4 ms·

I’ve been hearing about the dangers of influence campaigns like Russian bot farms, deep fakes, and LLMs for the last ten years now. While these sorts of papers

by lurk2 1y ago

I’ve been hearing about the dangers of influence campaigns like Russian bot farms, deep fakes, and LLMs for the last ten years now. While these sorts of papers go out of their way to use the word “democratic,” it always seems to be motivated by a (not-very-compelling) idea that right wing populism is an essentially artificial creation rather than an organic backlash to the excesses of the Obama era. The scale of these influence campaigns may have increased in the last five years, but the (common, in these circles) idea that Russia stole the election with a few million posts on Twitter is silly and itself begins to look like an attempt to implement anti-democratic measures that would allow established authorities to pull the ladder up behind them. The authors of this paper have at acknowledged that there are (practical, more so than moral) limitations to strict identification systems (“Please insert your social security number to submit this post”) and cite a few (non-US) examples of instances where these kinds of influence campaigns have ostensibly occurred. The countermeasures similarly appear to be reasonable, being focused on providing trust scores and counter-narratives. What they are describing, though, might end up looking a lot like a Reddit-style social credit system which has the impact of shutting out dissenting opinions. One of my favorite things about Hacker News over Reddit is that I can view and vouch for posts that have been flagged dead by other users. 95% of the time the flags were warranted (low-effort comments, vulgarity, or spam), but every once in a while I come across an intriguing comment that others preferred to be censored.

alephnerd 1y ago
These disinformation tactics via bots are used to vocalize BOTH the fringe left ("kill the rich") and the fringe right ("great replacement"). Most organizations and teams who have been investigating automated disinfo at scale have highlighted how fringes on both sides of the spectrum are being manipulated via automated engagement - often with state backing. Power and Politics is completely orthogonal to ideology.
- lurk2 1y ago
  Polarization seems more like an organic reaction to post-nationalism. There is no pre-political identity in any of these countries anymore, so the idea that you could be satisfied with dissatisfaction in exchange for being a member of a general public united in some kind of underlying belief system is nonsensical now.
techpineapple 1y ago
> I’ve been hearing about the dangers of influence campaigns like Russian bot farms, deep fakes, and LLMs for the last ten years now. While these sorts of papers go out of their way to use the word “democratic,” it always seems to be motivated by a (not-very-compelling) idea that right wing populism is an essentially artificial creation rather than an organic backlash to the excesses of the Obama era. I think it can be both. There's part of me that has become, maybe sort of Bernie Sanders MAGA over the past couple of years. Like I certainly identify with the people who want their lives to be better, and America to be simplified, and I don't think that underlying this is an idea that without Russian influence, we would all be Democrats. But to me the problem with Russian bot farms and other influence campaigns to me isn't the direction of the beliefs, it's the degree, and by the way, this is on both sides. Right, classically, there's the study that says gun violence is down, but portrayal of gun deaths in the media is up, and I think social media has taken this idea into overdrive. So like, instead of thinking we're one nation with people who disagree, now we're two political parties, and if we don't eliminate the other evil political party, it's the end of America. Maybe something from the other side I've been trying to figure out: To a matter of degree, again not binary, to what extent was the woke movement organic, vs constructed re: social media algorithms and capitalism. I'm not saying that nobody organically cares about social justice and etc. But to what extent were certain practices - announcing pronouns at the beginning of meetings - bottom up from activists or the people who cared, or top down via diversity consultants? To what extent did BLM or MeToo grow organically, vs being promoted by social media algorithms? If there's this big complaint that progressive change was happening too fast, was it really progressive activists driving the change? Or other institutions and influence campaigns.
Spivak 1y ago
> the excesses of the Obama era. Thank you, I needed a laugh today. I mean you're not wrong that it started with Obama but like come on-- I lived through that era, you probably did too. It was a visceral emotional response to the most powerful man on earth being a black man. That spawned The Tea Party and birther movement the Venn Diagram of which was a circle. The Republican party noticeably changed to a tone of burn it all down while Obama was in office. Being one of the most outspoken birthers what was put Donald Trump into the public sphere as a political figure. This is where the MAGA wing of the Republican party traces its origins.
- SoftTalker 1y ago
  Blaming it all on racism is too easy. The left needs to face the real reasons that they lost to Donald Trump (because he was easily defeatable, IMO).
  - Spivak 1y ago
    I'm not, that's just where it started. The movement has grown massively since it's humble beginnings during the Barack HUSSEIN Obama era. They started hating Obama before he took office, to say it's a response to what he did during his presidency doesn't track.
- lurk2 1y ago
  > It was a visceral emotional response to the most powerful man on earth being a black man. This is exactly the sort of mentality that led to Democrats thinking Hillary Clinton was a viable candidate. Leftists all over the world spent the 2010s creating a coalition of the fringes, for whatever reason assuming that young majorities would not take notice. This was a very uncomfortable time to be a young man, even after Trump was elected. Young guys these days don’t have any expectation of being allowed to sit at the table, which is why they are so open about wanting to burn it all down now; a lot of them felt this way when Obama was president, too, but the risk of getting cancelled on Twitter still seemed like a serious threat back then.
  - Spivak 1y ago

