5 ms·

There can be 1000s, if not 1,000,000s of paid shills by bad actors present online media - whether industrial complexes or domestic-foreign enemies being paid to

by loceng 3y ago

There can be 1000s, if not 1,000,000s of paid shills by bad actors present online media - whether industrial complexes or domestic-foreign enemies being paid to cause problems, to be divisive - to divide and conquer; and what % will be AI bots that can have their own unique personalities and behaviour? I think we're going to have to be very careful-intentional in the near future of who we decide to interact with, though an ideological mob won't likely particularly care if they're being manipulated by nefarious actors who aim to weaponized a mob.

everdrive 3y ago
This is a good point that I hadn't considered. How can you trust mutual cooperation over time if you can't be sure you're even talking to a person? And crucially, if the ratio of malicious actors drowns out the cooperators, it may not matter how altruistically the remaining cooperators act.
- causal 3y ago
  Doesn't even need to drown out cooperators - one in a hundred interactions can be enough to ruin your day.
  - loceng 3y ago
    We're in a global war and most don't even realize it because it's 5th generation psychological warfare; followed by a second incognito economic attack by purposefully weakening societies from within by purposeful mismanagement, going more and more into debt, increasing costs of goods and services, and where the West has been ideologically driven - consent manufactured - to eliminate CO2 or tax CO2 like in Canada, meanwhile in China - where most of our products come from, their CO2 emissions are skyrocketing; look at the incongruences and follow the money to see a fairly clear pattern.
    - HKH2 3y ago
      Is China responsible for Western corruption and impractical ideologies that make people blind to reality?
      - loceng 3y ago
        I don't know who's all directly or indirectly involved-responsible: it's a system of corruption where many different parties, bad actors, are aligning for a common goal - where there is a synergy with the line they are toeing. Do you think CO2 is an issue? If yes, do you think it's a problem that China's CO2 emissions are skyrocketing, whereas the Western countries have been following an ideology fuelled by climate alarmism-fear mongering? What are the consequences in your mind, of China being able to increase how much cheap energy they are able to use because they're not constrained by CO2-related policy, whereas the West's energy costs are increasing due to CO2-related policy? How does that positively or negatively effect China and the West?
        PeterisP 3y ago
        Interestingly, China's CO2 emissions seem to have stopped skyrocketing - they are set to stabilize this year, and they are currently undergoing a massive growth in manufacturing solar capacity, and as all PV that's currently being manufactured gets installed, their CO2 emissions are expected to significantly decrease already within 2-3 years. It looks like we have passed the tipping point where switch to renewables happens not because of policy constraints but simply because it's cheaper now.
        loceng 3y ago
        Where are you seeing the data showing that? E.g. what's your unbiased source?
        HKH2 3y ago
        China didn't draft the West's policies. If the West openly signals its own weaknesses, that is not China's problem. Globalism destroys cultures and ultimately statehood; China understands that, but the West is still firmly in denial. Who can blame China for not wanting to enter a suicide pact?
- layer8 3y ago
  By their behavior? The same way you assess trustworthiness in real life. I might not actually care if a forum member is human or an AI, depending on the topic of conversation, if they behave usefully.
OkayPhysicist 3y ago
I'm a big proponent of clusters of invite-only communities combined with tracing the invite tree. It's the sweet-spot for community building: the growth rate is limited, so people get acclimated to the community. Moderation becomes easy, because good faith actors tend to invite good faith actors, and are incentized to do so by effectively staking their reputation by vouching for their invitees, and when a bad faith actor slips through the cracks their invitees tend to be suspect, too. This also heavily addressed the bot issue: if a bot is identified, it is highly likely that most if not all of their invitees are bots, too, and there's a good chance whoever invited them is not a good faith actor, either. Communities without barriers to entry are always going to be low trust. The trick is striking a balance between trust and isolationism.
- loceng 3y ago
  Another way to counter bot accounts - arguably allowing inherently at least a slightly higher default trust possible - are paid subscription fees. Even at $1/month for an account, 5 bots would cost $60 per year, and for most that is arguably increasing the cost too much to run a sophisticated bot net - though there certainly will be domestic and foreign bad actors wanting to infect a system for their censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus and will be willing to spend $ billions if not $10s of billions annually - as a war-invasion-infiltration cost - but at least then they are paying into the system that their adversary controls. This is a problem I am going to face system design wise in the next few years as I'll want to launch my solution to many problems. A core value for the network of platforms and central platform with many feature sets, is that it will not have advertising - no ads - as I believe cheap-shallow advertising is very harmful and dangerous to society. Not only do ads capture our attention that has already been, for many if not most, been compromised, it also increases the costs of goods and services - because you're funding their advertising budget when you are manipulated to purchase from them, paying for yourself to be manipulated and perpetuating that system, it also influences design decisions. It's going to be a very challenging and ongoing cost to strike a balance, as you say, between trust and isolationism - determining what limited "Free" accounts get access to do functionality wise vs. providing a low enough cost and a high enough value to sooner than later have the masses signup, with having a large enough % of paying subscribers to cover or subsidize the cost of the free accounts holders. I'm most torn at whether free accounts will have any ability to publicly comment, post, etc - but my current intuition is telling me that in most circumstances, no. Doing proper moderation for posts and comments from paid subscribers alone, which will include bad actors-paid shills or uncritical indoctrinated-misguided ideologues party to a mob believing and parroting propaganda-narrative talking points, that will certainly be the most important and overwhelming task from my estimation. I think we need to rally the awake and most conscious people of the world, who arguably will also be successful in their own right, where say paying $5/month for general access is pocket change in comparison to the importance of a well-designed and desperately needed system for our security-safety and leading the charge or holding the line for peace. Likewise, I wonder then if a version of Reddit's forum, at least one method that can be enabled to limit interference, are introducing mechanisms like say $0.25 to $1/month to be part of that forum. That could then help subsidize the cost of paid moderators, who arguably would be less likely to be bad actors attempting to inject bias, etc. My greatest concern though is that as the tyrant wannabes with global totalitarian state wet dreams start to lose their grip, as they appear to be in certain parts of the world, that they will go "full tyrant" with major false flag attacks including manufacturing consent to have censorship capabilities for not only internet but private communications; and so then an online platform is moot.
godshatter 3y ago
Another option, as opposed or in addition to being careful of who we interact with, is to be less reactive if our buttons are pushed. If a paid shill (or just a random Joe) says something inflammatory about a group we identify with, it would be in our best interest not to immediately lash out in response. Shrugging it off might be the better solution, especially if there is reason to suspect that there are mobs of paid shills out there with the express intention of dividing us. We seem to have lost the ability to "live and let live", to any reasonable degree. That's what they are actually weaponizing in this case. Not to say that doing this is easy, but I think it's something we should aspire to.

