The fact that information about government's actions can spread to a large number of people, without any control from authorities is a first time in history for many. Organising protests without government censorship. Publishing investigations. Alerting the entire country to corruption as it happens.
It's really life-changing and unfortunately I don't think it will last. It's already routine when civil unrest happens to shut down internet. Facebook is a good one to censor but other networks take its place so creating Great Firewalls is next for many (somewhat rich) governments.
Some of us see an unfortunate trend recently, in which our political powers collude with or badger the owners of these companies to engage in censorship, and find it highly alarming.
May not require active complicity from Facebook and may even happen despite them.
The worst thing that can happen is having Zuck run for president and win. A pesident with a propaganda tool of his own.
In Ukraine they already have a reality TV actor who played a president as the president. Turns out that he's no worse than any other 'real' politician. Guess it's the Ukrainian way of trolling the vote.
1) You can look at the 5 eyes alliance's assault on encryption. That's literally forcing their will on the company (and others)
2) The TikTok ban demonstrates not only capacity but an appetite to exert to control over this domain
3) That whole "summon the CEO of the company to directly answer questions from the group of people literally in charge of policies around reform and control"
Or we could sidestep these questions and conflate income with ownership
Next synergize all these efforts: Have the newspaper write about the activists, have the lobbyists talk about the newspaper articles with the politicians, and bring up the articles during sales talks regarding your ads.
Compare YouTube policy adjustments in light of P&G announcing they were planning to yank their advertising from the platform because it wouldn't rope in what P&G considered to be its worst content.
Controlling the content is awfully close to "controlling Facebook". Facebook can decide to stop serving your content, but they've shown no interest in doing so.
Exactly, the amount of psy-ops via bots and entities like the CCP's Wumao Army are going to be way more effective at steering the narrative in your favour way more than any short-lived 'viral' ad or targeted ad campaign.
Furthermore, it can be sustained for much longer periods of time and can foment and incite way more resentment than any controversial or persuasive ad, because of the associations to other conflict-based facebook groups.
This is all really to say that the underlying surveillance economy is entirely indifferent to labels such as 'communism' or 'capitalism' and seem ephemeral and fleeting when the means/methods and desirable ends are the same as each other: manipulation by discord.
The fact that this takes place is not a surprise as psy-ops, conspiracy and counter-intelligence have been the mainstays of every single Nation-state's intelligence agencies; what is a surprise to me is how widely adopted and how pervasive it has been for so much of the Human population when there is SO MUCH MORE interesting aspects of the Internet. And how readily people are drawn to go for such shallow fodder when presented the opportunity to do so.
It's all so High School, and for those of us that got fed up with it when we were (forced) in it we cannot see the value or appeal to any of it: I got a small chuckle in passing from the whole 'Space Karen' spat with Elon after he supposedly tested positive for COVID and was not able to go to the Cape, but rather than waste my time digging into it or anything else related to that drama that led up to it I just kept the stream from the Crew flight on throughout the entire mission and then stopped listening to anything related to that entirely until I had time to watch the Sentinel launch this morning. Which was pretty rad, and dedicated to an amazing man who devoted much of his life to the pursuit of studying and monitoring Climate Science and Ocean levels and made incredible contributions to the discipline before tragically losing his battle with cancer this year: Michael Freilich [0].
His children's recounting of their father was incredibly touching and it made my day to hear their story and relationship with Micheal.
By contrast, I felt physically ill for several days trying to follow the impact of Anonymous' Blue Leaks on twitter without an account during the riots. I'm not prepared to subject myself to such a degrading sense of mental health for what seems like vapid forms of entertainment, especially with so much more beneficial and fruitful things to be in engaged in, both on and offline.
The concept of 'de-evolution' comes to mind anytime I hear about the latest twitter beef that spills over into real life that often leads to violence: Follow Live: Violent white supremacists (proud boys) clash with Liberal snowflakes (BLM protestors)! Its often feels like we're filling in the missing parts to the prelude of Idiocracy.
0: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/people/432/michael-freilich/
The Atlantic Council are listed as a "thinktank"?
https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-is-going-after-its-crit...
This seems to be the direction we’re moving towards.
Their only saving grace is that it’s in a fringe political system that not enough people care about. Or maybe the opposite, there won’t be enough counter outrage to handle the gov organized information suppression networks set up during some past emotionally volatile times without thinking of how easy it will be to abuse.
FB has been only slightly better in this context, by not being stupid enough to interfere with politics of random countries, which might explain the ban.
As time goes on, people will put less and less stock into sources of information that have proven faulty in the past.
However, I think this kind of thing takes way longer than anyone thinks, and will play out over many years or decades.
>people will put less and less stock into sources of information that have proven faulty in the past.
Do you have any idea of the number of people who inherently trust a 'fact' because it was on a radio or television program?
I'm not sure that your assessment is correct. I think what we're seeing is what we see with TV, there is just less of a way to track it with those stations. - when I buy cable, I get both left and right news stations. I only watch one, but nobody but me knows that. When I use social media, I can access right and left, but everyone can see what I access, and the people who see it can cater their message to me specifically.
