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An illustrated guide to post-Orwellian censorship (2021)
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- pvg 3y agoHN thread at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28316443 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28316443 2021, 150ish comments
- throw0101d 3y agoWith regards to the section on Flooding: > We characterize the contemporary Russian model for propaganda as “the firehose of falsehood” because of two of its distinctive features: high numbers of channels and messages and a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions. In the words of one observer, “[N]ew Russian propaganda entertains, confuses and overwhelms the audience.”[2] > Contemporary Russian propaganda has at least two other distinctive features. It is also rapid, continuous, and repetitive, and it lacks commitment to consistency. […] > The experimental psychology literature tells us that first impressions are very resilient: An individual is more likely to accept the first information received on a topic and then favor this information when faced with conflicting messages.[13] Furthermore, repetition leads to familiarity, and familiarity leads to acceptance: * https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html
- JohnMakin 3y agoThis is extremely effective in an age where people will only read headlines, and often barely even that.
- kmeisthax 3y agoReminds me of what the Church of Scientology did to USENET's alt.religion.scientology newsgroup[0]. More generally, I think the Internet is unusually useful for this kind of attack. The netheads that built it had a very specific political view - namely, that censorship is network interference with a political motive. "The Internet views censorship as damage and routes around it", and all that. Ergo, all we have to do to have free speech is build better networks. Censorship by free speech - i.e. flooding / sporgery / etc - is the "GPL judo move" of dictators. You want unimpeded network traffic? Heheh, sure. Fine. We can have 'free speech'. Free speech for me and my twenty billion alts all saying the same thing, too! [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporgery https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sporgery
- amadeuspagel 3y agoUsenet was useful for this kind of attack, the internet allows you to create moderated forums that can withstand it.
- photonthug 3y agoExcept it's increasingly obvious that moderation doesn't scale, and the attack it wishes to prevent does
- kmeisthax 3y agoUSENET had moderated newsgroups, too - and there's web forums that are wholly unmoderated (or not meaningfully moderated). Doesn't matter, though. This isn't an attack that can be solved with moderators, because the attack is not the content of the message. It's who's sending it. Our Russian dictators assume thousands if not millions of identities in order to spam the world - you as a moderator only see a randomly-generated humanoid and an unusually common sentiment. Yes, you could just ban the sentiment, but now you're accidentally censoring legitimate speech by unrelated parties.
- BLKNSLVR 3y agoMeta comment: this is the second comment within a couple of weeks that's critical of Scientology that's fairly quickly attracted down votes. Ironic?
- dang 3y agoPlease don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading. - https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Worse, when the GP comment eventually gets upvoted (as happened above), replies like this one become dangling references to a situation that no longer exists. HN threads have no GC!
- pvg 3y agoIt's interesting that this take on Russian propaganda is itself a becoming a little outdated - flooding makes sense externally given you have external channels for it and internally, where the channels might be a given but the regime does not want to appear overly coercive. Russia now has fewer external channels than it did in 2016 (your link) and 2021 (posted link). It's more coercive internally and a more coercive (but reasonably rational) regime needs more consistent internal messaging so that people know where the line of trouble is - defining the limits of public behaviour and expression becomes a more important part of the propaganda. There's still 'flooding' but it isn't sufficient.
- pixl97 3y agoThere is still plenty of flooding, but it looks more like these days it's about social media account creation that generates content to get picked up by superspreaders. At least for foreign consumption this seems more effective. https://www.youtube.com/@RyanMcBethProgramming https://www.youtube.com/@RyanMcBethProgramming talks about this on a number of his videos.
- lcnPylGDnU4H9OF 3y ago> a shameless willingness to disseminate partial truths or outright fictions I remember an informative presentation about Russian history and culture which seems to go along with this, in particular the bit about "two words for the truth and three for the lie". https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=2257 https://youtu.be/kF9KretXqJw?t=2257 (time-stamped at the relevant portion but the whole talk is good)
- 331c8c71 3y agoWell I don't know about Finns but in Western Europe Russians are often considered to be a bit too direct or even blunt. Kinda contradicts the "lying culture" hypothesis. EDIT. I watched the video a bit more and I could not take it seriously after seeing the part about "technological backwardness" that apparently always was there. That's just charged propaganda and there is nothing to discuss.
- rainworld 3y agoFinns still sore about losing the Winter War. Which they lost. They were defeated. They had to tap out. It’s just that they were smart enough to concede and trade a good chunk of their territory for continued statehood. A lesson lost in time.
