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Since we weren't allowed to say it when it was relevant, and the point was muddled and trampled on in pseudo-rational debates (“Can you find evidence that they’

by jgg 13y ago

Since we weren't allowed to say it when it was relevant, and the point was muddled and trampled on in pseudo-rational debates (“Can you find evidence that they’re abusing this new legislation?”, etc.), I'll go ahead and say it now: it's happening. There's still a big world outside the Internet, and yet ironically, we live in a world where some employers are so stupid that they won't hire someone without a Facebook, making the abuse and surveillance of Internet more relevant than it needs to be. I find it hilarious that in most of the threads I've read on here for months, that people who have actually lived in oppressive regimes say that the US is at least displaying a likelihood of being on the slow descent to Hell, while people in the US are quick to point out that it's still fine because we have elections and we aren't being forced out onto the streets and shot in the back of the head. Read any book on history, strategy, authoritarianism or "real" conspiracies and it's abundantly clear that the best way to control a population is to analyze and manipulate the information they consume; I will not be surprised when we find out in 30-50 years that the tech companies were not only complicit in passive surveillance, but in active manipulation to control public opinion and perception. Further, people self-actualize and learn to evolve to higher ideals, so once you debase intelligent debate/freedom of expression and make every personal detail of a person's life that passes over an electronic medium open to dissection and survellience, you debase the minds of the people as a whole and open the door to committing worse atrocities. It's actually less difficult than it was 50-100 years ago to control public opinion. Before, you'd have to burn books and control every major newspaper and broadcasting corporation. Now you can just astroturf on Reddit or Twitter, or edit Wikipedia is subtle ways, and have the same effect.

