9 ms·

was this comment written in the past? social media is already controlled, exploited, and mastered by corrupt businessmen and politicians.

jvanderbot 6y ago
Well, technically ... yes.
dnissley 6y ago
Which businessmen and politicians control facebook?
- ptd 6y ago
  Whichever are willing to pay the most.
  - dnissley 6y ago
    Let's say I have loads of cash to spend. How do I spend it to get control of facebook? Presumably there are limits to that control -- what are they? Is "buying ads on facebook" the same as "controlling facebook"?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - shadowgovt 6y ago
      Buying a massive ad slate on Facebook doesn't give you direct control but does give you a lot of say in their policies because keeping you happy becomes tied to their bottom line. Compare YouTube policy adjustments in light of P&G announcing they were planning to yank their advertising from the platform because it wouldn't rope in what P&G considered to be its worst content.
    - smokey_circles 6y ago
      This is... Silly. 1) You can look at the 5 eyes alliance's assault on encryption. That's literally forcing their will on the company (and others) 2) The TikTok ban demonstrates not only capacity but an appetite to exert to control over this domain 3) That whole "summon the CEO of the company to directly answer questions from the group of people literally in charge of policies around reform and control" Or we could sidestep these questions and conflate income with ownership
    - banannaise 6y ago
      If you have functionally unlimited funds, you can just use them to astroturf, which, as we've seen, can be far more effective than advertising. Controlling the content is awfully close to "controlling Facebook". Facebook can decide to stop serving your content, but they've shown no interest in doing so.
      - Melting_Harps 6y ago
        > If you have functionally unlimited funds, you can just use them to astroturf, which, as we've seen, can be far more effective than advertising. Exactly, the amount of psy-ops via bots and entities like the CCP's Wumao Army are going to be way more effective at steering the narrative in your favour way more than any short-lived 'viral' ad or targeted ad campaign. Furthermore, it can be sustained for much longer periods of time and can foment and incite way more resentment than any controversial or persuasive ad, because of the associations to other conflict-based facebook groups. This is all really to say that the underlying surveillance economy is entirely indifferent to labels such as 'communism' or 'capitalism' and seem ephemeral and fleeting when the means/methods and desirable ends are the same as each other: manipulation by discord. The fact that this takes place is not a surprise as psy-ops, conspiracy and counter-intelligence have been the mainstays of every single Nation-state's intelligence agencies; what is a surprise to me is how widely adopted and how pervasive it has been for so much of the Human population when there is SO MUCH MORE interesting aspects of the Internet. And how readily people are drawn to go for such shallow fodder when presented the opportunity to do so. It's all so High School, and for those of us that got fed up with it when we were (forced) in it we cannot see the value or appeal to any of it: I got a small chuckle in passing from the whole 'Space Karen' spat with Elon after he supposedly tested positive for COVID and was not able to go to the Cape, but rather than waste my time digging into it or anything else related to that drama that led up to it I just kept the stream from the Crew flight on throughout the entire mission and then stopped listening to anything related to that entirely