Definition of fraud: Act or course of deception, an intentional concealment, omission or perversion of truth.
In April 2017, Procter & Gamble (P&G) announced some of the details of its $12 billion or so cost-cutting binge over the next five years. It included slashing $2 billion in advertising expenditures — or, more specifically, discontinuing ads on Facebook that micro-target key consumers. P&G found that micro-targeting specific consumers based on the data Facebook collected actually reduced company reach and generally wasn’t working.
CFO Jon Moeller explained the gist of it: The Internet is crawling with fraudulent bots.
“In the fourth quarter, the reduction in marketing that occurred was almost all in the digital space. And what it reflected was a choice to cut spending from a digital standpoint where it was ineffective: where either we were serving bots as opposed to human beings, or where the placement of ads was not facilitating the equity of our brands.”
So P&G cut more than $100 million out of its digital advertising budget in the fourth quarter, and this is what happened: According to Moeller, they “didn’t see a reduction in the growth rate.”
He touched on the two most common complaints about digital advertising scams:
Advertisers are paying for ads that are viewed and clicked on by bots, not humans.
Ads are placed by thousands of automated “ad exchanges” that are out of control of the advertiser on sites and pages that don’t match the advertiser’s products.
The entire vast space between legitimate advertisers and legitimate publishers is populated by a murky, slimy world of often-invisible entities, usually automated, that try to extract their cut and, in the process, further dilute the effectiveness of advertising expenses.
In the realm of social media, a Digital Forensic Lab study using a behavior-based model estimated that 9 to 15 percent of active Twitter accounts are bots, which is a lot more than Twitter reported.
Incredibly, the practice of buying Twitter, Instagram and Facebook followers and likes is considered acceptable. The trick is to fool the cognoscenti into believing an account is popular. The public perception of popularity is as good as gold in our inverted world.
This type of fake activity can be found across a spectrum of social media forums. On Reddit at times, discussion there is almost entirely owned by bots. Additionally, power resides in individual subreddits. In the most popular ones ,there was a power grab to become moderators of these subreddits.
In terms of how this works, Winter Watch, for example, for a long time was not permitted to post in r/news and many other “mainstream” subreddits. In others subs, we are frequently met with bot attacks, if not outright banned. And in some subs, where our articles were once welcomed, we’re now banned. Today Winter Watch in universally banned on Reddit.
To illustrate what we are up against, there’s a subreddit of Hasbara and authoritarian-follower types called Top Minds of Reddit (TMOR). These goons target “conspiracy theory” articles for censorship, removal and ridicule. Notice that they have adopted a logo that fraudulently associates them with the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). I’m sure this is satire, but why would Reddit — even in humor — allow this? In fact, inquiring minds should wonder if this is a criminal offense.
The not-at-all-funny mission of these juvenile delinquents is to create a lot of havoc, and they’re probably provided a good-size budget for it. Similar brigades take down YouTube channels in collaboration with Orwellian social media company Google.
TMOR logo
Look, you may be new here, but /r/TopMindsOfReddit is where many top-of-minds collaborate, and routinely outsmart the most well funded, well equipped and diabolical subreddits on earth. How do we do it? Top shitposters, brigaders on every sub, unparalleled circlejerking skills and fearlessness. I would trust a top comment here over pretty much any racist sub, especially a default, any day.
In one instance, we posted an article about David Cameron and his bankster great-grandfathers at the sub r/unitedkingdom. After a brigade of down votes, the thought-police fake-NSA-logo goons are seen trophy bragging about how they got Winter Watch banned and had the post removed “within 249-259 minutes.” Take notice of the small-print author of the comment, one r/removal bot.
In time we became amazed at how much of this activity was directed at Winter Watch articles. I suppose we should take that as compliment, but it was annoying at the time and is not missed now that we are universally banned at Reddit cesspool.
Of particular note was the heavy presence of discourse disrupting paid-bot activity during the Pizzagate (aka Pedogate) discussion last year before those subreddits were also banned by Reddit. For example, we shared this article at Reddit and became a prima-facie and rather comical example of a bot trying to disrupt the conversation on Pizzagate. “Clovize” is our catch-all poster that includes all of the Winter Watch authors and, of course, “Jpop” is the non-human bot. Johnny-on-the-Spot Jpop made the first comment within minutes of the post.
Who funds this type of operation?
Naturally, the Reddit moderators take all this down after five hours, but here is what transpired.
jpop23mn 0 points an hour ago
oh, c’mon! This is clearly the fake news that makes us lol bad
clovize[S] 2 points an hour ago
Given your garbled syntax, I have a capcha to determine if you are a human or a bot. Answer this question: are dominos played on cheese or pasta?
jpop23mn [score hidden] 59 minutes ago
I’m still not convinced
[–]lemonyfresh3667 [score hidden] 57 minutes ago
A bot lol, gives the same comment to every pizzag8 post
Wow, first hand glimpse of a non-human bot in action.
We learn more about jpop23mn:
Here are even more stark examples of organized and fraudulent bot-wave operations on the Pizzagate/Pedogate issue. The messages are identical for the multiple bots. Notice that a number of the bot avatars also show up in the second canned message.
