I immediately thought of the book "New Model Army":<p><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0575083638/" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0575083638/</a><p>"A giant has brought war to the fields and towns of England's heartland. When the British army brings in air support and deploys heavy weapons he simply melts away, only to form again somewhere else and deliver another devastating blow. He is called Pantegrel, and he is a New Model Army—a giant whose thoughts flow through countless wireless connections, whose intelligence comes from the internet and real-time camera updates, whose mind is made up of thousands of minds, each deciding what he will choose to do. He has chosen the joy of the fight, and his fury is truly democratic—he is me and you. This is a terrifying vision of a near future war as new technologies allow the world's first truly democratic army to wrest control from the powers that be..."
Might be naive, but it feels to me like this type of propoganda from the various militaries and TLA's should be illegal.<p>I wonder if that's where Google were going with their real name policy... if you can link stuff back to a real person, they're less likely to be a shill. Maybe being generous there.
So now social media is a platform for the continuation of war by other means?[0] This feels like a slippery slope
potentially leading to a morass of misinformation and
confusion, not only among the putative enemy but for all
readers.<p>[0] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz</a>
Social media operations are not unique to the UK. For example,<p><a href="http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/01/what-your-facebook-posts-mean-us-special-forces/104031/" rel="nofollow">http://www.defenseone.com/technology/2015/01/what-your-faceb...</a>
See also <i>Grassroots for Hire</i>, based on a dissertation <a href="http://www.techsoc.com/grassroots.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.techsoc.com/grassroots.html</a><p><i>"Edward T. Walker, a professor of sociology and that University of California, Los Angeles, captured the results of his detailed study of political consulting firms specializing in grassroots mobilization in his book, Grassroots for Hire: Public Affairs Consultants in American Democracy. The product of several years’ work interviewing grassroots consulting firms and analyzing data on the industry, Walker’s book offers a dispassionate and detailed look into this category of firms."</i>
The Israeli military has been doing this for a while:<p><a href="http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/israel-and-palestine/130605/idf-israel-isreali-defense-forces-social-media-twitter-facebook" rel="nofollow">http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/middle-east/...</a><p><a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/3003305/inside-israeli-militarys-social-media-squad" rel="nofollow">http://www.fastcompany.com/3003305/inside-israeli-militarys-...</a>