5 ms·

This is really a pretty fascinating example of psyops in the wild. Propaganda for both "tribes" assembled in opposition over various issues in order to sow more

• dilap 8y ago
  how are these any different than the standard appeal to emotion arguments that groups make in good faith? e.g., why is an ad trying to raise awareness about black lives matter from russia any different than an ad trying to raise awareness about black lives matter from black lives matter? > The power to disseminate information (or disinformation) is not one that should be taken lightly. curious to know if you believe the power to disseminate info should be regulated by the govt.
  • eric_h 8y ago
    > how are these any different than the standard appeal to emotion arguments that groups make in good faith? That's what's so fascinating about this. I don't see a reasonable way to prevent it from happening. The tools optimized for extracting money from people are also apparently pretty good at sowing discord. > curious to know if you believe the power to disseminate info should be regulated by the govt. The term "pirate radio" is a thing. The internet democratized the power to disseminate information without permission or consequence (with some exceptions, obviously), and I think that's a good thing. Honestly at this point the only reasonable solution I can come up with is a "one weird trick" ad campaign that directs people to a magically effective MOOC on critical thinking.
    • roywiggins 8y ago
      The internet was not quite so bad before content recommendation engines. It was very much a "pull" experience, other than banner ads for porn and malware. Now, Google and Facebook can specialize their content directly to you and your interests. Watch a slightly out of mainstream video? Maybe you would like this one that's further out there. And the more you click, the more YouTube thinks it knows you, and it can keep feeding you worse stuff. It's not that it's being malicious exactly, but it's got an ability to push you that Web 1.0 just didn't have. It used to be that you would go down a link rabbit hole and maybe find some really awful stuff, but the next day the only thing that remembers it is your own browser. Nobody comes along and starts emailing you about it.
      • eric_h 8y ago
        > The internet was not quite so bad before content recommendation engines. It was very much a "pull" experience, other than banner ads for porn and malware. Very true, and because of that the depth of the internet was not available to the uninitiated. The "push" of recommendation engines opened up a world of possibilities for the denizens of the internet who didn't know how to find new things that would interest them beyond typing the name of a site into a url bar. It also opened up a world of possibilities for monetization, and here we are.
  • jryan49 8y ago
    Some of the ads I was reading were would take extreme stances that make the other side get a distorted view of a group. I saw an LGBT ad from Russia that suggested we make it illegal for heterosexuals to adopt. This would do damage to said movements in that people will ignore their legitimate messages as well when them deem them extremists.
    • dilap 8y ago
      good point; that could indeed cause 'unnatural' dissension. (a related phenomenon that occurs even w/o impostors: people in group A tend to pick the most outlandish, crazy members of opposition group B to critique (and vice-versa); each group, by focusing their criticism & attention on the least-reasonable members of the opposing group, becomes convinced that only unreasonable people are in the opposition. (and any large group will have unreasonable members, of course.))
    • chris11 8y ago
      I think this showed another more fundamental problem with Facebook. Their focus on increasing user engagement can end up putting users in hyper-partisan walled gardens. Then people can end up less willing to compromise.
    • r00fus 8y ago
      So a false flag/ Joe job
    • alexandercrohde 8y ago
      Could you link that one? I can't seem to find it
      • jryan49 8y ago
        This was the image I was talking about: https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/buDyxBhuwEgTWpgvuiE_wMVI6D4=/1484x0/arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/JGYIJPRTN47INP4WM3QAM7EY64.png https://www.washingtonpost.com/resizer/buDyxBhuwEgTWpgvuiE_w... in this washington post article (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/10/these-are-the-most-popular-russian-facebook-ads-from-each-month/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.70c7820d2adf https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/2018/05/10/t...)
  • roywiggins 8y ago
    For instance, you might try to push a particular movement to an extreme by selectively targeting and pushing the most extreme version of their ideology. This isn't standard outreach ("come join our org") but it's trying to build a radical faction inside the existing organization. The goal is, you destabilize the whole organization and hope to end up either cleaving it in half or getting the whole thing coopted by the extreme nut jobs.
  • a1369209993 8y ago
    > standard appeal to emotion attack That is the RCE vulnerability.
  • moomin 8y ago
    Well, you need to consider the subtext as well, which can be very different from what you expect. e.g. that nice image of a woman in a Stars and Stripes hijab talking to Hillary Clinton with a pro-Hillary tagline? Targeted specifically at users believed to be anti-Islamic. The pictures don’t tell you the whole story and shouldn’t be taken at face value.
• 205guy 8y ago
  To take the analogy further, if education in its various forms represent the patches, they have been MITM'd, compromised, and sold on the dark web. This seems to be the achilles heel of a consumer culture: it's also in the corporate interests to have weak education and psychologically compromised consumers.
• jancsika 8y ago
  > It seems that most of the human race was deployed to production with a pretty critical RCE vulnerability, and the patches available (education in its various forms) do not appear to be sufficient to protect the whole system from corruption. I don't get what education has to do with it. HN is a forum full of hyper-educated users, but it still greys out downvoted comments by default. I don't think the reason for that is because it makes it slightly more convenient to read comments. I think the reason is because it lowers the probability that hyper-educated users get irritated and end up expending energy responding to low-effort comments.
  • eric_h 8y ago
    My point was, in part, that education is an inadequate patch.
• partycoder 8y ago
  Pretty much the same Fox News and CNN do. Think about it.