bostik 13y ago
> best way to control a population is to analyze and manipulate the information they consume That brought back a quote from a past: "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." I had to look it up to get the exact wording right. Was only half surprised that it comes from Orwell's 1984.
- digitalengineer 13y ago
  Agreed. Some time ago on HN: Law firms forcing online newspapers to delete older articles. No one cares, it's old news right? Step by step they're changing history.
- auggierose 13y ago
  That implies you have not read 1984. You should.
  - bostik 13y ago
    Oh, I have. It's just far too long ago, and I had the misfortune of reading a translation. A bad one, at that. So I couldn't place the quote. I just knew it from different context. Much the same way it took me years to find a quote that my gradeschool math teacher used and which had lodged itself firmly in my brain. Namely: "To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous." - Confucius
    - auggierose 13y ago
      I like the Confucius quote. There IS a certain danger in taking shortcuts in your thinking. It's probably best to use shortcuts anyway when in discovery mode, but then to check those shortcuts rigorously.
      - raintrees 13y ago
        Ha! Almost like "Trust, but verify" :)
    - gbog 13y ago
      Kudos for this accurate and relevant Confucius quote, it is rare nowadays. In fact, reading this guy's Analects, you'd find a mine of secular wisdom aphorism that sound obvious but are all the more urgent to remember by the times running.
CaptainZapp 13y ago
There's still a big world outside the Internet, and yet ironically, we live in a world where some employers are so stupid that they won't hire someone without a Facebook, making the abuse and surveillance of Internet more relevant than it needs to be. You know what's my thought towards such employers? A big fat FUCK YOU! Those are companies, where I rather collect unemployment benefits than ever working one day for such an outfit. The same sentiment is extended to any service, which requires me to have a Facebook (or any other social media) account.
- angersock 13y ago
  Right, right, but for everyone that isn't a lean rockstar Node ninja programmer agile kanban expert--e.g., most of the population of the United States--it is far, far too easy to weigh going hungry against getting a "harmless" Facebook profile.
  - tambourine_man 13y ago
    No programmer is going hungry in the US.
    - clebio 13y ago
      Was anyone here speaking exclusively about programmers?
    - glesica 13y ago
      Yep, for those of us who can read, the point of the comment was that not everyone has as many options as programmers.
    - tambourine_man 13y ago
      Replying to myself as this could have been misunderstood: programmers are not going hungry in the US, and yet, comply with things they may consider unscrupulous. We shouldn't, even if we were starving, but that's a tall order for most human beings. I'm not intransigent, but I try not to redraw the line of how low I'll go according to context.
ihsw 13y ago
> the best way to control a population is to analyze and manipulate the information they consume The comparison that some have made between the US Government and Stasi is more accurate than you think, with regards of Zersetzung: > By the 1970s, the Stasi had decided that methods of overt persecution which had been employed up to that time, such as arrest and torture, were too crude and obvious. It was realised that psychological harassment was far less likely to be recognised for what it was, so its victims, and their supporters, were less likely to be provoked into active resistance, given that they would often not be aware of the source of their problems, or even its exact nature. Zersetzung was designed to side-track and "switch off" perceived enemies so that they would lose the will to continue any "inappropriate" activities. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung Data mining is a very interest challenge and represents a major step in large-scale computing technology, but it pales in comparison to data manipulation. Imagine for a moment if the intelligence-surveillance apparatus were redirected outward: methods used for parsing human communication would be re-purposed for disseminating seemingly-human propaganda. Who you're responding to on Twitter, reddit, or HN may not be a person. Imagine for a moment if spammers were quite a bit more convincing in their emails, and that their poor grammar and spelling were improved.
- 001sky 13y ago
  see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- rolux 13y ago
  While I see the potential for "Zersetzung", it just doesn't scale as well as mass surveillance. If your communication (and location) data is stored by US companies complicit with programs like PRISM, and there is no hope that this data will ever be destroyed, then that's enough to make you communicate (and move) a lot more cautiously.
- wittyphrasehere 13y ago
  Already a term for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)
mr_spothawk 13y ago
> once you debase intelligent debate/freedom of expression and [...] you debase the minds of the people as a whole and open the door to committing worse atrocities. see: the cultural revolution
badman_ting 13y ago
I'm not saying things are good in America right now, but I think our problems are due to my fellow citizens, not some evil cabal of overlords. If we're all gonna steer the plane into the ground, well, I wish we wouldn't, but from everything I see we are doing this to ourselves. We went crazy over terrorism, and we didn't come back.
- jmagoon 13y ago
  If 75% of the polled public believes that linking minimum wage to the cost of living is a good and correct thing, and legislation continues to be passed attempting to lower or inhibit raising minimum wage, who would you suggest controls the legislation? It's certainly not the 75%.
- jgg 13y ago
  We went crazy over terrorism? Who's we? Am I part of the we that helped pass the PATRIOT Act (which was an Act of Congress) without reading it? Am I the one who pitched Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction to justify an invasion of an irrelevant country that resulted in ~125,000 dead civilians? Am I the one who has been helping build the system that has devalued an American college degree to the point of worthlessness? Did I decide to over-advertise the college experience to impressionable kids? Did I decide to give more student loan money to college students? Did I decide to raise the cost of my university to account for said federal dollars that I can now obtain out of greed? Of course there's a bleeting majority supporting all of this. They're, like all citizens in a democracy, only as good as the media they're fed: http://fsi.stanford.edu/publications/how_to_subvert_democracy_montesinos_in_peru http://fsi.stanford.edu/publications/how_to_subvert_democrac... But many of the policies and actions are coming from a higher-level than your average citizen. EDIT: However, I agree that the stupidity and apathy of the general populace is at least partly to blame. The people who know what's up ahead of time aren't confident enough to act until it's obvious, in which case it's usually too late. The rest just don't care and assume someone else will solve the problem. Further, following trends and the subsequent inability to make it through a turbulent or confusing time without devolving into mass panic and animal-like behavior is also a problem.
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]

by jgg 13y ago

bostik 13y ago

> best way to control a population is to analyze and manipulate the information they consume That brought back a quote from a past: "He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past." I had to look it up to get the exact wording right. Was only half surprised that it comes from Orwell's 1984.

digitalengineer 13y ago
Agreed. Some time ago on HN: Law firms forcing online newspapers to delete older articles. No one cares, it's old news right? Step by step they're changing history.
auggierose 13y ago
That implies you have not read 1984. You should.
- bostik 13y ago
  Oh, I have. It's just far too long ago, and I had the misfortune of reading a translation. A bad one, at that. So I couldn't place the quote. I just knew it from different context. Much the same way it took me years to find a quote that my gradeschool math teacher used and which had lodged itself firmly in my brain. Namely: "To study and not think is a waste. To think and not study is dangerous." - Confucius
  - auggierose 13y ago
    I like the Confucius quote. There IS a certain danger in taking shortcuts in your thinking. It's probably best to use shortcuts anyway when in discovery mode, but then to check those shortcuts rigorously.
    - raintrees 13y ago
      Ha! Almost like "Trust, but verify" :)
  - gbog 13y ago
    Kudos for this accurate and relevant Confucius quote, it is rare nowadays. In fact, reading this guy's Analects, you'd find a mine of secular wisdom aphorism that sound obvious but are all the more urgent to remember by the times running.

