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I think this sort of thing is going to become more commonplace, but I'm not sure I or anyone else can think of a better solution for now. Western-aligned power

by Two4 2y ago

I think this sort of thing is going to become more commonplace, but I'm not sure I or anyone else can think of a better solution for now. Western-aligned powers have been dealing with this prickly aspect of unconventional warfare for some time now: opposing powers intruding into the collective consciousness of their populace to introduce well-designed, self propagating ideas that are harmful to their power base. This basic idea is nothing new, with propaganda being invented somewhere between communication and warfare on the human timeline. However, humanity has never been this connected to so many sources and proxies of information, each being a vector for malicious ideas to spread. The harmful ideas are best described as a meme in the Richard Dawkins sense. They are harmful to western-aligned powers because these ideas can be things like "democracy doesn't work", or "the government is conspiring against us", or "capitalism is failing". I'm especially fond of the last one, because I don't think it's necessarily untrue - but it's harmful to the powers that be nonetheless. These ideas are not presented so simply: there's usually several layers of indirection, and some sort of built in way of defending against opposing ideas that would cause the harmful idea to be abandoned - this can exploit fear, pride or the need for group identity to do so, for example. When dealing with unconventional warfare such as this, you have a couple of options as far as I'm aware: innoculate your own populace against harmful ideas; retaliate against opposing powers with your own harmful ideas; or mitigate and remove sources of harmful ideas. That's where events like these start unfolding. The EU is facing massive disinformation efforts and political interference from external actors, and its fundamentally threatening those in power and their power structures. They are attempting to do number 3 here, and they are running into opposition in the form of free speech absolutism. Whether this is part of a smarter defense built into this web of harmful ideas or just convenient cover, it still results into the survival of those harmful ideas. As the world continues on a trajectory of polarisation socially, politically and economically, I fear we may see more and more of this sort of thing, and it will definitely be abused to suppress good ideas, not just harmful ones. I'm sure it's happening already.

untitledfolder 2y ago
> I think this sort of thing is going to become more commonplace, but I'm not sure I or anyone else can think of a better solution for now. > When dealing with unconventional warfare such as this, you have a couple of options as far as I'm aware: innoculate your own populace against harmful ideas; retaliate against opposing powers with your own harmful ideas; or mitigate and remove sources of harmful ideas. That's where events like these start unfolding. Don't be so defeatest. There are numerous ideas for handling this problem. For instance X/Twitter's Community Notes, which is now being trialed on Youtube too last I heard. There's also efforts towards eliminating secrecy (which is sorely needed in any healty democracy). The whole mis/disinformation issue simply comes from a lack of trust (in government, authority, or generally any agency who has more legal flexibility than most people). In order to fix that, the easiest solution is for them to be transparrent about everything. Hypothetically, imagine if you could login to your government website and see a simple chart breakdown of how much money your [insert agency of intrest] had, how it was gained, and how and where it was spent. Frankly if any government in the world were to do that, it would influence others to ask "Why isn't my government transparrent like that?" and inevitably cause a knock on effect. Democracy was the first step, next is openness and transparency.
thinkingemote 2y ago
The Institute for Propaganda Analysis was set up before WW2 to teach the american public about propaganda. Many academics and researchers sought to educate the people in the face of mainly foreign related propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Propaganda_Analy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Propaganda_Analy... It was abolished because the Americans wanted to go to war and use propaganda themselves. In other words, the USA had a national program to educate the public about harmful ideas and misinformation, to see the signs and to resist but they abolished it because they wanted to do misinformation on their own people. --- Today we see "nudging" being used to manipulate. All our governments (and corporations and charities) seek to control our behaviour against our conscious wills. They won't easily give up their toolbox of tricks. Especially when the tricks actually work!

by Two4 2y ago

untitledfolder 2y ago

> I think this sort of thing is going to become more commonplace, but I'm not sure I or anyone else can think of a better solution for now. > When dealing with unconventional warfare such as this, you have a couple of options as far as I'm aware: innoculate your own populace against harmful ideas; retaliate against opposing powers with your own harmful ideas; or mitigate and remove sources of harmful ideas. That's where events like these start unfolding. Don't be so defeatest. There are numerous ideas for handling this problem. For instance X/Twitter's Community Notes, which is now being trialed on Youtube too last I heard. There's also efforts towards eliminating secrecy (which is sorely needed in any healty democracy). The whole mis/disinformation issue simply comes from a lack of trust (in government, authority, or generally any agency who has more legal flexibility than most people). In order to fix that, the easiest solution is for them to be transparrent about everything. Hypothetically, imagine if you could login to your government website and see a simple chart breakdown of how much money your [insert agency of intrest] had, how it was gained, and how and where it was spent. Frankly if any government in the world were to do that, it would influence others to ask "Why isn't my government transparrent like that?" and inevitably cause a knock on effect. Democracy was the first step, next is openness and transparency.

thinkingemote 2y ago

The Institute for Propaganda Analysis was set up before WW2 to teach the american public about propaganda. Many academics and researchers sought to educate the people in the face of mainly foreign related propaganda. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Propaganda_Analy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_for_Propaganda_Analy... It was abolished because the Americans wanted to go to war and use propaganda themselves. In other words, the USA had a national program to educate the public about harmful ideas and misinformation, to see the signs and to resist but they abolished it because they wanted to do misinformation on their own people. --- Today we see "nudging" being used to manipulate. All our governments (and corporations and charities) seek to control our behaviour against our conscious wills. They won't easily give up their toolbox of tricks. Especially when the tricks actually work!