Anyway, I think you're wrong. I don't believe people inherently distrust traditional media. I think they distrust traditional media they don't agree with.
Think about the way that FDR used his “fireside chats” to directly message the American people. By making them feel like he was speaking directly to them, many Americans felt like they were given access to a greater level of transparency of government. 50 years later, Reagan and Clinton both still made regular radio addresses, but failed to control their narratives the same way FDR did. Why? Because by that time the farce was up. Most Americans knew that radio wasn’t some intimate conversation between the president and them. There was a greater cynicism about the medium, everyone knew that lying was just as easy over the radio as compared to written statements.
Now think about how many assumptions people make about social media. Even forums like Hackernews. You’ve engaged with me, so you probably have made several assumptions about me.
1. I’m an actual person and not a bot 2. I am personally commenting my opinion and not the opinions of someone who has compelled my opinion 3. I am arguing in good faith 4. I am a single person, not multiple people with the same account.
I’ve made the same assumptions about you. But the funny thing is that NONE of these things is guaranteed to be true. And in some cases it’s not even likely that all of these things are true.
Eventually people will stop making these assumptions, and learn to mistrust the Internet to the degree that they probably should.
Back when it was new? More than you'd think: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_...
Facebook is an effective media outlet in cases where country are too poor to bribe Facebook and too small for Facebook to ignore market altogether.
I think Twitter and Facebook should continue to do more to mitigate harms, but the people doing the harm don't get a pass. The Myanmar government must think Westerners are idiots. They kill tens of thousands of people and the general response is Facebook is bad.
A Rwandan court sentenced one of the announcers to life in prison.
This information is easily found on Wikipedia for those curious enough to look.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_T%C3%A9l%C3%A9vision_L...
Radio Télévision Libre des Mille Collines (RTLM) was a Rwandan radio station which broadcast from July 8, 1993 to July 31, 1994. It played a significant role in inciting the April–July 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi.
Widely listened to by the general population, it projected hate propaganda against Tutsis, moderate Hutus, Belgians, and the United Nations mission UNAMIR. It is widely regarded by many Rwandan citizens (a view also shared and expressed by the UN war crimes tribunal) as having played a crucial role in creating the atmosphere of charged racial hostility that allowed the genocide to occur. A working paper published at Harvard University found that RTLM broadcasts were an important part of the process of mobilising the population, which complemented the mandatory Umuganda meetings.[2] RTLM has been described as "radio genocide", "death by radio" and "the soundtrack to genocide".[3]
More generally, does every company that sells a dual-use product/service have a duty to interrogate the motives of the buyer and apply editorial control over all uses of that product/service that they could conceivably have visibility of?
Yes.
Why is this even a question?
I think much of the West has always fallen under that umbrella in many ways. Look up "yellow journalism". Hell, look at how the media is currently controlled by corrupt businessmen.
Source: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/213282...
Until, we curb massive disinformation campaigns and lack of fact-checking in media and political speech...
There will be always be politicians and government officials who will spread falsehoods and work to discredit the truth.
It’s not important for everyone to believe a lie. Corrupt, despots only need enough votes to obtain power and then subvert established norms and laws.
It seems the way moving forward will be "crypto-activism" where key individuals distribute information through end-to-end encrypted messaging channels; when they act in the public eye, it will not be obvious that they are affiliated with an organized group. In this way their actions will appear to represent "the will of the people" rather than the agenda of a single organization and it will also shield the organization itself from misinformation.
Just my two cents based on what I observed this year.
Tor isn't particularly difficult to use (client-side), the only obstacle is having to remember the links
If your status quo is shit, random change is statistically likely to improve the situation. If the status quo is decent, random change is statistically likely to worsen the situation.
I even question that. Didn't we have this exact discussion after the 'Arab Spring' already? For a year everyone was elated because the internet was ending the evil autocracies of the Middle East. Turned out in most cases the chaos was even worse than the corrupt status quo
even if you're in a bad place turns out there's still way more ways for it to get even worse rather than better if you roll the dice, you can't fall up a hill
In Victoria, Australia, the government used social media to track people organising lockdown protests, which led people to be arrested for 'inciting' protest.
Think speak 101.
For those who want context. There's a pandemic. People are dying. The government stopped an anti-quarantine protest before it could cause harm.
All they did was to suggest a protest.
Here's some news articles:
https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/police-break-dow...
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-04/victoria-police-arres...
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/02/three...
https://theconversation.com/protests-have-been-criminalised-...
This was enough to get your door broken in and arrested:
> As some of you may have seen the government has gone to extreme measures and are using scare tactics through the media to prevent the Melbourne protest...
> Here in Ballarat we can be a voice for those in stage four lockdowns. We can be seen and heard and hopefully make a difference!
Anyway, during WW2 the press was controlled by the occupants (and before, possibly influenced?), so after WW2 we said never again. We still take the piss on newspapers that cooperated with the invaders instead of fold.
You severely overestimate the independence and faux-organic nature of "western" social media. Every last aspect of it is controlled by "corrupt businessmen or politicians".
