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Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#11

Post by Chickenality »

monocle wrote: post #10

In China the government hires people to sway public opinion. In the US, special interests and those with money do it. Is it worse that the Chinese government does it to "keep the peace", while those in the US do it to get your money? Super PACs, political activists, pharmaceutical companies, Reddit power users, brigades and pay-for-votes services... not sure if there's any real difference.

One major difference is how concentrated the special interests are. In the case of the Chinese government, public opinion is being swayed by a single entity. In the US, a large number of interest groups are all competing to try to sway public opinion. In the latter case, I think it's harder (at least in principle) for any one group to have a large effect on its own.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#13

Post by danharaj »

Chickenality wrote: post #11
monocle wrote: post #10

In China the government hires people to sway public opinion. In the US, special interests and those with money do it. Is it worse that the Chinese government does it to "keep the peace", while those in the US do it to get your money? Super PACs, political activists, pharmaceutical companies, Reddit power users, brigades and pay-for-votes services... not sure if there's any real difference.

One major difference is how concentrated the special interests are. In the case of the Chinese government, public opinion is being swayed by a single entity. In the US, a large number of interest groups are all competing to try to sway public opinion. In the latter case, I think it's harder (at least in principle) for any one group to have a large effect on its own.

Except in the common intersection of their interests.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#14

Post by JulianMorrison »

monocle wrote: post #10

In China the government hires people to sway public opinion. In the US, special interests and those with money do it. Is it worse that the Chinese government does it to "keep the peace", while those in the US do it to get your money? Super PACs, political activists, pharmaceutical companies, Reddit power users, brigades and pay-for-votes services... not sure if there's any real difference.

It's my opinion that attempts to sway public opinion are spitting in the wind, but normally in the same direction as the wind, resulting in an illusion of efficacy. You can see their lack of real impact when they desperately try (and fail) to turn the public. Cf Trump.

Control of ideas is massively oversold by both proponents and opponents, who both have a vested interest in believing it works. The reality is that the public has beliefs which are more cultural than anything else, and so do the "influencers", and so they tend to push in the direction the public was already going. And the opponents find it easier to blame influence rather than a cultural rejection of their ideas.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#15

Post by PJDK »

monocle wrote: post #10

In China the government hires people to sway public opinion. In the US, special interests and those with money do it. Is it worse that the Chinese government does it to "keep the peace", while those in the US do it to get your money? Super PACs, political activists, pharmaceutical companies, Reddit power users, brigades and pay-for-votes services... not sure if there's any real difference.

An important part of the political theory behind pluralism is to do with managing certain realities beyond just individuals. You will have multiple power centres within societies (corporations, universities, trade unions, NGOs etc.). Allowing them a free voice has many benefits. Particularly it helps keep the peace, it makes power structures more obvious and it allows legitimate concerns to be surfaced more quickly and reliably.

Just because it's not the weakest member of society controlling things in either system doesn't make both systems the same.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#16

Post by JulianMorrison »

Chickenality wrote: post #11
monocle wrote: post #10

In China the government hires people to sway public opinion. In the US, special interests and those with money do it. Is it worse that the Chinese government does it to "keep the peace", while those in the US do it to get your money? Super PACs, political activists, pharmaceutical companies, Reddit power users, brigades and pay-for-votes services... not sure if there's any real difference.

One major difference is how concentrated the special interests are. In the case of the Chinese government, public opinion is being swayed by a single entity. In the US, a large number of interest groups are all competing to try to sway public opinion. In the latter case, I think it's harder (at least in principle) for any one group to have a large effect on its own.

Except, centralization of wealth means that the opinions of a relatively few people control the seeming surface diversity of "influencers" in the USA by holding the purse strings (when the proles resort to crowd funding they can break out of this to an extent, Bernie being an example).

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#17

Post by cryoshon »

aaron-lebo wrote: post #3

Pretty fascinating stuff. I'm not sure what Trump's arm of this kind of propaganda is, but Correct the Record was a very real thing, despite the bogeyman descriptions of it in some online communities. https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00578997 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record Interestingly, the original website is now gone, but it used to say essentially that it advocated for Clinton…

Not sure why you were downvoted, CTR is a perfect example of this phenomenon operating within the USA, albeit in a slightly different context than in China.

The US government likely has similar programs going on here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JTRIG

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#18

Post by cryoshon »

Yep. This is real in the US, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JTRIG & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_for_Strategic_Counterte... & https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Earnest_Voice. Sure, these are officially targeted at enemies of the state, outside the US.

But we have proof that they lie about these things preventatively as well as reactively.

I imagine that in China as well as here, their shills are skilled at disruption and redirection.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#19

Post by cryoshon »

nabla9 wrote: post #6
bbctol wrote: post #2

Title might want to be altered: this is a description of a specific research paper analyzing Chinese online propaganda campaigns, not as general an analysis as the title indicates. Interesting stuff!

RAND has study says the same about Russia. The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

Thanks for the excellent link, I've been looking for a documentary on Putin's propaganda regime that I saw a few years ago, but this paper is a much deeper look which will serve the same purpose.

Re: Authoritarians Distract Rather Than Debate

#20

Post by wu-ikkyu »

devoply wrote: post #9

> …find a massive government effort, where every year the 50c party writes approximately 448 million social media posts nationwide. About 52.7% of these posts appear on government sites. The remaining 212 million posts are inserted into the stream of approximately 80 billion total posts on commercial social media sites, all in real time. If these estimates are correct, a large proportion of government web site commen…

>But I doubt they can match that sort of scale with their economies.

Chatbots scale much easier than manual astroturfing.

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