General Staff of the Polish Army: The protest may be an element of a hostile operation
Mechanisms of hostile inciting riots and social manipulation described by the military.
Quick Look
- The General Staff of the Polish Army warns against astroturfing, i.e. artificially induced protests and disinformation on the Internet.
- The military explains the mechanisms of operation of hostile services and advises how not to be manipulated.
AI-generated summary
Why It Matters
Astroturfing is the phenomenon of pretending to be a grassroots movement in order to cause unrest or disinformation.
Supposedly spontaneous, but planned
Astroturfing can be a protest or a manifestation that is supposed to resemble a grass-roots, social, spontaneous initiative. The real goal is to cause riots. However, these may also include disinformation activities and entries on the Internet. They also seem to be created spontaneously by citizens of a given country, but in fact they are generated by bot farms, trolls and artificial intelligence. The General Staff of the Polish Army today warned against this phenomenon and described in detail how its mechanism works:
enemy services recognize and identify "flash points" in society; it is fueled by troll farms, bots and coordinated social media accounts, and extreme emotions of both sides of the dispute are struck;
kinetic actions - people are taken to the streets;
multiplying crisis - when riots break out, media and online information operations immediately publicize the chaos.
manifestors may not realize that they are being used for a purpose other than their manifesto.
The main goals of hostile inciting riots are to overload emergency services and citizens' sense of security; decision-making crisis of the authorities, paralysis of actions; forcing geopolitical concessions or influencing public opinion, manipulating politics - informs SGWP.
How not to fall for it?
The Polish Army advises that, first of all, pay attention to whether the demonstration of beliefs turns into verbal or physical violence or there is talk of it. We should also pay attention to whether the flood of uniform calls for demonstrations did not appear suddenly and with great intensity.
On the Internet, it is worth paying attention to the language - as the military emphasizes - whether comments and opinions sound very similar or are even copied, or whether the same phrase or slogan appears in many places.
You should also pay attention to whether the profiles publishing opinions or comments are newly created and have no history of activity. If this is the case, they may be "bots" or fictitious accounts.
Open Questions
- What specific incidents prompted SGWP to issue a warning?
