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Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

theguardian.com

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Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#281

Post by vijayr02 »

Mirioron wrote: post #249
ajuc wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In case of Poland the party increased social spending several times, paying people with 2 kids half the median salary every month and lowering retirement age. 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 ho…

I initially wrote a comment about how the idea of troll farms and misinformation campaigns is very old. Mark Antony and Octavian engaged in such campaigns against one another after Caesar's death. I was essentially thinking that we've dealt with them, just at a smaller scale. Somehow I missed the irony that Octavian literally ended the Roman Republic. I suppose the downfall started with Caesar though. I really do won…

History buff input here:

Arguably the downfall started with Sulla [0]:

> Sulla's military coup—ironically enabled by Marius' military reforms that bound the army's loyalty with the general rather than to the Republic—permanently destabilized the Roman power structure. Later leaders like Julius Caesar would follow his precedent in attaining political power through force.

A far cry from the traditional virtue embodied by Cincinnatus [1]:

> He came from his plow to assume complete control over the state but, upon achieving a swift victory, relinquished his power and its perquisites and returned to his farm. His success and immediate resignation of his near-absolute authority with the end of this crisis (traditionally dated to 458 BC) has often been cited as an example of outstanding leadership, service to the greater good, civic virtue, humility, and modesty.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulla

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucius_Quinctius_Cincinnatus

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#282

Post by stef25 »

tmp20191105 wrote: post #259
stef25 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FB does work with 3rd party fact checkers. We should be able to trust people from places like Reuters to remain fairly neutral.

3rd party fact checkers themselves are highly biased. If you think reuters is neutral, then you really don't understand the "news" business. The "news" business isn't in the business of news. It's in the influence business. The founder of reuters started off peddling radical revolutionary propaganda. Paul Julius Reuter worked at a book-publishing firm in Berlin and was involved in distributing radical pamphlets at th…

Reuters having started off spreading radical pamphlets is about as relevant as Hitler being involved in the development of Volkswagen.

Nobody in charge needs to (or even can) decide if something like globalism or communism is good or bad, just that no obvious lies are spread while discussing it.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#283

Post by jmkni »

dpc_pw wrote: post #31

The solution is not regulate it. The solution is to stop pretending like social media have anything to do with reality.

For a lot of people, what they see on Social Media is reality.

A good example is this recent thread from Reddit for a screenshot from Facebook about a guy who was arrested and named in the media. The screenshot claims the poster is with the guy and that he was 'Released Without Charge!' - https://old.reddit.com/r/ireland/comments/dm4lda/came_across...

Lots of anger in the comments about the media, lots of sympathy for the 'poor' guy, lots of comments saying he should get a lawyer, sue the newspapers etc.

The problem is the screenshot was bullshit. He wasn't released without charge at all, he has since been charged and is looking at 10+ years in jail, but that one screenshot from Facebook was all it took for people to be convinced, and not just in cyber-space, but in the real world.

I'm from the same part of the world, and remember going into work the following day to find people talking about the 'poor guy', and expressing anger about how he had been treated, etc, because of that one screenshot doing the rounds.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#284

Post by antepodius »

RobertRoberts wrote: post #251
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would a paid troll degenerate to irrationally? If anyone is going to have a script and long list of references to draw from, wouldn’t it be the paid shill? Provided by their employer? It seems more likely to me that most people are just an emotional wreck and don’t perform well in debate.

The leader of a mob spouts irrational things, not logic or sound reasoning. The goal is to inspire outrage and offence not present sound solutions. Stir up strife and ignite passion in the masses. This is why they use irrationality as a weapon.

Seems like a poor strategy to me. You can do that sort of thing to rile up the choir, but you have to actually preach to the non-believers.

An [x] shill making poor arguments the those on the fence is going to do less good for their employers than a shill making the strongest possible case for [x].

If anything, you'd assume the 'irrational' nuclear shills are actually being paid by natural gas and renewables interests, and vice-versa, to make the other side seem obnoxious and crazy.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#285

Post by qnsi »

12xo wrote: post #63
nkozyra wrote: post #43

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.

The real issue here is that FB allows post boosting via payment. The public will never be able to decipher the difference and so with FB and other social media companies, there is no way for the avg user to tell the difference between an ad and organic content. Since FB makes billions from the practice of boosting posts, they are never going to back away from the practice. Its no wonder they dont want to ban politica…

Is it really hard for people to spot promoted text?

I heard in Google search, most of the people click ads because they dont know these are ads but this is hard to believe for me

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#286

Post by profstasiak »

EasyTiger_ wrote: post #173
whamlastxmas wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It was EXTREMELY pro-Sanders for a very long time. The entirety of reddit was extremely pro-Sanders. I have to believe reddit owners/admins were complicit in this shift because it was so overwhelming and even today, dissent is extremely difficult. The most notable pro-Sanders sub outside his boring official campaign one(chapotraphouse) is quarantined.

