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Astroturfing, troll farms, and AI driven slide bots are the future of discourse where the stakes are high and the conversation is in any way connected to the in

Astroturfing, troll farms, and AI driven slide bots are the future of discourse where the stakes are high and the conversation is in any way connected to the internet. This will affect all parties on all sides of all debates. I have no idea what this means for society or what should be done about it.

PeterStuer 7y ago
Welcome to the post-truth society. Where this will end nobody knows, but that it will take us into some new 'dark ages' already seems pretty likely.
- jacquesm 7y ago
  I would argue that we are already well underway towards those 'dark ages'. The fact is that today if you compare the quality of the news and the deluge of information you are bombarded with with say the news grade at the end of the 80's, just before the internet became a commodity that we've slid backwards considerably. Losing quality newspapers as a source of information and replacing them with the current crop of online news sources, filter bubbles and the twitterverse does not feel at all like an improvement to me.
electrifyTrash 7y ago
The long game is that participation in electronic communication is reduced to rubble and ash. We all withdraw, and seek alternatives to personal remote interaction via telecommunication. We look at the text tumbleweeds blowing across the landscape, knowing they are covered in radioactive dust and asbestos from wars fought long ago in what now resembles a no mans land of WMD cola wars and Michael Dukakis pogroms. Uselessness and futility expressed in magnetic regions and energized transistors. Moldering and soon desiccated well beyond any expiration date. Short term, our eyes and ears are raped by tabloid infographics, as a shortage of sensory chastity belts drives prices through the roof. We lock our doors and listen as boots tromp outside and morons with opinions bayonet and hand grenade everything in sight, until eventually the noxious fumes force even their horses to wear gas masks. We slap wet towels against the door jams as blister agents seep in, and eventually aerial carpet bombing exterminates millions of us. Shell shocked survivors ramble word salad nonsense and gibberish about glam rock and square dancing, as if nerd signaling niche interests will validate the street credibility of their corporate agribusiness ad-supported cybernetic implants hobbled with OEM political opinion software that cannot be uninstalled. But eventually, the war ends when something so terrible emerges, that further sock puppeting becomes unthinkable and a cold war posture leaves only limited proxy misinformation still frothing at the edges of digital electronic systems. The occasional Nigerian robocall reminds us of the bad old days aren't as far away as we'd like to think. The blackened sky and nuclear winter still shrouds the internet as we knew it. All TCP/IP traffic ruined, we still get by with bucket brigades that hand off physical disks that resist tampering through cryptographic integrity mechanisms. Nothing is instantaneous anymore, and some prefer it that way.

PeterStuer 7y ago

Welcome to the post-truth society. Where this will end nobody knows, but that it will take us into some new 'dark ages' already seems pretty likely.

jacquesm 7y ago
I would argue that we are already well underway towards those 'dark ages'. The fact is that today if you compare the quality of the news and the deluge of information you are bombarded with with say the news grade at the end of the 80's, just before the internet became a commodity that we've slid backwards considerably. Losing quality newspapers as a source of information and replacing them with the current crop of online news sources, filter bubbles and the twitterverse does not feel at all like an improvement to me.

electrifyTrash 7y ago

The long game is that participation in electronic communication is reduced to rubble and ash. We all withdraw, and seek alternatives to personal remote interaction via telecommunication. We look at the text tumbleweeds blowing across the landscape, knowing they are covered in radioactive dust and asbestos from wars fought long ago in what now resembles a no mans land of WMD cola wars and Michael Dukakis pogroms. Uselessness and futility expressed in magnetic regions and energized transistors. Moldering and soon desiccated well beyond any expiration date. Short term, our eyes and ears are raped by tabloid infographics, as a shortage of sensory chastity belts drives prices through the roof. We lock our doors and listen as boots tromp outside and morons with opinions bayonet and hand grenade everything in sight, until eventually the noxious fumes force even their horses to wear gas masks. We slap wet towels against the door jams as blister agents seep in, and eventually aerial carpet bombing exterminates millions of us. Shell shocked survivors ramble word salad nonsense and gibberish about glam rock and square dancing, as if nerd signaling niche interests will validate the street credibility of their corporate agribusiness ad-supported cybernetic implants hobbled with OEM political opinion software that cannot be uninstalled. But eventually, the war ends when something so terrible emerges, that further sock puppeting becomes unthinkable and a cold war posture leaves only limited proxy misinformation still frothing at the edges of digital electronic systems. The occasional Nigerian robocall reminds us of the bad old days aren't as far away as we'd like to think. The blackened sky and nuclear winter still shrouds the internet as we knew it. All TCP/IP traffic ruined, we still get by with bucket brigades that hand off physical disks that resist tampering through cryptographic integrity mechanisms. Nothing is instantaneous anymore, and some prefer it that way.