Buy this book to start the new year. The content is slightly dated already, but I won't be writing a sequel any time soon. https://www.amazon.com/Rats-Nationalism-Brandon-Adamson/dp/0578584743

Really every online political person should own a copy of this book, if for no other reason than it will help you become more critical and aware when it comes to your interactions on social media.

For many years on here I maintained only a cartoonish image of "infiltrators" and operated under a naive assumption that most people/accounts/figures were basically genuine in their beliefs, and that the ideological trajectory of certain movements was for the most part "organic."

It's much more complex than that (in some ways better, in some ways worse). One thing people didn't anticipate is that social media is a gift for people with pattern recognition ability and memory. It's a nonstop flow of data that allows for "noticing" to the observant.

This has caused problems and radicalization because this data sorting leads discerning individuals to pick up on patterns, whether it be in people's names, phrases, articles, repetitive messaging etc. One would not have noticed these 20 years ago, just engaging with local/tv news

But there are other patterns among figureheads on here, or even people you interact with casually.

The biggest mistake people make when it comes to fakes on here is that they always assume a shill is someone they disagree with, dislike or that makes them look bad.

They never consider that it could be someone they actually like, who seems to say all the right things and think *just* like them.

The second biggest mistake people make is to assume that infiltrators all have malevolent intentions (that they're out to entrap you and send you to prison). The truth is you don't really know why they're monitoring/influencing your circles. It could be for any number of reasons

For example, they may not even be interested in "you" but are instead trying to counter subversive *foreign* influences that attempt to weaponize political dissidents in the US (get people riled up and turn them against the US government).

So they try to keep political dissidents at least within a pro-American framework, to counter the effect of foreign anti-American propaganda, infiltration and memetic influence.

Also, recognizing the importance of balance in retaining stability, they may very well see the necessity of a robust right and left wing. In that sense they may even "help" amplify certain ideas, groups and intelligent people if doing so serves those ends.

Admittedly, this kind of manipulation is still "malevolent" in that it's deceptive, and it can be kind of annoying when you're just trying to interact with someone normally and realize their entire persona is just a carefully crafted role.

The reality is that there are so many competing interests: intelligence agencies (even rival departments within the US), PR firms, activist organizations, marketers, etc...all battling it out with their respective bot farms and actors. We are just lab rats responding to stimuli.