What a strange and wonderful world we live in where you can get paid for trolling... Back in my day trolls worked for free!
Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming
121–130 of 311 posts
Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming
#122Pot, 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…
> Pot, kettle, etc.
Most defense and intelligence agencies have been, for the past two decades, calling the internet the most important conflict space of the 21st century. Why no one took them seriously is beyond me.
What this didn’t touch on was the availability of likes/interactions for money. This seems to be the much more pernicious attack vector, because you don’t need to write fake content and risk exposure to any serious extent. There are already plenty of people saying antivax (or insert your favorite conspiracy theory) things, and it’s much easier to just hand them a megaphone instead of creating your own content. Any possible message you would want to spread as a state actor is almost certainly out there, and it’s better to find natural occurrences of it and simply amplify those voices.
Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming
#123Earlier quoted context omitted.
> People would be less susceptible to disinformation if they could actually trust mainstream sources like the NYT. What is the relationship between more trust in a mainstream source and susceptibility to disinformation you are implying here? For example, IIRC Rush Limbaugh's audience gave him a lot of credibility and was less informed because of that.
If you want to learn about news about your country read papers of other countries about you. Though you still need some critical thinking to filter out BS. For example Russian Today is often a great source for all non-russian news. But its a propaganda tube for russian news.
I read a few sources of biased news, deliberately to see the different viewpoints, omissions and outright lies. RT is pretty bad for making unsubstantiated claims or strong insinuations that are obviously refuted by facts presented by other news sources. They spread disinformation about the US, too, not just Russia.
Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
You should read more. Everything fallingknife said is backed up by statements from insiders. As one wrote: > Stories are chosen and told in a way to satisfy the narrowest of audiences, rather than to allow a curious public to read about the world and then draw their own conclusions. ... > But the truth is that intellectual curiosity—let alone risk-taking—is now a liability at The Times. Why edit something challenging…
Famously biased person claims bias of other people, yawn.
Bias is not in-and-of-itself a bad thing. The B-Word feels like a rhetorical trick for simply dismissing someone with a strong stance.
Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming
#125This requires being the truth police. Everything should be allowed to be printed, even for a price. Everything is potentially incorrect or not truth. Everything is propaganda or motivated to be printed for some purpose and benefit of someone. The solution is to teach people to be independent thinkers, not invoke the thought police.
In our fascist mixed economy it is every gang against every other gang. I can't blame the gangs in the society we have built.
Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming
#126Ironic that this is from the New York Times, which has (in)famously had several years of poor or biased reporting.
In 2005 I was in a college dorm that provided the NYT in a common area. I picked up one and the first article I read was a column about Hurricane Katrina. The author interviewed a history professor who bewailed the failings of the president and the United States and how this was "worse than Antitem". In other words the esteemed Grey Lady interviewed an "expert" whose expertise has nothing to do with meteorology or di…
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Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
I'm not sure since I get most of my news online. I thought they had like 2 hours per day that were non-opinion news.
The HN crowd is not the typical Fox News audience.
Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
What is the said propaganda? The article does not articulate but I do remember one of which came up in an earlier discussion being a tourist promotion.
A tactic used in some almost autocratic countries is to pay for lots of ads in the press, ensuring that the press stays friendly to the payer. It's legal, it passes first scrutiny, and it's effective. NYT wouldn't want to lose a big client, so they will be thinking twice before publishing a damaging article. I don't think 100k a month can break NYT journalism integrity (their revenue is 1.7 billions), but not because…
That's the thing with CNN and Fox, they don't even try to hide it. They know their money makers are their opinion shows that do nothing but grind axes.
Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
Famously biased person claims bias of other people, yawn.
Bias is not in-and-of-itself a bad thing. The B-Word feels like a rhetorical trick for simply dismissing someone with a strong stance.
It's just confirmation bias, the desire to avoid information that conflicts with their worldview. Comments like hobs' contribute nothing to the conversation except partisan dismissal of a differing viewpoint.
What's ironic is that this attitude was described in the quote hobs responded to:
> If a person’s ideology is in keeping with the new orthodoxy, they and their work remain unscrutinized. Everyone else lives in fear of the digital thunderdome.
Re: Disinformation for hire, a shadow industry, is quietly booming
#130Classic projection from mainstream news. With the amount of disinformation put out by NYTimes, it's easier to point the finger elsewhere.
If you want to block NYTimes and all contributors on your account, try this: https://www.blocknyt.com/