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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: 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?"

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  • (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?

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    • (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.

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    • (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.

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      • (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.