3 ms·

what a load of rubbish. fake news & social engineering has always been around. it's just there are more channels for it nowadays, and due to the freedom of publ

what a load of rubbish. fake news & social engineering has always been around. it's just there are more channels for it nowadays, and due to the freedom of publish, those at top have to mix a lot of truth with a bit of nonsense, to keep control

deevolution 9y ago
So true. Fake news/social engineering has been around since at least The creation of the bible. But now fake news can reach people faster, spread more quickly, and be consumed in larger quantities because of facebook.
acdha 9y ago
That’s like writing off the green revolution because farming has been around forever. We have fewer barriers than before: a website is cheap to run compared to a newspaper or broadcast station and there’s no border restriction – no Moldovan teenager could send TV programs or newspapers to gullible Americans. That’s a huge difference: if a newspaper printed libel they could be sued and had physical assets to risk losing. Companies had reputations which took years to build or change. Now it’s just a sea of shell companies and disposable websites and if, hypothetically, a bunch of Republicans started caring that Breitbart was lying so routinely the same stuff would just pop up on a new domain a day later. That’s the other key point you missed: distribution and discovery are totally different now. If I set up a newspaper I still had to convince people to subscribe or stock it, TV stations took years to setup, etc. That encouraged moderation to maximize the number of customers. In contrast, now everyone is competing on Facebook and Google News, both of which hate the idea of paying for editorial review and will cheerfully display satire or propaganda on equal footing with established mainstream news sources. I’m not in love with the gatekeeper model – note that e.g. the 90s Balkan & Rwandan genocides relied on taking over the state media first – but that doesn’t mean that we can ignore the problems we’re seeing now, or that tech companies aren’t being incredibly reckless in their desire to make a slightly higher margin on ad revenue.
- testingTheCraic 9y ago
  Didn't miss distribution & discovery. Distribution is different nowadays of course (hence the social engineering program is very clever and will feed you a lot of truth and grab you if you're seeking truth - i.e. all prominent 'alternative' sources). Discovery? Well, no not really. Discovery for the masses is at the will of the centralised social engineering program (Google, Facebook, etc) When anything significant happens in western politics you can better you bottom dollar it wasn't an un-staged occurrence. Trump was your man before election day. Brexit was the ultimate divisive illusionary 'you have a choice, you can make a difference' nonsense, despite the fact that having one less centralised corrupt level of power is of course worthy of a vote. Journalism is a dead as a dodo. Have you been psyop-d into attributing tin-foil hats to anyone who raises there head from the Orwellian / Huxley media sources and takes stock of history, and seeks alternatives from the mainstream, rather than the brain-rotting recycling 'news'. Does 'conspiracy theorist' make your alarm bells go off and want to cease all association? The thing to invest in is local. Turn away from centralisation for now, until the whole thing is open sourced and you can track your politicians lives into the intimate details, and you have a monetary system that's not debt-based. Once that day comes maybe local won't be your only avenue for hope.

deevolution 9y ago

So true. Fake news/social engineering has been around since at least The creation of the bible. But now fake news can reach people faster, spread more quickly, and be consumed in larger quantities because of facebook.

acdha 9y ago

That’s like writing off the green revolution because farming has been around forever. We have fewer barriers than before: a website is cheap to run compared to a newspaper or broadcast station and there’s no border restriction – no Moldovan teenager could send TV programs or newspapers to gullible Americans. That’s a huge difference: if a newspaper printed libel they could be sued and had physical assets to risk losing. Companies had reputations which took years to build or change. Now it’s just a sea of shell companies and disposable websites and if, hypothetically, a bunch of Republicans started caring that Breitbart was lying so routinely the same stuff would just pop up on a new domain a day later. That’s the other key point you missed: distribution and discovery are totally different now. If I set up a newspaper I still had to convince people to subscribe or stock it, TV stations took years to setup, etc. That encouraged moderation to maximize the number of customers. In contrast, now everyone is competing on Facebook and Google News, both of which hate the idea of paying for editorial review and will cheerfully display satire or propaganda on equal footing with established mainstream news sources. I’m not in love with the gatekeeper model – note that e.g. the 90s Balkan & Rwandan genocides relied on taking over the state media first – but that doesn’t mean that we can ignore the problems we’re seeing now, or that tech companies aren’t being incredibly reckless in their desire to make a slightly higher margin on ad revenue.

testingTheCraic 9y ago
Didn't miss distribution & discovery. Distribution is different nowadays of course (hence the social engineering program is very clever and will feed you a lot of truth and grab you if you're seeking truth - i.e. all prominent 'alternative' sources). Discovery? Well, no not really. Discovery for the masses is at the will of the centralised social engineering program (Google, Facebook, etc) When anything significant happens in western politics you can better you bottom dollar it wasn't an un-staged occurrence. Trump was your man before election day. Brexit was the ultimate divisive illusionary 'you have a choice, you can make a difference' nonsense, despite the fact that having one less centralised corrupt level of power is of course worthy of a vote. Journalism is a dead as a dodo. Have you been psyop-d into attributing tin-foil hats to anyone who raises there head from the Orwellian / Huxley media sources and takes stock of history, and seeks alternatives from the mainstream, rather than the brain-rotting recycling 'news'. Does 'conspiracy theorist' make your alarm bells go off and want to cease all association? The thing to invest in is local. Turn away from centralisation for now, until the whole thing is open sourced and you can track your politicians lives into the intimate details, and you have a monetary system that's not debt-based. Once that day comes maybe local won't be your only avenue for hope.