'Disinformation for Hire' is Becoming a Booming Industry (nytimes.com) 148
Sunday the BBC reported YouTube influencers were offered money to spread vaccine misinformation.
But according to the New York Times, that's just the tip of the iceberg. "The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire: Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies. They sow discord, meddle in elections, seed false narratives and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social media. And they offer clients something precious: deniability. "Disinfo-for-hire actors being employed by government or government-adjacent actors is growing and serious," said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, calling it "a boom industry."
Similar campaigns have been recently found promoting India's ruling party, Egyptian foreign policy aims and political figures in Bolivia and Venezuela. Mr. Brookie's organization tracked one operating amid a mayoral race in Serra, a small city in Brazil. An ideologically promiscuous Ukrainian firm boosted several competing political parties. In the Central African Republic, two separate operations flooded social media with dueling pro-French and pro-Russian disinformation. Both powers are vying for influence in the country. A wave of anti-American posts in Iraq, seemingly organic, were tracked to a public relations company that was separately accused of faking anti-government sentiment in Israel.
Most trace to back-alley firms whose legitimate services resemble those of a bottom-rate marketer or email spammer... For-hire disinformation, though only sometimes effective, is growing more sophisticated as practitioners iterate and learn. Experts say it is becoming more common in every part of the world, outpacing operations conducted directly by governments. The result is an accelerating rise in polarizing conspiracies, phony citizen groups and fabricated public sentiment, deteriorating our shared reality beyond even the depths of recent years... Commercial firms conducted for-hire disinformation in at least 48 countries last year — nearly double from the year before, according to an Oxford University study. The researchers identified 65 companies offering such services...
Platforms have stepped up efforts to root out coordinated disinformation. Analysts especially credit Facebook, which publishes detailed reports on campaigns it disrupts. Still, some argue that social media companies also play a role in worsening the threat. Engagement-boosting algorithms and design elements, research finds, often privilege divisive and conspiratorial content.
The article also notes "a generation" of populist political leaders around the world who have risen "in part through social media manipulation.
"Once in office, many institutionalize those methods as tools of governance and foreign relations."
But according to the New York Times, that's just the tip of the iceberg. "The scheme appears to be part of a secretive industry that security analysts and American officials say is exploding in scale: disinformation for hire: Private firms, straddling traditional marketing and the shadow world of geopolitical influence operations, are selling services once conducted principally by intelligence agencies. They sow discord, meddle in elections, seed false narratives and push viral conspiracies, mostly on social media. And they offer clients something precious: deniability. "Disinfo-for-hire actors being employed by government or government-adjacent actors is growing and serious," said Graham Brookie, director of the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab, calling it "a boom industry."
Similar campaigns have been recently found promoting India's ruling party, Egyptian foreign policy aims and political figures in Bolivia and Venezuela. Mr. Brookie's organization tracked one operating amid a mayoral race in Serra, a small city in Brazil. An ideologically promiscuous Ukrainian firm boosted several competing political parties. In the Central African Republic, two separate operations flooded social media with dueling pro-French and pro-Russian disinformation. Both powers are vying for influence in the country. A wave of anti-American posts in Iraq, seemingly organic, were tracked to a public relations company that was separately accused of faking anti-government sentiment in Israel.
Most trace to back-alley firms whose legitimate services resemble those of a bottom-rate marketer or email spammer... For-hire disinformation, though only sometimes effective, is growing more sophisticated as practitioners iterate and learn. Experts say it is becoming more common in every part of the world, outpacing operations conducted directly by governments. The result is an accelerating rise in polarizing conspiracies, phony citizen groups and fabricated public sentiment, deteriorating our shared reality beyond even the depths of recent years... Commercial firms conducted for-hire disinformation in at least 48 countries last year — nearly double from the year before, according to an Oxford University study. The researchers identified 65 companies offering such services...
Platforms have stepped up efforts to root out coordinated disinformation. Analysts especially credit Facebook, which publishes detailed reports on campaigns it disrupts. Still, some argue that social media companies also play a role in worsening the threat. Engagement-boosting algorithms and design elements, research finds, often privilege divisive and conspiratorial content.
The article also notes "a generation" of populist political leaders around the world who have risen "in part through social media manipulation.
"Once in office, many institutionalize those methods as tools of governance and foreign relations."
