MarksMan posted:

Did anyone watch Homeland last night? Season 6, Episode 9. They had a scene, where a conservative radio host owns some mysterious company that is hiring tech people on a massive scale. Max, one of the 'good guys' gets hired to see what's going on.

Essentially in the basement, they have hundreds of young people around computers. They ask Max to fix their code because, "22,000 sock puppets just went offline," and he proceeds to fix it. They tell him they are on Facebook, 4chan, 8chan, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. When he finally gets it fixed, it comes back online and the guy says "Ok people your talking points are in front of you. Get to work. Get ANGRY!"

They explain these are accounts they've created through spoofed IP's and have been maintaining and regularly posting so they appear like regular people. Thousands of them.

I'm not saying this is happening, but it's exactly what I meant by my original post. It wouldn't be very hard at all to get something like this going, using people who already are inclined to a certain viewpoint. Imagine how much narrative online through social media you could control.

Again, not claiming this is happening. Just that it's not a stretch at all to think it could be.