What's happening on facebook, Twitter, and comment sections is closer to astroturfing. Hiding the sponsor while confusing the reader into thinking they are receiving some sort of grassroots or socially acceptable message. Studies show that it's ridiculously effective in getting people to change their opinions when they feel society is also changing, which is what's being abused in these people's bubbles.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
No, that is a misunderstanding of what these articles and investigations are reporting, as well as of my post. The overwhelming majority of users on Facebook are real. These articles aren't about fake accounts and bots only talking with each other. The propaganda accounts--whether actively managed or almost fully automated--act to influence the content real people are exposed to, and those people spread such content--and opinions influenced by that content--to their networks of real people. Fake accounts can also amplify divisive opinions & news--whether real or fake--in such a way that greater numbers of real people become exposed to it by letting it spread from network to network.Originally Posted by LittleFuzzy
One of the examples highlighted in the latest round of articles is the one of the fake image of a Muslim woman walking past Brits injured in a terrorist attack looking like she doesn't g a f about them. This image was shared by tens if not hundreds of thousands of real people--and discussed by thousands--both in the UK and elsewhere. In Sweden, it eventually became the focus of intense discussion with real participants--such as well-known xenophobic politicians, alt-media writers, influential bloggers etc--on several occasions even long after it first appeared and was debunked, usually resurfacing with nudges from bots or fake troll accounts. It was used to reinforce disgusting misconceptions about the kuffar-hating Muslim fifth column in our overly-tolerant societies. This is characteristic of the spread of much of the actual fake news as well the non-fake but deeply misleading and divisive content on Facebook in particular.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Yes but do you recognise what these memes tend to have in common? A clear and simple image with a short and snappy message that is easily shared.
Not shouty all caps bullshit written under a news article that people don't read.
I don't think anyone has disputed the power of memes as opposed to below the line text only comments on a news site.
Again, no. A great deal of this content is spread either as links to "articles" or as long copy-pasted posts (rants, opinion, lists of "arguments", fake stories, etc). And, again, no-one here is talking about comments on news sites.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
No, you're misunderstanding. The material is the same. The sources are the same. But I'm supposed to act like we're not talking about bathroom scralls because someone or multiple someones are re-tweeting them, hitting their like button, or adding their own scrall to the material?
Do I detect the flavor "ignorance is bliss" here? There is ONLY ONE decent remedy for bad news, bad speech, etc. More news, speech, and so on. If a basic education isn't enough to protect the dumbasses of the world from taking their news and world views from a bathroom stall than you'll just have to bank on that "easily led" nature you insist they have and use it to grab them with the more accurate stuff.Fake accounts can also amplify divisive opinions & news--whether real or fake--in such a way that greater numbers of real people become exposed to it by letting it spread from network to network.
I'm sorry but what you, OG, (Steely to a slightly lesser extent) are trying to peddle is intellectual laziness. People are stupid enough to love bad sources and so the solution is to. . . "do something" about bad sources rather than deal with the problem: the dumbasses.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
How are you this god damn ignorant when it comes to advertising? Don't you own your own business?
We aren't talking about some 4chan basement dwellers. We aren't talking about the kats of the world.
We're talking about the offices filled with paid full time employees. People who are trained in how foreign governments work, pop culture, and languages. People who are masters at red pilling. These groups that actively seek out deplorables and manipulate them until their backfire effect is perfected. That create, or infiltrate, groups and steer them toward a common goal: to destabilize. Hell, at one point we had russian groups controlling both BLM and Nazi groups and even scheduled them to hold rallies at the same time to create a conflict. They're so good at what they do that their fake twitter accounts can hit 70,000+ followers and more before they get outed. They put serious effort into what they do, and its so subtle that few question what is going on. For example, this conversation exposes at least one account run by employees at Internet Research Agency, the largest known russian troll farm.
Once you find that cord to pull on thats it, there is no discussion, no "fixing" an incorrect view. Racism, xenophobia, etc. Issues that shouldn't be front and center, yet are, because outside influences have convinced a handicapped part of the population that they're right, and they aren't as alone as they should be.
