Massive fake crowds for disinformation campaigns

The Guardian has a good article, "'Aims': the software for hire that can control 30,000 fake online profiles", on fake crowds faking popularity and consensus to manipulate opinion.

Misinformation and disinformation are the biggest problems on the internet right now. And it's never been cheaper and easier to do.

Note how it works. The fake accounts coordinate together to shout down others and create the appearance of agreement. It's like giving one person a megaphone. One person now has thousands of voices shouting in unison, dominating the conversation.

Propaganda is not free speech. One person should have one voice. It shouldn't be possible to buy more voices to add to yours. And algorithms like rankers and recommenders definitely shouldn't treat these as organic popularity and amplify them further.

The article is part of a much larger investigative report combining reporters from The Guardian, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, El Pais, and others. You can read much more starting from this article, "Revealed: the hacking and disinformation team meddling in elections".