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One of the problems I see is that we are now in the era of what one might call "population scale mind control", actually delivering on the promises of propagand

One of the problems I see is that we are now in the era of what one might call "population scale mind control", actually delivering on the promises of propaganda. Given enough data you can find a large enough subset of the population you can persuade/trick/threaten into acting in a way you want, taking the moderate remainder in a direction completely contrary to their best interests. This is after all, what they claim as their major selling point to advertisers. So if we shut Facebook down tomorrow, would the problems disappear? Only if we took out Google and any other organizations pursuing the same dystopian models.

ethbr0 5y ago
Gore writes about this in one of his books, I believe in reference to one of his Tennessee campaigns. In short form: His polling manager tells him that if he runs this ad, at this time, on these channels, he'll get this much of a polling bump. Gore reflects to self that surely people are more complicated than that. Ad is run, polling moves exactly as predicted. The dangers of population-scale mind control isn't that it's universally effective, but that it doesn't need to be to swing democratic elections. You can usually sway the outcome just by appealing to the lowest-thinking denominator, and micro-targeting on universal platforms is exceedingly good at that.
- avalys 5y ago
  This is hardly news. You can sway a democratic election, by definition, by changing the opinion of the median voter. Which means political campaigns focus their energy on the median voter. And targeted advertising makes it easier and more efficient to do that. So what? This doesn't change the end result, that the person who gets elected is close to the median opinion in the country. It doesn't give you a way to elect an extremist that 90% of the country disagree with. It's also a mechanism that is equally available to all candidates. It is not as if only Republicans can run advertising on social media. In fact, I recall a bunch of fawning praise in the media and tech sphere for the 2008 Obama campaign's use of social media, and much prognostication that the old farts in the Republican party would be consigned to political oblivion because they wouldn't be able to master the use of big data and social media to precisely target their spending and efforts to win elections. At the time no one in the media seemed to consider this future the end of democracy - that's only a complaint that comes up when the Republicans use this technique to win, apparently.
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    I made no mention of party. And I think the modern reality is a little different, precisely because we aren't talking about influencing the median voter. We're instead talking about influencing the mostly easily influenced voter. It used to be, that was the median voter, because that's all newspaper / radio / television was able to target. But now, it's pretty easy for me to say "Show me likely voters who believe the Koch brothers are the Illuminati" or "Show me likely voters who believe in Pizzagate," and craft a winning campaign around motivating them. Which leads us to... where we are now.
Applejinx 5y ago
We're in 'yet another' era of that. Back in the 30s, it was radio. Whenever technology brings a new mass communication medium, this happens, and is corrected. This is no different.
- angelzen 5y ago
  Back in the 1600s it was the printing press. 30 years and 50% population decline later, it was corrected. Hopefully we can avoid too strong of a correction? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War
avalys 5y ago
That certainly isn't what they claim as their major selling point to advertisers. Do you have any evidence or documentation for this statement? What Facebook offers to advertisers is the ability to choose who sees their ads very accurately and for a very granular set of interests and demographics. Nothing more, nothing less. Advertisers like this because it means they are not spending money showing ads to people who are unlikely to be interested in their product in the first place. That's it. The idea that Facebook has figured out a way to achieve "population scale mind control" and that they explicitly offer this as a product to advertisers is beyond ludicrous. Again, do you have any evidence for this? Can you show me a screenshot of the Facebook ad buying interface with the "mind control" box checked? I can see why people would wish this were true. The US is in a downward spiral of political polarization and dysfunction that may well be heading us towards civil war. It would be nice if we could blame this on some kind of mysterious, greedy, rapacious AI-driven boogeyman (like Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook) that we could simply eliminate to return us to normal. I think a lot of the pushback against Facebook comes from people wanting to believe this is possible and not wanting to face the actual root causes of this dysfunction.
- datavirtue 5y ago
  Textbook shill.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't break the site rules like this. I don't want to have to ban you again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

ethbr0 5y ago

Gore writes about this in one of his books, I believe in reference to one of his Tennessee campaigns. In short form: His polling manager tells him that if he runs this ad, at this time, on these channels, he'll get this much of a polling bump. Gore reflects to self that surely people are more complicated than that. Ad is run, polling moves exactly as predicted. The dangers of population-scale mind control isn't that it's universally effective, but that it doesn't need to be to swing democratic elections. You can usually sway the outcome just by appealing to the lowest-thinking denominator, and micro-targeting on universal platforms is exceedingly good at that.

avalys 5y ago
This is hardly news. You can sway a democratic election, by definition, by changing the opinion of the median voter. Which means political campaigns focus their energy on the median voter. And targeted advertising makes it easier and more efficient to do that. So what? This doesn't change the end result, that the person who gets elected is close to the median opinion in the country. It doesn't give you a way to elect an extremist that 90% of the country disagree with. It's also a mechanism that is equally available to all candidates. It is not as if only Republicans can run advertising on social media. In fact, I recall a bunch of fawning praise in the media and tech sphere for the 2008 Obama campaign's use of social media, and much prognostication that the old farts in the Republican party would be consigned to political oblivion because they wouldn't be able to master the use of big data and social media to precisely target their spending and efforts to win elections. At the time no one in the media seemed to consider this future the end of democracy - that's only a complaint that comes up when the Republicans use this technique to win, apparently.
- ethbr0 5y ago
  I made no mention of party. And I think the modern reality is a little different, precisely because we aren't talking about influencing the median voter. We're instead talking about influencing the mostly easily influenced voter. It used to be, that was the median voter, because that's all newspaper / radio / television was able to target. But now, it's pretty easy for me to say "Show me likely voters who believe the Koch brothers are the Illuminati" or "Show me likely voters who believe in Pizzagate," and craft a winning campaign around motivating them. Which leads us to... where we are now.

Applejinx 5y ago

We're in 'yet another' era of that. Back in the 30s, it was radio. Whenever technology brings a new mass communication medium, this happens, and is corrected. This is no different.

angelzen 5y ago
Back in the 1600s it was the printing press. 30 years and 50% population decline later, it was corrected. Hopefully we can avoid too strong of a correction? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_Years%27_War

avalys 5y ago

That certainly isn't what they claim as their major selling point to advertisers. Do you have any evidence or documentation for this statement? What Facebook offers to advertisers is the ability to choose who sees their ads very accurately and for a very granular set of interests and demographics. Nothing more, nothing less. Advertisers like this because it means they are not spending money showing ads to people who are unlikely to be interested in their product in the first place. That's it. The idea that Facebook has figured out a way to achieve "population scale mind control" and that they explicitly offer this as a product to advertisers is beyond ludicrous. Again, do you have any evidence for this? Can you show me a screenshot of the Facebook ad buying interface with the "mind control" box checked? I can see why people would wish this were true. The US is in a downward spiral of political polarization and dysfunction that may well be heading us towards civil war. It would be nice if we could blame this on some kind of mysterious, greedy, rapacious AI-driven boogeyman (like Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook) that we could simply eliminate to return us to normal. I think a lot of the pushback against Facebook comes from people wanting to believe this is possible and not wanting to face the actual root causes of this dysfunction.

datavirtue 5y ago
Textbook shill.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't break the site rules like this. I don't want to have to ban you again. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html