, using around 1,500 Full Time Equivalent staff to distort, manipulate and pollute social media. It's not we, private citizens, that need to be regulated - it's Whitehall and Westminster. 

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The report finds internationally that five nations - Cambodia, China, Iran, Israel and the US - lead the league in government-controlled cyber-manipulation, but that the UK comes in second tier place, alongside Ecuador, Malaysia, North Korea, Russia, Syria and Venezuela. Fine company we're keeping. 

Apart from this report having bypassed the DCMS Select Committee that should have taken this evidence instead of itself distorting evidence in a vindictive campaign against 'Leave' actors, one must question whether the government's methods are even legal. The report finds that the UK uses both human agents operating fake accounts and automated fake accounts to manipulate social media - and does so across all categories of distortion, omission, deviation and fake content creation. 

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It may suit the MSM to lose this vital report in the Summer silliness, but I urge you all to download it. Come September, we need to shove our Parliamentarians' noses into it.

14 comments:

DiscoveredJoys said...

So there you go. The Government isn't worried about other people distorting, omitting, deviating from, or generating Fake News. It's jealous.

Add in the pro-Establishment views of the BBC and Grauniad and you can make a compelling case for a not-actually-a-false-conspiracy theory.

Cuffleyburgers said...

Thank you for this Radders, which I wouldn't otherwise have found.

They really are scurrilous lying dishonest cheating bastards aren't they.

I am quite sickened at the direction the country is taking. May seems to manage to combine the worst features of Blair Brown and Cameron, and has to be a very strong contender for the title of most damagingly authoritarian incompetent PM in British history, in a crowded field.

The long awaited Ecksian purge is now well overdue.

John in Cheshire said...

I'm not a proponent of making new laws about everything; in fact I think all the laws since 1997 should be repealed; but a law that prohibits the use of propaganda, fake news or whatever else it might be called, by the state against its paymasters, the citizens of our nation, should be passed. And using propaganda against us should carry a severe sentence for this involved, whether it's the Prime Minister of a senior communist Civil Servant. Perhaps 13 months in a muslim infested prison would act as a suitable deterrent.

jack ketch said...

distorted by Aaron Banks and the Russians pumping out fake news and running thousands of bots Raed

Oh dear Dear, do keep up- Rubles and bots are so ooOOold news. According to the Guardian yesterday you all voted for BrexSShite because of the bedroom tax and other 'austerity' measures.

Apparently there is a new study......(might have been in the Indy not the Manchester rag, CBA to go back and check.)

Raedwald said...

john cheshire - no government should use these methods against the nation's own citizens. However, I'm relaxed about SIS, GCHQ or whomever applying cyber manipulation against our economic enemies in the EU or wherever - in fact we should absolutely encourage them to undermine EU strength by covert cyber warfare.

What I think we need is a trusted citizens' protector working inside the security agencies to ensure their activities are not turned inwards.

John Vasc said...

Damian Collins is leading the argument down a rabbithole.
It's not as if those who voted to leave the EU are particularly high users of social media, and nobody can be found who claims they voted to Leave after being influenced by a pro-Leave online message. (As for 'You can't trust David Cameron on Turkey [joining the EU]' - shock horror - well, of course, you couldn't and can't.)
Metro-bubble Remoaners find it difficult to accept that the reason why most people voted Leave was that
a) Over many years they looked around them and did not like the legal and demographic changes they saw the EU enforcing upon them and their locality
b) they wanted and want Britain to be an independent nation again.


Anonymous said...

In the USA, part of the fuel for Q Anon's following (Q posts can be found at qanon.pub , with links to analysis on 8chan) is the understanding that the state has been plotting against its own citizens for many a long decade.

The sad fact is that in the UK we have no patriot prepared to stand up in the same way, for the same plotting has been going on (see accession to EEC and Edward Heath's later comments that it was intended to be a nation state in its own right, and see the declassified Foreign Office papers that stated the British fishing fleet was expendable for their greater prize)

Edward Spalton said...