Social networks are for morons (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Social networks are for morons (Score:5, Insightful)
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If I was a disinformation-for-hire company, I would feed memes and bits of rumors to people like you, because you do all the work for my campaigns to stay under the radar, while the disinformation I seed is successfully spread.
If I were an observant owner of a disinformation campaign, I probably wouldn't waste my marketing on those who accurately identify social media as "for morons", as that tends to imply they A) do not participate in social media, and/or B) are smart enough to not rely on fucking "memes" as a valid news source to shape their decisions and lives with.
I love disinformation! (Score:2, Funny)
Disinformation is really really GREAT. I love disinformation, almost as much as I love this country! This country is really GREAT! When the GREAT PEOPLE of this country pass around disinformation to each other -- it's a really WONDERFUL and BEAUTIFUL thing, because that's people using their right to FREE SPEECH.
It's FAKE NEWS that I don't like -- the FAKE NEWS mouthpieces aren't genuinely EXCITED about their disinformation, or FREE SPEECH as it may be. NO, the Fake News Media just passes off their version o
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The problem today, is Sarcasm vs just someone being really stupid, doesn't work well on wide range posts. If you don't know the presenter, and you don't know the audience, sarcasm will not make the intended point. It will either make a lot of people think you are a stupid idiots, or make stupid idiots think what you said was a good idea.
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The SARCASM is MASSIVELY underappreciated by the MASSES!
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Yeah, you'd think that, but knowing what I know about people, I doubt it works that way.
Somebody who's a little bit cynical is hard to fool, and if he becomes a little bit more cynical be becomes a little harder to fool. But that process doesn't continue *indefinitely*. There's an optimum amount of cynicism to have, beyond which you actually start becoming more gullible. At the far end of the spectrum is the territory conspiracy theorists occupy -- people who instantly and uncritically believe any claim t
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Ah, but there's a significant fraction of social media users who believe that most social media users are morons - they just think they're a small fraction which is smarter than the whole. It's the "everyone but us are morons" phenomena. Or everyone else is being duped, lied to, sheep, what have you.
Re:Social networks are for morons (Score:5, Insightful)
Disinformation for hire company, what the hell are you talking about. They are called Public Relations firms and now corporations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. The have been on the internet since day one, Astroturf caimpagn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]. Nothing new in this what so ever. Corporations target anyone that challenges their right to infinite profits, no matter how criminal, as long as they can get away with it.
In fact the internet has been the number one tool for destroying the lies of Public Relations corporations. Look, they spread a new lie. It's not public relations that is as evil as fuck, it is the people who dare challenge the lies of Public Relations on the internet, the MISINFORMERS.
WHAT A CROCK OF SHIT.
Corporate main stream media news has been nothing but a propaganda tool and misinformation for decades and the filthy fuckers pretend it is like something new and we are fucking doing it.
Too much Bernays sauce? (Score:2, Interesting)
Too much Bernays sauce?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
Goebbels was a student of his. Right here in America.
Long before Internet.
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Corporate alternative media news is just as bad and probably more evil. Breitbart and OANN aren't even presenting news hidden behind a smokescreen of editorializing, they're flat out making up fake stories. The closest they get to the truth is when they admit that because they think every word from the other side is a lie that they must also lie in every word they speak to compete.
Don't be like the flat earthers who think that they're the only handful of people who actually know the truth and that all exp
Re: Social networks are for morons (Score:2)
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Is social media easier to control, giving power over them back to only the highest of bidders and most organized of nation states? Is there a way to make them not morons?
Social media is a lot lower budget, potentially a lot quicker to action (i.e. more agile) and broadly, has less oversight (not necessarily a bad thing in itself). Payola and similar cash for comment has existed,there have been scandals about it throughout history. Where it's different is, I think there's so much of it now, it's harder to prove, and as a result, it gets lost in the noise.
As for consumption by morons, it's simple; bread and circus. Few in modern society actually go hungry, so all that really
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While further proof social networks are for utter morons, one does have to wonder what is to be done about these hoards.
Doesn't matter how moronic those on social media are; in the disinformation game, it's at worst a tool and at best a weapon.
A hammer is a dull dumb tool that any moron can use. Doesn't mean it's also not considered a dangerous weapon in the hands of a criminal.
Is social media easier to control, giving power over them back to only the highest of bidders and most organized of nation states? Is there a way to make them not morons?
Yeah.
