Social networks is where we project the image of everything we pretend to be, even if it is a lie. The perception of others has become an obsession not only for ordinary users, but also for companies, political parties or football clubs. That preoccupation with appearance feeds the business of opaque agencies that live by creating false accounts to amplify messages and do what citizens believe something that is not true, an industry of deception that already moves billions of euros.
“Being able to take control is something very greedy,” explains to El Periódico the former employee of an international agency that offered as a service the creation of artificial campaigns to manipulate public opinion, which is known as ‘astroturfing’. For years, he coordinated a digital guerrilla in the pay of 10 people dedicated to fraudulently viralize messages in Twitter, to defend the reputation of their clients —from large multinationals to television celebrities— and to harass their enemies. “I can create an army capable of making the world see you as an exemplary citizen,” he adds. Now he narrates his experience in ‘Confessions of a Russian bot’ (Editorial Debate).
“Imagine that you are the director of a company and that an investigation uncovers your involvement in a corruption case. You are sold, but suddenly a guy calls you who offers you a way out to solve that reputation crisis without lowering your pants. That call would have been made by my former boss and I would have been in charge of planning, designing and executing that strategy, ”says this former agent, who hides his identity because a confidentiality agreement prevents him from putting a face and eyes to the campaigns he orchestrated.
orchestrated manipulation
Twitter has become one of the main stages of that battle for the political, social and cultural narrative. And it is that part of the debates, discussions and insults that are poured there do not arise naturally and organically, but are coordinated and executed through bots —automated accounts, whether false or not— with the intention of amplify certain messages and thus achieve greater legitimacy. You’re more likely to stop to read or share a post with 2,000 retweets than a marginal one.
In turn, the repeated propagation of messages on the same topic seeks to sneak into the most commented topics (‘trending topics’), hijack the debate and try to set the media agenda. “Getting to popularize a ‘hashtag’ is very easy, you just have to analyze how many tweets the rest of the trends generate and calculate how many you have to launch to achieve it,” he says.
Making a message go viral can be simple and relatively inexpensive. But in the world of psychological manipulation success goes beyond numbers and to create a “real link” with the victim, everything has to be planned in detail, mapping what happens on the networks and identifying weak points to influence the conversation. “If we manage an anti-vaccine account, we need to know how they talk and what concerns they have to know what content will go deeper into their hearts,” he warns.
Harassing and taking down rivals
The improvement of Twitter’s security measures against bots and the ease with which users detect them has made more and more ‘astroturfing’ agencies opt for a more aggressive strategy, trolls: fake accounts from which insults and threats are launched against specific targets. “If I want a journalist to stop publishing content that attacks my client, it is bullying is essential”, he points out. “If every time you talk about a topic you receive 50 negative comments after a month you will stop entering the social network or you will do it to publish photos of the puppy you have adopted.” The best way to make up these accounts is to humanize them, that is to invent details of their lives “as if it were a role-playing game”.
Penetration into the mind of the target is key, even more so if it is a question of “a quality speaker” such as a journalist buying your story. That is also more expensive, but it does not mean that those who work for these agencies have deep pockets. “You don’t earn much,” confesses the former agent. “There are many mileuristas, freelancers and people with illegal contracts”.
Like Facebook or YouTube, Twitter has been criticized because their recommendation algorithms tend to amplify the most viral content, which gives rise to incendiary messages that, by attraction or rejection, generate a reaction from users. However, he points out that the problem is the “wide sleeve” of the platform and that “there is no control”. “How can journalists’ denunciations of botnets and troll accounts be ignored?” he asks.
With the publication of the book, the former agent seeks to report on a business that grows in the shadows, something that he also does on Twitter under the pseudonym @thebotruso. “We are very little aware of the large amount of data we leave on the internet and how valuable it can be in the wrong hands,” he warns. “These agencies are still running wild.”
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.