SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the psychological-warfare-in-peacetime dept.
The Guardian has an article about a whistleblower from Cambridge Analytica, who claims to have devised a strategy to "weaponize" Facebook profiles, in order to use those profile for targeted advertising to sway the US elections in 2016.
(The Guardian headline titles are often crap). I read a few older articles, presumably by the same author: she had a series of articles in March--May 2017 about Cambridge Analytica being used as a weapon to convince British voters to vote for Brexit in the referendum. It seems that her investigative journalism encouraged this wistleblower to "come out" and be interviewed by her.
Here's one: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy
Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others (Churchill), but when does advertising cross the line into psychological warfare against your own population?
Additional coverage at The Register
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 19 2018, @03:04PM (5 children)
Khallow, you CANNOT be unaware of the ongoing wars in the mideast and Asia. I won't believe that you are that naive, or ignorant, or whatever. People are dying because they happen to find themselves in front of the wrong gun, or because they were overheard saying something "subversive", or because they "disrespected the profit" - errr, prophet, or something like that.
Just because the war hasn't turned hot in your corner of the planet doesn't mean the war has no casualties.
More, it's not just one war. There are multiple wars, and multiple fronts. Half of those fronts may be chill right now, but people are dying on the other fronts.
Each and every terror attack that makes the headlines in Europe is, in actuality, just one more skirmish in just one of those fronts, in one of those wars.
They are for-real wars. Never make the mistake that they are some silly thing like "war on germs" or whatever you are alluding to up above.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Monday March 19 2018, @05:47PM (2 children)
In other words, it's a few dozen small wars and Syria. Vastly better than the days leading up to the Second World War. I don't buy that there is a global war between cultures merely because there are wars between cultures. You're making the fallacy of composition where you are extrapolating from a part of the world to the whole. Just because there are wars doesn't mean there is a global war.
So what? It's not much of a skirmish.
There's no well-defined enemies, little fighting that wouldn't happen anyway (and certainly far less than one would expect from a global war), and no strategy for winning this alleged war. Getting ourselves entangled in foreign wars without a clear idea of why we're there or hope to achieve is a recipe for disaster.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 19 2018, @06:41PM (1 child)
I'll agree with you on that point. But, the Ottoman was toppled for a reason. And, the Muslims are fighting back for equally valid reasons. Among their valid reasons, they fear that they might go the way of the Assyrians. And - they might, at that. Their culture is under assault, daily, via the internet, television, radio, and more.
I was shown a photo some years ago. In Saudi Arabia, it is (or was) illegal to watch foreign television. Yet, nearly every apartment within sight of the camera lens had a satellite dish. Their culture, not to mention the authority of their religious authorities, has been under constand assault by the west. And, we wonder why the most fanatic Muslim extremists come from Saudi Arabia . . .
No, we aren't exactly waging a World War, like the 1940's. But there is a war, and there are casualties. Again, I tell you, just because your little piece of the world seems peaceful, doesn't mean the world is peaceful.
(Score: 2) by NotSanguine on Monday March 19 2018, @11:56PM
Actually, we are (and have been for quite some time), by pretty much every measure, living in the most peaceful, prosperous and free (by certain definitions of that word) time in the history of human civilization.
I'm all for making things *more* peaceful, *more* prosperous and *more* free.
But claiming that everything is going to hell, when the truth is the opposite, seems pretty silly Runaway.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2, Insightful) by aristarchus on Monday March 19 2018, @08:01PM (1 child)
Runaway, you Cold War Cretin! Time for your military indoctrination of wear off.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 20 2018, @01:23AM
FTFY. It was bugging me, even though I knew what you meant. Cretin, and a Poltroon and a Knave, I might add. But I won't.