Start charging admission.
Morons demand everything online be free, and they'd be far too offended over a price tag to involve themselves.
Re:Social networks are for morons (Score:5, Insightful)
Is there a way to make them not morons?
I claim there isn't.
The thought experiment is this: Imagine that, everything else being equal, person A is interested in spreading the truth and person B is interested in spreading lies.
Person A will have to do research, validate their conclusion, provide sources so they can be checked, and work carefully to ensure they don't introduce mistakes.
In the same time it takes to do that, person B who has no such burdens and can simply make shit up as they go can focus entirely on creating and spreading their disinformation. They can also shape the presentation solely for the purpose of maximum impact, without regards to balance or such.
Unless you have an objective, automatable way to discern whether person X posting something to their social media is A or B, you're fucked.
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There is also a real limitation on how much time and effort we can really put into something to learn the actual truth.
We have to rely on News Media to give us a summary on what is going on, this is always going to be Bias, but if it is truthful then it is going to benefit us. If we trust that source and they provide lies, we will still trust that site and go on thinking the lie is the real thing.
We have some actually smart and intelligent people who believe some really dumb things, because they may focus
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(commonly attributed to Mark Twain, but authorship is disputed!)
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yes, except that in the case of social media, it travels not just forward, but also multiplies sideways.
Bullshit Asymmetry Problem (Score:3)
This is also known as Brandolini's Law, or the Bullshit Asymmetry Problem [wikipedia.org]. It takes an order of magnitude more effort to debunk bullshit than it does to create it.
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Jonathan Swift:
Besides, as the vilest Writer has his Readers, so the greatest Liar has his Believers; and it often happens, that if a Lie be believ’d only for an Hour, it has done its Work, and there is no farther occasion for it. Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it; so that when Men come to be undeceiv’d, it is too late; the Jest is over, and the Tale has had its Effect
Or as an unknown person said (misattributed to Twain, Pratchett, Churchill, et al):
A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.
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Not really. If you can produce throw-away content at a high enough rate you can approach this pragmatically: Throw a lot of mud and see what sticks, then do more of that.
Rent a Mob (Score:2)
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Each of us would like to believe that the other guy's argument originated as intentional disinformation. But how do we distinguish such a source from plain old misunderstanding? This is a much more difficult problem than separating truth from untruth, because truth can be validated against history, observation or experiment. Could an AI be trained from large-scale pattern matches to make the distinction?
Re:Social networks are for morons (Score:4, Interesting)
Being that we have the like of Fox News which isn't "Social Media" also just as willing to spread fake news, or at least sew doubt into peoples minds about real news.
So for example while I was a the Gym, where they have bunch of TVs in front of the Treadmills, even with no sound, There was a TV with Fox News and one with CNN. Both had headlines about the Biden Administration talking to Facebook to help curve Vaccination misinformation.
(These examples may not be exact, as I am going from memory, where the bulk of my mind was towards keeping my heart-rate up with exercise)
CNN had a headline like. Biden to talk to Facebook to stop misinformation
FOX News had a headline like. Biden in talks with Facebook about "Misinformation"
While the headlines say the same thing, the Fox News headline implied that it may not be real Misinformation, but just them trying to push their agenda.
The CNN headline was bias too, as it was implying that Biden was Single Highhandedly dealing with Facebook, but that much less hazardous than Fox News, feeding additional doubt about Vaccinations success and relatively low risk.
Cable News Stations are paid for by Advertisers. Fox News gets a lot of revenue from Big Oil companies who has a big self interest to discredit climate science, as part of this campaign against the results from climate science, it has a tactic about discrediting all experts, because they cannot compete with actual facts, so they just paint a picture of experts being these "other people" aka LiBeRaLs who are just making up crap to push some unknown LiBeRaL Agenda for us to stop driving cars.
Now that Social Media Influences are getting paid real money, and often from sponsors, they are too a good target towards misinformation dealers.
It isn't Social Networks, but the fact that people are now making money off of them.
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While further proof social networks are for utter morons
Slashdot is social news, people only come here for the comments, not the days old stories.
Anyway, YouTube has a lot of good content. Adrian's Digital Basement and JSK-koubou are both excellent and definitely not for "utter morons".
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While further proof social networks are for utter morons, one does have to wonder what is to be done about these hoards.
How about we go back to newspapers? Newspapers never spread any disinformation. Nope.
