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Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

nytimes.com

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Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#91

Post by antattack »

shrubble wrote: post #73

Pot, kettle, etc. 'The new disclosure revealed that the Post and the Journal each received more than $100,000 per month to run print versions of Chinese propaganda articles. The Times received $50,000 in 2018 to place the propaganda on its website, presumably a small fraction of the revenue it made selling print space to China Daily. The new disclosures also showed that China Daily paid hundreds of thousands of dolla…

Article does not claim that it did not exist, only that they are loosing the monopoly status :)

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#92

Post by loonster »

hdjjhhvvhga wrote: post #31
bad_username wrote: post #24

I have a hard time to take seriously any disinformation talk from the political and media establishment after the lab leak theory twist, where it had been shameful disinformation, until it suddenly wasn't. I have to be doubting publications even from reputable sources, after "The Lancet" fiasco, where the organizer of the open letter that condemned the lab leak theory was discovered to have ties with the lab in quest…

It's a hard one. Trump was promoting it when there was not enough evidence and was acting as it it was obvious. As a scientist you need to be much more careful and precise in what you say. As far as I can tell, what we have now are some very strong cues, but still no definitive proof (that might be impossible to have without the cooperation of the Chinese government).

I would expect the president of the united states to have much more information available to him than the rest of the country.

IIRC, Trump didn't start blaming China until China started blaming the USA for the spread during the military games that happened during the fall.

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#93

Post by happy_path »

Disinformation/narratives' control has always been present:

There are some examples I can think of:

  - Manifest Destiny.
  - Spanish American 1989 war because (Maine sinking).
  - The gulf of Tokin incident.
  - The Nayirah testimony.
  - Irak's WMD.
I think the issue here is that the some western governments are failing to control information, and their citizens are now being preyed by other governments' disinformation campaigns (Russia, China).

Does this worries me? Yes, of course. The level of fracture in some societies (USA, UK, for example) is increasing. How could we enact some defenses against them? Don't know.

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#94

Post by Hokusai »

> In May, several French and German social media influencers received a strange proposal. A London-based public relations agency wanted to pay them to promote messages on behalf of a client. A polished three-page document detailed what to say and on which platforms to say it. But it asked the influencers to push not beauty products or vacation packages, as is typical, but falsehoods tarring Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 vaccine.

If any foreign power wants to destabilize a country this is a good way to go. Each time that there it's any stressful event create opposite sides and make them fight.

Of course, there is a degree of 'fallout' where the influence can reach the attacking country. So, the destabilization creates ripples around the world. And all because 'influencers' seem to operate outside any industry self-regulation or state rules. And many people is unprepared to fight against messages send by, otherwise, producers of quite innocuous content.

And the comments, and opinions do not need to make sense, just need to create enough noise so the general population does not know who to trust anymore. Want country inn that state will be debilitated and open for further foreign interference.

I think they many people is learning to see the noise, to see the people screaming nobody can be trusted, but it will take time until we're have good social mechanisms to fight misinformation.

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#95

Post by bamboo2 »

dd36 wrote: post #68
mrspeaker wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People are very good at justifying what they are doing if their livelihood is at stake. I know many programmers - nice people - working as the digital equivalent of seal-clubbers... but there's good money to be made clubbing seals, and if they don't do it somebody else will, and the seals have a choice not be clubbed, and they need the experience, and they only indirectly club the seals, and remember that time when t…

I have friends that do this selling crappy financial products while wearing a suit IRL. It’s really hard to look the other way.

Bitcoins?

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#98

Post by rbanffy »

giantg2 wrote: post #69
rbanffy wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As a useful rule of thumb, the New York Times prints retractions. And, yet, a lot of the US public opinion is shaped by Fox News...

Do other tv/cable news networks print retractions? I can't remember any, but maybe they have a specific webpage you have to go to in order to see it? I doubt any of the non-news programs on those networks do, and those comprise the majority of the programming. So maybe it's just hard to find for the little bit of actual news.

> I doubt any of the non-news programs on those networks do

My impression is they only have opinion programs and no news reporting whatsoever.

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#99

Post by f38zf5vdt »

happy_path wrote: post #93

Disinformation/narratives' control has always been present: There are some examples I can think of: - Manifest Destiny. - Spanish American 1989 war because (Maine sinking). - The gulf of Tokin incident. - The Nayirah testimony. - Irak's WMD. I think the issue here is that the some western governments are failing to control information, and their citizens are now being preyed by other governments' disinformation campa…

Scope social media usage to residents using group attribution technologies that are government verified. You can demonstrate membership in a group without revealing your individual identity. Then have who the user is from displayed to all other users, or limit access based on that. Japan does this with Line, to get access to Japanese chat rooms you need a Japan telephone number, which usually requires a Japanese ID somewhere down the line. China is similar, but much more extreme, in that you need a Chinese phone number to use virtually any online service.

Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming

#100

Post by wussboy »

Covzire wrote: post #77
afpx wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The NYT reporting seems pretty reliable to me. Could you give a few notable examples at least to support that claim?

One way outlets like the NYT slant their credibility into the ground is by always giving Democrats the benefit of any doubt, and never giving it to anyone else. Everything that could be good for Democrats is amplified to 11, everything that could be a bad look for everyone else is amplified to 11 in the other direction. They appear to be a lot more reliable than they actually are.

Your comment is neither an example nor evidence.
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