3 ms·

> Before, the Soviets simply didn't have any mechanism to get 100 million American voter impressions. They didn't? Back in the 60s, around half of the US popul

> Before, the Soviets simply didn't have any mechanism to get 100 million American voter impressions. They didn't? Back in the 60s, around half of the US population (100M people) watched the national nightly news on a regular basis from the three networks. What's easier: convincing three networks to run a fake story sympathetic to Soviet interests, or convincing 100M people of something through "impressions?" And keep in mind that for decades, Western journalists (mostly in newspapers or magazines) parroted stories about how the Soviet Union was advanced and prosperous, when the reality was starkly different. Reality only penetrated through when samizdat, arguably the social media of its day, was able to funnel Khrushchev's so-called Secret Speech into Western hands. That and Gulag Archipelago really tarnished the image of the Soviet Union in spite of coverage from journalists. Also, quick aside: I remain highly perplexed that otherwise intelligent people in the tech industry believe so strongly in the power of social media to "program" people just by virtue of "number of impressions." Hacker News is the only place on the Internet where I might see side-by-side stories where social media advertising is called out as essentially fraud and also that social media advertising is bringing about the end of civilization because some Russian Bots paid for some Facebook ads. I don't get it. Getting anyone to commit to anything beyond cheap talk is extremely difficult (and even the cheap talk part is hard if it doesn't confer some status).

quantified 6y ago
Based on FB algorithms, I think "impressions" have won convincingly.
- baryphonic 6y ago
  I want to see evidence of causation. The herd mentality here has yet to even show correlation. Just repeated assertions without evidence.
throwaway894345 6y ago
You make a good point that mainstream media is and has been an attack vector; however, your comparison "3 networks vs 100M people" is a bad one--obviously the choice is "3 traditional media networks vs 3 social media networks".
- baryphonic 6y ago
  This is fair. In this 3 vs. 3 framing, the social media companies are much easier to "convince," since it's easier to defeat algorithms than a person's mind. I stand by what I said, though. The two types of network are not equivalent. People in the 1960s generally trusted media implicitly. Walter Kronkite has the trust of reportedly 90%(!!!) of Americans at the time. I don't think anyone trusts what they see on Facebook because it is on Facebook. Doubly so for Twitter. (Nevertheless, Facebook clearly wants this kind of trust - it deranks and adds disclaimers to posts it claims are false. Maybe this makes some people think Facebook posts are more reliable. Yet their somewhat repeated failure to mistake political opinions that dominate in the Valley for facts[1] has made me trust Facebook itself less.) Instead, people trust or don't trust what they see filtered through critical thinking, personal experience and individual biases. If a Russian creates pages for "Americans for the Second Amendment" and "Black Lives Matter Network," people already predisposed to supporting those causes will inherently trust the claims a bit more. But very few would be convinced to change their minds based on this. Social media can be used to amplify preexisting polarization, especially given the engagement-based algorithms. (Perhaps that is the lesson we should learn from OP.) But I have yet to see any evidence that state-sanctioned "PsyOps" on social media have been terribly effective at convincing people of lies or narratives that they might not otherwise believe. I have seen gobs of evidence that the mainstream media is still effective at convincing tens of millions of people of the veracity of stories that are propaganda or close to it. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/adam4d/status/969405110324523008 https://mobile.twitter.com/adam4d/status/969405110324523008

quantified 6y ago

Based on FB algorithms, I think "impressions" have won convincingly.

baryphonic 6y ago
I want to see evidence of causation. The herd mentality here has yet to even show correlation. Just repeated assertions without evidence.

throwaway894345 6y ago

You make a good point that mainstream media is and has been an attack vector; however, your comparison "3 networks vs 100M people" is a bad one--obviously the choice is "3 traditional media networks vs 3 social media networks".

baryphonic 6y ago
This is fair. In this 3 vs. 3 framing, the social media companies are much easier to "convince," since it's easier to defeat algorithms than a person's mind. I stand by what I said, though. The two types of network are not equivalent. People in the 1960s generally trusted media implicitly. Walter Kronkite has the trust of reportedly 90%(!!!) of Americans at the time. I don't think anyone trusts what they see on Facebook because it is on Facebook. Doubly so for Twitter. (Nevertheless, Facebook clearly wants this kind of trust - it deranks and adds disclaimers to posts it claims are false. Maybe this makes some people think Facebook posts are more reliable. Yet their somewhat repeated failure to mistake political opinions that dominate in the Valley for facts[1] has made me trust Facebook itself less.) Instead, people trust or don't trust what they see filtered through critical thinking, personal experience and individual biases. If a Russian creates pages for "Americans for the Second Amendment" and "Black Lives Matter Network," people already predisposed to supporting those causes will inherently trust the claims a bit more. But very few would be convinced to change their minds based on this. Social media can be used to amplify preexisting polarization, especially given the engagement-based algorithms. (Perhaps that is the lesson we should learn from OP.) But I have yet to see any evidence that state-sanctioned "PsyOps" on social media have been terribly effective at convincing people of lies or narratives that they might not otherwise believe. I have seen gobs of evidence that the mainstream media is still effective at convincing tens of millions of people of the veracity of stories that are propaganda or close to it. [1] https://mobile.twitter.com/adam4d/status/969405110324523008 https://mobile.twitter.com/adam4d/status/969405110324523008