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Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

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Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#41

Post by jachee »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #35
jachee wrote: 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-r…

Here in Pittsburgh, it was literally the latter.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#42

Post by downerending »

p1necone wrote: post #16
jachee wrote: 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…

The right uses 'Antifa' as a catch all term for anyone on the left doing anything they don't like. It's a meaningless label, but not enough people get that.

There are definitely people who proudly identify as "Antifa". And a pretty good number of them are what one might generically describe as agitators (at least).

If nothing else, they seem to be the douchebags defacing war memorials.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#43

Post by bsanr2 »

mysticpipuo wrote: post #20
EVdotIO wrote: 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]

Capital-A Antifa does not exist. It's like saying, "The Geeks are destroying Western culture"; there are people who identify with a broad philosophy and will adopt a label as a signal of that identity, but there is no organization pulling strings, and certainly no one way to be a geek or antifa.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#44

Post by HPsquared »

p1necone wrote: post #16
jachee wrote: 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…

The right uses 'Antifa' as a catch all term for anyone on the left doing anything they don't like. It's a meaningless label, but not enough people get that.

I guess it's the mirror image of the word "fascist" being sometimes used as a catch-all term.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#45

Post by AnimalMuppet »

brenden2 wrote: post #27
jachee wrote: 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…

Unfortunately the mainstream has portrayed "antifa" as some kind of covert organization acting inappropriately. They fail to point out that antifa is literally short for anti-fascist. In other words, unless you're pro-fascism, you're anti-fascist by default. It's akin to calling yourself a liberal or conservative.

No. Antifa is more than just anti-fascist, and not everyone who is anti-fascist is Antifa. There are plenty of people who are not pro-fascist, but also are not pro-brawling-with-the-Proud-Boys-in-the-streets.

In fact, the Proud Boys could use the same logic. Are you ashamed of America's heritage? No? Then you're one of the Proud Boys. The logic in either case is completely false. In fact, this is one of the standard fallacies, but I can't remember the name of it.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#46

Post by JMTQp8lwXL »

racnid wrote: post #3

Stop treating Twitter as news. It's trash, bots, and trashy bots all the way down.

With the recent protests it's been difficult to find local news coverage. But I found tweets, I found livestreams, but I couldn't find any reporters covering some of the most impactful demonstrations in my city in decades. In that moment, Twitter was critical.

There is a lot of bots and trash, but it has it moments where it is a wonderful tool. This is one of them.

Show me a believable bot that's going to fake a livestream of what's actually happening at the scene. There's far too much contextual information to fake it. I could identify the streets protestors walked down, the landmarks, the actions taken, the way the phone was temporarily thrown on the ground after a confrontation. Far too much nuance to fake all of that.

Faking a <500px low quality everything-is-burning but it's actually street lights picture isn't particularly groundbreaking when it comes to doctored images.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#47

Post by senectus1 »

would not be at all surprised if the FBI has evidence that these riots are often escalated by foreign operatives. or at the very least escalated by locals that have been groomed and stoked by foreign powers.

The US imploding is right up Russia's and China's street. Though I suspect that China would prefer that the Us doesn't dissolve economically, they need them to keep buying shit from them.

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#48

Post by [deleted] »

brenden2 wrote: post #27
jachee wrote: 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…

Unfortunately the mainstream has portrayed "antifa" as some kind of covert organization acting inappropriately. They fail to point out that antifa is literally short for anti-fascist. In other words, unless you're pro-fascism, you're anti-fascist by default. It's akin to calling yourself a liberal or conservative.

[deleted]

Re: Protests become fertile ground for online disinformation

#49

Post by downerending »

Weird--I lurk a lot in the unseemly corners of the Internet, and I can't recall ever having seen a piece of disinformation that wasn't obviously so.

I wonder if this isn't blown a bit out of proportion. There's a lot of difference between a "war of the worlds" piece that a lot of people might actually believe, and a "trump is a literal nazi" piece that everyone knows is hyperbole.

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