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People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

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Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#91

Post by jordigh »

bonestamp2 wrote: post #64
saalweachter wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I occasionally think about the end of The Man in the High Castle, when the characters realize they are living in a fictional alternate history.

!!! SPOILER ALERT ABOVE !!! Hopefully you saw this before reading the above comment.

Spoiler alerts are a 20th century invention. Everyone has been taught to get angry about spoilers, but the very word "spoiler" itself is an internet invention coined in Usenet. The idea of society at large working hard to keep a fictional story secret is a marketing ploy invented by Alfred Hitchcock to sell more movie tickets to his mystery films. It used to be common to know everything about a story before you even experienced it, and there is evidence that despite what people say, they actually enjoy stories even more if they know beforehand how the story ends.

http://www.wired.com/2011/08/spoilers-dont-spoil-anything/

If a story isn't worth reading if you already know the ending, it's not worth reading without knowing the ending either. Good stories cannot be spoiled. Good stories are not merely puzzles to be savoured for a single punchline.

We also enjoy stories we already know well. It's why James Bond movies keep getting churned out despite all following the exact same formula or why Shakespeare plays are still in production centuries after they were written. Only bad stories are ruined by knowing the story.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#92

Post by schnevets »

Facebook won the social media war by cultivating a smaller, more selective group of users (college students). It meant sharing had some more definitive meaning, and provided some added safety for marketplace and message board functions. It was their secret weapon against the MySpaces and CraigsLists, and yet they completely abandoned it.

If they really wanted to further their company mission, their Manhattan Project should have been a plan to keep the internet authentic and "owned" by humans. I no longer think this will be their downfall (it has been a problem in the system since at least 2012), but I cannot think of a more stark example of a company trashing an original philosophy so wholeheartedly.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#93

Post by zo1 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #26
sjwright wrote: post #22

It doesn’t matter how autonomous and free thinking you are or any other individual is— social media is transforming us into a collective. Like ants excreting pheromones, our actions in aggregate are more powerful than any individual, the result being whatever results from this untested cocktail of biology, language and global connection. It’s unprecedented and borderline unpredictable. Nobody is in a position to dire…

How is this worse than tightly controlled mass media? I think people like to look back on this non-existent golden era of News where it was fair and balanced and just reported the truth. That era never existed. At least now you have options. I hate social media as much as anyone, but it's not bringing an end to the world. It's easy to manipulate people of Facebook. But it's way easier on Fox News or CNN.

You have options but you are being manipulated in subtle ways, whether nefariously or not. And that "manipulation" is a whole lot more hidden due to simply being "algorithms". On some level it is getting a free-pass compared to traditional media where you can clearly see the bias.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#94

Post by ydb »

This is nothing new. Influencing elections is a part of having elections -- this liberal idea that "bots" are somehow poisoning the electoral process is beyond out of touch.

The TV you watch, whether it's CNN or FOX or MSNBC or CNBC has more of an outsize effect on how you develop your personal beliefs than any of this nonsense. The biggest thing to come out of America's Second Red Scare is that people are more likely to listen to others when they spout propaganda that they already believe.

To think it's the FSB or GRU is somehow responsible for a defect in the design of elections in a democratic republic is laughable. If anything, the "Russians" are doing what Siberia and their rough country taught them: make the best of a bad situation.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#95

Post by jonfw »

elliekelly wrote: post #76
digi59404 wrote: post #75

Did anyone stop and consider these aren’t fake people but people who value anonymity? I have 20 friends who use such tools and tech to hide their identities. Yes they lean right, slightly but they do. They all do this to avoid being found by employers and other. One of my friends is a prominent person in a legal field, another one is a member of a three letter group. Other than my real name - My Facebook profile has…

Surely that scenario is the exception and not the rule. But also, if you have the Facebook app on your phone, or associated with your phone number or email, you’re not anonymous. It’s been an issue for sex workers in the past who try to conceal their identity on social media but Facebook still manages to suggest their “Johns” as friends.

People are seeking anonymity from their peers and their employers, not neccesarily from facebook itself. I haven't heard of facebook Doxxing people with any sort of regularity.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#96

Post by btilly »

michaelbuckbee wrote: post #53
catalogia wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is anybody old enough to remember if people once had analogous reactions to software like photoshop?

I am (mid-forties) and started using Photoshop around version 2. People definitely worried about the integrity of photographic evidence. I think what's different now is the combination of much more powerful cheaper tools (those fake GAN generated faces are likely taken from one of the sites making them for free) vs Photoshop at the time was thousands of inflation-adjusted dollars. This is coupled with a much more eff…

What is even crazier about the Dan Rather story is that the story about how George W. Bush avoided Vietnam due to political manipulation and bribes was actually TRUE.

Before it was ever reported in the USA it was reported in the UK by The Guardian among others. Dan Rather's team started their investigation with sources in hand which already constituted very strong evidence.

Given that the story was true and Dan Rather's team was starting with solid evidence of it, Bush's team was at a disadvantage in discrediting the story. Their solution was to slip a clearly faked smoking gun that was so good that Rather would have to lead with it. After Rather lead with it, Bush's team was able to discredit Rather and get him fired. The result was that the story became toxic and nobody in the USA was willing to report the story.

The result is rather amazing. By faking evidence for what really did happen, Bush's team was able to make everyone believe that it didn't happen! And was able to keep the story out of the US media!

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#97

Post by fzeroracer »

digi59404 wrote: post #75

Did anyone stop and consider these aren’t fake people but people who value anonymity? I have 20 friends who use such tools and tech to hide their identities. Yes they lean right, slightly but they do. They all do this to avoid being found by employers and other. One of my friends is a prominent person in a legal field, another one is a member of a three letter group. Other than my real name - My Facebook profile has…

If it walks like a duck and quacks exactly like 10,000 other ducks, then it's probably a duck.

This article isn't about accounts being used semi-anonymously. It's about accounts which are all spreading the exact same thing down to the letter and propagating the exact same articles.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#98

Post by ydb »

dilyevsky wrote: post #21
tabtab wrote: post #3

Fake people reading and writing fake news on fake websites? If this keeps up, we'll end up with a fake President. Don't give me negative points, for this is a fake reply.

The world has gone full Philip K Dick

Except without the fun of a full-blown stimulant psychosis.

Everyone is going crazy seeing pink ghosts and visiting ancient Rome entirely sober.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#99

Post by pera »

digi59404 wrote: post #75

Did anyone stop and consider these aren’t fake people but people who value anonymity? I have 20 friends who use such tools and tech to hide their identities. Yes they lean right, slightly but they do. They all do this to avoid being found by employers and other. One of my friends is a prominent person in a legal field, another one is a member of a three letter group. Other than my real name - My Facebook profile has…

> I have 20 friends who use such tools

Wait, do you have 20 friends that ran StyleGAN2 for a couple of hours to generate human faces? Can't they just avoid uploading a profile picture?

When I used Facebook my avatar was an anime and my name was an obvious joke. I didn't need to simulate a natural person identity.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#100

Post by lightedman »

jordigh wrote: post #91
bonestamp2 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

!!! SPOILER ALERT ABOVE !!! Hopefully you saw this before reading the above comment.

Spoiler alerts are a 20th century invention. Everyone has been taught to get angry about spoilers, but the very word "spoiler" itself is an internet invention coined in Usenet. The idea of society at large working hard to keep a fictional story secret is a marketing ploy invented by Alfred Hitchcock to sell more movie tickets to his mystery films. It used to be common to know everything about a story before you even…

" but the very word "spoiler" is an internet invention coined in Usenet,"

Spoiler as a word was around in avionics well before UseNet even existed.

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