Ideological / campaign
Organised, resourced and strategic — sometimes commercial, sometimes state-linked — blending provocation with disinformation to shift what looks normal rather than to win any particular argument.
Responding at this level
Individual response is close to irrelevant at this scale. Understanding is the point: the useful reader here is a moderator, journalist or researcher.
12 tactics at this level
Troll farms
Paid, staffed operations producing provocation and division as a job rather than a pastime.
Identity & coordination
Coordinated inauthentic behaviour
The platform-policy term for coordinated activity relying on fake accounts to mislead about who is behind it.
Identity & coordination
Firehose of falsehood
High-volume, multi-channel, unashamedly inconsistent messaging that overwhelms rather than persuades.
Amplification
Flooding the zone
Saturating attention with so much material that sustained focus on any one thing becomes impossible.
Amplification
Hashtag hijacking
Capturing someone else's tag or trend to redirect the audience it gathered.
Amplification
False-flag trolling
Posing as your opponents while behaving badly, so the discredit lands on them.
Identity & coordination
Wedge-issue exploitation
Amplifying an existing division from both sides at once, where widening the gap is the objective.
Amplification
Data-void exploitation
Seeding content for search terms that have no authoritative results yet, so the first answer is yours.
Amplification
Information laundering
Moving a claim through progressively more reputable venues until its origin is no longer visible.
Amplification
Hate raids
Automated, repeated abusive floods against a specific creator, usually in live chat.
Amplification
Amplification botting
Automated accounts inflating engagement to make a position look more widely held than it is.
Amplification
Persona-building
Investing months in a credible account with no apparent agenda, so its later turn carries weight.
Identity & coordination