- mtizim 3y ago> a lesson lost in time What exactly are you implying?
- rainworld 3y agoHN’s supposed to be a well-informed crowd but somehow the last half-year of Ukraine-related doom and gloom in Western mainstream media simply hasn’t registered. Since you’re asking. Knowing when to quit—it’s a lesson for everyone, of course. Knowing that when you take a gamble you could lose it all.
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- pphysch 3y agoIt is interesting how meta-propaganda like this article (comic book), or Peter Pomerantsev's This Is Not Propaganda, or your average YouTube video on "propaganda" tends to infantilize the reader.
- photochemsyn 3y agoThis article is a bit narrow in scope, e.g. > "Horrified by Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany, Orwell spun a tale that continues to color how we picture state censorship in controlled societies." Orwell was equally 'horrified' by the British Empire's imperialist practices, which he documented in then-Burma. See "Shooting an Elephant" for example: George Orwell: "I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing.... I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_an_Elephant Now, if you want to experience censorship in the 'Western liberal democracies' today, just replace "the Burmese" in that quote with "the Palestinians."
- gsinclair 3y agoI don’t get it. I see Palestinian advocacy all over the place.
- hodanli 3y agothey are after the filter. you were even not able to tag gaza in instagram.
- text0404 3y ago"Prominent US figures face backlash and firings for pro-Palestinian statements" - https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/29/israel-palestine-backlash-david-velasco-artforum-nan-goldin https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/oct/29/israel-pales... "‘The Palestine exception’: why pro-Palestinian voices are suppressed in the US" - https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/01/palestine-us-activism-firings-speech https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/nov/01/palestine-us-a... "House Passes Resolution Declaring Anti-Zionism A Form Of Antisemitism—Some Democrats Are Critical" - https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/12/05/house-passes-resolution-declaring-anti-zionism-a-form-of-antisemitism-some-democrats-are-critical/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianbushard/2023/12/05/house-p... being coerced into silence for fear of professional retaliation is a form of censorship.
- SammyStacks 3y ago
- enterprise_cog 3y ago[flagged]
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- ajsnigrutin 3y agoYep, same for EU... we literally banned RT to not hear the other side. And let's not forget covid... how the "truth" changed overnight and everyone else was literally censored on pretty much all social networks and comment sections. Somehow we always point the fingers at others, china, russia, etc., whoever is not "our friend" at the moment, and forget the stuff that happens in our own countries.
- dudul 3y agoWhat do you mean "not our friend at the moment"?? We've always been at war with Eurasia :)
- nottorp 3y agoInteresting, when I saw the title i thought it's an article about self censorship of entertainment in order to not offend any possible pressure group. Seems to be about present day dictatorships though.
- raphlinus 3y agoI think the distinction is not as hard and fast as you make it out. I found "Tools for thinking about censorship"[1] to be extremely thought-provoking. There are many nuanced arguments, but a central one is that governments often leverage self-censorship in order to effect their control over the flow of information. [1]: https://www.exurbe.com/tools-for-thinking-about-censorship/ https://www.exurbe.com/tools-for-thinking-about-censorship/
- nottorp 3y agoAh, I was thinking of Disney like zaccharine not government control of information.
- amadeuspagel 3y agoOrwell wrote about subtle censorship in a preface to Animal Farm[1] -- the book itself is about totalitarian censorship in the Soviet Union, the preface is about a more subtle censorship in britain that made it hard to publish the book. [1]: https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/ https://www.orwellfoundation.com/the-orwell-foundation/orwel...
- anramon 3y ago>the book itself is about totalitarian censorship in the Soviet Union Animal farm is a critic of any kind of totalitarian government AND a critic of capitalism itself. The book literally ends with: >Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
- jancsika 3y agoHas anyone made a kind of interactive post-Orwellian censorship sandbox? Seems like LLMs should make this possible. E.g., the user posts a trivially true thing and the LLM starts to reply with falsehoods, half-truths, concern trolling, etc. If the user can keep the truth above some percentage of the posts (or get the truth to bubble up to top comment) then they win that level. Maybe even different levels like Space Invaders so the LLM speeds up with each level, perhaps even adding more sock puppets each level. Would definitely be instructive. If done right it should also have an effect on the way the user consequently reads and assesses content on HN, Reddit, etc. :)
- RcouF1uZ4gsC 3y agoI think the biggest danger for censorship in the US is public/private censorship cooperation. The government is prohibited by the First Amendment from censoring. However, due to the centralization of the Internet, most communication passes through just a few gatekeepers. Congress holds hearing decrying content that they do not have the right to officially censor, but nevertheless use this to make their wishes crystal clear. Present for those hearings are the leadership of these gatekeepers, who are also made aware of all the other levers that Congress has that could make their lives miserable - anti-trust, section 230, copyright, not to mention government contracts. Of course like Henry II who never actually ordered Becket's death, Congress doesn't actually order censorship, just makes it clear that censoring those things would make them very happy.
