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I liked the approach in one of Neal Stephenson's books [1], where instead of trying to remove negative stuff said about a person, they flooded the internet with

I liked the approach in one of Neal Stephenson's books [1], where instead of trying to remove negative stuff said about a person, they flooded the internet with the most vile stuff they could come up with, to the extent that people stopped taking it seriously and moved on. Kind of like letting a fire consume all the oxygen out of a room instead of trying to put it out. 1: https://www.nealstephenson.com/fall,-or-dodge-in-hell.html https://www.nealstephenson.com/fall,-or-dodge-in-hell.html

nullc 5y ago
Then the next section of the book is about the fracturing of civilization as a result of inconsistent disinformation everyone was being flooded with...
rapind 5y ago
We’ll we’re already doing that, except not necessarily vile but in aggregate filling it up with useless information. Between SEO spam, content marketing, outrage news, and reputation fixers, we’re well on the way to destroying the web at least as we used to know it.
jandrese 5y ago
Of course in the real world we know this doesn't work. People will instead believe everything you tell them if they want to. They might not remember all of it specifically, but they will believe it all in aggregate. Example: Hillary Clinton, who murdered a bunch of Americans at an embassy in Libya, ran an underground child murder ring, gave away all of our state secrets via a criminal email server, is actually an animated corpse that can't even wear shoes properly, etc... You'll probably say that most of this is nonsense, but people have gone to jail because they believed it so completely and committed crimes to try to stop her.
- jimmygrapes 5y ago
  You're on the right track. I think that the issue with this whole concept is that it didn't go far enough. People got too worked up about the myths and started acting out which messed with other norms and laws, but what if they simmered for a other decade? Not that I want to see the result of that, but it's a curious idea imo.

nullc 5y ago

Then the next section of the book is about the fracturing of civilization as a result of inconsistent disinformation everyone was being flooded with...

rapind 5y ago

We’ll we’re already doing that, except not necessarily vile but in aggregate filling it up with useless information. Between SEO spam, content marketing, outrage news, and reputation fixers, we’re well on the way to destroying the web at least as we used to know it.

jandrese 5y ago

Of course in the real world we know this doesn't work. People will instead believe everything you tell them if they want to. They might not remember all of it specifically, but they will believe it all in aggregate. Example: Hillary Clinton, who murdered a bunch of Americans at an embassy in Libya, ran an underground child murder ring, gave away all of our state secrets via a criminal email server, is actually an animated corpse that can't even wear shoes properly, etc... You'll probably say that most of this is nonsense, but people have gone to jail because they believed it so completely and committed crimes to try to stop her.

jimmygrapes 5y ago
You're on the right track. I think that the issue with this whole concept is that it didn't go far enough. People got too worked up about the myths and started acting out which messed with other norms and laws, but what if they simmered for a other decade? Not that I want to see the result of that, but it's a curious idea imo.