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posted by janrinok on Friday February 23 2018, @03:38PM   Printer-friendly

The Columbia Journalism Review has some analysis of the problem of disinformation and propaganda being actively spread over social control media. As the situation is studied more, albeit belatedly, the nature of social control's business model gets more daylight.

"That fundamental goal is to get the user to stay as long as possible," Ghosh said in an interview. "Their motivations are different—for platforms, it is to maximize ad space, to collect more information about the individual, and to rake in more dollars; and for the disinformation operator, the motive is the political persuasion of the individual to make a certain decision. But until we change that alignment, we are not going to solve the problem of disinformation on these platforms."

After Mueller released his indictments, sociologist Zeynep Tufekci noted on Twitter that the indictment "shows [Russia] used social media just like any other advertiser/influencer. They used the platforms as they were designed to be used."

The phrase surveillance capitalism gets more traction as it becomes acknowledged that while social control media do not actively spread disinformation and propaganda it is a side effect of collecting as much personal information as legally (and somtimes illegally) allowed. That information is aggregated from multiple sources both internal and external to social control media itself. As a result it is getting increasingly difficult to distinguish between disinformation and authentic political speech.

Automated attacks make that differentiation that much harder. Faecebook gets the most attention, but the others, including YouTube work the same way and can thus be manipulated just as easily. (Ed: Speaking of YouTube, to single out one topic as an example, as seen recently with FCC comments on Net Neutrality, only 17%of the comments the FCC received were legitimate with the rest filled in by clumsy bots.)

Source : Fake news is part of a bigger problem: automated propaganda


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  • (Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday February 23 2018, @04:34PM (3 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday February 23 2018, @04:34PM (#642449) Homepage

    Oh, lookie here, it's from Columbia, one of the biggest Jewniversities on the East Coast. Jews invented fake news, now they have to deal with it.

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  • (Score: -1, Flamebait) by Ethanol-fueled on Friday February 23 2018, @06:04PM (2 children)

    by Ethanol-fueled (2792) on Friday February 23 2018, @06:04PM (#642502) Homepage

    That is not a troll! It is fact that the Ivy League is dominated by the Jewish! [quora.com]

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday February 23 2018, @06:27PM

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 23 2018, @06:27PM (#642526) Journal

      Granting your assertion of domination, that doesn't make your original post not a troll...unless you think flamebait is a more appropriate category.

      --
      Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
    • (Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23 2018, @07:18PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 23 2018, @07:18PM (#642569)

      Just cause your parents raised you as a degenerate pig doesn't give you some magical right to a top-tier school. I get your sad about your life, but you're taking it out in unhealthy ways that will only prove worse for your psyche.

      If you're laughing uncontrollably about your troll post snagging a hit then you should find a psychiatrist TODAY.