- dudul 3y ago> The government is prohibited by the First Amendment from censoring. And if there's one thing we know for an absolute fact it's that the government never does anything forbidden by the constitution.
- Vicinity9635 3y ago>Horrified by Stalin’s Soviet Union and Hitler’s Germany, Orwell spun a tale that continues to color how we picture state censorship in controlled societies. ...no. It was inspired by his observations during the Spanish Civil War: “Early in life I have noticed that no event is ever correctly reported in a newspaper, but in Spain, for the first time, I saw newspaper reports which did not bear any relation to the facts, not even the relationship which is implied in an ordinary lie. I saw great battles reported where there had been no fighting, and complete silence where hundreds of men had been killed. I saw troops who had fought bravely denounced as cowards and traitors, and others who had never seen a shot fired hailed as heroes of imaginary victories; and I saw newspapers in London retailing these lies and eager intellectuals building emotional superstructures over events that never happened. I saw, in fact, history being written not in terms of what happened but of what ought to have happened according to various “party lines.” ― George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia, 1938 A year before World War II even started.
- KennyBlanken 3y agoNo, actually. I have no idea why you're relying on a quote 8 years prior to him starting writing 1984. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nineteen_Eighty-Four > In his 1946 essay "Why I Write", Orwell explains that the serious works he wrote since the Spanish Civil War (1936–39) were "written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism".[3][89] Nineteen Eighty-Four is a cautionary tale about revolution betrayed by totalitarian defenders previously proposed in Homage to Catalonia (1938) and Animal Farm (1945), while Coming Up for Air (1939) celebrates the personal and political freedoms lost in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949). > In one 1948 letter, Orwell claims to have "first thought of [the book] in 1943", while in another he says he thought of it in 1944 and cites 1943's Tehran Conference as inspiration: "What it is really meant to do is to discuss the implications of dividing the world up into 'Zones of Influence' (I thought of it in 1944 as a result of the Tehran Conference), and in addition to indicate by parodying them the intellectual implications of totalitarianism".[13] Orwell had toured Austria in May 1945 and observed manoeuvering he thought would likely lead to separate Soviet and Allied Zones of Occupation.[14][15] > In a June 1944 meeting with Fredric Warburg, co-founder of his British publisher Secker & Warburg, shortly before the release of Animal Farm, Orwell announced that he had written the first 12 pages of his new novel. Keep on reading that wikipedia page, which explains in detail all the characters, agencies, events, etc in the book that are in many cases directly taken from elements of Stalinism.
- Vicinity9635 3y agoMeanwhile, this censored post: How strange they focus on Russia or China, rather than the censorship and propaganda being done by the US, given they are a US university. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39121693 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39121693 HN is ridiculous sometimes.
- pixl97 3y ago[flagged]
- Vicinity9635 3y ago[flagged]
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoBut it's not. Why should you care what censorship is done in some other country? Shouldn't you care about your own? I don't care what Putin/Xi/... censors, but I care strongly about what our "garden" of europe, the bastion of freedom of EU censors. Or my own small country... the whole 'rest of the world' can access something, but I have to set up a complete DNS setup to avoid local ones (luckily the bans are DNS based for now).
- pixl97 3y ago>Why should you care what censorship is done in some other country Because corporations cross national lines. Just ask Apple and Jon Stewart about this. What China censors directly affects what media is produced in the US.
- ajsnigrutin 3y agoWell sure, but again, that's your (i'm guessing you're american) companies doing the censorship. And you're talking about entertainment, while most people want other information (mostly "news") uncensored. With access to only government-approved and censored media, then iraq has weapons of mass destruction, putin has only two days of missles left,... since mid-2022, jeffery eppstein killed himself, and only cnn can legally read hillarys emails on wikileaks, etc.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- goethes_kind 3y agoI did not read the article. I skimmed over the Chinese section. I am not Chinese nor do I ever intend to live in China. I skimmed over the Russian and Turkish sections for similiar reasons. I was expecting there to be a section about censorship in western countries: US, UK, Germany ...etc. Disappointing.