until I had time to watch the Sentinel launch this morning. Which was pretty rad, and dedicated to an amazing man who devoted much of his life to the pursuit of studying and monitoring Climate Science and Ocean levels and made incredible contributions to the discipline before tragically losing his battle with cancer this year: Michael Freilich [0]. His children's recounting of their father was incredibly touching and it made my day to hear their story and relationship with Micheal. By contrast, I felt physically ill for several days trying to follow the impact of Anonymous' Blue Leaks on twitter without an account during the riots. I'm not prepared to subject myself to such a degrading sense of mental health for what seems like vapid forms of entertainment, especially with so much more beneficial and fruitful things to be in engaged in, both on and offline. The concept of 'de-evolution' comes to mind anytime I hear about the latest twitter beef that spills over into real life that often leads to violence: Follow Live: Violent white supremacists (proud boys) clash with Liberal snowflakes (BLM protestors)! Its often feels like we're filling in the missing parts to the prelude of Idiocracy. 0: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/432/michael-freilich/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/432/michael-freilich/
    - leetcrew 6y ago
      make a large donation to one of mark's favorite charities. at the gala, have a casual discussion about the challenges of moderating a large social media platform.
      - tekknik 6y ago
        who is mark?
    - im3w1l 6y ago
      Buy a newspaper, spend money lobbying politicians. Use these to exert indirect pressure. Buy ads for direct pressure. Setup a charity "social media consumer advocacy" to which you donate money used to spoil the activists you cultivate. Next synergize all these efforts: Have the newspaper write about the activists, have the lobbyists talk about the newspaper articles with the politicians, and bring up the articles during sales talks regarding your ads.
- millsmob 6y ago
  The Atlantic Council and NATO for a start.
  - pjc50 6y ago
    You're going to have to define "control" here and explain how it's exercised, other than Facebook being headquartered in a NATO country. The Atlantic Council are listed as a "thinktank"?
- ajxs 6y ago
  Facebook itself, just like other online media companies, _is_ a political entity. My view is that the risk we in democratic countries face is not from political entities co-opting Facebook, it's from companies like Facebook becoming political entities in their own right. We're all well aware of how America's lobbying system works. What I think is much more insidious is companies who control the flow of information pursuing their own political agendas. Twitter and Facebook can have more influence on the political landscape by altering the algorithms they use to promote information than the equivalent of millions of dollars of lobbying. That should frighten you.
  - petre 6y ago
    > companies like Facebook becoming political entities in their own right The worst thing that can happen is having Zuck run for president and win. A pesident with a propaganda tool of his own. In Ukraine they already have a reality TV actor who played a president as the president. Turns out that he's no worse than any other 'real' politician. Guess it's the Ukrainian way of trolling the vote.
    - UnFleshedOne 6y ago
      Tells you something about the real politicians I guess...
- Natanael_L 6y ago
  Republican politicians appealed personally to Zuckerberg over fact checks on right wing disinformation and bans of right wing trolls and they agreed to not hold those people to the ToS.

