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from the overlords-for-the-robotic-overlords dept.
This morning I was trying to find a video via Youtube of a dust-up that happened in an MLB game last night. I tripped over an annoying video with a robotic voice and still images being scrolled across the screen. I thought I hit this same video more than once, but it may have been multiple videos after seeing what Destin has come up with.
This evening, I finally watched a Smarter Every Day video that's been in my notifications for a few days and lo, he starts talking about political videos that look exactly like the one that plagued me this morning.
The first third of the SED video is the part I thought would be interesting to Soylents. It explains how these multiple videos with subtle changes are intended to avoid detection by algorithms that are looking for repeat postings. Later he also looks at how they are using the different platforms to generate buzz on each other, pushing the fake content up in listings. (In the 9th minute we're shown how easy it is to buy likes and comments and a farm of hundreds of smart phones to get it done.)
The technical measures Big Tech (Youtube, Twitter, Facebook) are both employing and being inundated with to either protect us or get content in front of us is fascinating.
Part 2 and 3 will cover interviews with Twitter and Facebook. I'm sure there are folks here that were already familiar with these goings on, can you share with us any other places to educate ourselves?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Saturday April 06 2019, @01:47PM (1 child)
I would not disagree with any of that but I would extend some remarks on the topic of dying institutions retain manipulation long after the organic demand drops. So naturally, on the downslope of social media type stuff, the real content and viewers leave long before business contracts for propaganda and scammers will leave, so in the dying days of a media the ratio of spam to ham gets ridiculous.
See not just social media, but legacy network news, old fashioned newspapers and news-magazines, etc.
As the normies abandon a legacy media, the left behind propagandists and scammers go crazy beyond their normal weight in overall society.
As a side issue, 4chan seems more than pranks and hoaxes, its like a training ground for superior groups to manipulate inferior groups. Remember when /pol/ decided to see if they could manipulate the legacy media lunatics into reporting the "OK symbol" was a white supremacy symbol, and they were somewhat successful, then the meta posts on /pol/ of cut and pastes from the lunatic media were hilarious to read. "Who makes and spreads and enforces the memes" used to be ABC nightly news and new york times editorial page; those are functionally obsolete and the leader is /pol/ now.
(Score: 2) by jmorris on Saturday April 06 2019, @04:33PM
Yeah. Good times. Now clowns are a symbol of white supremacy. And according to a lunatic everyone has been having great sport with, time itself is a symbol of white supremacy. Just about everything is or will be a symbol of white supremacy. Meanwhile every possible ethnic group is fighting the census people for a different classification because, as the fake news reports, they don't want to be classified as White and suffer from affirmative action quotas in hiring and admissions.