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U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box

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Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box

#41

Post by belZaah »

elcritch wrote: post #11
avaer wrote: post #3

It's interesting to have a conversation with people over politics these days, sometimes it's like people don't live in the same reality anymore. It's probably not far from the truth. To a first approximation, nothing is verified, people see a number on social media as a proxy for accuracy. Even if it's completely wrong, it doesn't matter because you're among friends. Memes let insane ideas spread like a virus, the on…

These sorts of things did happen before the internet though. Think of the Cultural Revolution in China started by revolutionary university students. Mass printed pamphlets was the original meme. The more things change the more they stay the same.

True. But in the physical world, ideas (or memes, if you will) are bound to people and can only survive, if the carrier survives. The idea of curing headaches with striking your head with a hammer does not spread, because the carrier dies. On the interweb, that connection is no longer there. An idea is independent and can spread without direct human involvement. We are like a tundra species finding itself in a rainforest: completely unprepared, lacking both immunity and the ability to keep up with the environment as it changes.

Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box

#42

Post by Jimmc414 »

strictnein wrote: post #38
Jimmc414 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This has nothing to do with antisemitism and I shouldn’t have to say that. This is about unfair interference of a foreign power in US elections which I thought was the entire point of this post.

[flagged]

Do you also think the authors of this document intrinsically hate people of Russian descent or are they stating what they see as germane facts and inviting people to use their own judgment?

Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box

#43

Post by chairmansteve »

stinkbeetle wrote: post #15
avaer wrote: post #3

It's interesting to have a conversation with people over politics these days, sometimes it's like people don't live in the same reality anymore. It's probably not far from the truth. To a first approximation, nothing is verified, people see a number on social media as a proxy for accuracy. Even if it's completely wrong, it doesn't matter because you're among friends. Memes let insane ideas spread like a virus, the on…

> And now the tools are there for anyone to generate bullshit at a scale commensurate to their wallet. Democratizing propaganda. Not sure the previous state of affairs where propaganda was accessible to the ruling class and their media corporations was better, it might have just seemed that way because there appeared to be less conflict when it came to them telling you what was in "your own best interest". I do have…

> Democratizing propaganda.

Not really. A lot of the disinformation is generated by authoritarian state actors.

Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box

#44

Post by himata4113 »

reddozen wrote: post #30
himata4113 wrote: post #13

The problem with voting is that people are simply not engaged in politics anymore. I have never voted and never will. To be impactful you have to be a politician and that's a full-time job which lives off donations. We need more politicans, but we don't have a reward structure to support them so we have too few politicians which means the few are funded by powerful people making even fewer make the decisions. Just to…

> I have never voted and never will. Thank you for putting the reason at the top to disregard the rest of your post-hoc justification. Your prescriptions literally don't matter because you will never engage with the political system.

I don't vote because I am uneducated enough in local politics to do so I would only be corrupting the vote and dilluting votes that are that of people who did their research.

This is an opinionated take, but voting just to vote is pointless and does more harm than good. I guess I should have positioned that at the end instead of making that the opening statement.

Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box

#45

Post by himata4113 »

01100011 wrote: post #24
himata4113 wrote: post #13

The problem with voting is that people are simply not engaged in politics anymore. I have never voted and never will. To be impactful you have to be a politician and that's a full-time job which lives off donations. We need more politicans, but we don't have a reward structure to support them so we have too few politicians which means the few are funded by powerful people making even fewer make the decisions. Just to…

Everyone pushes voting and sure, you should vote if you're able, but the other half of the puzzle is you need to have good options to vote for. Politicians are relatively low paid for the expertise we want and so many of the folks running are people looking to supplement their income with influence peddling and grift.

This is why I wrote such a strong statement I don't have anyone to vote for and looking back at the history of my country I had never had a politican I would have wanted to vote for.

Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box

#46

Post by himata4113 »

warkdarrior wrote: post #22
himata4113 wrote: post #13

The problem with voting is that people are simply not engaged in politics anymore. I have never voted and never will. To be impactful you have to be a politician and that's a full-time job which lives off donations. We need more politicans, but we don't have a reward structure to support them so we have too few politicians which means the few are funded by powerful people making even fewer make the decisions. Just to…

Agreed, someone should do something to fix the problem that you discussed so eloquently.

I've just described the current politican system there's nothing to fix, it's a reality we live in. It's nothing more than a rant.

Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box

#47

Post by chairmansteve »

01100011 wrote: post #24
himata4113 wrote: post #13

The problem with voting is that people are simply not engaged in politics anymore. I have never voted and never will. To be impactful you have to be a politician and that's a full-time job which lives off donations. We need more politicans, but we don't have a reward structure to support them so we have too few politicians which means the few are funded by powerful people making even fewer make the decisions. Just to…

Everyone pushes voting and sure, you should vote if you're able, but the other half of the puzzle is you need to have good options to vote for. Politicians are relatively low paid for the expertise we want and so many of the folks running are people looking to supplement their income with influence peddling and grift.

> but the other half of the puzzle is you need to have good options to vote for.

No. It's always been that you get to choose the least bad option. Unless you fall for the personality cults that sometimes develop around politicians.

Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box

#48

Post by anonymousiam »

boredatoms wrote: post #23
dabinat wrote: post #17

I feel like this may be made worse by the rise in paywalls from media companies. I understand times are difficult and they need to make money, but it’s harder to counter disinformation if only those with money can see it. Disinformation will always be free to view.

Many countries have free news services though. Can read BBC and so on

BBC is state funded, so it's technically not "free."

Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box

#49

Post by elevation »

jimbob45 wrote: post #36

They’ve done this to my workplace too. We have several domains for employee-concerning content and they’ve mirrored them and placed them at the top of Google’s search results. If you’ve forgotten the URL and go to Google it, you can get phished super easily. I can see the elderly and the tech illiterate falling for similar schemes with mirrors of the NYT, CNN, FOX, etc.

I’m experimenting with serving different content to users based on the presence of an mTLS cert in their USB key.

The idea is that authenticated employees see the company logo but scrapers get an IIS welcome page. Prevents cloned content from showing up on squatted domains.

Re: U.S. midterms have a cyber problem, but it's not at the ballot box

#50

Post by no-name-here »

himata4113 wrote: post #45
01100011 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone pushes voting and sure, you should vote if you're able, but the other half of the puzzle is you need to have good options to vote for. Politicians are relatively low paid for the expertise we want and so many of the folks running are people looking to supplement their income with influence peddling and grift.

This is why I wrote such a strong statement I don't have anyone to vote for and looking back at the history of my country I had never had a politican I would have wanted to vote for.

Are you from the US?
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