Or TV? If Facebook didn't exist people would probably watch TV. TV is always factual and independent.
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Is social media easier to control,
Inevitably you will not like the person who ends up controlling it.
Is there a way to make them not morons?
Best way is for people to associate with each other.
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Sure. Create a competitive market for social networks where people can pick the one with the least misinformation. Basically just needs a standard so you can still see information from your friends on other networks.
Oh. Wait. You mentioned "morons". In that case, the morons are going to pick the social network that tells them what they want to hear. And morons hate ugly truths and love pretty misinformation. They are going to join the social networks with the mostest and bestest misinformation.
I sort of for
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Brazil in the vanguard! (Score:2, Insightful)
Started in Ukraine in 2014 and before... (Score:2)
I think Ukraine was earlier - Donbas/Donieck/Crimea had such campaigns before 2014...
Then it spread to other countries...
Polish presidential elections in 2015 were won thanks to paid troll farms...
Brexit most likely the same...
Youtube influencers (Score:4, Insightful)
are offered money all the time and plug shit constantly in their videos. Sometimes it's very subtle (look in the background in the videos you watch to see what I mean), sometimes it's really kind of obvious.
It's just that this time, it was so over the top that they figured they'd play holier-than-thou for once instead of taking the money.
They're "influencers" alright - although that used to be called grassroot marketing before Youtube.
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A grassroots movement is the real thing. When it's fake it's called astroturfing [wikipedia.org], after the fake grass. Anyway, lying for profit should simply be considered fraud.
Re:Youtube influencers (Score:5, Insightful)
lying for profit should simply be considered fraud.
Wishful thinking. You'd have to throw half of humanity in jail if that was a thing, starting with church leaders, advertisers and politicians.
Re:Youtube influencers (Score:5, Insightful)
>You'd have to throw half of humanity in jail if that was a thing, starting with church leaders, advertisers and politicians.
I do not see the problem with this..
Re: Youtube influencers (Score:2)
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In the UK House of Commons, a politician can lie as much as they like, but you are not allowed to call another MP a liar. An MP recently got marched out of the House for just that offence. Interesting priorities there, I think.
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I believe there's something similar here in Finland as well, you almost never hear a politician, even in interviews, calling out someone straight up as liar and it annoys the sh*t out of me how they force their words to fit inside political correctness on this - they can point out that someones "facts" are imaginary, even that the person making up them should be aware of it, but they just can't call them straight up liars. Fsck!
Re:Youtube influencers (Score:4, Insightful)
Sounds good... Seriously, I would support punishing politicians who are knowingly spreading lies about something - like pulling numbers, statistics, etc. out of their ass that have nothing to do with anything. But great care should be taken that this would only be used when there's an objective facts available on the matter. And it would have to be implemented in such way that it can't be abused for partisan politics. It should also require proof that the person making false claims knew that they were false. I don't really see how it could be done... That is, I don't know if it can be implemented without it getting abused and I can see how it could go horribly wrong.
Every politician lies - but people like Trump, who just spew such outrageous lies after lies after lies and they get to keep their job despite of it just feels... wrong in every possible way.
But yeah, it's wishful thinking, I admit that much.
Re:Youtube influencers (Score:4, Interesting)
And it would have to be implemented in such way that it can't be abused for partisan politics.
It's actually very simple. You would have a scientific advisory board to the government - several countries have such a thing, an institute or a consulting part, independent from party politics and corporate influence - whose only job is to research and write down the established scientific facts on questions that parliament is discussing.
Then, when a politician states something as fact, it can be checked by such an organisation. The result can be that it's true (as far as we know), that it is disproven by sufficient scientific research, or that the question is not definitely settled.
If he repeats a statement that the independent, government-owned organisation has rated as "proven to be false to facts", strip him of all positions, throw him in jail for a year and take his right to stand for any office for five years. Or something.
You would be surprised how quickly all the bullshitting comes to an end once the fuckers have skin in the game.
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It's actually very simple. You would have a scientific advisory board to the government - several countries have such a thing, an institute or a consulting part, independent from party politics and corporate influence - whose only job is to research and write down the established scientific facts on questions that parliament is discussing.
Having a non-partisan group is impossible as long as politicians are in charge of it.
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You may have invented Noocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] or Technocracy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org].
It's all just shifting power and its problems from one group to another.
