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, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @12:53AM
A YouTube vid warning us about YouTube vid
No thanks.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @01:21AM
Please tell us what to believe internet!
(Score: 3, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 06 2019, @01:38AM (2 children)
Any time you click a link, only to be exposed to a robovoice, the person who posted it has to come to your house, so you can slap him/her in the face.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @02:59AM (1 child)
I think this may be the very first time I have seen you post something I wholeheartedly agree with. Tell me, is the sky still blue? Just asking.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday April 06 2019, @01:26PM
Not today.
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 3, Insightful) by jmorris on Saturday April 06 2019, @02:31AM (6 children)
The clickbait ads will always be with us, but lets look at the fake news side of this problem.
People are digging for news in dark corners of the Internet because they have lost all trust in the Institutions in our civilization. Even folks on the left side of the Bell Curve have figured that much out. So that leaves a lot of people who know they can't trust the "mainstream news" and also can't sort out the obviously fake alternative stuff. Of course then there is the professional disinformation campaigns running that are much harder to detect, again they succeed because there are no trusted gatekeepers. Now add in 4chan running elaborate pranks and hoaxes.
There is of course only one long term solution, but for now it if forbidden to even dream of, while we are ruled by people who consider lying the highest form of worship. Ah well, barring an outright miracle this all ends in fire and we start over.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @04:00AM (1 child)
Indeed. My point where I realized just how manufactured it all is was a trip across the united states. I was an avid NPR listener. Can't get more benign than that right? Station after station reading the same story over and over. Each time by a different person. Presenting it as if they wrote it themselves. That was 20 years ago. The more I looked for 'balanced' the less I see 'news' or 'facts' but click bait, manipulation, half-truths, and opinion disguised as facts.
A common tactic I see from 'liberal' stations is what I call association. It will be something like lets say a political figure does something that most people do not agree with. If it is a republican the story will read almost every time something like "John Doe, a Republican senator for the state of blah, did something bad" whereas a democrat will get something along the lines of "John Doe a senator did something bad". They will selectively leave out facts to sway you into association of bad things to other groups. That is but a simple one and one of the first ones you can find. Once you 'see' the pattern it is hard to 'un-see'. 'conservative' sites have their own set of tactics too.
Another common tactic I see is what we called on the green site 'slashvertisiments'. Basically political and companies will buy news. They do not even have to pay much. Most news is wildly rushed out the door. So political groups and companies will pre-prepare stories for the news to basically read for when they have a gap (and there are many). Once you realize they can buy trivial news. What if there was real money or power on the line? They are willing to do it for a few bucks. What about when hundreds of thousands are on the line? What would they do?
The tabloid style click news is what rules now. These groups have seized upon it with such vigor you could almost admire it if it were not for the poison they are foisting upon our society. The more division they create the more the echo chambers they build work. The more people click and reclick on their stuff. All so they can show you an ad impression and make 0.0001 cents from you.
In the case of the new gate keepers. They have mistakenly bought into the idea that there is a final truth and that only they can see it. They have fallen into the smart person fallacy that they can fix this and that they are right by default. The root of the issue is money, power, and the enabler of this advertisements. There is money to be made so the whole system is being manipulated, even by the gate keepers themselves. They even freely admit it and deplatform those they do not agree with.
If you had told me 20 years ago that CNN would go off the rails like it has, and google would deliberately censor information, I would have thought you crazy. But here we are.
At first you think 'nah I am just being crazy'. Then you see more lies. Then more. Then more twists of truth into half truths. Eventually you realize "I am not crazy I am being gaslighted by liars and narcissists".
The logical thing to do is to ignore these raving idiots. They are yelling louder and louder as more people tune them out. It is how narcissists draw you back into their web of lies and how they feed on your misery. The same tactics you use to disassociate from a narcissist work with these news wonks.
You may think 'but I may miss the news'. The big stuff pops out. The trivial shit designed to piss you off falls away.
Do not feed the trolls. Which is what these people have become. They have become what they hate.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @05:55PM
honk honk
(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.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Saturday April 06 2019, @10:50PM
Devil's advocate: misinformation has never not been a thing. Consider the quote by Mark Twain, who predates the Internet by half a century:
"If you don't read the newspaper, you're uninformed. If you read the newspaper, you're mis-informed."
Arguably, the purpose of organized religion is to communicate what leaders want heard. Sometimes that is correct information, sometimes that is incorrect information. Since the beginning of society, humans have always had to discern correct and incorrect news, and since the beginning of society, most humans have never been very good at it; but overall we have been good enough at it to make something resembling forward progress.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 07 2019, @04:39AM
"There is of course only one long term solution, but for now it if forbidden to even dream of, while we are ruled by people who consider lying the highest form of worship."
Sure you can dream! The long term solution is to *not* be a gullible ignoramus. Of course, that will take some effort on the part of every individual who aspires to such but it is doable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday April 06 2019, @05:25AM
So called Social media is nothing more than a manipulation of crowded people in a next logical step to religion and ideology. It is actually good that the people are now recognizing the psychological technology of mind control behind all historical social manipulations, because our current technical technology made it clearly visible. So called giants are just a tool of ancient oppressors, they deserve well to be beaten by weapons they themselves use against us.