jvanderbot 6y ago

Well, technically ... yes.

dnissley 6y ago

Which businessmen and politicians control facebook?

ptd 6y ago
Whichever are willing to pay the most.
- dnissley 6y ago
  Let's say I have loads of cash to spend. How do I spend it to get control of facebook? Presumably there are limits to that control -- what are they? Is "buying ads on facebook" the same as "controlling facebook"?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - shadowgovt 6y ago
    Buying a massive ad slate on Facebook doesn't give you direct control but does give you a lot of say in their policies because keeping you happy becomes tied to their bottom line. Compare YouTube policy adjustments in light of P&G announcing they were planning to yank their advertising from the platform because it wouldn't rope in what P&G considered to be its worst content.
  - smokey_circles 6y ago
    This is... Silly. 1) You can look at the 5 eyes alliance's assault on encryption. That's literally forcing their will on the company (and others) 2) The TikTok ban demonstrates not only capacity but an appetite to exert to control over this domain 3) That whole "summon the CEO of the company to directly answer questions from the group of people literally in charge of policies around reform and control" Or we could sidestep these questions and conflate income with ownership
  - banannaise 6y ago
    If you have functionally unlimited funds, you can just use them to astroturf, which, as we've seen, can be far more effective than advertising. Controlling the content is awfully close to "controlling Facebook". Facebook can decide to stop serving your content, but they've shown no interest in doing so.
    - Melting_Harps 6y ago
      > If you have functionally unlimited funds, you can just use them to astroturf, which, as we've seen, can be far more effective than advertising. Exactly, the amount of psy-ops via bots and entities like the CCP's Wumao Army are going to be way more effective at steering the narrative in your favour way more than any short-lived 'viral' ad or targeted ad campaign. Furthermore, it can be sustained for much longer periods of time and can foment and incite way more resentment than any controversial or persuasive ad, because of the associations to other conflict-based facebook groups. This is all really to say that the underlying surveillance economy is entirely indifferent to labels such as 'communism' or 'capitalism' and seem ephemeral and fleeting when the means/methods and desirable ends are the same as each other: manipulation by discord. The fact that this takes place is not a surprise as psy-ops, conspiracy and counter-intelligence have been the mainstays of every single Nation-state's intelligence agencies; what is a surprise to me is how widely adopted and how pervasive it has been for so much of the Human population when there is SO MUCH MORE interesting aspects of the Internet. And how readily people are drawn to go for such shallow fodder when presented the opportunity to do so. It's all so High School, and for those of us that got fed up with it when we were (forced) in it we cannot see the value or appeal to any of it: I got a small chuckle in passing from the whole 'Space Karen' spat with Elon after he supposedly tested positive for COVID and was not able to go to the Cape, but rather than waste my time digging into it or anything else related to that drama that led up to it I just kept the stream from the Crew flight on throughout the entire mission and then stopped listening to anything related to that entirely until I had time to watch the Sentinel launch this morning. Which was pretty rad, and dedicated to an amazing man who devoted much of his life to the pursuit of studying and monitoring Climate Science and Ocean levels and made incredible contributions to the discipline before tragically losing his battle with cancer this year: Michael Freilich [0]. His children's recounting of their father was incredibly touching and it made my day to hear their story and relationship with Micheal. By contrast, I felt physically ill for several days trying to follow the impact of Anonymous' Blue Leaks on twitter without an account during the riots. I'm not prepared to subject myself to such a degrading sense of mental health for what seems like vapid forms of entertainment, especially with so much more beneficial and fruitful things to be in engaged in, both on and offline. The concept of 'de-evolution' comes to mind anytime I hear about the latest twitter beef that spills over into real life that often leads to violence: Follow Live: Violent white supremacists (proud boys) clash with Liberal snowflakes (BLM protestors)! Its often feels like we're filling in the missing parts to the prelude of Idiocracy. 0: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/432/michael-freilich/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/432/michael-freilich/
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    make a large donation to one of mark's favorite charities. at the gala, have a casual discussion about the challenges of moderating a large social media platform.
    - tekknik 6y ago
      who is mark?
  - im3w1l 6y ago
    Buy a newspaper, spend money lobbying politicians. Use these to exert indirect pressure. Buy ads for direct pressure. Setup a charity "social media consumer advocacy" to which you donate money used to spoil the activists you cultivate. Next synergize all these efforts: Have the newspaper write about the activists, have the lobbyists talk about the newspaper articles with the politicians, and bring up the articles during sales talks regarding your ads.
millsmob 6y ago
The Atlantic Council and NATO for a start.
- pjc50 6y ago
  You're going to have to define "control" here and explain how it's exercised, other than Facebook being headquartered in a NATO country. The Atlantic Council are listed as a "thinktank"?
ajxs 6y ago
Facebook itself, just like other online media companies, _is_ a political entity. My view is that the risk we in democratic countries face is not from political entities co-opting Facebook, it's from companies like Facebook becoming political entities in their own right. We're all well aware of how America's lobbying system works. What I think is much more insidious is companies who control the flow of information pursuing their own political agendas. Twitter and Facebook can have more influence on the political landscape by altering the algorithms they use to promote information than the equivalent of millions of dollars of lobbying. That should frighten you.
- petre 6y ago
  > companies like Facebook becoming political entities in their own right The worst thing that can happen is having Zuck run for president and win. A pesident with a propaganda tool of his own. In Ukraine they already have a reality TV actor who played a president as the president. Turns out that he's no worse than any other 'real' politician. Guess it's the Ukrainian way of trolling the vote.
  - UnFleshedOne 6y ago
    Tells you something about the real politicians I guess...
Natanael_L 6y ago
Republican politicians appealed personally to Zuckerberg over fact checks on right wing disinformation and bans of right wing trolls and they agreed to not hold those people to the ToS.