Saturday 21 May 2011

Why Is Twitter Hating Imran Khan today? Its more interesting than you thought.


If you search Imran Khan on social media today, you will find a surprising result. Twitter hates Imran Khan today. For every message supporting his "dharna" there are roughly a dozen which mock him, call him a taliban supporter or a selfish politician who is about to burn Pakistan down.

This is surprising. He is out today to do a sit in against USA's drone strikes. We know from variety of sources that it should make him pretty popular these days. Pew research tells us that USA's likability in Pakistan was at an all time low of 11% before their Abbotabad raid. After this raid, you can be sure the number is zero.

It is also difficult to imagine Imran Khan being so unpopular in social media. Typically he is more liked by youth and educated class. A Facebook survey asking "who would you vote for in next election" got a 100,000 plus replies, with 73% favoring Imran Khan. I know, this is not representative of general opinion but such huge sample definitely looks quite indicative of online Pakistan population to me.

In fact every single politician in Pakistan has read Pakistani opinion to be severely against drones, as is evident with all public statements.

Who, then are these people today who is so hating him on twitter and Facebook? And the answer to that is a bit more interesting than your expectation.

Imagine for a minute that you are someone with a lot of money and have an interest in influencing opinions online. Of course, it is conceivable why you would like to have that control. We have grown up with a respect for public opinion. If a lot of people are saying something they must be right. If you can "make" people hear a lot of same opinion they will probably start believing it as right. In a way if you can control popular opinions on twitter, facebook and comments sections of various newspapers, you get a kind of mind control capability.

So what would a rich power, with a lot of money, trying to control public opinion, by controlling social networks, do?

If I was one, I would build a software. I will call it umm... "Persona". The software will "allow 10 personas per user, replete with background , history, supporting details, and cyber presences that are technically, culturally and geographacilly (sic) consistent" or in simple words it will create false personalities on the web which will look coming from certain backgrounds. These personalities will be controllable in 1 to 10 ratio. i.e. one user will be able to feed thoughts which will look like 10 people's thoughts on internet.

I would also take detailed steps to be efficient while looking genuine, "Individual applications will enable an operator to exercise a number of different online personas from the same workstation and without fear of being discovered by sophisticated adversaries. Personas must be able to appear to originate in nearly any part of the world and can interact through conventional online services and social media platforms."

I will also try and make operators of the service be aware of what they are talking about "The service includes a user friendly application environment to maximize the user's situational awareness by displaying real-time local information."

If it is becoming obvious to you that this RFP was really written by someone with a lot of money and not me, then you are right. Also, you don't expect me to make so many spelling errors do you? This RFP was written by US military and was posted on USA's federal business opportunities site. It has since been taken off the site but is still available here.

When a PR professionals site found out about it and considered this to be slightly off colored PR attempt, this is what US Airforce (original suspects of the RFP) had to say about it: "this contract supports activities at US Central Command, as opposed to the Air Force. The software supports classified social media activities outside the US intended to counter violent extremist ideology and enemy propaganda."

So if you have missed what I have been trying to say up there, US Central Command has access to an online army of fake people, which walks, talks, looks like the people they want them to look like. These fake people, controlled by real people at the ratio of 1 to 10, publish twitter updates, Facebook profiles, comment on blogs, comment on news items and try to control your mind by controlling the popular opinion.

This is not a conspiracy theory. Its an above board public project. Why have you never heard about it to date? Because once US media questioned about it they were told that US citizens will never be targeted only bad foreigners will be tricked. Click here for reading this justification on Washington Post. This seems to have silenced US media, which led to a complete blackout on international media.

Could it be that Imran Khan became a valid bad foreigner today to attract this program's interest? Seems that way.

By the way, when it comes to Pakistan, USA's "personas" aren't the only ones interested in influencing the opinion. I personally suspected for a long time that people commenting about Pakistan in major US news sites are a bit too enthusiastic and efficient. Doesn't it look odd that on CNN, a benign story about Pakistan floods gets more comments than a story about university shooting in USA? While these commentators will have western names of John Smiths etc. they will typically have opinions and desires which suit someone in our neighborhood.

So I did a little experiment. I went to few of these comment sections and, using a fake persona of my own, engaged those commentators from USA (emphasis, commentators from USA). I also lured them to click on a link about the subject which agreed with their ideas. The link pointed to an empty page on my blog. Sure enough, with in 10 minutes my empty blog page got few hits. All from Indian IP addresses!

Quite obviously Indian program hasn't been able to build enough counter-detection mechanisms.

37 comments:

  1. Very informative read. But such tactics can be used by the supporters of both sides!

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  2. Luring the fake IDs to determine their IPs was just too brilliant, thanks for sharing!