And who can forget the “I know a guy, who knows a guy” bot shill chorus around the Las Vegas shooting deception.
7 Comments on More Color on Social Media Skuldruggery: A Problem with Internet Bots and Brigading
On an individual level, people with a high number of followers — called “influencers” — can actually turn their popularity into cash. Businesses are willing to give them freebees to “like” their products or services. On a business level, bots = revenues. Ad revenues used to be based on click throughs or completion of some action, like signing up for account. Now, it’s increasingly based on “impressions,” meaning that all somebody has to do is view the social media page or website. In other words, mere followers/traffic/feed volume = money for the ad seller. There’s no oversight for fakery and a high level of monetary motivation to use bots.
The way that we have to ‘incorporate’ the Internet now into our thinking, whether it be with politics, economics, culture, etc.,…everything has been transposed into a different realm of understanding. That is why I think that the ‘High Priest of postmodernity, Jean Baudrillard , is so important to understand our time! His is the language of our bureaucratic, informational, and tyrannical technocratic age that seeks to disintegrate all freedom and bring in complete nihilism.
Here is an analysis of the movie “The Matrix’ and how it was impacted by Baudrillard’s thought:
Yea. When I first went down the rabbit hole after the 9/11 deception hit me like a ton of bricks, I felt myself being misdirected down meandering side tunnels going nowhere or somewhere specifically designed for myself and others like myself. After a long learning curve you sort of figure out who are the honest players and sites. Endless discussions with digital strangers is truly a waste of time. The internet is still a pretty good source of information but you’d better have your BS radar turned up really high and a box of Morton’s salt handy. Don’t know for sure but I believe RW is an honest player and has a human form.
One reason I don’t sign up for ad revenues (one can on a WordPress Premium or Business site)–bots, and fake revenue. Only revenue I want from https://omegooksnet.com is book sales. Getting revenue from fake bots “clicking” on (fake?) ads is evil,IMHO. And I don’t want bots to influence my site stats either! Every now and then I have ten or twenty times the number of visits I usually do–but only a few visitors….that is, from bots. Screw the bots!
I assume everyone I’m arguing with about my racist witticisms are bots.
Not that the average person has an astonishing grasp of grammar, syntax, rhetoric, or satire. But, the language has less of a formatted “copypasta” feel.
Little things like this can contain so much value! What are the odds of this occurring? This camera’s ‘frame-rate’ was somehow miraculously ‘synchronized’ with the main rotary blade of this helicopter as it flew above the camera man. Amazing!
Does that look fake? Even if you accept the interpretation, does that look normal for that helicopters ‘body’ to move like that? Does the orientation not seem off? Things to think about!
On an individual level, people with a high number of followers — called “influencers” — can actually turn their popularity into cash. Businesses are willing to give them freebees to “like” their products or services. On a business level, bots = revenues. Ad revenues used to be based on click throughs or completion of some action, like signing up for account. Now, it’s increasingly based on “impressions,” meaning that all somebody has to do is view the social media page or website. In other words, mere followers/traffic/feed volume = money for the ad seller. There’s no oversight for fakery and a high level of monetary motivation to use bots.
The way that we have to ‘incorporate’ the Internet now into our thinking, whether it be with politics, economics, culture, etc.,…everything has been transposed into a different realm of understanding. That is why I think that the ‘High Priest of postmodernity, Jean Baudrillard , is so important to understand our time! His is the language of our bureaucratic, informational, and tyrannical technocratic age that seeks to disintegrate all freedom and bring in complete nihilism.
Here is an analysis of the movie “The Matrix’ and how it was impacted by Baudrillard’s thought:
Yea. When I first went down the rabbit hole after the 9/11 deception hit me like a ton of bricks, I felt myself being misdirected down meandering side tunnels going nowhere or somewhere specifically designed for myself and others like myself. After a long learning curve you sort of figure out who are the honest players and sites. Endless discussions with digital strangers is truly a waste of time. The internet is still a pretty good source of information but you’d better have your BS radar turned up really high and a box of Morton’s salt handy. Don’t know for sure but I believe RW is an honest player and has a human form.
One reason I don’t sign up for ad revenues (one can on a WordPress Premium or Business site)–bots, and fake revenue. Only revenue I want from https://omegooksnet.com is book sales. Getting revenue from fake bots “clicking” on (fake?) ads is evil,IMHO. And I don’t want bots to influence my site stats either! Every now and then I have ten or twenty times the number of visits I usually do–but only a few visitors….that is, from bots. Screw the bots!
I assume everyone I’m arguing with about my racist witticisms are bots.
Not that the average person has an astonishing grasp of grammar, syntax, rhetoric, or satire. But, the language has less of a formatted “copypasta” feel.
Little things like this can contain so much value! What are the odds of this occurring? This camera’s ‘frame-rate’ was somehow miraculously ‘synchronized’ with the main rotary blade of this helicopter as it flew above the camera man. Amazing!
https://twitter.com/QTAnon1/status/1306508197759512583?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
Does that look fake? Even if you accept the interpretation, does that look normal for that helicopters ‘body’ to move like that? Does the orientation not seem off? Things to think about!