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 11-16-2017 at 11:32 AM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
You appreciate the radical nature of what you just stated?
Congratulations America
I don't know what kind of weird-ass bathrooms or bathroom culture you have where you live, but it appears from your post as if they have no relation to bathrooms in the real world. Sure, on an extremely superficial level, and in a very trivial sense, fake news may be a little like scrawls on a bathroom wall. But in the real world the best comparison is to propaganda and disinformation comprising an important part of information and/or psychological warfare. It is within those fields that these methods have been developed, perfected and deployed. Your analogy with bathroom scrawls isn't informative. The quality is greater and, even when it isn't, most people aren't getting this info from a bathroom. They're getting it from their friends, family members, the "news" and even their political leaders.
There is little evidence to suggest that this is effective and a growing body of evidence suggesting that it may have the opposite effect, ie. attempts to correct false information about controversial or politically divisive subjects risks entrenching false views. There is also little evidence to suggest that this method is workable, given that participation in social media--and, to a very great extent, in news-/information gathering in general--is extremely tribal. In addition, as you well know, Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.Do I detect the flavor "ignorance is bliss" here? There is ONLY ONE decent remedy for bad news, bad speech, etc. More news, speech, and so on.
No. This strategy just reinforces precisely those mechanisms, behavioral quirks and cognitive biases that have given rise to this situation to begin with. It's an arms-race we can only lose, in the long term, with increasingly dangerous consequences.If a basic education isn't enough to protect the dumbasses of the world from taking their news and world views from a bathroom stall than you'll just have to bank on that "easily led" nature you insist they have and use it to grab them with the more accurate stuff.
I'm surprised to see your disdainful dismissal of hundreds of millions of people as irrelevant "dumbasses" or easily-led sheep, as if that somehow helps us arrive at a solution. The methods we're discussing here exploit traits shared by most humans everywhere. Some are more susceptible than others, but most people are susceptible to some extent, and your belief that a "basic education" should be enough to protect us from these tactics is simply not borne out by real world experience or controlled studies. Even educated people can fall into the trap of thinking that, where there's smoke, there's probably a fire.
I'm sorry if my posts in this latest discussion have somehow confused you but as far as I can tell I haven't yet proposed a solution. The temporary solutions I've seen that show some promise involve requiring entities like Facebook & Google to take more responsibility for the quality of content on their platforms as well as make an effort to comply with laws. For example, Google has made progress with prioritizing high quality information in their search results, but it's a constant struggle. Facebook has lagged behind, but has in recent months made progress eg. with a tactic of clearly labeling news that has been disputed by independent fact-checkers (dramatically reducing their reach), and working to remove automated and managed fake accounts. Facebook will also take more responsibility to ensure, for example, that foreign actors don't try to circumvent laws by paying for campaign ads in the US, and both Facebook and Twitter are doing more to sanction users for subjecting other users to racially motivated abuse. Other strategies involve thorough and official investigations into the disinformation campaigns that have been conducted in the past few years.I'm sorry but what you, OG, (Steely to a slightly lesser extent) are trying to peddle is intellectual laziness. People are stupid enough to love bad sources and so the solution is to. . . "do something" about bad sources rather than deal with the problem: the dumbasses.
It's obvious that, in the long term, we haven't got a shot unless we put a lot of effort into training people to become better at dealing with information (and we haven't got the slightest hope of accomplishing that so long as it remains a politically polarizing issue). But it's foolish to focus exclusively on long-term strategies for addressing root causes while an established cancer or infection rapidly destroys your body. You have to do both, simultaneously.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
It's a "follow the money" thing though. You're really focused on intermediate vectors of delivery and ignoring that the information remains invalid without any valid source of origin/back-up material. Writing on a bathroom wall doesn't become any better (or more credible) because your uncle (or a "leader" like Trump) is the one who repeated it to you.
