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People just randomly get excited and make up shit online. See Median Strategies aka Rahil Prakash just making up polls and publishing them this month. Then decl
by wang_li 26d ago
People just randomly get excited and make up shit online. See Median Strategies aka Rahil Prakash just making up polls and publishing them this month. Then declaring it was a social experiment and shutting down his website. After affecting prediction markets in some minor ways.
- mmooss 25d agoHow does that theory explain, * So many people using the same nonsense talking points at the same time. Did they coincidentally make up the same lies? With no anchor in objective reality, why would they converge on the same talking points? * The sophistication of the talking points: IME they are often very well-crafted - seemingly professionally crafted - public communication. They effectively frame the debate, shift attention (often attacking the messenger), use powerful emotional impact to bypass reasoned discussion, and acheive the main goal of disinformation - paralyze discussion. Did people invest the time and effort to craft these talking points on their own, and do it so effectively?
- wang_li 25d agoIt's not exclusively random people doing random stuff, but it also doesn't require a large, well funded, conspiracy. People see a fake poll that confirms their preferences and then proceed to propagate the message.
- mmooss 25d agoAlso, consider who controls what propogates and what nobody sees. Social media operators are like news (newspaper, tv news) editors, deciding what gets covered and how, and what doesn't. But they operate on a far larger scale, more powerful scale, and very few realize they do it.