21–30 of 156 posts
In China the government hires people to sway public opinion. In the US, special interests and those with money do it. Is it worse that the Chinese government does it to "keep the peace", while those in the US do it to get your money? Super PACs, political activists, pharmaceutical companies, Reddit power users, brigades and pay-for-votes services... not sure if there's any real difference.
In China the government hires people to sway public opinion. In the US, special interests and those with money do it. Is it worse that the Chinese government does it to "keep the peace", while those in the US do it to get your money? Super PACs, political activists, pharmaceutical companies, Reddit power users, brigades and pay-for-votes services... not sure if there's any real difference.
It's my opinion that attempts to sway public opinion are spitting in the wind, but normally in the same direction as the wind, resulting in an illusion of efficacy. You can see their lack of real impact when they desperately try (and fail) to turn the public. Cf Trump. Control of ideas is massively oversold by both proponents and opponents, who both have a vested interest in believing it works. The reality is that th…
The latest time I saw this behavior was on Reddit during the just completed 2016 elections. And then my suspicions were validated when Correct The Record was outed as the group doing it.
This is ugly, ugly behavior--propaganda of the nastiest kind.
In China the government hires people to sway public opinion. In the US, special interests and those with money do it. Is it worse that the Chinese government does it to "keep the peace", while those in the US do it to get your money? Super PACs, political activists, pharmaceutical companies, Reddit power users, brigades and pay-for-votes services... not sure if there's any real difference.
One major difference is how concentrated the special interests are. In the case of the Chinese government, public opinion is being swayed by a single entity. In the US, a large number of interest groups are all competing to try to sway public opinion. In the latter case, I think it's harder (at least in principle) for any one group to have a large effect on its own.
The really scary lobbying is the sort that stays out of the public opinion and tries to influence the government in niche areas the average person doesn't know or care about (like very specific industry regulations). That's where companies get away with the most egregious things, at least until something finally brings the issue to the public conscience.
In China the government hires people to sway public opinion. In the US, special interests and those with money do it. Is it worse that the Chinese government does it to "keep the peace", while those in the US do it to get your money? Super PACs, political activists, pharmaceutical companies, Reddit power users, brigades and pay-for-votes services... not sure if there's any real difference.
One major difference is how concentrated the special interests are. In the case of the Chinese government, public opinion is being swayed by a single entity. In the US, a large number of interest groups are all competing to try to sway public opinion. In the latter case, I think it's harder (at least in principle) for any one group to have a large effect on its own.
This is really scary, because I do read comments critically, and have seen those sections being flooded with nonsense, or convincing arguments being pushed without evidence. Heck, this even happens on HackerNews, which users are thoughtful hackers and which are secretly trying to push an agenda? Or is there even a line between those? Now some food for thought, does online anonymity ultimately help the powerful more t…
I don't think there is a line. Each of us pushes an agenda (our own). That's never going to change, and I wouldn't want it to.
> does online anonymity ultimately help the powerful more than the general public?
I don't do online anonymity :)
In China the government hires people to sway public opinion. In the US, special interests and those with money do it. Is it worse that the Chinese government does it to "keep the peace", while those in the US do it to get your money? Super PACs, political activists, pharmaceutical companies, Reddit power users, brigades and pay-for-votes services... not sure if there's any real difference.
"Among the core self-identified purposes of JTRIG are two tactics: (1) to inject all sorts of false material onto the internet in order to destroy the reputation of its targets; and (2) to use social sciences and other techniques to manipulate online discourse and activism to generate outcomes it considers desirable. "
Earlier quoted context omitted.
RAND has study says the same about Russia. The Russian "Firehose of Falsehood" Propaganda Model Why It Might Work and Options to Counter It http://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
Thanks for the excellent link, I've been looking for a documentary on Putin's propaganda regime that I saw a few years ago, but this paper is a much deeper look which will serve the same purpose.
https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surr...
Pretty fascinating stuff. I'm not sure what Trump's arm of this kind of propaganda is, but Correct the Record was a very real thing, despite the bogeyman descriptions of it in some online communities. https://www.opensecrets.org/pacs/lookup2.php?strID=C00578997 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correct_the_Record Interestingly, the original website is now gone, but it used to say essentially that it advocated for Clinton…
In all seriousness - it's /pol/. See also /r/The_Donald, gab.ai, and a handful of niche forums.
As an aside, I'm sad that gab.ai hasn't seen adoption outside that political group. It's really got a lot of potential as a platform.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's my opinion that attempts to sway public opinion are spitting in the wind, but normally in the same direction as the wind, resulting in an illusion of efficacy. You can see their lack of real impact when they desperately try (and fail) to turn the public. Cf Trump. Control of ideas is massively oversold by both proponents and opponents, who both have a vested interest in believing it works. The reality is that th…
No, they're not, it is highly effective--I saw it firsthand during the run up to the Gulf War in 2003. I was on a message board and suddenly there would be all these "pro war" type members showing up posting basically propaganda and giving people a hard time and mostly creating chaos. The latest time I saw this behavior was on Reddit during the just completed 2016 elections. And then my suspicions were validated when…
Title might want to be altered: this is a description of a specific research paper analyzing Chinese online propaganda campaigns, not as general an analysis as the title indicates. Interesting stuff!