It's possible it doesn't work, hence my initial reply on this topic. I said "decent" not effective. The problem is that your remedy is that if we can just "protect" the dumbasses from material we don't want them to ever see/hear in the first place than the whole problem goes away. But there is simply no flipping way to shut off the flow of information like that in this 24/7 information age, not in any semblance of an open society. You can't protect them from themselves, or yourself from their exposure. The ONLY thing you can do here is try to counter it after the fact. You mention an arms race. The same race faces the "tech companies" and whoever else may seek to stem this by technical means and they will also lose it. Defense, in information warfare as in cyberwarfare, is decidedly inferior. It's almost wholly reactive which means you're pretty much guaranteed to take it to the face before you can start building a response.There is little evidence to suggest that this is effective and a growing body of evidence suggesting that it may have the opposite effect, ie. attempts to correct false information about controversial or politically divisive subjects risks entrenching false views. There is also little evidence to suggest that this method is workable, given that participation in social media--and, to a very great extent, in news-/information gathering in general--is extremely tribal. In addition, as you well know, Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it.
Social media is not, cannot be, a reliable news source, anymore than a wiki can and for the same reason. We have a word for "crowdsourcing" when it comes to information dissemination, a concept that goes back thousands of years. In English, we call it "gossip." What else am I supposed to think of these people?I'm surprised to see your disdainful dismissal of hundreds of millions of people as irrelevant "dumbasses" or easily-led sheep,
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Sounds sensible and positive from Davis. I'm warming to him after disliking him lots originally: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42020008
Right, right, just gonna go right ahead and change human nature rather than ask Twitter, Facebook, Google et al to turn off the posting functionality in their APIs, or mark automated users or moderate their platforms in the slightest.
Fuckers are world leaders in machine learning, but if it's not for selling adverts or harvesting people's personal data to sell to advertisers they're not interested.
When the sky above us fell
We descended into hell
Into kingdom come
Lmao. So many words, so little substance, so much continuing incompetence. The lack of respect from his subordinates is understandable.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Its as if all the other consumer protection laws, agencies, and groups we have are being called pointless and useless... a surprising and ridiculous position for someone like fuzzy to take.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Many of those things are useful and have their place. But you're asking that we build a wall that will prevent any of these people from getting any information which they might repeat to others themselves and corrupt the world in doing so. Further, you're asking we do this when you insist these people are dedicated to these messages and take any effort to refute or remove them as confirmation of their accuracy and their own biases.
And, furthermore, we're supposed to trust human moderators and machine learning to do this with material that is carefully crafted and put in place by human state actors, while simultaneously (though I imagine none of you guys really cares about this) not imposing prior restraint on any of the dumbasses and their own protected is wrongheaded expression.
If your goal is to stomp on information created and spread by human actors supported by state resources before it ever reaches anyone, in a world which is devoted to the rapid dissemination of information at the individual level, than your goal is absolute futility. You can educate them, before and after, so they don't believe the crap. You can try and fight fire with fire since you insist they're gullible and easily led morons. You can find a way to make the Russians (or other actors who want to get in the game) hurt enough that they don't want to play anymore. Or you can find a way to turn off social media. Those are your options.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Your apparent paranoia and frankly archaic understanding of technology puts a lot of your post somewhere between laughable and irrelevant. But this is an established issue with you and at this point I can't be assed to correct it because, as you've already said, you don't actually care about what we say on here. Which is an odd stance to hold considering your denial of the backfire effect combined with your "more debate" take on things.
Now I can't tell if your rambling attempt to put words in my mouth is an act of ignorance on the matter, or just being an ass, but you did appear to touch on a bit here and there for what I think could help matters. Frankly the attacks that we are seeing here need a response from some sort of combination of enforcement and filtering we already use for subjects like drugs and child porn. Which is a mix of programming and moderation. But both have to be effective, a point I'm sure you're foaming at the mouth to jump at. Pushing for debates just gives these people more platform, which is exactly what they need and want and shouldn't be given. This concept that is barely more evolved than why those horribly misspelled Nigerian spam emails are so effective, they aren't targeting you, they're targeting people like Lewk. The people who thrive on strife and discord because thats the only type of world that they are relevant in.
