191–200 of 333 posts
In my opinion this is actual problem in Poland nowadays, however: a. This article was published by a newspaper which has proven track of publishing fake polarizing news, b. Unfortunately - the so called democratic oposition has also proven track of similar behavior. One may check #SilniRazem (together we are strong) which is kind of meme on Polish Twitter. 3. It is likely that the intent of the original article was t…
This really is a critical juncture for the internet; the moment wherein the democratization of information has empowered those with the resources to overwhelm the signal with noise. I wish I saw a way out.
Neal Stephenson's latest book sorta deals with this. One way the characters in the book got around the huge signal to noise problem was by using editors who were paid to filter it out. Different people could afford different qualities of editors and that had effects on society. It's a pretty small part of the book, but it's very interesting.
He expressed the idea of editors being a two-way service. They not only curated your feeds, but also monitored the data you make available to others.
Wealthy people could afford human editors to look after their personal 'brand', and ensure the quality of their consumed media, whereas poorer people had to make do with AI editors run by the likes of Google, or Facebook.
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I can't say it surprises me. But I think by now every government is using such farms. I find it difficult to believe otherwise based on recent FCC issues ( https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/jsvine/net-neutrality-f... ). Yes, sadly, I am invoking everyone is doin' it.
If a party did that in a country where voters respond appropriately to this kind of thing, that political party would be wiped out for a generation. If a party manages to dupe people into thinking their populist cause is important enough to see past the use of troll factories for message control, then that I think says a lot about the health of a democracy. I can imagine this happening in Poland, Hungary or perhaps e…
They could go on TV saying "we are corrupt and we are stealing from you" and they would still win these elections just because they paid for the votes. That's how populism works.
Frankly I'm amazed they managed to lose the Senate and only won the Sejm (lower house - more important in Poland).
> I can imagine this happening in Poland, Hungary or perhaps even Italy, but not in that many places in the EU apart from those.
May I remind you Trump is the president of USA (and his lawyer is arguing he could murder someone on the street and would still be free to go) and UK voted for Brexit? Social networks and troll farms played a big role in both events.
This is how democracy works now... It's like in 20s-30s last century - radio was invented and democracy wasn't ready for it - and when crisis came the result was totalitarianisms.
Now democracy wasn't ready for internet and after crisis came the result is resurgence of populism.
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it's ridiculous how blatant it all is, to the point that even in modern media (e.g tv show Succession) pokes at all the cancer this stuff produces and its one of those things most people are like "yep its happening" but there is nothing being done to stop any of it. ive stopped using facebook/twitter ages ago. that stuff is the downfall of modern society
I think you're absolutely right. It's frightening that there are so many wrongs happening in society today yet nobody seems to be able to stop them from happening. I'm not sure what has gone wrong here but I suspect it all stems from deep-rooted corruption in our leaders and institutions.
> “For them it was just work and that’s it.” Is it? If someone's job is spewing cleverly provocative, disruptive, toxic, and intentionally negative messages all day ... does that edgy skill and behaviour not leak into their home or personal life? I understand, these workers need jobs and I'm sure some get quite proficient at trolling. But my gut says there will be personal side effects from reinforcing and working yo…
I agree with you but I guess humans are very good at compartmentalizing their brain. Honestly, these jobs are not that different from working for defense contractors. They know their products are used to cause harm but still most people working in the defense industry manage to stay detached from the consequences of their work.
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Climate change is an issue that people talk about a lot, and nuclear power is a carbon-neutral form of energy, so it might just be a relevant and popular argument around the circles you frequent. If I had to guess at any motivation other than a lot of people actually liking nuclear power, it would probably be that nuclear power is one of the few controversies where a reasonably intelligent person can easily grasp a s…
If a discussion is about halloween costumes and then another person asks a pointed question about [material/structure/use/etc...] and then devolves into nearly perfect corporate speak supporting [sponsored industry]. No big deal. But if this happens frequently on a wide range of topics, on a regular basis it gets to a point where a rational person has to question the validity of the information source. Edit: clarity
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If a party did that in a country where voters respond appropriately to this kind of thing, that political party would be wiped out for a generation. If a party manages to dupe people into thinking their populist cause is important enough to see past the use of troll factories for message control, then that I think says a lot about the health of a democracy. I can imagine this happening in Poland, Hungary or perhaps e…
I would guess that as of 2019 there is no political party of any size in the western world not using such services. If they have an annual revenue of $1,000,000, they're doing it. Many of them will be doing it through a PR firm to maintain deniability in the event of disclosure. But each and every party is doing it.
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I'm not sure when you're referencing, but Russian troll farms used Sanders to divide the left on social media websites.
This is news to me, are you able to cite any specific evidence ? (Not vague allegations or assertions of fact, but rather actual, specific, somewhat confirmable evidence.)
This has been confirmed with research by independent media analysts like Johnathan Albright.
There's a good summary here: https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/what-we-know-about-the-...
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In addition to the making-money thing, I think it's often a class-interest thing. As a recipient of the harms of paid disinformation, I'm perfectly happy to ban it all, and with stiff legal penalties. But if you're a billionaire (or work for one), then banning paid disinformation means you're giving up a tool of power, and taking power away from the people you regularly hobnob with.
As a billionaire your interests are a bigger target for well funded or well organised opponents as well. And you probably have a lot of other ways at your disposal to exert influence. So I don't see a net benefit of disinformation specifically for billionaires.