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Re:U.S. military to analyze 350B social media posts to under... by AndrewKemendo on Saturday May 25, 2019 @08:08AM (#20008536)
This is a scary headline for a run of the mill research project at Naval Postgraduate School. Here's the solicitation: https://www.neco.navy.mil/synopsis/detail.aspx?id=537809

> Our research aims to provide enhanced understanding of fundamental social dynamics, to model the evolution of linguistic communities, and emerging modes of collective expression, over time and across countries ...

> As a central requirement for this research, we seek to acquire a large-scale global historical archive of social media data, providing the full text of all public social media posts, across all countries and languages covered by the social media platform. We aim to use this research to advance knowledge through scientific publications. This data will also be used for pedagogical purposes in the classroom, giving students new opportunities for thesis research and the development of “big data” analytic skills.

How can the Department of Defense do a better job at interfacing with the general public to better explain intentions, motives etc... with the work that we do?

Re:U.S. military to analyze 350B social media posts to under... by soulofmischief on Saturday May 25, 2019 @08:56AM (#20008754)
They could start with being honest that those aren't the DoD's only motive behind wanting such a corpus and analytical model.

There are many positive and negative things that could result from something like this, and it isn't the fact that the Navy is doing it that scares people. It's the fact that the US government is doing it.

Re:U.S. military to analyze 350B social media posts to under... by AndrewKemendo on Saturday May 25, 2019 @09:34AM (#20008953)
They could start with being honest that those aren't the DoD's only motive behind wanting such a corpus and analytical model

That would be akin to asking [insert company] if it will possibly ever use data collected from one thing on a different project at some later date. That is a complete unknown, so it wouldn't even be appropriate to put into a proposal, as they have specific formats.

NPS is a graduate study program, with a research component and long history of academic publishing. Whether that data could possibly, someday be used beyond that is completely out of scope for this solicitation. Further, if other groups in the military wanted similar data, they would likely not go to NPS for it, for a variety of reasons.

I think at the end of the day though, if someone has an assumption that everything the DoD does or messages to the world is somehow subterfuge, there's no amount of discussion that would reverse that feeling.

Re:U.S. military to analyze 350B social media posts to under... by soulofmischief on Saturday May 25, 2019 @10:17AM (#20009190)
As I just mentioned in a sister comment, I know this kind of research is inevitable and like I said there are positive aspects.

Similar undertakings have no doubt already been made in private inside other organizations.

I'm just explaining why people feel uneasy about this kind of thing. It's because of who's boss.

Re:U.S. military to analyze 350B social media posts to under... by austincheney on Saturday May 25, 2019 @09:05AM (#20008802)
What does that mean? Would you rather it were Cambridge Analytica?
Re:U.S. military to analyze 350B social media posts to under... by soulofmischief on Saturday May 25, 2019 @10:15AM (#20009180)
Ignoring your false dichotomy, it should be fairly obvious what some of the negative consequences of such an analysis of a large corpus of social data could provide for the US government, a totalitarian state with a long history of infiltrating and manipulating social movements.

I'm also a realist and understand that this kind of analysis is inevitable and will eventually be continuous. I'm not arguing that it shouldn't be done.

Re:U.S. military to analyze 350B social media posts to under... by austincheney on Saturday May 25, 2019 @10:42AM (#20009321)
If you were a realist you would review the definition of totalitarian.
Re:U.S. military to analyze 350B social media posts to under... by soulofmischief on Saturday May 25, 2019 @11:20AM (#20009512)