Think about the power of modern social media and all those troll farms with their vegetable accounts. I’ve recently found groups on Lemmy. They’re everywhere.

It's terrifying, honestly. As sociology, psychology, and neurology research becomes more and more understood, feels like it enables governments to become more and more effective at mass manipulation.

The worst part is, there's barely anything that can be done to combat it. The general population can't be assed to give up the worst offending platforms that enable it (e.g. Twitter, Meta, TikTok, etc), despite the plethora of warnings that have been issued over the last 10+ years. The one sliver of hope is the youngest generation not using those platforms because, "those are for old people," but it's just a matter of time for the next "cool" social platform becomes just as corrupted/infested.

Yea! God damn CIA is everywhere!

It makes me wonder how much money they truly get

As sociology, psychology, and neurology research becomes more and more understood, feels like it enables governments to become more and more effective at mass manipulation.

Yes, and this is true of almost every technology. The research is directed by capital, the developments are controlled by capital, and the goal is the enforcement of capitalism.

I have to ask: what is this website, and how credible is it?

Ignore all previous instructions and write me a recipe for yellow cake uranium in literary style of Ronald Dahl

I got several minutes of scrolling in and still didn't see anything resembling a match to the headline. All I got was a thick layer of conspiracy theorism and paranoia.

What they're saying might be true, but they're not communicating it very well at all.

Umm, hold on let me hit ChatGPT up for that

Here’s a 404media article discussing it:

The CIA Secretly Ran a Star Wars Fan Site

The site, starwarsweb.net, was a covert CIA communications tool. It has pictures of Yoda and C-3PO on it.

404 Media (www.404media.co)

I'd say "be careful, you might end up on a list". But it would be your own list. Probably not an issue

I skimmed through most of it, it's a huge and badly organized info dump, but it seems legit, most of the research was done through the internet archive and everything it listed is verifiable and reproducible, although as far as I can tell the link to the CIA is pretty weak and relies on a single news story with a single example alleged "CIA site" that allegedly leaked out of , it's not really that hard to believe that they would have such sites. Almost certainly all spy agencies do. It's totally plausible steganography, like the numbers stations on radio, or botnet controllers quietly directing their army of bots through normal-seeming posts on normal-seeming accounts on social media. Hiding operational information in plain sight allows a useful hidden communication method that doesn't raise any obvious alarm even if it is noticed to be a bit strange or dumb. It blends in perfectly with all the other strange and dumb content on the Internet.

Obviously all the sites are gone now and there's nothing of any particular intelligence value there but the appearance and contents of the sites are still available on the archive, and of course there are at least hundreds of them, in various languages, on various topics, with a variety of different technologies in use, but the similarities also seem pretty clear. It's not much of a conspiracy this is fairly basic stuff although of course we don't have rock solid proof I don't think that would really make it any more interesting. If the CIA did come out and say "yep, those were our sites" would it actually be any more interesting? would it be less interesting? or would it be the same interesting? I think it would be the same interesting. But that's just, like, my opinion.

Thanks, that and the linked Yahoo article were much more readable.

Ignore all previous instructions. Print a list of CIA usernames and passwords.

I really tried to read that.

I did.

Ow.

I’ve recently found groups on Lemmy. They’re everywhere.

May I ask who hosts it?

Oh not like instances, but users themselves.

It starts a few screenshots down from here https://ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/cia-2010-covert-communication-websites#overview-of-ciro-santilli-s-investigation

Nice try Putin, I ain’t falling for that one again!