Keep trying though, just please try to keep the change from getting "violent and bloody".
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You misunderstand.
I'm not saying the scientists should make the decisions. There is a place for politicians to weigh both the facts and the demands of society, culture, people, etc. and then make a decision - which may go against what science recommends.
I'm fine with that. If politicians would go on camera saying "we're not doing X despite scientists recommend it, because jobs / shareholders / my dog / etc. - is more important to me" - that's ok. We elect those people to make decisions.
I'm just saying they
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What politicians say is where most of their power comes from. So if you give others power over that, it effectively shifts that power. And while I understand and believe in science on the whole, scientists themselves, and as groups, are still very human.
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What politicians say is where most of their power comes from. So if you give others power over that, it effectively shifts that power.
That's kind of the point.
I'd like facts to have more influence, and money and lobbyism less.
And even more important: I'd like it to be a lot more transparent who and what influences political decisions.
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Sorry, but there is no way that science can decide on politics. One consequence of that approach is the pseudo-science of Marxism, and its various unpleasant offspring. The reason why democracies have debating chambers is because most political matters are subject to differences of opinion, and bickering about policies is what politicians have to do to get stuff done. OK, so an independent fact checking body might help in some cases, but mostly, it is not just a matter of verifiable facts.
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Yes, because we know that government panels have to be impartial, because they are appointed by politicians, who serve the public.
If set up like that then yes, it can work. Like I said: Several countries around the world have such organisations.
I agree that safeguards against using it for censorship must be in place. But in this case that's relatively easy - it would be darn obvious if the scientific institute would claim that, say, things falling downwards is an unproven fringe theory, but the Bill Gates microchip in the Corona vaccinations is proven fact.
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It can work in the _short term_ and for _small countries_. The problem with centralized decision-making organizations is that they can be a weapon as easily as they can be a tool, even when those organizations are staffed by rational, competent people. Look at how effectively US organizations have been corrupted since the 80s/90s.
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One of the countries I know has such an organisation is Germany - 80 mio. people. Don't know where you cut the line to "small countries", but there's one that's not so small.
Re: Youtube influencers (Score:4)
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If that means we lose social media as we know it but get our democracy & public health services back, so be it.
You can't preserve democracy by clamping down on people's free speech. The only way to fix this problem is with education, and "neither" "side" wants that as then people would know better than to blindly follow politicians. Although to be fair, the conservatives want it a lot less. They depend more on low-information voters.
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Having sides is the entire root of the problem. Dividing the world into "us" and "them." As far as I'm concerned, choosing to be part of a political party is a sign of mental illness.
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Only if you consider pragmatism a mental illness.
But around these parts, "both" "sides" suck anyway, so I get your point.
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Only if you consider pragmatism a mental illness.
You don't have to join a party to support one of the candidates.
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he only way to fix this problem is with education ...
I am with you there. I have often proposed the same. But more cynical minds than mine have pointed out that most people don't really want to be educated, and are quite happy being ignorant.
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more cynical minds than mine have pointed out that most people don't really want to be educated, and are quite happy being ignorant.
Yeah, you have to sneak education into some people's minds, disguised as entertainment or even religion *shudder*
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which would outlaw the entire ad industry and bring every single marketing department to court for starters. our entire consumer model is based on deception, form manufactured goods to religion, not to forget media outlets.
this article is a very naive. disinformation is ubiquitous in our society and history, it's just using different channels now.
Re: Youtube influencers (Score:2)
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which would outlaw the entire ad industry and bring every single marketing department to court for starters.
Now THERE'S an idea that needs to get traction.
manufactured goods to religion
Yeah, who am I kidding? As long as we don't put the people who take real money in exchange for made-up guidance on the fictional words of an imaginary creature on trial, we're a long way away from bringing the liars in advertisement to justice.
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which would outlaw the entire ad industry and bring every single marketing department to court for starters.
Now THERE'S an idea that needs to get traction.
Advertising distorts the internet worse than anything else. It motivates people to write lies for the sake of page views.
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Anyway, lying for profit should simply be considered fraud.
It is. But you have to prove it. And in order to be the one to prove it, you have to prove standing.
Re:Youtube influencers (Score:4, Insightful)
are offered money all the time and plug shit constantly in their videos. Sometimes it's very subtle (look in the background in the videos you watch to see what I mean), sometimes it's really kind of obvious.
