4 ms·

Propaganda is not a new thing. It might look slightly different on the internet, but it doesn't look that different. Creating organizations to push a narrative

by bawolff 2mo ago

Propaganda is not a new thing. It might look slightly different on the internet, but it doesn't look that different. Creating organizations to push a narrative was just as much a thing 100 years ago as it is now.

pphysch 2mo ago
IIRC the first or second chapter of Bernays' Propaganda (1928) talks about sophisticated influence campaigns in the fashion industry. Conscripting "influencers" to induce demand, and so on. As you said, literally 100 years ago.
- jimz 2mo ago
  Jill Fields at Cal State Fresno have actually narrowed it down to a (temporarily successful, but not in the long term, obviously) effort by the corset-making industry seeking to stay relevant after WWI during which corsets basically disappeared and there was an organized campaign that was organized both in person and through trade magazines. Women's silhouettes basically took a quick 180 right between 1900 and the start of the war only to turn very very retro in 1919 and while the first was organic and resembled how styles change in the century prior, albeit much quicker, the 1919 switch was openly plotted out in writing that was published but in such a niche publication that I get the sense that people not in the industry didn't even know that it existed. The cite to her paper on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=17641417785638413972&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=17641417785638413... You might have to shadow library this one, but it's a good read. Interestingly it seemed to be something entirely separate from Bernays whose observations were based on a derivation of what began as a homebrewed effort in a corner of the market. Valerie Steele wrote extensively about the trends and the after life but the source seems to originate in corsetry and ended up being copied by the garmet industry generally in the 20s.
petesergeant 2mo ago
Scale is different though. Tapping a phone isn't new, tapping _all phones_ is different. Altering a photo to change what it appears to depict isn't new, being able to do it in a few seconds and for free is different. So sure, propaganda isn't new, but being able to pump out an organization's worth of credible-looking content for cheap absolutely is.
- Terr_ 2mo ago
  "Quantity is/has a quality all of/on its own."
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
wiseowise 2mo ago
Not by a single lunatic operating from their bedroom.
- HPsquared 2mo ago
  Lunatics in bedrooms have been distributing pamphlets since the invention of the printing press.
  - rithdmc 2mo ago
    I'd have called the folks on Skellig Michael lunatics in bedrooms, too. They just had a harder time copying their lunacy out by hand.
  - pjc50 2mo ago
    Arguably much of the mid-20th century was the pipeline from "lunatic with pamphlet" => "millions dead".
  - amiga386 2mo ago
    Some historical context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphlet_war#History_of_the_pamphlet_in_England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphlet_war#History_of_the_pa... > Throughout Europe in the 16th century, printed tracts were used to argue religious doctrine and foment support for religious causes. In England, Henry VIII used print literature to justify his break from the Catholic Church. During the subsequent reigns of Edward and Mary, print polemics escalated into propaganda warfare, as print media gained enormous potential to sway common opinion. > Over the next century, the pamphlet became the principal means of garnering support for a cause or an idea, and was particularly influential during the English Civil Wars (1642-1651) and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War > Casualties: Parliamentarians 34,130 killed; Royalists 50,700 killed; 127,000 non-combat deaths (including some 40,000 civilians) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamite_War_in_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamite_War_in_Ireland > Casualties: Williamites: 10,000 killed or died of disease; Jacobites: 15,293 killed or died of disease
  - aa-jv 2mo ago
insane_dreamer 2mo ago
what's different is that the misinformation is designed to be ingested by LLMs to influence _their_ outputs, which are then presented to users as "knowledge" without necessarily attribution of sources. This is worse that the current state where you might enter a search term "morality of the Israeli army" and see a list of websites that are influenced by SEO-wrangling and paid ad word placement, but at least you can click on each website and sometimes get an idea of the bias of the website (if you read the small print) or maybe do a search about the website to see what others might say. All that is either impossible or much more difficult with AI generated content so 99% of users won't bother, but instead will go with "ChatGPT said that xxx".
AngryData 2mo ago
Yeah, the fact that people think propaganda is some kind of new thing shows just how far down the rabbit hole we already were.