Last edited by Ominous Gamer; 11-17-2017 at 10:46 AM.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Nice timing, this was just shared on slashdot.
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41983599
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
There's another issue. Since you bring up topics like child porn and drug use. . . those are illegal. Political opinions and commentary, whether it's based on true material or false, is not. And at least in this country, they literally cannot be. And while private firms do have some rights to control the content which appears on their property, they are enjoined to do so without engaging in invidious discrimination. Which again brings us back to this being political claims, opinions, and commentary which are protected areas. There are limits to their ability to pick and choose. There's generally not any justiciable fraud here as there would be with your typical nigerian scam and there typically isn't someone who would have standing bringing a libel or slander suit (which again brings those platforms and attention).
Btw, has it occurred to you that this is the flip-side of social media's accessibility and use for those formenting social change, even on a massive scale like we saw with the Arab Spring? Do you remember why it was not easy for authorities to counter that? It applies here to us as well. Furthermore, any measures we can come up with or force the tech companies to come up with are then also available to shut down those very same other movements you do like.
And how is it that you're raising kids to anyone who ever disagrees with you is "you just don't understand" like some pre-teen girl?
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Put prosperity before politics. That's rich coming from a Breximaniac.
Congratulations America
It's his high-horse-shtick. He regularly prances into a thread on it.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
New BBC article today with comments open: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-42023765
Top 3 comments right now:
From "newspeak"
From "I am not happy about this at all"The EU's Article 50 states 'Any Member State may decide to withdraw from the Union'.
The UK has every right to leave without any financial or moral obligation.
The UK have compromised, conceded and offered solutions.
The EU have not entered into any negotiations whatsoever.
The EU merely has a list of demands.
You cannot negotiate with idealogues.
Walk.
Away.
Now.
From "lee"Day by day it’s becoming clearer and clearer that the EU is a nasty and vindictive organisation and the sooner we tell them to shove it, the better.
Stinks. Stinks I tell ya.The sooner we just walk away the better.
Oh really?
Quoting the above:If you didn't read those comments then I'm not sure how you can draw any conclusions about the impact they had.I think you owe me an apology Aimless. Gogo clearly is talking about comments on news sites. He was the one who first used those words and has done so repeatedly.
What makes that stink? What makes you think that some of the weirdos who read and post below the line on news sites may not actually think that way by themselves? And why are you reading the ramblings of weirdos?
Because their comments are consistently upvoted into the heavens; way above those that attempt to offer any kind balanced or constructive argument. And whilst I've met lots of leavers (my family, friends from different backgrounds and upbringings, and work colleagues in a company with over 1,000 employees), I've never actually met or spoken to anyone in real life who shares those extreme views - and it makes me suspicious that the massive upvoting isn't actually representative of public opinion at all.
Because I find it interesting and because I think it's important to understand what may be observed by many as "common public opinion" on one of the most popular sites in the world.
While I hadn't considered Gogo's posts, it's clear he's not only talking about comments on news sites, and your inordinate focus on that one particular vector of xenophobic Brexity garbage remains misguided.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
A dagger through my heart.
I'm sorry but gogobongopop is clearly a pseudonym and your posts are consequently nothing more than scrawls on a bathroom wall.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
I'm sorry but that is a tad naive, extreme opinions have been upvoted consistently on that site since the idea of voting like that on comments was first introduced. Regardless of the subject.
Moderate opinions don't get upvoted much in any arena or subject.
That's fine but take it with a pinch of salt. There is nothing scientific or representative about it.Because I find it interesting and because I think it's important to understand what may be observed by many as "common public opinion" on one of the most popular sites in the world.
Astonishing, disheartening but also unsurprising to see the resurgence of anti-Irish rhetoric in British public debate. Also fascinating to read about the targeting of Tories who've taken a dim view of govt's mismanagement of the Brexit process, by both media as well as by organizations using targeted dark ads.
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
Interesting account of the Irish problem:
https://www.rte.ie/news/analysis-and...g-read-brexit/
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
It'll certainly be interesting to see how this is resolved.
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