Consider WaPo's chief readership: people interested in domestic/foreign policy probably living in the DMV area and associated with the federal government.
Among those types, what Snowden did was considered, at BEST, a warranted discussion but highly unprofessional and a breach of trust. (whether you agree with that or not, but that represents their core interests in serving the federal government)
There's a difference between it happening, and it happening so often that it can be taken for granted. The CIA trying to plant microphones into stray cats hoping they'd wander within earshot of Soviet dignitaries happened too.
The truth is, it isn't known, the scale of these operations, and you can assume everything is full of spooks or not. But the more reasonable assumption, absent evidence to the contrary, is that it's likely not a conspiracy. Particularly when you're describing points of view which a lot of Americans actually do hold.
Although then I suppose you could suggest that the reason Americans believe certain things, or even the appearance of that belief, is the result of propaganda but, again - who knows?
But some things are. So some comments, probably the best, most convincing ones, the ones with the most time and effort spent on them, are sockpuppets from the American military.
There's no "parallel construction" or "false flags" here. There's just propaganda. All governments use propaganda. Governments have always used propaganda. If you think propaganda isn't a large part of your day-to-day life you're just unable to see it.
>So some comments, probably the best, most convincing ones, the ones with the most time and effort spent on them, are sockpuppets from the American military.
This appears to assume that it's all but impossible to legitimately hold the opposing point of view, or be able to articulate it, without there being a script involved?
It's a non-falsifiable hypothesis. How can I prove your comment isn't some subtle form of propaganda? Maybe mine is. Maybe this forum is mostly shills, spooks and sockpuppets anyway. Maybe dang is a covert NSA operative. He did 'borrow' someone's account, after all. Can't prove he isn't.
>All governments use propaganda. Governments have always used propaganda. If you think propaganda isn't a large part of your day-to-day life you're just unable to see it.
If you think you see it everywhere, I would submit the government might have far more control over you than you believe.
>This appears to assume that it's all but impossible to legitimately hold the opposing point of view, or be able to articulate it, without there being a script involved?
You're reading a lot into "probably."
I'd expect that someone whose day job is to comment on forums to be better at writing comments than someone who only comments on forums as a hobby. That seems how it is in most professions.
It seems like without explicitly defining our experimental terms, the reverse (there are literally zero sockpuppet comments on the linked page) is equally unfalsifiable. Personally, if I were talking to a friend about what comments we've written on the Internet, and she mentioned writing a comment on that page, I'd take it as a virtual certainty that that particular comment was not written by a sockpuppet, so I don't think my belief is unfalsifiable.
>If you think you see it everywhere, I would submit the government might have far more control over you than you believe.
...no, I see propaganda pretty much everywhere. Less so now that I live outside a major city, but when I did there'd be propaganda all over the place.
You might be seeing propaganda as too narrow a term. Propaganda is just government advertising, sometimes related explicitly to supporting politicians but more often related to rather mundane things. "See something, say something" is propaganda. Ads on the bus or on bus stops about the risks of jaywalking are propaganda. Highways have maybe one propaganda sign every 50 miles, on average (this might be an East Coast thing). "Click it or ticket" was propaganda (and beautiful propaganda at that).
And that's just considering only things explicitly put up by the government. Bumper stickers are propaganda for political parties. You can go to the more government-dominated metro stations in DC and see propaganda advertisements from Boeing, Raytheon, Palantir, etc., aimed at politicians. Activist and advocacy groups produce propaganda full-time.
I suggest checking out the PropagandaPosters subreddit. There's great propaganda from World War II or the Cold War (from all over the world), but also a large amount of modern propaganda.
I was kind of surprised at that as well. Then I noticed it was the same few people who seem to be very upset. It isn't too unreasonable for a vocal minority to waste their time on something like that.
Yep, it's likely they have some "public opinion making" going on. After all psychology teaches us that people look to other people first to find out what to think and do. These guys spoiled the Internet.
Among those types, what Snowden did was considered, at BEST, a warranted discussion but highly unprofessional and a breach of trust. (whether you agree with that or not, but that represents their core interests in serving the federal government)