Social media managers with quantitative goals, watch out, here comes the price list for guaranteed success. It is a price list for social media manipulation. It's delivered by NATO. No kidding.
What does NATO have to do with social media?
This happens "on the net," the "net community" says that. How often have we all read such references in the press and heard them on TV? Politics is made in the "net," politics is made with "the net," and "the net" influences politics. In democratic societies, this influence is already immense. And it will continue to grow.
The reason is that editorial offices can be paid less and less for research due to a lack of income. Journalists who no longer have time for this, their job, like to rewrite what Greta, Deutsche Bahn and a thousand unknown people are tweeting to each other. The political power of copying from "the web" is demonstrated not least by the whole debate about #hate.
Social media manipulation: wars begin in the mind
Not only Putin, but also NATO knows: "the net" is the perfect instrument for disinformation and propaganda, even for the disintegration of entire societies - in short, for warfare, which is no exaggeration.
Because "wars begin in the mind and that is where peace must be defended" (UNESCO Preamble, 1946). So NATO established STRATCOM. The "Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence" is based in Riga, Latvia. From there now comes a valuable study - (many thanks to Gründerszene for the reference).
#RealMoney #FakeAccounts #FakeLikes #FakeSuccess - welcome "on the net".
In an experiment, they have examined the costs and success of MSPs and provide hard figures. MSP - never heard of them? These are "Manipulation Service Providers" that buy Likes in Facebook etc., among other things. STRATCOM commissioned 11 Russian, 1 Polish, 1 German, 1 French and 1 Italian MSP to attack the popular US social media platforms. Here are the brief results of the experiment.
Manipulation made easy: "300 euros bought us 3,530 comments, 25,750 likes, 20,000 views and 5,100 followers"
A huge digital "success" - for a paltry 300 euros. That's how easy it is to buy success "in social". What does this mean for proof of success in social media? They are unreliable and worthless if they are not confirmed by data from the client's domain. To do that, the data just needs to be linked (let's take care of that).
Here is STRATCOM's shopping list - with efficiency recommendations :-)!
Manipulation in "Social" - a huge business
As part of the experiment, STRATCOM identifies a total of 18,739 "inauthentic accounts".
This army stepped up to transact 300 euros. That makes 1.6 cents refinancing per account. At zero euros marginal cost, that's still a good deal for the MSPs. I wonder how many there are?
There is no public data on the actual extent of manipulation business in social media. But there are the responses from the U.S. platforms about their deletion activities, which the EU has requested.
- Google: reported a figure of 3.39 million YouTube accounts deleted to the "EU action plan against disinformation" in June 2019
- Facebook: reported the same program of 2.19 billion (!!!) deleted accounts in the first quarter of 2019 .
- Twitter: reported 77 million accounts deleted
- Instagram: the competitor formerly bought by Facebook reported: nothing
Instagram is the manipulators' favorite child
"Instagram was largely unable to detect and counter any manipulation." Nowhere else can manipulation be done as easily, as cheaply, and as efficiently as on Instagram. Nowhere else are there so many fake accounts, nowhere else can they do their work so unchallenged.
A defensive battle hardly takes place
The operators of "social" media platforms are responsible for the misuse of their own platforms. They actually have to defend themselves. But if you look at the following figures, you will see that this defense hardly takes place.
Conclusion: Under today's conditions, a successful defense against social media manipulation is completely futile. #regulate