The Dark Arts Use Nudging to Astroturf Your World

Written by Chriss W Street

Science Digest Journal just publish enlightening research by Patrick Fagan titled ‘Clicks and tricks: The dark art of online persuasion’ to argue that nudging has emerged as one of the primary psyop “dark arts” tool that is being “used by globalists, governments, NGOs, and “security” (intelligence) forces against ordinary people.

Research has long established that humans are ‘cognitive misers’ who tend to avoid spending cognitive effort by thinking and solving problems in simpler, less effortful ways.  This can include favoring information that confirms their own beliefs, which reduces the mental effort required to process it. Cognitive misers may also intuitively replace difficult questions with easier ones with limited conscious brainpower.

Internet users are inundated with attempts to persuade, including digital nudges like defaults, friction, and reinforcement. Digital nudges can be used for altruistic purposes, but when nudges are not transparent, optional, and beneficial, they become ‘dark patterns’ that are categorized under the acronym FORCES = Frame, Obstruct, Ruse, Compel, Entangle, and Seduce.

Dark pattern nudges based on fear are often used advocates to control individuals and communities regarding health, climate change, meat-eating, tobacco use, alcohol use, weight control, electoral candidates, political campaigns, and hundreds more.

Dark agents tend to initially use nudges to ‘seed’ awareness of an issues, then insert deceptions into the discourse, disguised as legitimate information.  Once introduced to the issue, ‘echoing’is used to solidify viewpoints through identity-driven argumentation such as “us versus them.”

The science of seeding and echoing nudges to inflateperceptions or the popularity of an opinion or policy through bots or agents who mimic genuine humans online to manufacture widespread grassroots support for a policy, individual, or product, where little such support exists, is called ‘astroturfing.’