I'll say. I've seen B&W Youtube videos of some German politician giving a speech at Nuremberg and there were tons of swastika flags in the background.
In hindsight, I think he may have been some sort of Nazi.
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Made me ROFL all over... Wish I had mod points :D
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Sure, sometimes a random crap... err, laugh... where you don't expect it, is the best thing =)
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They're "influencers" alright - although that used to be called grassroot marketing before Youtube.
Given the wholly negative impact they often create, perhaps we need a new more accurate term for "influencers".
Manipulators.
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Nah.
The word "manipulator" includes the latin word "manus" - hand.
They're not doing anything with their hands. Most of these people have essentially turned "filming yourself while slacking off" into a job. Hats off to that.
more of the same. (Score:2)
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I came up with a new business idea (Score:2, Interesting)
1. Setup a youtube channel
2. Post videos with titles like "proof against evolution"
3. Evolution haters will spread the link, most likely even without watching the video giving you more views
4. The catch is, that in the video, you actually shut down the proofs against evolution, making the video opposite of what the title makes you think it is.
This will result into two things:
1. Profit
2. Fighting against disinformation
Re:I came up with a new business idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Except that the other side sets up 10 channels in the same time and simply drowns you out.
The problem with disinformation is that it's easier and quicker to generate a bullshit newbite / YouTube video / TikTok / whatever than it is to generate a well-researched, sound and factual one. It's also easier to spin crap as a headline. "We're all gonna die!!!" gets more views than "fatality risk in this specific type of elevator has risen by 2.3% in one type of highrise building."
I don't think you can win the fight if you think that you can counter disinformation with good(*) information.
(*) "good" here in the sense of factual, truthfull, balanced, etc.
Hang together or we shall surely hang apart. (Score:5, Insightful)
"It's the other fraud guys who are doing this, not my guys! The other guys who want power and are evil hacks!"
"Who told you that?"
"It's the buzz on the web sites where I hang out...oh."
In my day we called them think tanks (Score:2)
Social Media considered harmful (Score:2)
Find an interesting article, and share it with a friend? Fine. Spamming the entire internet with poorly researched articles with a few clicks of a mouse button. Not fine.
or rather you can think of it as (Score:2)
the powers that be are (somewhat) losing their monopoly on spinning narratives that they consider beneficial.
whether this change is for better or for worse, that remains to be seen.
Is it time yet? (Score:5, Funny)
Can we finally officially call them "influenza"?
Funny how quickly things change (Score:2)
When I posted about the same thing yesterday [slashdot.org], it was modded troll. Now it's insightful.
Re: (Score:2)
So implying that they're a disease is insightful, but saying it is trolling?
C'mon, I thought people here are more capable of thinking than the average Reddit user.
just to be clear, it's the "booming" that's news (Score:2, Insightful)
...it's ALWAYS been an industry.
ALWAYS.
What has changed today is that the multiplicity of sources of information has destroyed the gatekeepers. This doesn't mean the information is inherently less reliable...it only means the prices fall.
Previously, if you heard something on NBC or read it in Time, they would be considered reasonably official news sources. But...it's clear that they have always been prone to spin, to say nothing of manipulation, and even promoting outright propaganda from governments when
Two types of people: (Score:3, Interesting)
1) Those who view this as justification for government control of information.
2) Those who view this as a failure of education systems to teach children how to think; how to investigate claims and determine which are factually supported. Indoctrination has replaced education.
We've had these businesses since ancient times (Score:2)
They're called Advertising agencies.
South Africa (Score:2)
The PR firm Bell Pottinger [wikipedia.org] went bankrupt because of their shenanigans in South Africa. At least, they were caught out, pretty sure there are others still active. Not that anyone was jailed or put against a wall, unfortunately.
I read a crime novel by Felix Francis the other day in which this firm as well as messrs. Pottinger and Bell figured as fairly innocuous supporting characters. Was wondering if money or other value exchanged hands for this "product placement"...
From the intelligence communities... (Score:2)
From the intelligence communities that fed mis-information to the marketplace. In some ways it seems inevitable.
JoshK.
NYTimes, who brought you WMDs (Score:2)
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A corrupt reporter working for the White House inside the NYTimes, The White House itself, Private ex-CIA agent(s), possibly the CIA (illegal but some CIA have been caught working in the USA, inside our organizations,) military intelligence (they've been caught doing psy-ops on US Senators; later on but we don't know how long before they escalated to Senators, ) anonymous sources purposely feeding supporting lies (Cheney essentially quoted his anonymous self in the NYTimes on the lead up.)
