Other people are absolutely going to take their cues from them and even try to become influencers. (We may wish to only relay particular messages, but we are boosting their personal brand.) That could have utility to intel agencies as well, encouraging everyone to organize openly on platforms that are not just public and as open to interference and infiltration as possible, but also profitable data scraping sources for social research. Knowing there's no alternative or way around that, and this is what the majority of opposition media in the west consists of is why I am trying to find explanations. It's not like these kinds of people haven't been educational to me. I remember my whole pipelining from wondering why game developers can't do whatever they want & whether my VPN actually works all the way to this conversation.

I may be paranoid, but I'm scrutinizing what really is the difference between someone like Ben Norton and Russel Brand. It's considerable, but not as far as I'd like. I question whether the exceptions to the good takes of someone like Rania Khalek on Syria are organic, or a deliberate attempt to spend earned credibility and redirect political energy back into safe or beneficial avenues for the feds.

Of course, this isn't all cut and dry. The majority of this is accomplished through process of elimination on social media, controlling the academic and journalistic apparatus with funding. It naturally produces these people. There are a number of ways to look at the system of compatible left journalism I am describing that go way beyond "X person is an informant".