by bawolff 2mo ago

pphysch 2mo ago

IIRC the first or second chapter of Bernays' Propaganda (1928) talks about sophisticated influence campaigns in the fashion industry. Conscripting "influencers" to induce demand, and so on. As you said, literally 100 years ago.

jimz 2mo ago
Jill Fields at Cal State Fresno have actually narrowed it down to a (temporarily successful, but not in the long term, obviously) effort by the corset-making industry seeking to stay relevant after WWI during which corsets basically disappeared and there was an organized campaign that was organized both in person and through trade magazines. Women's silhouettes basically took a quick 180 right between 1900 and the start of the war only to turn very very retro in 1919 and while the first was organic and resembled how styles change in the century prior, albeit much quicker, the 1919 switch was openly plotted out in writing that was published but in such a niche publication that I get the sense that people not in the industry didn't even know that it existed. The cite to her paper on Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=17641417785638413972&hl=en https://scholar.google.com/scholar?cluster=17641417785638413... You might have to shadow library this one, but it's a good read. Interestingly it seemed to be something entirely separate from Bernays whose observations were based on a derivation of what began as a homebrewed effort in a corner of the market. Valerie Steele wrote extensively about the trends and the after life but the source seems to originate in corsetry and ended up being copied by the garmet industry generally in the 20s.

petesergeant 2mo ago

Scale is different though. Tapping a phone isn't new, tapping _all phones_ is different. Altering a photo to change what it appears to depict isn't new, being able to do it in a few seconds and for free is different. So sure, propaganda isn't new, but being able to pump out an organization's worth of credible-looking content for cheap absolutely is.

Terr_ 2mo ago
"Quantity is/has a quality all of/on its own."
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

wiseowise 2mo ago

Not by a single lunatic operating from their bedroom.

HPsquared 2mo ago
Lunatics in bedrooms have been distributing pamphlets since the invention of the printing press.
- rithdmc 2mo ago
  I'd have called the folks on Skellig Michael lunatics in bedrooms, too. They just had a harder time copying their lunacy out by hand.
- pjc50 2mo ago
  Arguably much of the mid-20th century was the pipeline from "lunatic with pamphlet" => "millions dead".
- amiga386 2mo ago
  Some historical context: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphlet_war#History_of_the_pamphlet_in_England https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pamphlet_war#History_of_the_pa... > Throughout Europe in the 16th century, printed tracts were used to argue religious doctrine and foment support for religious causes. In England, Henry VIII used print literature to justify his break from the Catholic Church. During the subsequent reigns of Edward and Mary, print polemics escalated into propaganda warfare, as print media gained enormous potential to sway common opinion. > Over the next century, the pamphlet became the principal means of garnering support for a cause or an idea, and was particularly influential during the English Civil Wars (1642-1651) and the Glorious Revolution of 1688. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_Civil_War > Casualties: Parliamentarians 34,130 killed; Royalists 50,700 killed; 127,000 non-combat deaths (including some 40,000 civilians) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamite_War_in_Ireland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Williamite_War_in_Ireland > Casualties: Williamites: 10,000 killed or died of disease; Jacobites: 15,293 killed or died of disease
- aa-jv 2mo ago

insane_dreamer 2mo ago

what's different is that the misinformation is designed to be ingested by LLMs to influence _their_ outputs, which are then presented to users as "knowledge" without necessarily attribution of sources. This is worse that the current state where you might enter a search term "morality of the Israeli army" and see a list of websites that are influenced by SEO-wrangling and paid ad word placement, but at least you can click on each website and sometimes get an idea of the bias of the website (if you read the small print) or maybe do a search about the website to see what others might say. All that is either impossible or much more difficult with AI generated content so 99% of users won't bother, but instead will go with "ChatGPT said that xxx".

AngryData 2mo ago

Yeah, the fact that people think propaganda is some kind of new thing shows just how far down the rabbit hole we already were.