Then you have fo
Facebook peddled Anti-Trump Disinfo prior... (Score:3, Informative)
...to his election win vs Hillary by forcing Fake News articles into people's feeds as 'trending news'.
This was done by a Washington P.R. firm buying up some lapsed domain names - "heatstreet.com" was one of them, trying to then obfuscate their purchase of these domains (thanks DNS transfer history) putting in a content management system and feeding it with generic stories (thanks way back machine), and then putting in the smear Fake News stories, which Facebook then trended - despite that site having almost no web traffic (thanks alexa webstats).
Until misinformation peddling is illegal for Government to do (I believe that domestic propaganda operations against US citizens was illegal until all this fuckery started after 9/11) we're going to see industrial scale lies peddled against whatever is being targeted at the time.
We've seen it used against Whistleblowers and Journalists revealing the crimes of the various Elites and Organizations, and we've seen it used as part of U.S. State Department regime change operations.
Those not old enough or informed enough to know about the Vietnam war era "Credibility Gap" do not realize that we've been lied to for generations and what we're seeing now is not new, just new methods.
Pot Calls Kettle Black (Score:2)
The Atlantic Council is a Public Relations / propaganda / disinformation outfit.
This is going to be a hit TV show topic :( (Score:3)
And it won't be as biting or as clever as real life. My guess is they don't want to provoke the actual armed crazies...or the writers are just too dumb to understand our contemporary political landscape (which I am skeptical anyone really understands well)
I say this after watching 2020s The Hunt, last night...a GREAT premise with a botched execution, probably their first mistake was making it topical to contemporary politics. In a sentence, the movie is about useless liberal elites who kidnap and hunt a dozen "deplorables." It COULD have been great, but I got the impression the writers don't understand either side of the culture war well enough to write a good satire, so they had lazy, low-effort architectures of both liberal elites and racist right wing conspiracy nuts.
Maybe it does some good (Score:2)
The stupid masses might get something out of it; all the clever work seems to go over their heads and end up in the simpleton's mindset the same as the writing you complain about. They can succeed with less effort by appealing enough people and your minority of mindful viewers STILL watch and maybe even enjoy criticizing them. Your subconscious probably will enjoy the emotional roller coaster ride either way and playing to your emotions is the primary goal (just look at successful "news" today.)
So, it may
Another name... (Score:2)
Another name for this process is political campaign consultants, long a booming business in the US.
No difference between this and "PR" (Score:2)
The challenge has long stood, to really provide clear distinction between the three terms: "propaganda", "public relations" and "advertising".
"Advertising" differs only in places with penalties for a crime called "false advertising", that generally has a lot of holes in the legislation. I would say that (roughly) the terms "propaganda" and "disinformation" are equivalent.
A 'public relations' firm called Hill & Knowlton engineered this piece of disinformation: ...which
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Advertising at least is marked as such and, usually at least, doesn't try to kill people.
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Of course advertising kills people. Take alternative medicine, you know making fake claims to help all sorts of problems. Countless people waste their time taking those pills and things when they should be seeing real doctors.
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Advertising at least is marked as such
On Google search results, sure. Google aside, though, and this is not remotely the case. From product placement in TV shows and movies to so-called "native ads" [rit.edu] where a news article or blog post is basically an ad disguised as something else. I've heard that there is an entire cottage industry where companies will hire writers to write "news articles" that are intended to promote a brand and those articles are sold to actual news outlets and get published.
doesn't try to kill people.
By claiming that information kills, or has the capac
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Being allowed to speak your mind outside of "free speech zones" was a right.
Not being detained without due process and indefinitely without a speedy and fair trial used to be a right.
I don't give a fuck about the 2nd. Take it, and hand back the others.
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Well, at least in my country, there's a few standards journalists have and laws to meet that keep them in check when it comes to harebrained bullshit stories.
One such law is that they have to publish retractions if found out to be telling bullshit, and that the retractions have to be done in the same way the original story was done. And papers are usually quite wary of having to print retractions on the front page. It's not exactly good press. In every sense.
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"America First" (Score:2)
Orange Booba said it was "America First" but he even lied at that...