The coming automation of propaganda • Hacker News Board

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#21

Post by mistermann » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 1:37 AM UTC

a3n wrote: post #17

olivermarks wrote: post #6

'As U.S. policymakers remain indecisive over how to prevent a repeat of the 2016 election interference' Was this ever proven? all I ever heard about was conspiracy theories around 100k of Facebook ads and Cambridge Analytica being accused of various things. Nothing concrete was ever seriously discussed and the Mueller team findings were inconclusive.

The Mueller team indicted N Russian individuals for that activity. They are not likely to show up for trial. The intelligence community leadership testified to Congress that this was so. The leadership of both parties in both houses of Congress believe it was so, though they differ in what if anything should be done, and the level of downplay or up-play differs depending on party and how close or far to leadership a…

Rather than opinion polls, I would love to see some specific accusations with specific supporting evidence, that doesn't consist of a 500 page narrative. I've never encountered anyone who could provide this.

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#22

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 1:38 AM UTC

IIAOPSW wrote: post #4

I never got around to finishing the Muller Report, but from what I recall and what was made public, Russia's influence campaign was largely traditional and human powered. Here's a bitter pill for everyone. If it turns out that a large fraction of people really can have their opinion changed by bots that wouldn't even pass a Turing test, maybe its time to rethink the idea that everyone gets to vote.

[deleted]

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#23

Post by inflatableDodo » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 1:46 AM UTC

Great. Plato's Cave is tricky enough to navigate as it is, without it being covered in graffiti.

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#24

Post by bitcurious » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 1:59 AM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #9

Imagine you go to an online forum and that there is a 99.99% chance that a given message was written by a bot. Imagine further they are sufficiently well written you can't tell from the post itself whether it was made by a bot or not How would people respond to that? Well the obvious consequence is that you have to stop paying attention to random posts. You have to depend on something outside of the forum itself to f…

You would enjoy reading Neal Stephenson's new novel "Fall; or, Dodge in Hell." The middle part imagines how America would change as a consequence of exactly that.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;_or,_Dodge_in_Hell

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#25

Post by LargoLasskhyfv » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 2:01 AM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #9

Imagine you go to an online forum and that there is a 99.99% chance that a given message was written by a bot. Imagine further they are sufficiently well written you can't tell from the post itself whether it was made by a bot or not How would people respond to that? Well the obvious consequence is that you have to stop paying attention to random posts. You have to depend on something outside of the forum itself to f…

Someone called Neal Stephenson imagined that to perfection in the first third of [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fall;_or,_Dodge_in_Hell

Amusing to read.

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#26

Post by anigbrowl » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 2:03 AM UTC

mynameishere wrote: post #10

IIAOPSW wrote: post #4

I never got around to finishing the Muller Report, but from what I recall and what was made public, Russia's influence campaign was largely traditional and human powered. Here's a bitter pill for everyone. If it turns out that a large fraction of people really can have their opinion changed by bots that wouldn't even pass a Turing test, maybe its time to rethink the idea that everyone gets to vote.

Does it matter if a bot passes the Turing test? What if I had a bot that merely said the following: "Democratic candidate XYZ wants to give free healthcare to illegal immigrants with your tax dollars." Such a bot would not pass the Turing test, but it would be speaking the truth (for many of the candidates) and that truth would be relevant to many voters' interest. So what? I think people need to understand that the…

No doubt you have a similarly unconvincing explanation for the string of lies and changing stories from your corner.

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#27

Post by whatshisface » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 2:07 AM UTC

im3w1l wrote: post #9

Imagine you go to an online forum and that there is a 99.99% chance that a given message was written by a bot. Imagine further they are sufficiently well written you can't tell from the post itself whether it was made by a bot or not How would people respond to that? Well the obvious consequence is that you have to stop paying attention to random posts. You have to depend on something outside of the forum itself to f…

Here's a hot take: you shouldn't be trusting intenet comments written by humans anyway. If a bot comment contains something you should actually listen to (sources, evidence) then you should listen to it, and if a human comment is just a Reddit-style popular opinion dogpile it is just as bad as a bot comment.

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#28

Post by i_am_nomad » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 2:26 AM UTC

rrggrr wrote: post #3

This is old news BUT hasn't reached it's Apex by a long shot. Candidates that are aggressively transparent, speak with brutal truth, and accept it may cost them an election... They will ironically be hard to beat long haul in this environment.

In some ways, that’s what Trump was - he didn’t stick to the predictable talking points and empty platitudes that form the language most other politicians speak in. He spoke much more bluntly and aggressively than we were used to. It seemed to have helped him enormously, even though the things he actually said turned out to be pure falsehoods.

On the other hand, we have had actual honest and realistic candidates, like Larry Lessig. And they were so honest they got squashed by their party apparatus before they ever had a chance.

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#29

Post by a3n » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 2:38 AM UTC

mistermann wrote: post #21

a3n wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mueller team indicted N Russian individuals for that activity. They are not likely to show up for trial. The intelligence community leadership testified to Congress that this was so. The leadership of both parties in both houses of Congress believe it was so, though they differ in what if anything should be done, and the level of downplay or up-play differs depending on party and how close or far to leadership a…

Rather than opinion polls, I would love to see some specific accusations with specific supporting evidence, that doesn't consist of a 500 page narrative. I've never encountered anyone who could provide this.

You could look at the executive summaries of the two sections of the 500 page narrative.

Re: The coming automation of propaganda

#30

Post by hackermailman » Sat, Aug 10, 2019, 2:42 AM UTC

olivermarks wrote: post #6

'As U.S. policymakers remain indecisive over how to prevent a repeat of the 2016 election interference' Was this ever proven? all I ever heard about was conspiracy theories around 100k of Facebook ads and Cambridge Analytica being accused of various things. Nothing concrete was ever seriously discussed and the Mueller team findings were inconclusive.

The interference really was only the leaked Clinton emails, the facebook propaganda is just typical propaganda nobody really pays attention to unless it's to confirm their own bias, nobody anywhere changes their political opinion because of something they read on facebook. I doubt Russians had any real influence, the question is those leaked emails, which everybody wants to know the provenance. Personally I think it was just some DNC pro-Bernie activist staffer, who burned from the primary shenanigans decided to leak to Assange and not Russians, (because we all know those radical DNC tech staffers are bernie bros (now Yang shills) from SV) despite the nonsense indicators of compromise that the FBI never saw but was only provided by the DNC themselves. Even if you believe that was a major influencer I don't think so, as a neutral foreign observer of US politics I saw a wild card that the Americans were ready to put into office to 'disrupt' as a protest vote because if anybody remembers, they were only given two choices before the disruptor, Clinton 2.0 or Bush 3.0. They responded accordingly by pushing the maniac into power just to implode the system from what my foreign analysis indicates.

I think the most dangerous propaganda are the news propagandists from MSNBC and other networks who pretend to be from your specific subculture/groups, and then feed you lies and propaganda. That to me is the most dangerous, the Russian bots? nope everybody sees through cruise control shilling but when it's somebody from their own group in a news org and they're spouting lies it's a lot more difficult. I'm old so back in the 1990s news propaganda was just absolutely blatant, any kid could tell Norman General Swartzkopf(spelling) was making up bs about 'precision bombs' we all knew they were just landing wherever and blowing up Mother Theresa's Iraq orphanage by accident, but now it's different. The news corps discovered they need to recruit people from specific identities and use them as a weapon to feed lies to their subculture.