https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/twitter-executive-also-part-time-officer-uk-army-psychological-warfare-unit posted:

The senior Twitter executive with editorial responsibility for the Middle East is also a part-time officer in the British Army’s psychological warfare unit, Middle East Eye has established.

Gordon MacMillan, who joined the social media company's UK office six years ago, has for several years also served with the 77th Brigade, a unit formed in 2015 in order to develop “non-lethal” ways of waging war.

The 77th Brigade uses social media platforms such as Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, as well as podcasts, data analysis and audience research to wage what the head of the UK military, General Nick Carter, describes as “information warfare”.

Carter says the 77th Brigade is giving the British military “the capability to compete in the war of narratives at the tactical level”; to shape perceptions of conflict. Some soldiers who have served with the unit say they have been engaged in operations intended to change the behaviour of target audiences.

What exactly MacMillan is doing with the unit is difficult to determine, however: he has declined to answer any questions about his role, as has Twitter and the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Twitter would say only that “we actively encourage all our employees to pursue external interests”, while the MoD said that the 77th Brigade had no relationship with Twitter, other than using it for communication.

The 77th Brigade's headquarters is located west of London. It brought together a number of existing military units such as the Media Operations Group and the 15 Psychological Operations Group.

At its launch, the UK media was told that the new unit of “Facebook warriors” would be around 1,500 strong, and made up of both regular soldiers and reservists. In recent months, the army has been approaching British journalists and asking them to join the unit as reservists.

While clearly engaged in propaganda, the MoD is reluctant to use that word to describe the unit’s operations.

Instead, the British army’s website describes the 77th Brigade as “an agent of change” which aims to “challenge the difficulties of modern warfare using non-lethal engagement and legitimate non-military levers as a means to adapt behaviours of the opposing forces and adversaries”.

MacMillan, whose editorial responsibilities at Twitter also cover Europe and Africa, was a captain in the unit at the end of 2016, according to one British army publication. The MoD will not disclose his current rank.

His involvement with the 77th Brigade was made public when he disclosed it on his page at LinkedIn, the online professional networking site.

As well as outlining his responsibilities at Twitter, MacMillan wrote that he had an interest in politics and international affairs, had trained at Sandhurst, the British military academy, “and am a reserve officer in the British Army serving in 77th Brigade, which specialises in non-lethal engagement”.

His page has recently been edited to remove all references to his service with 77th Brigade.

my pary are with the middle east who lost his three chrilden ; i am truely sorry for your lots

c_man posted:

It would be cool to learn a bit about stuff like the persona management software that amazon uses to have their ppl ostensibly post about how great it is there while theyre on the toilet, and how it might be similar or different from the sockpuppets the intelligence community uses

From an essay by an Amazon worker in a fulfilment centre I read:

The Fourth Reich is the dictatorship of the Silicon Valley capitalist, who is part-technocrat and part- New Age mystic. His volksgenosse is the professional consumer. A lot of the mostly young, mostly white, workers have already bought into his delusion of a “sharing economy.” They almost never think about work, only “gigs” and “side hustles.” They think they’re entrepreneurs but the fact that the capitalists have gotten them to think a corporation like Amazon is doing them a favor by offering them regular employment betrays their real status. They’re useful idiots, the good workers: they pull the highest rates on any task, they collaborate with the supervisors, and they’re always the first to land a steady contract as a “Blue Badge.” What strange force also compels them to tell us that the break’s over, get back to work, I don’t know; I only know I absolutely despise them for it. Someday they’ll turn into supervisors and likely transfer out, eagerly lapping up whatever shit the company throws at them.

The majority of the workers have actually embraced the level of social atomization that’s engineered into the system. The flat wage increase to $15/hr was employed as a provisional deterrent against worker organization but the primacy of random assignments on shift and the encouragement to leave the facility during all your breaks practically ensures it. On break, almost everyone will scatter to their cars and spend all their time alone; the minority will occupy the break room. There might be a few breakaway groups of two or three people making small talk but this is really minimal and insufficient. The greatest divides between workers are produced by this atomization rather than hierarchy or the division of labor. No one is going to work at the same place for long and there’s less incentive overall to maintain your baseline sanity on shift by talking to other people when most can satisfy this by looking at their phones.

https://homintern.soy/posts/wemachines.html

ialdabaoth posted:

i liked what i thought extinction rebellion was until i read anything about it

Not long ago, a friend of mine affiliated with the London-based group Left Culture Club attempted to start an XR socialist subgroup and quickly incurred the ire of the central XR media team. In a phone call, he was told that such a move would contravene XR’s stated “beyond politics” stance but also make it more difficult to accomplish their strategic goals, which, the spokesperson argued, require the cooperation of big business. Yet in an official email encouraging people to join affinity groups, XR’s list of approved spin-offs included XR Police and XR Landlords.

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2019/10/extinction-rebellion-has-a-politics-problem

jfc

Edited by ghostpinballer (Oct. 17, 2019 18:00:16)