by loceng 3y ago

everdrive 3y ago

This is a good point that I hadn't considered. How can you trust mutual cooperation over time if you can't be sure you're even talking to a person? And crucially, if the ratio of malicious actors drowns out the cooperators, it may not matter how altruistically the remaining cooperators act.

causal 3y ago
Doesn't even need to drown out cooperators - one in a hundred interactions can be enough to ruin your day.
- loceng 3y ago
  We're in a global war and most don't even realize it because it's 5th generation psychological warfare; followed by a second incognito economic attack by purposefully weakening societies from within by purposeful mismanagement, going more and more into debt, increasing costs of goods and services, and where the West has been ideologically driven - consent manufactured - to eliminate CO2 or tax CO2 like in Canada, meanwhile in China - where most of our products come from, their CO2 emissions are skyrocketing; look at the incongruences and follow the money to see a fairly clear pattern.
  - HKH2 3y ago
    Is China responsible for Western corruption and impractical ideologies that make people blind to reality?
    - loceng 3y ago
      I don't know who's all directly or indirectly involved-responsible: it's a system of corruption where many different parties, bad actors, are aligning for a common goal - where there is a synergy with the line they are toeing. Do you think CO2 is an issue? If yes, do you think it's a problem that China's CO2 emissions are skyrocketing, whereas the Western countries have been following an ideology fuelled by climate alarmism-fear mongering? What are the consequences in your mind, of China being able to increase how much cheap energy they are able to use because they're not constrained by CO2-related policy, whereas the West's energy costs are increasing due to CO2-related policy? How does that positively or negatively effect China and the West?
      - PeterisP 3y ago
        Interestingly, China's CO2 emissions seem to have stopped skyrocketing - they are set to stabilize this year, and they are currently undergoing a massive growth in manufacturing solar capacity, and as all PV that's currently being manufactured gets installed, their CO2 emissions are expected to significantly decrease already within 2-3 years. It looks like we have passed the tipping point where switch to renewables happens not because of policy constraints but simply because it's cheaper now.
        loceng 3y ago
        Where are you seeing the data showing that? E.g. what's your unbiased source?
      - HKH2 3y ago
        China didn't draft the West's policies. If the West openly signals its own weaknesses, that is not China's problem. Globalism destroys cultures and ultimately statehood; China understands that, but the West is still firmly in denial. Who can blame China for not wanting to enter a suicide pact?
layer8 3y ago
By their behavior? The same way you assess trustworthiness in real life. I might not actually care if a forum member is human or an AI, depending on the topic of conversation, if they behave usefully.