Oh they knew exactly what was going in. Reddit suddenly became militantly pro-establishment and a much nastier place overall. I think the massive amount of Bernie enthusiasm scared some people, Bernie stuff was constantly hitting the front page.

Tbh I was brownsing Reddit few weeks ago and it looks like it’s full of communist jokes and Bernie Sanders

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#287

Post by madaxe_again »

raxxorrax wrote: post #275
Mirioron wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I initially wrote a comment about how the idea of troll farms and misinformation campaigns is very old. Mark Antony and Octavian engaged in such campaigns against one another after Caesar's death. I was essentially thinking that we've dealt with them, just at a smaller scale. Somehow I missed the irony that Octavian literally ended the Roman Republic. I suppose the downfall started with Caesar though. I really do won…

Dismissing opinions because they are allegedly victims of trolls is a far greater problem in my perspective.

I visited an extraordinarily polluted steelworks city a few years ago. Even on a clear day, the air was orange, and as you entered the city you noticed the colour wash out of everything slightly, and the horizon over the estuary blurred out to a drab orange smear.

I mention this, as when I mentioned it to the locals, none of them understood what I was talking about.

You see, when your entire reality glows orange, that becomes normal to you. You cease to notice that everything is orange. You even vehemently disagree with anyone who’s just arrived and asks “why is everything around here orange?”.

This is how propaganda works. Degree by degree everything turns orange, and unless you get out of it once in a while, you never notice.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#288

Post by madaxe_again »

ajuc wrote: post #276
sah2ed wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Interesting. Can you suggest additional reading on this? Thanks!

> Recognising the importance of radio in disseminating the Nazi message, Goebbels approved a scheme whereby millions of cheap radio sets (the Volksempfänger) were subsidised by the government. In the "Radio as the Eighth Great Power"[114] speech, Goebbels proclaimed: > It would not have been possible for us to take power or to use it in the ways we have without the radio....It is no exaggeration to say that the Germa…

Newspapers were dynamite in their time. Before moveable type, printing anything was expensive and time consuming. It was typically done only by governments and the very wealthy. They controlled the message.

Then, along comes the ability to move type, and re-use your castings. Luther prises the faultlines in religion wide open with handbills. The English and the French end up having revolutions, promulgated by samizdat handbills disseminated throughout society. The abolitionist movement promote their cause through the same, and American dissenters publish their ideas to a malleable audience with cheap ease, resulting in another revolution.

Arguably, the last gasp of newspapers as the primary medium of movement was the First World War - and then radio took the helm, then television, and now, the internet.

It’s not so much that we’re unready for these media so much as we never will be. We receive subjective realities willingly - it’s how we form social bonds. All that changes is the accessibility of broadcast through the medium, and radio and tv were machines for centralised messaging, whereas the printing press and internet have allowed dissenting voices to once more gain a foothold in the minds of many.

If we follow pattern, we are in for a rough ride, but perhaps a better state of affairs at the end of it.

Re: Undercover reporter reveals life in a Polish troll farm

#290

Post by zaarn »

philwelch wrote: post #216
olau wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then wake up. We didn't solve it with nuclear tech, and we won't. It is too expensive because it is so complicated and not very popular to boot. It won't happen. And it prevents you (here I'm not talking about you personally) from recognizing the incredible strides PV and wind turbines have made in the past decades. The IV generation plants people keep talking about didn't happen in time. With the current pace,…

If nuclear isn't happening in time, neither are renewables. Countries like Germany that are transitioning away from nuclear and towards renewables have actually increased their fossil fuel consumption in recent years because renewables just aren't keeping up. Not to mention that many of the delays and drawbacks of nuclear power are precisely due to the antinuclear movement itself, which imposes barriers and regulatio…

Part of the reason why Germany is burning more fossil fuels is that the coal lobby paid for that. The coal industry got a shitload of permits to build coal plants a while ago, in some cases coal plants that are being shut down are being turn down and replaced with a new coal plant that the operator got a permit for.

Meanwhile the renewables are being choked by increasing regulatory burdens (which the coal lobby lobbied for) and fake news (pushed by the coal lobby) to prevent even those who pass the burden from building anything. In Bavaria the area where wind turbines can still be built is less than a percent of the total area of the state, the coal lobby meanwhile is building a new coal plant (they got a permit to build one and politics is unwilling to revoke it).

Renewables could have easily replaced a large part of nuclear if not for the coal lobby.

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