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posted by martyb on Tuesday October 09 2018, @04:49PM   Printer-friendly
from the usa-usa-usa dept.

In March, the United States Special Operations Command, the section of the Defense Department supervising the US Special Forces, held a conference on the theme of "Sovereignty in the Information Age." The conference brought together Special Forces officers with domestic police forces, including officials from the New York Police Department, and representatives from technology companies such as Microsoft.

This meeting of top military, police and corporate representatives went unreported and unpublicized at the time. However, the Atlantic Council recently published a 21-page document summarizing the orientation of the proceedings. It is authored by John T. Watts, a former Australian Army officer and consultant to the US Department of Defense and Department of Homeland Security.

[...] The private sector, therefore, must do the dirty work of the government, because government propaganda is viewed with suspicion by the population. "Business and the private sector may not naturally understand the role they play in combating disinformation, but theirs is one of the most important.... In the West at least, they have been thrust into a central role due to the general public's increased trust in them as institutions."

But this is only the beginning. Online newspapers should "consider disabling commentary systems—the function of allowing the general public to leave comments beneath a particular media item," while social media companies should "use a grading system akin to that used to rate the cleanliness of restaurants" to rate their users' political statements.

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/10/05/pers-o05.html


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  • (Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @05:28PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @05:28PM (#746512)

    The private sector, therefore, must do the dirty work of the government, because government propaganda is viewed with suspicion by the population. “Business and the private sector may not naturally understand the role they play in combating disinformation, but theirs is one of the most important…. In the West at least, they have been thrust into a central role due to the general public’s increased trust in them as institutions.”

    If government propaganda is coming from "business and the private sector", then they will be "viewed with suspicion by the population" as well. In fact, it is pretty obvious that this has been going on for quite some time and many people do not trust the media at all.

    Look at this poll, which discovered the majority of people now don't trust the news because it is inaccurate, biased, opaque, and filled with hype/clickbait. Who would have thought?

    https://www.knightfoundation.org/reports/indicators-of-news-media-trust [knightfoundation.org]

    Online newspapers should “consider disabling commentary systems—the function of allowing the general public to leave comments beneath a particular media item,”

    Whatever, then people will just move to news aggregation sites like this one. I also don't trust disqus, so this would probably be a net benefit. But usually the most interesting part of any story is actually the comments at this point.

    Starting Score:    0  points
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       Interesting=2, Total=2
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  

    Total Score:   2  
  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday October 09 2018, @07:09PM (1 child)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday October 09 2018, @07:09PM (#746565) Journal

    I agree with you there--the comments at the end are the most interesting part of a story, now. A decent moderation system like SN has helps boost the signal to noise ratio.

    It has been glaring, too, how many "news" sites have eliminated comments sections entirely. They don't want to be challenged by readers. They don't want their glaring omissions or mistakes called out. They don't want to engage with the world because it's harder to have a conversation than to deliver a soliloquy.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @07:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 09 2018, @07:58PM (#746592)

      They don't want their glaring omissions or mistakes called out. They don't want to engage with the world because it's harder to have a conversation than to deliver a soliloquy.

      Nah, that's not it. They just don't want a Runaway666! He did managed to get banned from the comment section of Fox News, for being too cray-cray.