CaptainZapp 13y ago

There's still a big world outside the Internet, and yet ironically, we live in a world where some employers are so stupid that they won't hire someone without a Facebook, making the abuse and surveillance of Internet more relevant than it needs to be. You know what's my thought towards such employers? A big fat FUCK YOU! Those are companies, where I rather collect unemployment benefits than ever working one day for such an outfit. The same sentiment is extended to any service, which requires me to have a Facebook (or any other social media) account.

angersock 13y ago
Right, right, but for everyone that isn't a lean rockstar Node ninja programmer agile kanban expert--e.g., most of the population of the United States--it is far, far too easy to weigh going hungry against getting a "harmless" Facebook profile.
- tambourine_man 13y ago
  No programmer is going hungry in the US.
  - clebio 13y ago
    Was anyone here speaking exclusively about programmers?
  - glesica 13y ago
    Yep, for those of us who can read, the point of the comment was that not everyone has as many options as programmers.
  - tambourine_man 13y ago
    Replying to myself as this could have been misunderstood: programmers are not going hungry in the US, and yet, comply with things they may consider unscrupulous. We shouldn't, even if we were starving, but that's a tall order for most human beings. I'm not intransigent, but I try not to redraw the line of how low I'll go according to context.

ihsw 13y ago

> the best way to control a population is to analyze and manipulate the information they consume The comparison that some have made between the US Government and Stasi is more accurate than you think, with regards of Zersetzung: > By the 1970s, the Stasi had decided that methods of overt persecution which had been employed up to that time, such as arrest and torture, were too crude and obvious. It was realised that psychological harassment was far less likely to be recognised for what it was, so its victims, and their supporters, were less likely to be provoked into active resistance, given that they would often not be aware of the source of their problems, or even its exact nature. Zersetzung was designed to side-track and "switch off" perceived enemies so that they would lose the will to continue any "inappropriate" activities. Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stasi#Zersetzung Data mining is a very interest challenge and represents a major step in large-scale computing technology, but it pales in comparison to data manipulation. Imagine for a moment if the intelligence-surveillance apparatus were redirected outward: methods used for parsing human communication would be re-purposed for disseminating seemingly-human propaganda. Who you're responding to on Twitter, reddit, or HN may not be a person. Imagine for a moment if spammers were quite a bit more convincing in their emails, and that their poor grammar and spelling were improved.

001sky 13y ago
see also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaslighting
deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
rolux 13y ago
While I see the potential for "Zersetzung", it just doesn't scale as well as mass surveillance. If your communication (and location) data is stored by US companies complicit with programs like PRISM, and there is no hope that this data will ever be destroyed, then that's enough to make you communicate (and move) a lot more cautiously.
wittyphrasehere 13y ago
Already a term for that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sockpuppet_(Internet)

mr_spothawk 13y ago

> once you debase intelligent debate/freedom of expression and [...] you debase the minds of the people as a whole and open the door to committing worse atrocities. see: the cultural revolution

badman_ting 13y ago

I'm not saying things are good in America right now, but I think our problems are due to my fellow citizens, not some evil cabal of overlords. If we're all gonna steer the plane into the ground, well, I wish we wouldn't, but from everything I see we are doing this to ourselves. We went crazy over terrorism, and we didn't come back.

jmagoon 13y ago
If 75% of the polled public believes that linking minimum wage to the cost of living is a good and correct thing, and legislation continues to be passed attempting to lower or inhibit raising minimum wage, who would you suggest controls the legislation? It's certainly not the 75%.
jgg 13y ago
We went crazy over terrorism? Who's we? Am I part of the we that helped pass the PATRIOT Act (which was an Act of Congress) without reading it? Am I the one who pitched Saddam's Weapons of Mass Destruction to justify an invasion of an irrelevant country that resulted in ~125,000 dead civilians? Am I the one who has been helping build the system that has devalued an American college degree to the point of worthlessness? Did I decide to over-advertise the college experience to impressionable kids? Did I decide to give more student loan money to college students? Did I decide to raise the cost of my university to account for said federal dollars that I can now obtain out of greed? Of course there's a bleeting majority supporting all of this. They're, like all citizens in a democracy, only as good as the media they're fed: http://fsi.stanford.edu/publications/how_to_subvert_democracy_montesinos_in_peru http://fsi.stanford.edu/publications/how_to_subvert_democrac... But many of the policies and actions are coming from a higher-level than your average citizen. EDIT: However, I agree that the stupidity and apathy of the general populace is at least partly to blame. The people who know what's up ahead of time aren't confident enough to act until it's obvious, in which case it's usually too late. The rest just don't care and assume someone else will solve the problem. Further, following trends and the subsequent inability to make it through a turbulent or confusing time without devolving into mass panic and animal-like behavior is also a problem.

deleted 13y ago

[deleted]