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Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

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Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#31
post #15

EDIT: removed my comment because it turns out I was very wrong apparently.. sorry

Well, that's because a number of the protestors said exactly that all over social media. I don't see how that would be misinformation.

Here's but one example:

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1266286100743520257

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#32
post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't having a loose association of slightly-organized people who vehemently oppose fascism be declared as a "terrorist organization" already starting down the authoritarian path?

They don't oppose fascism. Antifa is literally fascism and differs only in its mandate of which speech is allowed and which is not. Indeed the mechanism which you see in all totalitarian movement, from Nazis to ISIS. It's completely at odds with democracy and free speech.

The mission statements of every Antifa group of which I'm aware start with "Protect peaceful protests from violent counter-protestors."

Where do you get your information from?

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#33
As someone who has used the public internet since the late 80s I have turned away from it almost entirely in the past few years. Its content is similar to those free rags like SFWeekly you can pick up from a dispenser on the streets. It's largely poor quality content supported by largely poor quality, irrelevant advertising. If you want to get riled up and find a rub-n-tug to calm you down, you don't even have to leave your home anymore.

The internet is in need of a reboot.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#35
post #11

I'm seeing false accusations of Antifa starting violence all over the place. It's the right-wing's boogieman-du-jours, and likely false-flag representation at best. Edit: Downvoters– tell me why you're downvoting this? Why would Antifa purposefully take actions that would deliberately cause an armed police response to otherwise-peaceful protests? Edit 2 since I can no longer post responses: Clearly the misinformation…

It all depends on where the violence is directed.

People are protesting police killing a black civilian. Now, if Antifa were to show up, who would they attack, the protesters or the police? The police. If the alt-right showed up, who would they attack? The protesters. Well, who's getting attacked? Not the protesters. So that fits with it being Antifa rather than the alt-right...

... unless it's a false flag, or alt-right accelerationists. In that case, it could be either.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#36
post #2

This could be very dangerous. If miss information leads to people distrusting the US government based on lies. But worse this could be a bad case of the boy crying wolf. Of the government does ever start taking these crazy authoritarian measures who will trust the information reporting it?

> If miss information leads to people distrusting the US government based on lies

You do not need lies to distrust the US government. They do a fine job by themselves (and have been doing so for decades).

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#37
post #9

It seems like there is some serious disinformation/psych ops working overtime across the internet right now; the tone is weirdly hostile. I would hope people would question the motivation of obviously divisive rhetoric, but it's clear that is a resounding no. As they say, people always buy with their emotions. I'm afraid the days of an open internet are quickly closing.

[flagged]

Isn’t there some far-right group called boogaloo too? And I thought I read something about the proud boys being involved?

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#38
China had an extensive system to delete disinformation. Every IM, UGC website or app are required by law to provide a report button and ICPs are required to response to user complaints immediately. There's also national wide hotline 12377 or website 12377.gov.cn to submit all categories of information you want to disappear. Any bad content esp. those against-govn't ones contained pretty quickly, which means not only the existing ones, but also prevention of future uploads or posts would be blocked. And the original uploader would be backtraced by "cyberpolice", and jailed if found.

I imagine if any technical measures taken to combat disinformation, it would be more or less like what China did here.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#39
post #9

It seems like there is some serious disinformation/psych ops working overtime across the internet right now; the tone is weirdly hostile. I would hope people would question the motivation of obviously divisive rhetoric, but it's clear that is a resounding no. As they say, people always buy with their emotions. I'm afraid the days of an open internet are quickly closing.

I agree. We are seeing the weaponization of the internet like nothing before. It's becoming more dangerous than nuclear weapons at this point. When people can't come to a consensus on basic reality and are primed to respond with hate and violence when their reality is challenged.

The world is moving quickly into a darker future.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#40
The level of disinformation I'm seeing around this is like nothing I've ever seen before. The thing is: many of these protests have dozens of people livestreaming the entire thing. You can see what is happening in real time, and it makes a lot of the disinformation extremely obvious.

I think a lot of the disinformation is just a function of how twitter (and to a lesser extent facebook) encourage misunderstanding/rage. For instance: there was a report that the majority of arrests after a Minneapolis protest were from out of state. This of course went completely viral, and was also completely false.

But the retraction of course did not go viral (since it will not create as much rage), and people are still repeating this misinformation.

Twitter especially is such a sad thing, and I hope at one point we can look back at the it the way that we look back at drug epidemics. It encourages people to misunderstand one another and get angry, not to seek a greater shared understanding.

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