Australia is in the midst of a propaganda war which is being fought in places like Facebook and Twitter. In an age of universal connectivity where everyone has access to virtually everything all of the time, I find the distinct lack of curiosity from people to properly investigate even the most obviously stupid of claims, to be singularly disappointing.
Bothering to do basic research is a small amount of work and as people and politics follow Newton's First Law of Motion (things are lazy and keep on doing what they are already doing until a massive enough force stops them or makes them do something else), then they will continue on their merry little way.
One of these little battles took place on the fields of the Sydney Morning Herald. ABC1's Media Watch did a longer form piece on this.
https://www.abc.net.au/mediawatch/episodes/polls/12662916
Buy Twitter Poll Votes will deliver you 15,000 bot votes for US$495 and 20,000 for US$660, at which prices The Age poll could have been gamed for around 2000 bucks.
So who would have done that? Well, we have no way of knowing and we’re not pointing the finger.
- Media Watch, ABC1, 14th Sep 2020.
What the Media Watch article didn't do was analyse the whyfor. They know where the lines of news reportage are, rather than editorialising and speculating like second-level yelling from the peanut gallery which is what I can do (because I don't actually go out and gather the news).
I think that we need to remember the principle motivation of Hunter (also on the ABC in the 1980s):
He's on his bike or in his den,
He's always looking around and then,
He's asking:
What? Why? Where? and When?
Again, this requires a modicum of curiosity and that same basic desire to see what is hiding behind the curtain. Perhaps we can chase away the spectre of oh so many years ago with a little illumination.
Let's play this game as though it were a crime novel. We have the body (the manipulated polls), we have the means (via some organised troll/bot service which someone has paid for and/or operates; which if you go looking, often has the Twitter handle of xxxx-kkkkkkkk where x is some name and k is a string of eight numbers and always eight numbers); all we need to do is find out who has the biggest motive. If you can establish opportunity, means, and motive, then you can make a pretty good guess as to whom you might suspect.
This is someone who obviously is interested enough to manipulate a Twitter poll which makes the ABC look bad. This is also someone who is probably capable of writing this off as a business expense because I do not see what kind of benefit that a private individual would have in manipulating a Twitter poll if it cost them good money. It is most likely to be someone in Australia because there isn't a good enough reason why a foreign actor would want to manipulate a Twitter poll which relates to the attitude of the Australian public to the national broadcaster.
The only entities which I can think of which would care enough to do this are News Corp, the IPA, and the Liberal/National Party.
Under cover of COVID-19 which has been used by the Morrison Government as an excuse to ideologically slash budgets and staff from the ABC, universities, the CSIRO, and any other government organisation which dares speak against their owners, an equally insipid information and propaganda war is currently being fought. Although there has been a cover story of Russia or perhaps China interfering in domestic politics in Australia, the more likely story is that these are paid entities in places with access to the internet and who are being funded from within rather than without. I think it a more credible story that the IPA especially which as a registered not for profit organisation which never gets investigated, is responsible since they have the biggest motive for bringing down Australian Government departments which they don't like, more than anyone else.
The IPA already falls neatly under the letter of the law as a terrorist organisation, per the acts which were passed by the Howard Government at the dawn of this century but have as far as I know, never even once been investigated for same.
What possible motives do the Russians have for giving a passing thought about Australia? What of China? They don't gain anything of value that I can see for interfering with Australian Government departments. This looks to me like a classic shell game, where there is misdirection going on via sleight of hand.
If you look at the broad political ideology of the troll/bots, they all appear to be operating from the same side of politics. If the game is one of massive amounts of instability in all directions then you should expect to see troll/bots from various positions attacking from multiple angles but I just do not see that there is evidence of this. They all seem to be operating from the same set of neoconservative talking points and also use that same limited vocabulary set. If you poke a bear with different kinds of pointed sticks, then you should expect to get different kinds of growls but there just aren't any.
Where are the pro-China troll/bots? I would expect to see plenty of those if China was actually engaged in fighting a propaganda war in Australia. And if they are the ones in charge, why are they all in favour of the Liberal Party? Surely they'd want to support the leftist politics of Labor? What possible motivation does Russia have?
Especially at the moment when China has supposedly signed up the state of Victoria to their 'belt and road' scheme, surely we should expect pro-Andrews troll/bots to be defending him? Moreover, why are they only going after Andrews and Palaszczuk? It wouldn't be because they are both Labor Premiers, would it?
I will admit at this point that I don't really have any other suspects because I just don't see what anyone else gets out of waging such a campaign. I suppose that could equally be a failure of imagination on my part but Occam's Razor is pretty sharp and I'm very quickly running out of things to cut out.
I will also be curious to see what kind of response this gets because that's also extra evidence of a sort.
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