311–320 of 333 posts
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At this point, it would be malpractice to not use them given their effectiveness. That doesn't mean we can't point out the origins and continued presence from bad actors.
It's malpractice to use effective things without regard for ethics.
Ethics don't matter in that case.
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> At the same time they proven not to be corruptible by sorting out the tax system to the effect of increasing the budget almost by half There is currently huge affair in Ministry of Finances because they were covering tax frauds and even doing them themselves :) https://www.money.pl/podatki/afera-w-resorcie-finansow-szefa... There was also a corruption scandal with KNF chief Chrzanowski nominated by PIS. https://www…
I should've written "mostly" not corruptible. Still the level of corruption discovered pales in comparison with the previous guys. As for the previous guys bringing up microreporting.... please, that is such a worn out excuse. They were in power for 8 years and they actually managed to start serious work on that particular solution half a year before they left office, becuase they knew they absolutely have to. How is…
Meanwhile Szyszko "forgot" to include land and a house in Mazury lake resort worth hundreds of thousands of PLN and nothing :)
> They were in power for 8 years and they actually managed to start serious work on that particular solution half a year before they left office, becuase they knew they absolutely have to.
That's one interpretation. Another is - when you don't have single majority and have to coordinate with your coallition partners stuff takes more time. When you actually ask people and do all the proper processes - legislation takes time.
On the other hand you can do it like PIS does - change law in 1 night without any review, and then it turns out it contains logical errors, duplicated articles, and have to be fixed 9 times (like the law about KRS was :) ).
I much prefer slow and steady to fast and chaotic. Law is in may respects like code, and PIS is doing spaghetti code.
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Who said anything about hard science? Just because something is well-understood by a group of people doesn't mean it has to have some sort of scientific basis to have any validity.
Well at that point, who gives a shit? It offers no predictive capability like real models. Might as well talk about how it’s well understood by the Scientology community that it’s indicative of a required audit.
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Do you believe only government pays trolls to comment online? And no industry does this?
You’re asking me to prove a negative. That’s not how it works. You’re the one trying to advance a theory. My counter argument here is simple: 1. You have outlined a pattern of behavior that in your opinion indicates that someone is a paid shill. 2. However you yourself have engaged in the exact pattern of behavior you describe. 3. Therefore we are left with two options: A: Your theory is correct, and you are a paid s…
"I don't think it's just government, but also likely industries as well. I've seen what could only be trolling for support of multiple industries."
Since this was my intent to state in the first place, do you disagree with this because you think it's impossible? Or because you think it's unlikely? Or some other reason?
The original post demonstrated proof that governments pay trolls, do you believe the only customers for these businesses are governments?
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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…
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Google has largely solved the spam problem for end users. What I can't figure out is why platforms like Facebook and Twitter couldn't mark these sort of posts as, essentially, spam, by the same sort of rules and heuristics as email spam. Why can't they look at the metadata of verified troll-farm-generated clickbait/junk/spam/fake news, and make their own filters, and demote that content? Simple. Because they're makin…
This is 100% correct. FB and TWTR are publicly traded companies; their executives and their board have convinced themselves in an extremely cowardly fashion that their only duty is to the shareholders. They absolutely know that the second they take this stuff seriously, they have to report both how bad it was/is, and how much traffic/revenue to their product was fraudulent at best. It’s so gross.
BTW, I agree with you that it is gross but thems the rules. So if we extend this logic we need to convince the corporation that it is not in there financial interest to continue with the status-quo.
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I would argue the foreign govt angle also is not new. The US at least has interfered with foreign elections before the internet era.
Sure but just because the US are hypocrites on the issue doesn't mean we should tolerate it.
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You’re asking me to prove a negative. That’s not how it works. You’re the one trying to advance a theory. My counter argument here is simple: 1. You have outlined a pattern of behavior that in your opinion indicates that someone is a paid shill. 2. However you yourself have engaged in the exact pattern of behavior you describe. 3. Therefore we are left with two options: A: Your theory is correct, and you are a paid s…
I will restate my original post, which I agree with you could have been more ideally written: "I don't think it's just government, but also likely industries as well. I've seen what could only be trolling for support of multiple industries." Since this was my intent to state in the first place, do you disagree with this because you think it's impossible? Or because you think it's unlikely? Or some other reason? The o…
What this article fails to mention: there was recently a case discovered where one of the clients of these troll farms was... Ministry of Justice. They used to slander judges who were not in the political line of thought of the previous / current leading party. The knowledge of this was as high up as Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the man who appears to be driving the whole country from the back seat. One of many, many articles…
'company’s rightwing accounts would then oppose the leftwing accounts, generating conflict and traffic' reads like something straight from Douglas Adams works.
Article also fails to mention a real political troll farm discovered some time earlier https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=http://... ran by current parliament member (representing failed party, PO, the one whose members recently voted pro censorship in EU) inside a Town Hall and utilized city employees on the clock.
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Billionaires have plenty of ways to fight with other billionaires. Disinformation gives them an advantage over the very large number of non-billionaires.
Billionaires also have plenty of ways to influence large numbers of non-billionaires. They can own media empires and think tanks, fund/lobby politicians and political movements with armies of volunteers, or become media personalities themselves. I would be interested in an analysis of who funds those troll campaigns. I'd wager billionaires rank very far below governments, political parties and corporations.
[1] https://www.vox.com/2014/4/18/5624310/martin-gilens-testing-...