OkayPhysicist 3y ago

I'm a big proponent of clusters of invite-only communities combined with tracing the invite tree. It's the sweet-spot for community building: the growth rate is limited, so people get acclimated to the community. Moderation becomes easy, because good faith actors tend to invite good faith actors, and are incentized to do so by effectively staking their reputation by vouching for their invitees, and when a bad faith actor slips through the cracks their invitees tend to be suspect, too. This also heavily addressed the bot issue: if a bot is identified, it is highly likely that most if not all of their invitees are bots, too, and there's a good chance whoever invited them is not a good faith actor, either. Communities without barriers to entry are always going to be low trust. The trick is striking a balance between trust and isolationism.

loceng 3y ago
Another way to counter bot accounts - arguably allowing inherently at least a slightly higher default trust possible - are paid subscription fees. Even at $1/month for an account, 5 bots would cost $60 per year, and for most that is arguably increasing the cost too much to run a sophisticated bot net - though there certainly will be domestic and foreign bad actors wanting to infect a system for their censorship-suppression-narrative control apparatus and will be willing to spend $ billions if not $10s of billions annually - as a war-invasion-infiltration cost - but at least then they are paying into the system that their adversary controls. This is a problem I am going to face system design wise in the next few years as I'll want to launch my solution to many problems. A core value for the network of platforms and central platform with many feature sets, is that it will not have advertising - no ads - as I believe cheap-shallow advertising is very harmful and dangerous to society. Not only do ads capture our attention that has already been, for many if not most, been compromised, it also increases the costs of goods and services - because you're funding their advertising budget when you are manipulated to purchase from them, paying for yourself to be manipulated and perpetuating that system, it also influences design decisions. It's going to be a very challenging and ongoing cost to strike a balance, as you say, between trust and isolationism - determining what limited "Free" accounts get access to do functionality wise vs. providing a low enough cost and a high enough value to sooner than later have the masses signup, with having a large enough % of paying subscribers to cover or subsidize the cost of the free accounts holders. I'm most torn at whether free accounts will have any ability to publicly comment, post, etc - but my current intuition is telling me that in most circumstances, no. Doing proper moderation for posts and comments from paid subscribers alone, which will include bad actors-paid shills or uncritical indoctrinated-misguided ideologues party to a mob believing and parroting propaganda-narrative talking points, that will certainly be the most important and overwhelming task from my estimation. I think we need to rally the awake and most conscious people of the world, who arguably will also be successful in their own right, where say paying $5/month for general access is pocket change in comparison to the importance of a well-designed and desperately needed system for our security-safety and leading the charge or holding the line for peace. Likewise, I wonder then if a version of Reddit's forum, at least one method that can be enabled to limit interference, are introducing mechanisms like say $0.25 to $1/month to be part of that forum. That could then help subsidize the cost of paid moderators, who arguably would be less likely to be bad actors attempting to inject bias, etc. My greatest concern though is that as the tyrant wannabes with global totalitarian state wet dreams start to lose their grip, as they appear to be in certain parts of the world, that they will go "full tyrant" with major false flag attacks including manufacturing consent to have censorship capabilities for not only internet but private communications; and so then an online platform is moot.

godshatter 3y ago

Another option, as opposed or in addition to being careful of who we interact with, is to be less reactive if our buttons are pushed. If a paid shill (or just a random Joe) says something inflammatory about a group we identify with, it would be in our best interest not to immediately lash out in response. Shrugging it off might be the better solution, especially if there is reason to suspect that there are mobs of paid shills out there with the express intention of dividing us. We seem to have lost the ability to "live and let live", to any reasonable degree. That's what they are actually weaponizing in this case. Not to say that doing this is easy, but I think it's something we should aspire to.