Paid internet trolls

[may be rude]

Well, maybe it's more covert and in a way more intelligent now.

 

But let's take Russian propaganda. Is it really worse than during the Cold War when the Soviet Union tried pass it self off as a nation of peace in Europe and influenced lots of governments behind the scenes? Or early 20th century when pieces like the Protocols of the Elders of Zion were written somewhere in the Russian Empire as anti-semitic propaganda?

 

Maybe the Russian propaganda and political influence is a relatively new thing in the US but here in Finland it has been present for a long long time.

 

I think technological advances such as the internet have lowered the price point of influence by a tremendous amount and therefor increased propaganda's prevalence dramatically. 

 

It would be difficult to quantify. People in a 17th century village lived in an era that was less scientifically minded, so people's viewpoints were susceptible to suggestion more anyway. This shift in mindset toward thinking-for-yourself has been progressing at the same time that technological advancements in information transfer have been increasing, so it is difficult to tease apart the effects of the two trends. I.e., people are exposed to more propaganda now, but are more skeptically minded than they were 200 years ago.

 

There is a third trend complicating such analysis, the amount of information being handled by people. The modern world is much more complex.

 

If you tried to quantify amount of people influenced by propaganda and the extent to which they were influenced, comparing the 19th century to the 21st century, I think it would be plain that people are more effected by disinformation now.

[Zephyr_Nova]

What the - the reply window appears to have moved to the top of the thread for me, instead of the bottom where it's been for the duration of my watmm posting career.  Did Joyrex just troll me?

 

My original reply was going to be "where do I apply to become a paid internet troll?"

[Amen Warrior]

I've heard flashbulb pays an army of shills to spread flashbulb propaganda on this very website

[may be rude]

So the Cambridge Analytica thing that just blew up is exactly what we've been talking about. Kind of crazy how Musk has said AI is the most serious problem we face, and it could become too powerful much sooner than expected, and now we are seeing Wylie, the director of research at Cambridge Analytica coming out because of his guilt about how his company was creating a web of disinfo online for people to go down the rabbit hole into, so they would believe things were happening that really weren't, while simultaneously the company had odd ties with a Kremlin linked oil company that was inexplicably inquiring into CA's voter data. All that stuff is on tape and well laid out toward the end of this Maddow block (the whole block is good though).

 

I think Musk was afraid to say it outright, but I think his fear regarding AI is nothing maniacal, but simply it becoming too powerful and falling into the wrong hands. And here we see that it may well have been stolen Facebook user data on 50 million Americans used for AI-powered, micro-targeted disinfo that flipped key states that polls indicated as safely Clinton's (MI, WI, PA, FL).

[marf]

I wonder if I could work from home thumbs downing youtube videos

[user]

 

I've heard flashbulb pays an army of shills to spread flashbulb propaganda on this very website

Interesting you should jest--has anyone else noticed that Benn is mostly a synth shill these days? I hang around r/synthesizers and he has a fairly big presence there. His posts always refer back to his YouTube page where he demos out the kit du jour. Maybe he's just doing it for love of gear but he doesn't strike me as the type to do much for free.

 

 

I think it's becoming more of a thing where people who've had moderate success with their music but not so much anymore start doing synth demos or tutoring for ask.audio/dubspot/point blank. Probably a good way to make some money while still staying in the field so to say.

[chenGOD]

An excellent piece on the Cambridge Analytica issue and reporting around it can be found here:
https://medium.com/@CKava/why-almost-everything-reported-about-the-cambridge-analytica-facebook-hacking-controversy-is-db7f8af2d042

 

With his follow-up here:
https://medium.com/@CKava/follow-up-on-my-cambridge-analytica-facebook-piece-8d6be7f142a3

 

And as usual,Pew Research Centre has some excellent work here on bots posting links on twitter: http://www.pewinternet.org/2018/04/09/bots-in-the-twittersphere

 

The tl;dr for this topic:

 

The study does not find evidence that automated accounts currently have a liberal or conservative “political bias” in their overall link-sharing behavior. This emerges from an analysis of the subset of news sites that contain politically oriented material. Suspected bots share roughly 41% of links to political sites shared primarily by conservatives and 44% of links to political sites shared primarily by liberals – a difference that is not statistically significant. By contrast, suspected bots share 57% to 66% of links from news and current events sites shared primarily by an ideologically mixed or centrist human audience.

[TubularCorporation]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-12-07/how-rodrigo-duterte-turned-facebook-into-a-weapon-with-a-little-help-from-facebook

 

 

Who needs troll farms and secret operatives and such when your campaign can just collaborate directly with Facebook to manipulate election results?