Online troll armies in service to business and political interests.

This is a real thing on The Internet of Fakes.

Businesses, especially big businesses, often employ large PR firms that then contract out employees to go online and be the American corporate version of China’s 50 Cent Army. They don’t just plant fake testimonials or embed advertisements not labeled such - which is common across the internet by actors big and small - they actually steer conversations and even ridicule enemies of the brand. This is a real thing on The Internet of Fakes. All sorts of interests pay people to manipulate public discussion, and even infiltrate private groups. 

This kind of manipulation has been happening for years, for example, on Reddit. One tactic I see used on Reddit often is that if there’s a negative comment on a thread, the operative doesn’t reply to that comment directly to discuss, instead they ridicule the comment in a higher up or equal in the thread comment, and then get a bunch of upvotes on their comment so that their comment, ridiculing anyone with another opinion, is higher up in the thread. (I see this happen not infrequently on a local Reddit.)

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The Biden administration’s FTC started doing good work in the right direction on some of this subterfuge in the form of cracking down on fake testimonials, but the future of Lina Kahn is unclear without a movement to call for her remaining in the position. This advocacy needs to build bigger now.

There is some indication that JD Vance is amenable to Lina Khan’s work at the FTC, and that there is at least the possibility of keeping her in the position as Donald Trump himself seemed clueless about the work of the FTC in the Google antitrust case in that interview with Bloomberg News, where he indicated he was no fan of Google for his own reasons.

At the very least if there’s public support of Lina Kahn at the FTC, and the Trump administration moves to remove Khan, despite JD Vance and other Republicans praising the work of the Khan, then it will be another data point to show that Republicans are not in fact governing with the populism and anti-corporation soundbites they used to win over working class votes.

This is also a point where you may be able to, if you have the inclination, nudge boomer Republicans and Trumpies that you know, to agitate for the cause, because many of them will remember the necessity of breaking up a big telecom into “the baby bells” back in 1982. Some of these people have surely also noticed the degradation of Google search over time, and are just as frustrated with the monopolies involved in all this tech and communication stuff curtailing their options.

There are no guarantees considering the shitshow unfolding but there is still benefit to finding spots of strategic leverage, or weaknesses, and to keep pushing.

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