by lurk2 1y ago

alephnerd 1y ago

These disinformation tactics via bots are used to vocalize BOTH the fringe left ("kill the rich") and the fringe right ("great replacement"). Most organizations and teams who have been investigating automated disinfo at scale have highlighted how fringes on both sides of the spectrum are being manipulated via automated engagement - often with state backing. Power and Politics is completely orthogonal to ideology.

lurk2 1y ago
Polarization seems more like an organic reaction to post-nationalism. There is no pre-political identity in any of these countries anymore, so the idea that you could be satisfied with dissatisfaction in exchange for being a member of a general public united in some kind of underlying belief system is nonsensical now.

techpineapple 1y ago

> I’ve been hearing about the dangers of influence campaigns like Russian bot farms, deep fakes, and LLMs for the last ten years now. While these sorts of papers go out of their way to use the word “democratic,” it always seems to be motivated by a (not-very-compelling) idea that right wing populism is an essentially artificial creation rather than an organic backlash to the excesses of the Obama era. I think it can be both. There's part of me that has become, maybe sort of Bernie Sanders MAGA over the past couple of years. Like I certainly identify with the people who want their lives to be better, and America to be simplified, and I don't think that underlying this is an idea that without Russian influence, we would all be Democrats. But to me the problem with Russian bot farms and other influence campaigns to me isn't the direction of the beliefs, it's the degree, and by the way, this is on both sides. Right, classically, there's the study that says gun violence is down, but portrayal of gun deaths in the media is up, and I think social media has taken this idea into overdrive. So like, instead of thinking we're one nation with people who disagree, now we're two political parties, and if we don't eliminate the other evil political party, it's the end of America. Maybe something from the other side I've been trying to figure out: To a matter of degree, again not binary, to what extent was the woke movement organic, vs constructed re: social media algorithms and capitalism. I'm not saying that nobody organically cares about social justice and etc. But to what extent were certain practices - announcing pronouns at the beginning of meetings - bottom up from activists or the people who cared, or top down via diversity consultants? To what extent did BLM or MeToo grow organically, vs being promoted by social media algorithms? If there's this big complaint that progressive change was happening too fast, was it really progressive activists driving the change? Or other institutions and influence campaigns.

Spivak 1y ago

> the excesses of the Obama era. Thank you, I needed a laugh today. I mean you're not wrong that it started with Obama but like come on-- I lived through that era, you probably did too. It was a visceral emotional response to the most powerful man on earth being a black man. That spawned The Tea Party and birther movement the Venn Diagram of which was a circle. The Republican party noticeably changed to a tone of burn it all down while Obama was in office. Being one of the most outspoken birthers what was put Donald Trump into the public sphere as a political figure. This is where the MAGA wing of the Republican party traces its origins.

SoftTalker 1y ago
Blaming it all on racism is too easy. The left needs to face the real reasons that they lost to Donald Trump (because he was easily defeatable, IMO).
- Spivak 1y ago
  I'm not, that's just where it started. The movement has grown massively since it's humble beginnings during the Barack HUSSEIN Obama era. They started hating Obama before he took office, to say it's a response to what he did during his presidency doesn't track.
lurk2 1y ago
> It was a visceral emotional response to the most powerful man on earth being a black man. This is exactly the sort of mentality that led to Democrats thinking Hillary Clinton was a viable candidate. Leftists all over the world spent the 2010s creating a coalition of the fringes, for whatever reason assuming that young majorities would not take notice. This was a very uncomfortable time to be a young man, even after Trump was elected. Young guys these days don’t have any expectation of being allowed to sit at the table, which is why they are so open about wanting to burn it all down now; a lot of them felt this way when Obama was president, too, but the risk of getting cancelled on Twitter still seemed like a serious threat back then.
- Spivak 1y ago