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Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

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Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#61

Post by ascar »

SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #59
mfer wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Am reading through the comments and I have to say westerners really think all news is about them. As a westerner, I've discovered that we forget that we are less than 20% of the global population. Bringing that up in conversation can surprise people.

For news, is global population the best metric to use? Wouldn’t you want maybe the “origin of things that will effect everyone”? What percent of the global economy? What percent of industry/invention? What percent of entertainment? What percent of military? Edit: No one wants to address military

I have the feeling your response just highlights the misconceptions from another angle.

From my personal experience living abroad, we westerners highly overestimate the consumption of our entertainment (movies/shows/music/games) in the non-western world. E.g. log into your favorite western online game in Japan and see what players you end up playing with. Hint: It's basically noone Japanese.

Regarding economy: based on the wikipedia data available here [1] USA+EU+Australia (with GB i think still included in EU there) makes up less than 50% of the global economy, tendency downwards.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_economy

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#62

Post by AbrahamParangi »

uniqueuid wrote: post #31
AbrahamParangi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fascinating to see this framed as "legitimate" and "illegitimate" vs true and false. I wonder how much disagreement on the topic comes from the distinctions in these meanings.

Well, true and false are practically unusable concepts outside of (and sometimes even in) courts. My use of (il-)legitimate ties to the legal framework, which means I don't need to take a normative (=subjective) position - I'm only describing the state of the rules and the mechanisms at play. You can also use economic terms if you want: Illegitimate manipulation of public opinion doesn't pay (the platforms), advertis…

As a corollary, I wonder just how much disagreement is actually "objective truth exists" vs "objective truth does not exist", repackaged.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#63

Post by deft »

dexen wrote: post #5

Why is Mozilla, of all orgs, performing foreign activism and reporting on Twitter users in hopes of getting them banned? "We want to do good", sure, but that's two bits of a stretch here. Nothing in the article as posted indicates that the "disinformation influencers" were nefarious actors. For all the description given, it might have been grassroots citizens action, only labeled "disinformation" by officials or gove…

Mozilla is wasting its limited funding fighting random individual boogeyman rather than develop software that helps protect our freedoms. It's really sad.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#64

Post by commandlinefan »

dexen wrote: post #5

Why is Mozilla, of all orgs, performing foreign activism and reporting on Twitter users in hopes of getting them banned? "We want to do good", sure, but that's two bits of a stretch here. Nothing in the article as posted indicates that the "disinformation influencers" were nefarious actors. For all the description given, it might have been grassroots citizens action, only labeled "disinformation" by officials or gove…

> Mozilla making arbitrary choice between two opposing camps of political activists

And Mozilla itself has hardly been politically neutral in the past few years - if anything, I'm more immediately skeptical of anything that Mozilla asserts as true than anything a blue-check twitter account owner in Kenya does.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#65

Post by ceilingcorner »

didibus wrote: post #57
ceilingcorner wrote: post #3

Sorry but unless you provide actual links to so-called misinformation, I’m going to assume that this is either overexaggerated or labeling anything against Western values as disinformation. Especially when it is described as ”This industry’s main goal is to sway public opinion during elections and protests ” which is different than every other media organization how, exactly?

I think you're missing the point, as a Twitter user, do you expect other users to be paid money to post and retweet things that they were told to post and retweet by some patron? Do you expect to be baited by some fake account that is sold to the best bidder for amplification? And do you expect the recommendations and trending to be full of manipulated content that actually all come from a single source of coordinate…

to be paid money to post and retweet things that they were told to post and retweet by some patron?

What do you think the network of “real media” is?

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#66

Post by ceilingcorner »

ascar wrote: post #61
SV_BubbleTime wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For news, is global population the best metric to use? Wouldn’t you want maybe the “origin of things that will effect everyone”? What percent of the global economy? What percent of industry/invention? What percent of entertainment? What percent of military? Edit: No one wants to address military

I have the feeling your response just highlights the misconceptions from another angle. From my personal experience living abroad, we westerners highly overestimate the consumption of our entertainment (movies/shows/music/games) in the non-western world. E.g. log into your favorite western online game in Japan and see what players you end up playing with. Hint: It's basically noone Japanese. Regarding economy: based…

Not a good example. Japan is famously insular and large enough to support a domestic audience.

Virtually every smaller country in Europe and Latin America consume American media voraciously.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#67

Post by Applejinx »

bunnernana wrote: post #50

Am reading through the comments and I have to say westerners really think all news is about them. People who don't understand the context of a story arguing out the ethics of a story they have no idea about. PS: I am a Kenyan. That being said, any Kenyan here who uses Twitter regularly will agree with the article. Go to Twitter right now and you will see the disinformation in action. Trend number 1 (Nyonga) Trend num…

I'm in the United States.

It's really not any different here. For good or ill, this is the Twitter-nature.

I deleted my account and made a 'connection-less' one so when I follow links and see tweets directly on Twitter, there's no further engagement to be had, beyond looking at whatever is 'trending'… which is literally, what you describe, localized. I am looking at whatever third parties are trying to promote as the 'vox populi', with a certain amount of organic interaction/reaction with it.

It's the twitter-nature. I know you're not wrong here.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#68

Post by Applejinx »

jacquesm wrote: post #55
bunnernana wrote: post #50

Am reading through the comments and I have to say westerners really think all news is about them. People who don't understand the context of a story arguing out the ethics of a story they have no idea about. PS: I am a Kenyan. That being said, any Kenyan here who uses Twitter regularly will agree with the article. Go to Twitter right now and you will see the disinformation in action. Trend number 1 (Nyonga) Trend num…

I've noticed that this is happening on any divisive subject, no matter what. Abortion, LGBTI rights, politics, sports, it doesn't matter there is always a bunch real people involved backed by an army of bots. There are some people mapping this out manually, I'm surprised that the likes of Twitter don't take a harder stand against this because it likely is going to ruin the platform long term (if that hasn't already h…

It's already happened.

Hard to say how many people recognize that, but it's long since happened.

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#69

Post by Applejinx »

recursivedoubts wrote: post #17

> "New research by two Mozilla Fellows reveals how malicious, coordinated, and inauthentic attacks on Twitter are undermining Kenyan civil society" i am glad that we here in the west are not subject to this sort of social media engineering and can participate in open and thoughtful debate on topics no matter how our elites feel about them

LOL, perfect right down to the lowercase i and lack of concluding period :)

That said, I don't know from what angle you're deadpanning, or which elites from where you mean, but… heh. noted. how nice for us

Re: Disinformation-for-hire in Kenya

#70

Post by tclancy »

deft wrote: post #63
dexen wrote: post #5

Why is Mozilla, of all orgs, performing foreign activism and reporting on Twitter users in hopes of getting them banned? "We want to do good", sure, but that's two bits of a stretch here. Nothing in the article as posted indicates that the "disinformation influencers" were nefarious actors. For all the description given, it might have been grassroots citizens action, only labeled "disinformation" by officials or gove…

Mozilla is wasting its limited funding fighting random individual boogeyman rather than develop software that helps protect our freedoms. It's really sad.

What software would that be? There are not technological solutions to social problems.
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