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Do you believe that governments might want to use social media platforms to try to divide the population within enemy countries?

briantakita 2y ago
Do you believe that governments might want to use social media platforms to try to divide the population within their own country? Only saying this because it's how people in power legitimize their own power over everyone else. External boogie men help as well. Of course foreign influence is a real factor that works against people in their own country. The USA has done many foreign influence operations that has been detrimental to those people. I'm not surprised that foreign governments would do the same over here. All in all, the general population often suffer downstream from these games of power.
- jimkleiber 2y ago
  Yes I believe people in government often spread divisive messages, both internally and externally. My personal belief is to train people to respond to such divisive attacks with love, feeling even more united with people after. To let people speak, and learn how to respond to how they're speaking. However, i have some ability to influence my government in how it influences social media platforms and which messages it spreads. I might have much much less, if any, ability to influence foreign governments in how they influence social media platforms and what messages they spread. And most non-Americans realize how helpless they have been to influence American laws and decisions, and maybe it's just a time when Americans also realize this helplessness in the face of foreign corporations.
lmm 2y ago
They can want all they like, doesn't mean they're going to be effective. Again, no-one cared until the arms dealers' incomes were threatened.
- jimkleiber 2y ago
  I think they (meaning US government officials) started to care a lot when they realized a non-American social media platform had significant attention from a significant majority of Americans, especially young Americans. Prior to that, most, if not all, social media platforms were American run, which allowed Congress to have more influence on how they were run and more power to investigate and learn how they were run, compared to one owned by a foreign country, especially one we haven't considered to be a close ally.
CMCDragonkai 2y ago
This is interesting because it's like saying I would rather be oppressed by my government than by foreign governments. But if that's true for you, why is not true for the citizens of other countries? Taking this to the logical conclusion, all foreign influence should be prevented for being potentially destructive and all the history's isolationism would be justified.
- jimkleiber 2y ago
  Or it can go the other way, not more isolation but rather more integration. If the goal of many foreign governments (the US included) may be to divide the population of its enemies, what if had an overarching, supranational, dare I say global, government that united people?
Nasrudith 2y ago
Adversary countries also have a deeply wrong view of a population which views dissent as a sign of weakness instead of a process which grants strength. What they want is misleading. They would want to use it even if it was in fact, good for the "victim" country. It brings to mind declassified documents that revealed how the KGB basically pissed money away trying to destabilize the US economy by engaging in large irrational trades. All they really did was make money for those who had the fortune to be on the opposite side of the trades.

briantakita 2y ago

Do you believe that governments might want to use social media platforms to try to divide the population within their own country? Only saying this because it's how people in power legitimize their own power over everyone else. External boogie men help as well. Of course foreign influence is a real factor that works against people in their own country. The USA has done many foreign influence operations that has been detrimental to those people. I'm not surprised that foreign governments would do the same over here. All in all, the general population often suffer downstream from these games of power.

jimkleiber 2y ago
Yes I believe people in government often spread divisive messages, both internally and externally. My personal belief is to train people to respond to such divisive attacks with love, feeling even more united with people after. To let people speak, and learn how to respond to how they're speaking. However, i have some ability to influence my government in how it influences social media platforms and which messages it spreads. I might have much much less, if any, ability to influence foreign governments in how they influence social media platforms and what messages they spread. And most non-Americans realize how helpless they have been to influence American laws and decisions, and maybe it's just a time when Americans also realize this helplessness in the face of foreign corporations.

lmm 2y ago

They can want all they like, doesn't mean they're going to be effective. Again, no-one cared until the arms dealers' incomes were threatened.

jimkleiber 2y ago
I think they (meaning US government officials) started to care a lot when they realized a non-American social media platform had significant attention from a significant majority of Americans, especially young Americans. Prior to that, most, if not all, social media platforms were American run, which allowed Congress to have more influence on how they were run and more power to investigate and learn how they were run, compared to one owned by a foreign country, especially one we haven't considered to be a close ally.

CMCDragonkai 2y ago

This is interesting because it's like saying I would rather be oppressed by my government than by foreign governments. But if that's true for you, why is not true for the citizens of other countries? Taking this to the logical conclusion, all foreign influence should be prevented for being potentially destructive and all the history's isolationism would be justified.

jimkleiber 2y ago
Or it can go the other way, not more isolation but rather more integration. If the goal of many foreign governments (the US included) may be to divide the population of its enemies, what if had an overarching, supranational, dare I say global, government that united people?

Nasrudith 2y ago

Adversary countries also have a deeply wrong view of a population which views dissent as a sign of weakness instead of a process which grants strength. What they want is misleading. They would want to use it even if it was in fact, good for the "victim" country. It brings to mind declassified documents that revealed how the KGB basically pissed money away trying to destabilize the US economy by engaging in large irrational trades. All they really did was make money for those who had the fortune to be on the opposite side of the trades.