Anti-democratic social media, Russia went hard

Logform podcast, but worth the listen, imo. 

My takeaway is, to what degree may I have been manipulated into trusting ideas that serve to degrade our democracy? 

https://youtu.be/0SXy6MsmFBc?t=698

This is a very old** (long) game, but the tools are constantly changing.

Even scarier is modern movie technology that allows them to slice and dice video and audio files to manipulate images of people speaking in their own natural voice.

It is good that people are upset by this but maybe don't google VOA radio broadcasts (or maybe do). 

JR

*** back in the 50/60s I had a short wave radio set and could listen to english language broadcasts from Moscow and Havana, with their own spin on world events.   

What amazes me is that people pretend to be outraged that the Russians are doing this, while US and other companies were boasting they could influence elections anywhere in the world by the same means provided you paid for it.

So it's OK if it's a commercial venture, used by both parties in the US elections, but it's not OK if the Russians do it?

Where does advertising/propaganda go if you feed it artificial intelligence?

cyrano said:

What amazes me is that people pretend to be outraged that the Russians are doing this, while US and other companies were boasting they could influence elections anywhere in the world by the same means provided you paid for it.

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Countries or Companies? Social media companies are under attack for not recognizing blatant manipulation in a timely fashion.

Countries view global power as a zero sum game, so making another country weaker, makes them stronger by comparison. Global geopolitics is a three man contest between Russia, China , and the US.

So it's OK if it's a commercial venture, used by both parties in the US elections, but it's not OK if the Russians do it?

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Russia is getting special attention these days because of the democratic talking point that President Trump is subservient to Putin. 

Where does advertising/propaganda go if you feed it artificial intelligence?

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I think AI gets overestimated and conflated with other technologies. I have long speculated about political parties using targeted social media to narrow cast different political promises to different segments of the voting population. Hopefully that same technology will help catch and reveal their hypocrisy.

Propaganda has been with us a long time, Sun Tzu in his classic  "The art of war" described disinformation as a useful technique to gain advantage.

JR

PS: Interesting that Russian social media advertising in some cases promoted opposite sides of the same arguments. Like they just wanted people arguing with each other and didn't care one way or the other about the issue. 

JohnRoberts said:

PS: Interesting that Russian social media advertising in some cases promoted opposite sides of the same arguments. Like they just wanted people arguing with each other and didn't care one way or the other about the issue.

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Bingo!

What do you think all that fake news is about?

It's not about winning a discussion, or winning a number of votes...

As long as there is enough confusion, those who really pull the strings can produce the election results they want.

The techniques aren't even new. In the case of voting computers, the mechanism for "corrections" has been in for almost 20 years. In the case of ballot voting, the means are simple: deny certain parts of the population access to the voting system.

Set out these manipulations and there isn't much democracy left.

The Swiss understand. Their voting machines are currently being checked by anyone wishing to participate. Find a weakness, get the bounty.

Of course, that's not possible in the US of A. Even when these things surface, the MSM ignore it largely.

while US and other companies were boasting they could influence elections anywhere in the world by the same means

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Did you get to the part where Ms DiResta was saying our Government couldn't decide how to handle ISIS videos?
They were wringing their hands over videos of beheadings back in 2015. They didn't know if taking them down would create first amendment issues! That doesn't sound like a country deftly ready to wreak havoc using social media infowar tactics. But in 2019, the US has got the memo, as evidenced by Russia quickly working out major security changes that allow their nation's internet to be run entirely from within.

PS: Interesting that Russian social media advertising in some cases promoted opposite sides of the same arguments. Like they just wanted people arguing with each other and didn't care one way or the other about the issue. 

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Voter disenfranchisement is nothing new.
Some of the most effective political advertising is the most deceptive.
For instance, a Republican operative set up auto calls to likely Democratic voters that were purportedly for the Democratic candidate, but were very annoying.  When someone answered, the robo-call just kept calling to annoy. This created a negative impression about the candidate.

cyrano said:

Bingo!
What do you think all that fake news is about?
It's not about winning a discussion, or winning a number of votes...
As long as there is enough confusion, those who really pull the strings can produce the election results they want.
The techniques aren't even new. In the case of voting computers, the mechanism for "corrections" has been in for almost 20 years. In the case of ballot voting, the means are simple: deny certain parts of the population access to the voting system.
Set out these manipulations and there isn't much democracy left.
The Swiss understand. Their voting machines are currently being checked by anyone wishing to participate. Find a weakness, get the bounty.
Of course, that's not possible in the US of A. Even when these things surface, the MSM ignore it largely.

Click to expand...

A lot of truth here . A lot of people don't realize it and contribute to the messed up system. The private, proprietary voting systems in the USA are a travesty.
The Democrats in the house are putting voting transparency and voting rights as a major objective. It is disgraceful that Republicans are opposing this. But the Republicans have become a party of minority rule in the US, so their hold on power depends on keeping major groups of people disenfranchised at the ballot box.

Of all the shiny distracting media stories lately, an important story happened - NC ordered a re-do election because the Republican cheated.

This should happen in several other areas where Republicans have 'cheated', but at least NC is a victory.