Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 271 posts

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#181

Post by quadrangle »

leakybit wrote: post #92
quadrangle wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You mean you don't see a UNIQUE problem here. "How X enables the Dark Art of Digital Propaganda" would be an issue of interest and concern NO MATTER WHAT THE X IS.

Which is the point. In reality the appropriate title is more along the lines: "How media enables Propaganda", so why single out just Facebook when they're just conforming to the industry standard? There's a simple solution to this, which is to write legislation to ban commercial political ads.

I have the same inclination about ads, but I'm highly skeptical that such a solution would work fully. I'd be willing to give it a try though. The problem is bad enough that it's worth throwing solutions out and trying them until we see what sticks.

The point about Facebook anyway, singling them out, is that it happens to be an article about Facebook and how they in particular do this. A similar article on "How Fox News…" or "How ESPN…" or "How the NYT…" would be appropriate also in the case that any of those places had a dedicated political unit which was interesting to report about, especially if it contradicts the way the entity prefers to present itself.

Of course, it's reasonable to focus on Facebook merely in their dominance.

And finally, it's possible at least that Facebook is actually worse in some ways (or just more effective at spreading propaganda etc), and I'm not ready to rule that out.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#182

Post by objectivetruth »

philwelch wrote: post #174
objectivetruth wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please give me a list of recent -- or ANY -- Hollywood films that are explicitly designed to disparage the military? That is a BOLD claim and I'd love to learn more.

Avatar comes to mind, as do all of those depressing post-Vietnam movies.

So the main point of Avatar in your opinion -- the reason it was explicitly made -- is that the military sucks? Not colonization or overcoming physical adversity or even just a fun sci-fi romp? It was just $100 million of "lol the army sucks?"

And you realize that a movie about the horrors of the Vietnam War isn't necessarily anti-military, right? America lost tens of thousands of young men and hundreds of thousands more were injured -- the country was torn about the war, with people literally dying in protests. It was a BIG DEAL. Which is why tons of movies and tv shows have dealt with those issues in the ensuing 50 years.

If your movie says "the Vietnam War sucked" or even "Lots of American soldiers came back from Vietnam with incredibly severe mental and physical problems" -- that's not anti-military. That's the truth.

If you want rah-rah, "go Army!" then there are plenty of archived Army recruitment and propaganda films from the 40s, 50s, and 60s on YouTube.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#183

Post by krapp »

tajen wrote: post #177
Steeeve wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine... If somebody like Rush Limbaugh had a nationwide radio show where day by day he created content based on RNC talking points. Or a network like Fox or MSNBC went all in on party loyalty and based all their content on party talking points. Or a media conglomerate like Sinclair or Clear Channel pushed out political messaging to their affiliates in small markets that had to be aired during prime viewership. oh…

I’m happy 52m voters still voted for Trump, despite all media being on Hillary’s side (TV, social networks, Hollywood, etc, except what, FoxNews and Breitbart which wouldn’t have an audience if people weren’t disgusted of MSM). It proves people don’t vote what they’re told to. Note: If you don’t believe it, try to listen to conversations in uncensored areas, places where there’s no social push to behave in a certain…

>It proves people don’t vote what they’re told to.

... except for all of the people who voted for Trump because they were told to, or because of the conspiratorial BS fed to them by the right and alt media.

It's not actually true that all media was on Hillary's side - that's just propaganda fed to Trump supporters to discourage them from thinking critically about their candidate, and only trust in the cult of personality. You shouldn't be happy that it worked.

>places where there’s no social push to behave in a certain way.

Try to go to those places and make pro liberal, pro feminist, pro multicultural or, hell, even pro Israel comments and see where it gets you.

There is definitely a social push to behave a certain way in most "uncensored" communities because such communities are usually started by or attract right or alt-right posters escaping what they believe to be the censorship of "politically correct" society.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#184

Post by objectivetruth »

philwelch wrote: post #179
objectivetruth wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A fictionalized Hillary Clinton? That's... quite a leap. You could easily argue Robin Wright plays a fictionalized Hillary Clinton on "House of Cards." Personally, I think that the free market that the conservatives love to salivate about is making this happen. It cracks me up to imagine Hollywood producers saying "Well, I COULD make more money by making a super-conservative show but I just NEED to get my liberal vie…

Leslie Knope is a blond, Midwest-born woman who believes strongly in using government to improve people’s lives. Despite being stopped short from achieving her goals time and time again, she never loses her optimism or her determination. She prepares long, in-depth policy briefings that no one ever reads, comes under attack from ignorant yokels, and even makes understandable, innocent mistakes that get blown out of p…

You just described about half of the female civil servants that I've met in the Midwest.

Wow, blond AND from the Midwest? A dedicated and caring public servant? Shit, I guess NBC is lucky that Hillary didn't sue them for such a blatant rip-off.

Oh wait, one is a real person who served as Senator and Secretary of State and the other is a fictional bureaucrat who served 3 months on her small city's council and loves waffles.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#185

Post by grzm »

tajen wrote: post #177
Steeeve wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine... If somebody like Rush Limbaugh had a nationwide radio show where day by day he created content based on RNC talking points. Or a network like Fox or MSNBC went all in on party loyalty and based all their content on party talking points. Or a media conglomerate like Sinclair or Clear Channel pushed out political messaging to their affiliates in small markets that had to be aired during prime viewership. oh…

I’m happy 52m voters still voted for Trump, despite all media being on Hillary’s side (TV, social networks, Hollywood, etc, except what, FoxNews and Breitbart which wouldn’t have an audience if people weren’t disgusted of MSM). It proves people don’t vote what they’re told to. Note: If you don’t believe it, try to listen to conversations in uncensored areas, places where there’s no social push to behave in a certain…

> "places where there’s no social push to behave in a certain way."