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  3. If the personas use VPN, how can you mark them as Indian?

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  4. @anonymous - read the last line of blog again. "Quite obviously Indian program hasn't been able to build enough counter-detection mechanisms."

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  5. I got offered Rs 500 and a free paper cap to participate in the 'dharna'. Closed the deal at Rs 600 and a dozen caps :D

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  6. wOW! that some serious "prison break" shit you did there... KUDOS!!!

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  7. That is just BS Anonymous. Come out with your identity and the identity of the person who made the offer.

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  8. Everyone knows who have ill gotten money to spend for online "persona" building.. It's an irony that whenever a brave leader appears on the "Radar" he/she gets shot in no time..Sad it is.

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  9. this is true, this is not with imran khan or any other politician, i am a layman and i have experienced this kind of personas very much while my social appearance, these things are minute delicate sophisticated. IN SHORT WE ARE BEING CONTROLLED

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  10. I always heard that there are people who are working against Pakistan, but you are the one who portray the real picture, about who they are and how they work. Thanks for sharing this informative article.

    JAZAK ALLAH!

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  11. This is only to degardes Imran Khan nothing else... anyone who hates Imran Khan hates Pakistan too...........

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  12. The other side... many people are thinking that "dharna" is a stupid strategy inline with disgraced politics. And the fact that our military installations were under attack while a procession to stop a supposedly "permitted" drone attacks is contradictory.

    IK should not use these dirty tactics. Rely on educated, silent voters. These dharna style voters would never give you vote anyway.

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  13. Thanks for comprehensive summation. This mechanism of spreading hate against army, Pakistan and every one who talks Pakistan is quite active on many Pakistan affair blogs. We must counter this bullshit since our agencies may not have enough resources and skills.
    Good job done guys.

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  14. Science...!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8ofWFx525s

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  15. Allah kamiab karye imran ko uske maqsad mai.
    ameen

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  16. Then shouldn't by the logic of the same argument, the Online popularity votes also have Imran khan loosing 10 : 1 ??

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  17. Thanks for sharing this informative article! I knew about this kind of act being going on against Pakistan especially but I was not so clear on how they are doing all these things...
    so thanks for information...
    and NO doubt IMRAN KHAN IS A GREAT LEADER!! and my vote will be IMRAN KHANS!

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  18. Imran khan is only hope for us.

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  19. Guys Indian programmers are best in the World.. Cheers!!

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  20. This is only to degardes Imran Khan nothing else... anyone who hates Imran Khan hates Pakistan too........... In his Dharna he undoubtedly put forward an example of Peacefull Protest against something..... Other pollitical parties of Pakistan must learnn a lesson from it that how to protest peacefully...... Imran Khan Zindabad

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  21. Not the best way to discredit and ignore Imran Khan's legitimate critics here.

    when you dont agree with someone, assume they are fake Indians on CIA mossad pay roll.

    how typically Pakistani of us!

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  22. @the writer of this article: i'm curious as to why YOU have hidden your identity. no info about you on this blog of yours. not even a name.

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  23. Imran Khan is a liar and getting fake popularity. Even though he knows drones strikes are occuring in FATA and he's staging Dharnas in Karachi. What a joke. lol

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  24. @ Adeel

    plzzz plzz for God sake stop talking about Imran Khan without any proof. He is the only truthful. respected, educated, sensible, and patriotic leader of Pakistan. He has proved himself without being coming into power. And mind what i have said above i have proof for it. DO YOU HAVE IT???????????????????????

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  25. bohat ala!!! yes a guy from states posts in urdu.

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  26. Imran Khan is the best.... its just his opposition who is trying to spoil his image. loosers!!!

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  27. Imran is the only person, who can take Pakistan towards prosperity and development........

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  28. Sigh!! Will I ever find a blog in my life where only sane and mature people post comments... this is insane... this is not an article that supports or rejects Imran Khan.

    It's about the Psy Ops and all other strategies that are cornering us Pakistanis at home and abroad.

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  29. Imran Khan is one and only hope of pakistan youth.

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  30. you just called me a BOT. Friggin hilarious. HAHAHAHAHAHAAA! and thank u!

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  31. It must be talkd about in the news, so that the masses are aware of it. Im sure US has no credibility and ethics to manipulate things the way they do! huh, down with the USA.

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  32. We Love you Imran Khan ....Keep it UP....

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  33. My Leader .....IMRAN KHAN.

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  34. The One and only sincere leader in Pakistan right now is IK, whatever the Tweeter says or US says, We are with you Imran Khan, because you're our Hope!

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  35. My Leader Khan is the only person, who can take Pakistan towards development, he is not fake leader.

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