Israel has been using/endorsing similar tactics with software-assisted, crowd-sourced trolling tool(s) since ages. The assistance is in the form of curation of targets to troll against, not generate troll speech.
Having been involved in various online activist forums including high-profile Anonymous and Occupy groups as well as low-profile environmentalist and political theater groups, I'm pretty sure this kind of thing has been going on for a while and not just for supposed terrorists groups. And sadly it can be very effective. When an online forum has dedicated professional accounts that post 24 hours a day 7 days a week (meaning there are multiple people operating them) and they are very familiar with all the internal group dynamics and personalities, and they use multiple demoralizing techniques from subtle misinformation to playing off different personalities to crass attacks, the effects can really destroy the cohesion of a group and drive people away. It's a struggle figuring out how to combat this.
I don't know which forums you visit, but in my experience trolls are always a failure of modding. Activists are vulnerable to strange notions of censorship (as if everyone should be able to scribble everywhere on the internet), and this bias makes them ascribe supernatural powers to trolls (like they can defeat any moderation).
The point is, if you make them look stupid to the broader population, people are less likely to come in. It's about recruitment, not mitigation of existing terrorists, at least how I understood it.
Right. So the question to ask, then, is: will the potential shorter-term increase in attacks from trolled terrorists be more or less than the longer-term decrease in attacks due to fewer new terrorists being around?
If it were Americans (or anyone else who worries about being a terrorist target already) doing the trolling, I would seriously worry about that. But if it's local people discouraging each other, I figure the risk is pretty small.
Is it possible that the trolling we experience on English language forums is really the rest of the world using this strategy to tie us up in petty arguments so we don't have time to do any real work?
Take responsibility for your own society's trolls, and for our gullibility to them.
It would be easy to point the finger at outsiders hating us for our freedom. In order to defeat the troll, we must recognize him in ourselves, however.
It's funny that this has been going on 'underground' for a few years (at least 2009) by a bunch of different groups. These two knuckleheads (hi HackMiami!) give a talk in 2010 about terrorist forums and how to troll them: http://www.tagtele.com/videos/voir/62093
Just a personal observation: On usenet, it looks to me like the political and religious right have been using trolling for years. IMHO, its a bizarre thing that political trolling looks almost exclusively right wing. Heh, what ever the politics, at least they put the leg work in. Dunno if it has any material effect though.
They learned it from the chinese. In china,this trolling scheme has been employed for years. There is even a name given (five cents) - meaning they are hired for cheap to praise everything the government does and demonize the activists.
The roots are the underlying discontent that motivates radicalization? Western diplomacy is not going to eliminate mid-east discontent any time soon, I agree.
This effort seeks to replace the radicalization option with something else. What's wrong with that? There are lots of discontents in the world, and not many of them kill other people.
Nope, this will never catch on. The minute they realize that the exact same principles they use to subvert al-Qaeida propaganda can be used against their own propaganda, they will have to shut down the program. You can't teach critical thinking, humour and satire to your army and not have them use the same tools against you.
But, in a country designed like the United States, wouldn't it be better for our denizens to have critical thinking, humor and satire? I mean, we're supposed to be a country that's full of people that say "no" to stupidity and that can laugh at -- and then work to fix our faults, through the channels that were established at out creation.
It's the democratic republic part of this country that makes it so great --- when used by critical thinkers.
Lame. They could address the reasons that people hate them but instead they invade foreign lands then use propaganda to convince people that "it's OK, our bombs contain freedom."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Megaphone_desktop_tool
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/09/06/giyus_megaphone/
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=42902