This social push is a function of a community. If you happen to not feel any pressure to behave a certain way, you're very likely already behaving in line with the norms of the community you're in.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#186

Post by flukus »

r00fus wrote: post #57
decebalus1 wrote: post #7

Remember this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15790687 To some extent it's still going on. Protests are still happening (and it's really bad) so lately I've been noticing a bunch of - what I think are - shill accounts. Couple of days before I went through some of the posts in news post about the protests and identified several profiles with no personal pictures, no posts, posting in broken Romanian about: - ant…

Persona Management software is a real thing. This link is from 6 years ago. In the past 5 years, I'm sure it's been refined and weaponized. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...

> This link is from 6 years ago. In the past 5 years, I'm sure it's been refined and weaponized.

Well before then, it's greatest impact has been on the climate change "debate" which I think was the first major deployment of the conept and they've got it down to a fine art these days. They just sow the seeds of doubt by getting the sock puppet accounts to ask seemingly innocuous questions, if you follow through with answers it quickly becomes obvious that there was no genuine curiosity, there wasn't just "one thing they don't understand about climate change" but a whole hosting of common denier talking points.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#187

Post by TheRealDunkirk »

uep wrote: post #176
r00fus wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Persona Management software is a real thing. This link is from 6 years ago. In the past 5 years, I'm sure it's been refined and weaponized. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...

Russian propaganda offices have been documented to be doing this for years as well. We know they've "weaponized" Facebook per the recent US presidential election. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/05/europe-vladimi... http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/rus... http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/05/11/i...

Who's gaming social media? EVERYONE, from every kid to every mom-and-pop store to every corporation on the planet. Why is it that people who are butt-hurt about the past election only want to talk about "the Russians," when (I'm betting) that a large chunk of users on this site are getting paid to do so as at least part of their job. If had the resources of a nation-state, do you think they would suddenly develop a case of ethics, and stop scaling up their efforts to play the same game that Russia did/does? Do you think China is ANY LESS involved in the same activity? Or Iran, or NK, or Israel, or the US?! I wish people would wake up and realize that the only winning move is not to play.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#188

Post by [deleted] »

threeseed wrote: post #150
Steeeve wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wouldn't put them on a pedestal. And to think that MSNBC airs any kind of content that is non-partisan is a joke.

I never said MSNBC wasn't partisan. But Fox News literally coordinates with the Trump team and he lavishes them personally with praise via Twitter almost every week. It's far more akin to campaign outreach rather than independent news. This never happened with Obama or the DNC. MSNBC also does have independent journalists e.g. Chuck Todd and right-wing commentators e.g. Hugh Hewitt, Joe Scarborough etc. So it's not e…

[deleted]

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#189

Post by tajen »

krapp wrote: post #183
tajen wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m happy 52m voters still voted for Trump, despite all media being on Hillary’s side (TV, social networks, Hollywood, etc, except what, FoxNews and Breitbart which wouldn’t have an audience if people weren’t disgusted of MSM). It proves people don’t vote what they’re told to. Note: If you don’t believe it, try to listen to conversations in uncensored areas, places where there’s no social push to behave in a certain…

>It proves people don’t vote what they’re told to. ... except for all of the people who voted for Trump because they were told to, or because of the conspiratorial BS fed to them by the right and alt media. It's not actually true that all media was on Hillary's side - that's just propaganda fed to Trump supporters to discourage them from thinking critically about their candidate, and only trust in the cult of persona…

I’m outside USA and studied the election from a feminism axis. Geek as we all are here, I tracked the original studies and discovered that literally every statistics said by feminists, namely Hillary Clinton and Obama, is false. It’s mind blowing, they just misrepresent the studied group, or the hypothesis, they omit a whole part of the study, every-single-time, not a thing from feminists can be trusted. You will believe I started from an ideological stance, but I only started because I was surprised at the big, announced figures and wanted to geek into it. I only ended up, indeed, meeting « those guys » because I was trying to expose the mismatch between journalism and underlying scientific studies, not the opposite.

And I discovered there are whole groups who do that already, it’s just MSM who lie on science. Plain lies, such as saying the opposite as the science paper (the example I have in mind is « Women can multitask, men can’t », saying it’s nonconclusive, and the corresponding BBC article saying it’s an unequivocal fact).

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#190

Post by exogen »

TheRealDunkirk wrote: post #187
uep wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Russian propaganda offices have been documented to be doing this for years as well. We know they've "weaponized" Facebook per the recent US presidential election. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/the-agency.html https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/05/europe-vladimi... http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2013/10/rus... http://www.forbes.com/sites/paulroderickgregory/2014/05/11/i...

Who's gaming social media? EVERYONE, from every kid to every mom-and-pop store to every corporation on the planet. Why is it that people who are butt-hurt about the past election only want to talk about "the Russians," when (I'm betting) that a large chunk of users on this site are getting paid to do so as at least part of their job. If had the resources of a nation-state, do you think they would suddenly develop a c…

No, every kid and mom and pop store is not creating a network of false identities to sway public opinion and incite violence. Your hot take that kids trying to get Likes is the same thing, so we shouldn't care or do anything about it, is I'm sorry to say, insane.
Post reply on HN