In February I attended a media conference at Leicester University where the platform was loaded with senior BBC types and those who
could not make it personally attended by video. The occasion was the launch of a book about why they had got it so wrong over both
Brexit and Trump. They really believe themselves to be truly impartial, splendid people and, in a group it becomes an embarrassingly
fulsome mutual admiration society. Insulated from mere mortals by the security of the licence fee, they are free to believe this without
Interruption.

They were very worried by what they called "fake news" and would clearly love to close down RT ( Russia Today) in an inclusive and liberal way. I said that I quite understood that nobody welcomed competition in their field, even that of fake news in which they were rather expert practitioners, citing massive pro EU bias. It was like waster off a duck's back as it came from outside the circle of those who counted.

We had received news from Greece that the EU-enforced austerity had actually doubled the death rate but the government had taken resolute action - ceasing the publication of the statistics. At a coffee break my wife suggested to a group of them that this might be worth reporting impartially. It was obviously not a fit topic for their refined impartial company!

Budgie said...

Edward Spalton, "They really believe themselves to be truly impartial ..." They do indeed. I was in the studio for a Five Live political discussion, and it was the oddest occasion - completely divorced from most people's lives and populated by phone ins from apparent BBC/Labour shills.

Anonymous said...

He only got what he deserved, eh Raedwald?

DELINGPOLE: Tommy Robinson was Abused and Tortured with the Complicity of the British State

https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/08/03/delingpole-tommy-robinson-was-abused-and-tortured-with-the-complicity-of-the-british-state/

Tommy Robinson Reveals PTSD Diagnosis to Tucker Carlson, Was Put in Cell Opposite Prison Mosque

https://www.breitbart.com/london/2018/08/03/tommy-robinson-reveals-ptsd-diagnosis-to-tucker-carlson-was-put-in-cell-opposite-prison-mosque/

Steve

Budgie said...

Raedwald, Good post, link, and subsequent comment. It really shouldn't have to be said that "no government should use these methods against the nation's own citizens". But they do, so we must.

In the pre-internet era, Heath got fake letters into the newspapers to nudge us into accepting the then EEC. So whilst I was unaware of the extent and sophistication now, I am not surprised. But I'm bitterly disappointed at the level to which our establishment has sunk - it gets worse, not better.

anon 2 said...

Yes, Budgie @ 19:37 --- except that "disappointed" strikes me as an overstated understatement!!!

Even though the euSSR's plan was clear as day from the start, I hadn't always understood the full size, strength, and influence of the traitor class. However, I'm now grateful that I steered clear of developing any personal relationship with men on that career track, and that other friends had the wisdom to steer me away from working for Auntie.

Beyond that, I'm horrified and nauseated that Britain has turned into this appalling model of everything we've always fought against.

What a nightmare.

leila said...

Yes, Steve I was saddened by Radders TR post in May.

Beyond that, I'm horrified and nauseated that Britain has turned into this appalling model of everything we've always fought against, to quote anon2.

Tommy's treatment was appalling, no exercise, Muslim chefs which is why he didn't eat the prison food, denied extra money to purchase more than £12/week worth. Lost 40 lbs 'Spills' through his small window, forcing him to close it in the heat. Told there was an acid attack threat to his family and police were on their way to the home etc Ezra Levant Rebel Media does a very good hearing summary, 10 points of miscarriage of justice for a CIVIL 'offence' Can 3M good Englishmen dismantle, in a fairly short time, the HOP boulder by boulder?

Anonymous said...

leila said @ 6 August 2018 at 16:45

'Yes, Steve I was saddened by Radders TR post in May.'

You'll have noticed that I more or less stopped posting here after that one from him. They were out to get him that day - other media were there and nothing he did was different from what the rest were doing, including naming the defendants. Then bizarrely they arrest him for a breach of the peace - I watched the whole thing and he breached no peace. From his arrest to his incarceration in a majority Muslim prison it was all sanctioned by the Home Office - glad to hear a warder has offered to stand witness to his 'irregular' treatment.

I hope he sues the backside off them.

Thanks for the extra info. I still find it hard to believe he got over a year in prison for a civil offence - wouldn't even have been an offence in the US of A (2nd Amendment Rights).

Steve