4 ms·

I believe all the discord and polarization that has happened over the past 10+ years have been because of psyops. I came to that realization when I read a paper

by vinyl7 4y ago

I believe all the discord and polarization that has happened over the past 10+ years have been because of psyops. I came to that realization when I read a paper from the CIA about memetics and naturally propagating ideas through a population. Social media makes it extremely easy to do. It could be russia, it could be china...but the goal is to destabilize the US

giantg2 4y ago
I'm not sure that all of it is. I know there has been some. One of the biggest known examples is Russia playing both sides of the Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter issue to drive violence. My comment was mostly about voting outcomes and not other types of disruption. Following the prior example, the vast majority of people dug into the side they already supported and didn't really affect party choice.
- r721 4y ago
  >Following the prior example, the vast majority of people dug into the side they already supported and didn't really affect party choice. In case you missed it there was a recent paper on this topic: >Exposure to the Russian Internet Research Agency foreign influence campaign on Twitter in the 2016 US election and its relationship to attitudes and voting behavior https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35576-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35576-9 Summary thread: https://twitter.com/CSMaP_NYU/status/1612449687218397194 https://twitter.com/CSMaP_NYU/status/1612449687218397194
- HybridCurve 4y ago
  I'm glad you mentioned this. Everyone should take a bit of time and look through the media they were disseminating to familiarize themselves with what their approach looked like. You can find it here (Sorry, large zip files, but straight from the source): https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/social-media-content/social-media-advertisements.htm https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/social-media-conten... A lot of this is related to reflexive control theory applied to psyops where you are conditioning a target to respond with anger (negative emotions work best, but any emotional response is valid). The goal being to divide groups and prevent them from establishing a constructive dialogue between themselves and by eliciting predictable (again, often negative) responses to certain stimuli. This allows a malign actor to effectively paralyze a governing body by preventing the two sides from working together to accomplish even the most basic of goals. It's often used in concert with other forms of subversion such as political/legal manipulation and warfare to achieve the desired outcome. RAND and CSIS have a number of good reports and articles on this type of thing if you wish to know more.
ekianjo 4y ago
it could be the three letter agencies going rogue as well.
meowface 4y ago
Very unintentionally funny post.

by vinyl7 4y ago

giantg2 4y ago

I'm not sure that all of it is. I know there has been some. One of the biggest known examples is Russia playing both sides of the Black Lives Matter, Blue Lives Matter issue to drive violence. My comment was mostly about voting outcomes and not other types of disruption. Following the prior example, the vast majority of people dug into the side they already supported and didn't really affect party choice.

r721 4y ago
>Following the prior example, the vast majority of people dug into the side they already supported and didn't really affect party choice. In case you missed it there was a recent paper on this topic: >Exposure to the Russian Internet Research Agency foreign influence campaign on Twitter in the 2016 US election and its relationship to attitudes and voting behavior https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35576-9 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-35576-9 Summary thread: https://twitter.com/CSMaP_NYU/status/1612449687218397194 https://twitter.com/CSMaP_NYU/status/1612449687218397194
HybridCurve 4y ago
I'm glad you mentioned this. Everyone should take a bit of time and look through the media they were disseminating to familiarize themselves with what their approach looked like. You can find it here (Sorry, large zip files, but straight from the source): https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/social-media-content/social-media-advertisements.htm https://democrats-intelligence.house.gov/social-media-conten... A lot of this is related to reflexive control theory applied to psyops where you are conditioning a target to respond with anger (negative emotions work best, but any emotional response is valid). The goal being to divide groups and prevent them from establishing a constructive dialogue between themselves and by eliciting predictable (again, often negative) responses to certain stimuli. This allows a malign actor to effectively paralyze a governing body by preventing the two sides from working together to accomplish even the most basic of goals. It's often used in concert with other forms of subversion such as political/legal manipulation and warfare to achieve the desired outcome. RAND and CSIS have a number of good reports and articles on this type of thing if you wish to know more.

ekianjo 4y ago

it could be the three letter agencies going rogue as well.

meowface 4y ago

Very unintentionally funny post.