Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

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


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday February 23 2018, @06:36PM (10 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday February 23 2018, @06:36PM (#642533)

    No, that isn't hitting the problem well either: Both MSM and non-MSM sources can be and frequently are completely full of crap.

    The problem is taking any single source of information, or any group of connected organizations, and holding up whatever they say as The Truth. That's a mistake whether you're talking about the New York Times, Democracy Now, or InfoWars. That's a mistake whether your source of information looks glitzy and highly produced like Fox News or MSNBC, or whether your source of information looks grainy and done in somebody's living room like random conspiracy nutters on Youtube.

    Whenever you get information, no matter the source, you should put it through battery of questions usually referred to as a Baloney Detection Kit. Carl Sagan's version, Michael Shermer's version, there are a few other versions out there, but the point is you don't simply trust it, no matter who said it or how plausible it seems at first. Be especially careful if that information satisfies your pre-existing biases - for instance, as someone on the far left of the political spectrum I take things said by Bernie Sanders as completely unverified until I've collected further information from sources not affiliated in any way with Bernie or even left-wing political groups that back up those claims.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +3  
       Insightful=3, Total=3
    Extra 'Insightful' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   5  
  • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Friday February 23 2018, @07:53PM (5 children)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Friday February 23 2018, @07:53PM (#642594)

    Something I noticed while traveling in Germany, more than the US, is that misleading signage ("this way to the city center" signs often point to roundabout bypass roads), and news stories intended to shape behavior more than relay facts ("the youth hostels in newly opened east Germany are absolutely packed full, no vacancies" when, in fact, I stayed in a couple that were absolutely empty...) seem to be more accepted as just how things are.

    In other words: childish Americans get pouty and/or outraged when you lift the curtain and show them that their news sources are in-fact lying to them to achieve some specific behavioral response in the population, whereas Europeans are more likely to shrug and comment "yeah, they do that - what did you expect?"

    --
    🌻🌻 [google.com]
    • (Score: 2) by cmdrklarg on Friday February 23 2018, @10:19PM (3 children)

      by cmdrklarg (5048) Subscriber Badge on Friday February 23 2018, @10:19PM (#642671)

      I don't know about you, but I find that becoming outraged when lied to is a fairly natural response, and not at all "childish".

      What exactly the fuck is wrong with demanding honesty?

      --
      The world is full of kings and queens who blind your eyes and steal your dreams.
      • (Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 23 2018, @11:42PM

        by takyon (881) <reversethis-{gro ... s} {ta} {noykat}> on Friday February 23 2018, @11:42PM (#642728) Journal

        What exactly the fuck is wrong with demanding honesty?

        Well, facts are dead [wikipedia.org], so honesty don't even make cents, bruh.

        --
        [SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
      • (Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Saturday February 24 2018, @01:05AM (1 child)

        by JoeMerchant (3937) on Saturday February 24 2018, @01:05AM (#642793)

        What exactly the fuck is wrong with demanding honesty?

        Nothing. Expecting it, on the other hand, fits the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result even when the observed results never change.

        --
        🌻🌻 [google.com]
        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @09:25AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @09:25AM (#642971)

          Nothing. Expecting it, on the other hand, fits the definition of insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result even when the observed results never change.

          That's not how the universe works! You're discounting quantum effects.

          Geez Louise!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @07:28AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @07:28AM (#642937)

      In Europe most town centers were built long before people traveled as much as they do now and long before they had cars to do it with. Municipalities design and implement traffic flow plans to prevent the town turning into a huge traffic jam. The signage you think of as misleading is part of that. People accept it because on the whole it actually helps them to reach their destination quicker and to keep their town pleasant to live in. A sign pointing to the preferred way to reach a destination rather than to where a road leads is only misleading if you expect the latter. If you expect the first and understand why it's done that way you don't think of it as misleading but as useful, and you accept it because it is useful.

  • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:07AM (3 children)

    by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:07AM (#642742) Homepage Journal

    It's never been tried or even conceived of before.

    This is how it works:
    Whenever you're presented with something (an event, an idea, a trend, anything newsworthy), always ask the following questions about it:
    Who?
    What?
    Where?
    When?
    How?
    Why?

    It's amazing to me that no one has ever, in the entire history of humanity, even though along those lines. [wikipedia.org]

    I think that if people did that, they might find themselves a little better informed and better able to separate truth from fiction.

    --
    No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:18AM (1 child)

      by Thexalon (636) on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:18AM (#642751)

      That doesn't do anything when the sources you are reading are either genuinely mistaken about the answers to those questions, lying about them, or simply making things up to fill in gaps in their knowledge in order to get the story to press faster.

      --
      The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
      • (Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:29AM

        by NotSanguine (285) <NotSanguineNO@SPAMSoylentNews.Org> on Saturday February 24 2018, @12:29AM (#642760) Homepage Journal

        That doesn't do anything when the sources you are reading are either genuinely mistaken about the answers to those questions, lying about them, or simply making things up to fill in gaps in their knowledge in order to get the story to press faster.

        You misunderstand me. I'm not saying that one should just accept the answers to those questions from that single source. I'm saying that rather than simply accepting something as true (or rejecting it as false), we should ask those questions and attempt to answer them independently.

        Is this always easy? No. However, once one has that mind set, it becomes much easier to reject the obvious bullshit, accept the obviously (assuming the evidence supports it) accurate, which leaves one with a smaller data set of questionable information that requires full investigation.

        What's more, as you move along with this along the same (or similar) lines of inquiry, those questions will often be immediately answered based on the results of previous inquiries.

        Despite my previous sarcasm, this method is the basis for pretty much all inquiry which strives to identify at least an approximation of truth.

        It's sad that more people aren't familiar with it.

        --
        No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @03:36AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 24 2018, @03:36AM (#642865)

      One more question (I suppose it can be derived from the Five W's) is, Follow the Money.