Weapons of Mass Persuasion | Motherboard

In Russia and China, large state-sponsored agencies manage social media manipulation campaigns, developing them as components in actual combat doctrine. Swarms of bots manipulate conversation and disrupt activists in a growing number of states including Syria, Mexico, Turkey, and the United States, to name a few. "Growth hacking” tactics borrowed from the startup world are helping to promote the spread of an ISIS-developed Android app. The Israeli military is active on 30 social media platforms in six different languages, and in April, the British army created a brigade of "Facebook warriors" responsible for "non-lethal warfare," drawing together "a host of existing and developing capabilities essential to meet the challenges of modern conflict and warfare."