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You said people underestimate the amount of astroturfing. Clearly implying there is more than people think. You seemed to imply there was a small amount of gen

by MBCook 1y ago

You said people underestimate the amount of astroturfing. Clearly implying there is more than people think. You seemed to imply there was a small amount of genuine anti-AI posting. You then said the posts came in identifiable waves followed by explaining how people organize on discord to post such things. All of that added up sounds to me like you are implying the vast majority of anti-AI sentiment is organized astroturfing. Yeah you never said every single one, I generalized on that front. You say that’s not what you meant. Sorry, that was how I read your post. It sounded to me like a blatant dismissal of all critiques as fake or insincere.

ants_everywhere 1y ago
People tend to think everything is organic. Whereas in reality there are forums and channels dedicated to raiding parties. And that's just the human participants, not including any bot activity or troll farm activity that's coordinated off of public forums. That does not mean that all content is inorganic. In any culture war or wedge issue or agitprop campaign you seed with influencers and rely on amplification by ordinary people. But the influencers frame the debate, decide what the priorities are, etc. It takes time and money to coordinate everyone's opinion on something. The natural tendency is toward entropy and fighting against that requires resources. So when large numbers of people believe the same thing and repeat the same lines that's a candidate for inorganic content. You can then investigate that further and decide whether it's a conlincidence or not. Sometimes there's just a trend that catches on. But people also underestimate how much work and coordination goes into making something catch on. This is a big part of why influencers and advertisers try to avoid the impression that they are paid to pretend to like something and why there are regulations requiring that you disclose paid content. People are easily fooled into thinking it's all just happening naturally and serendipitously.

by MBCook 1y ago

ants_everywhere 1y ago

People tend to think everything is organic. Whereas in reality there are forums and channels dedicated to raiding parties. And that's just the human participants, not including any bot activity or troll farm activity that's coordinated off of public forums. That does not mean that all content is inorganic. In any culture war or wedge issue or agitprop campaign you seed with influencers and rely on amplification by ordinary people. But the influencers frame the debate, decide what the priorities are, etc. It takes time and money to coordinate everyone's opinion on something. The natural tendency is toward entropy and fighting against that requires resources. So when large numbers of people believe the same thing and repeat the same lines that's a candidate for inorganic content. You can then investigate that further and decide whether it's a conlincidence or not. Sometimes there's just a trend that catches on. But people also underestimate how much work and coordination goes into making something catch on. This is a big part of why influencers and advertisers try to avoid the impression that they are paid to pretend to like something and why there are regulations requiring that you disclose paid content. People are easily fooled into thinking it's all just happening naturally and serendipitously.