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Since anti-vax activists lose on the science and are small in number, they have increasingly begun to rely on social media to inflate their presence. Twitter hashtags are particularly powerful because they transcend organized groups and the standard friend or follower relationships. More than any other social network, Twitter helps citizens to connect and organize in the real world even if they aren’t part of the same physical communities—anyone can participate in a conversation simply by following and using a hashtag.

in December 2014, “hashtag organizers” began to publish nightly “Trends and Tips” (TaTips) instruction videos on YouTube, containing instructions on what to tweet to advance the cause, and to improve the SEO of “vaccine questioning” websites. There are over 150 of these videos now—a testament to how much the anti-vax movement prioritizes Twitter.

n one unfortunate video, a movement leader encouraged supporters to use Twitter to harass and stalk a lobbyist, who has since filed police reports. In a very recent creation, that same leader excoriates her “Twitter army” for diluting the power of the #cdcwhistleblower movement by creating their own hashtags rather than using the ones they’ve been assigned. She also requests that the entire network tweet at Assembly representatives to inform them that their political careers will be over if they vote in favor of SB277.

Die Devise heißt nicht „Look Up“—sondern „Grow Up“. Und für Gary: Shut up.

Propagandizing foreign populations has generally been more legally acceptable. But it is difficult to see how government propaganda can be segregated from domestic consumption in the digital age. If American intelligence agencies are adopting the GCHQ’s tactics of “crafting messaging campaigns to go ‘viral’,” the legal issue is clear: A “viral” online propaganda campaign, by definition, is almost certain to influence its own citizens as well as those of other countries.

Those programs, carried out in secrecy and with little accountability (it seems nobody in Congress knew of the “Cuban Twitter” program in any detail) threaten the integrity of the internet itself, as state-disseminated propaganda masquerades as free online speech and organizing. There is thus little or no ability for an internet user to know when they are being covertly propagandized by their government, which is precisely what makes it so appealing to intelligence agencies, so powerful, and so dangerous.