I love how headlines like this are supposed to incite anger and fear.
The article mentioned nothing about manipulating "social media" (like reddit or HN as the headline would lead you to believe), in fact it mentions that none of the correspondence will even be in English. All this is is creating fake personas on extremist/underground forums as a source of intelligence.
Why is this downvoted? This is an entirely rational explanation and probably far closer to the truth than something vaguely conspiratorial, such as the NSA trying to manipulate opinion on Facebook or Reddit. I say "vaguely" because depending on who you ask, you'll get a different answer as to what possible motive they could have.
The article mentioned nothing about manipulating "social media" (like reddit or HN as the headline would lead you to believe), in fact it mentions that none of the correspondence will even be in English. All this is is creating fake personas on extremist/underground forums as a source of intelligence.
This Internet is so quick to outrage.