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Everything we like is a psyop?

techcrunch.com

151–160 of 262 posts

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#151

It's such an insane amount of waste that there are rooms filled with cell phones just to churn out spam. The same job should be doable by a single server. I imagine that it's only required because platforms are fingerprinting the phones to check for spammers but obviously those systems have gone from being simply useless to becoming harmful since it's now generating massive amounts of e-waste. This seems like somethi…

That's, unfortunately, the free market at play. Competition is adversarial. It has many of good sides, but resource efficiency is not one of them.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#152

I think most users of websites like reddit, x, and yes even HN don't realize how much traffic is inorganic. Marketing firms, government agencies, and many other interested parties with money to burn are absolutely aware that you search "best {product} reddit" I've commented on this before, but I strongly suspect much of the narrative around AI is being formed with strong inputs from these patterns. What's your basis…

Oh no I do realise just how much is inorganic... After the fact.

It is obvious in retrospect but difficult to see in the moment

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you check on average every three years, the odds of you checking the very same day the book comes out are about 1‰, which is improbable but not _extremely_. Add that together with all the probabilities of things that would make you think "wow, that's improbable" and we have pretty high odds of something improbable happening.

Okay, I squinted hard at that notation “1‰” and had Gemini explain it to me, and it appears that you made no typos, but I couldn’t let that go unexplained!

ButlerianJihad… had Gemini explain it to you…

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#155
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like they did good-faith estimate that there were 5000 stores out there and really believed they had 20% of the market? I wouldn't call that a lie as such.

They made up a number, and then quoted that number to other people (presumably with the intent to benefit themselves) without disclosing that they'd made up the number in the first place. That seems to jump right past 'lie' into 'fraud' or worse. I have this growing belief that what's wrong with America is that we've tossed a great deal of virtue (both personal and public) into the woodchipper, using a lot of euphemi…

You don't have a growing belief, you have an accurate observation.

This comes up often when bad actors promote the meme "everything is securities fraud". In reality, all cases that they're talking about are instances of _blatant lying_, but they attempt to normalize this even further than it already has been. Effectively saying "it's impossible to run a company and not lie at every possible opportunity!".

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#157
An apologetic damage control piece of "journalism". Someone was caught cheating and manipulating, so...

> Maybe Geese is a psyop, and maybe Katseye is an industry plant, but do we actually care?

...the article tries to normalize that.

But hell yeah, Amanda Silberling, I do actually care and won't ever accept that crap as norm.

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#158

Dang, that hurt to read. I'm starting up a new news-ish site like the old TheServerSide.com, at https://bytecode.news , and I'm faced with the question of "how do I generate traffic in the face of AI and all the people willing to market, market, astroturf, market, market?" I'm not that kind of personality, I don't want to do tiktok or whatever the kids do, I'd far rather accept organic and slow growth over meteoric a…

"Dang that hurt to read, here's an advertisement!" Why is this every 3rd comment on this site? Every single post has multiple comments that are "I hate that, here's my solution"

Market-by-contradiction is huge these days. Almost as big as We're-Evil-So-What marketing!

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#159

Dang, that hurt to read. I'm starting up a new news-ish site like the old TheServerSide.com, at https://bytecode.news , and I'm faced with the question of "how do I generate traffic in the face of AI and all the people willing to market, market, astroturf, market, market?" I'm not that kind of personality, I don't want to do tiktok or whatever the kids do, I'd far rather accept organic and slow growth over meteoric a…

But also don't squander the traffic with default dark mode with low contrast ;) Use the device mode hint at least

The font for the headlines also looks 'off' to me. Letters too close together maybe

Re: Everything we like is a psyop?

#160

> “Unfortunately, a lot of the internet is manipulation … Everything on the internet is fake. One thing that we always say is all opinions are formed in the TikTok comments,” Chaotic Good co-founder Jesse Coren noted. Why is this guy talking like this? YOU are literally co-making internet full of fake! It's worse if you read the context[0]: Interviewer: What would you say to someone who’s freaked out by these ideas t…

It's so weird to see empathy-speak be regularly co-opted by habitual mass manipulators. "I don't know if this will make you feel better... but we're concerned with manipulating the reactions to the reactions as well! See how much we care?" It makes me do a double-take every time someone shows actual empathy, because it's used so often as a manipulative tactic to shield oneself against critiques of soullessness.
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