If you're in "the east", wishing for a system like in "the west", be careful of what you hope for and be cautious of what you actually build.
Not saying that is the case here, but the truth is this cuts both ways, and I would say this development of free flying unverified information is overall more helpful to bad actors than good.
Yet the story was able to spread like wildfire through the US.
I don't know if it was authentic or the origins of it, and no credible media source was able to verify it. Frankly, the story of where it came from was absurd.
So did that story help bad actors or good actors? I would say bad actors because the people pushing the story seem to be playing fast and loose with verifiable facts and truth.
This is tearing the US apart by the seams. We are now in a situation where the president is openly attempting a coup on the popular vote, and using massive amounts of unverified information that is mostly false to push his agenda of destroying democracy.
Democrats are doing a pretty good job on that on their own. They attempt to force thoughts and beliefs on others, “cancelling” anybody getting in the way. When was the last time you saw a republican NOT getting screamed at by some liberal on any of the popular sites? Even now your comment reads as though you don’t want the parties to work together.
> We are now in a situation where the president is openly attempting a coup on the popular vote
We don’t use popular vote though. We use electoral college. And the media is overplaying this to induce panic from people like you. He’s not going to stage a coup, and if he did, even the republicans would stand against him. Calm down.
This is nonsense. Trump is openly trying to overturn the popular vote in PA, GA, MI, etc. That is how electoral votes are decided. He has openly called for the legislature to overturn the popular vote in these states based on nothing.
This isn't some outlier. He made similar accusations about fraud in 2016, and even in a race during the primaries against Ted Cruz.
He has already tried to stage a coup. We are past that point.
I do want the parties to work together, but I don't know what to do about these 2 bubbles I see being created on the right and left of these very deep fantasy worlds.
It is like the world of LOTR, where you read about hobbits, and then there are all these stories about hobbits and this deep web of information about this world that doesn't exist. Except now the right and left are creating these worlds and people can't tell it isn't real.
This has been a growing problem, and it is now at the point where it is threatening our democracy.
> This is nonsense. Trump is openly trying to overturn the popular vote in PA, GA, MI, etc. That is how electoral votes are decided. He has openly called for the legislature to overturn the popular vote in these states based on nothing.
Yes, he’s trying to overturn illegal votes, he’s well within his right. Had Trump won and Biden lost you wouldn’t be angry. You’re only angry now because there’s a chance, however small, that Trump can still win and this upsets you. Calm down, turn off CNN, this is not what a coup look like.
Republicans tried to secure the vote with national voting IDs, people are too poor the democrats said. India uses electronic voting to secure the vote, yet we’re too poor. So this mistrust in the voting system is again the fault of the democrats. The truth is there’s fraud in every election, it’s just usually not enough to swing the vote. Did you not read of all the problems with non residents and non citizens getting ballots anyway?
> This has been a growing problem, and it is now at the point where it is threatening our democracy.
Agreed, so let’s go for voter IDs so this question never comes up again?
Much like the contents of the Steele Dossier...
https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/zurawik/bal-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/01/11/th...
In corrupt places as well as democratic, peaceful places, it creates disruption and discontent through dissemination of (true - or false - doesn't matter) informations that in turn fuels civil unrest.
In corrupt places, this unrest is an opportunity for improvement. In non-corrupt ones, it is an opportunity for worsening.
Rather, in all places it is an opportunity for change. It's just that the upwards potential is a lot bigger than downwards in corrupt places.
I suggest that the opportunity for downward is just as big as the opportunity for upward, if the Rohingya situation in Myanmar is anything to measure by.
Double edged sword to be sure. It's great that people get access to better information, but we need to evolve as a species in order to handle bubbles this big.
Now we have a few large bubbles who insist that the smaller bubbles become part of them or else...
> true - or false - doesn't matter
I happen to think this matters rather a lot, but not everybody agrees.
It does matter in the sense that what is built on lies, besides being immoral, is unproductive, as it will always come back to bite everyone.
Humans run these organizations and humans deflect responsibility for doing anything.
Are you going around gathering a team to free kids in cages? Where is your group that is registering voters to save your democracy? What does Myanmar have to do with non-citizens? Why does the West think the world is their snow globe to ogle?
I have a hard time feeling like this can approach anything resembling honest debate if we’re going to point at the behavior of ephemeral, external objects and ignore how we individually organize our daily life.
You bow to the common time economy. Being good at rhetorical debate is, to me, nothing more than indifferent humans equivocating and deflecting with themes that sound good but mean nothing.
Focus on your society and culture. More often value comes of it.
> I have a hard time feeling like this can approach anything resembling honest debate if we’re going to point at the behavior of ephemeral, external objects and ignore how we individually organize our daily life.
How can these two sentences coexist in the same message? If you argue in favour of focusing exclusively on our personal daily lives rather than on amorphous imaginary entities (fine), then how can you write in an adjacent sentence about "the West", which "thinks"? And what's wrong with watching the world from afar, as if it were a snow globe, anyway?
So individuals often cannot do anything about it and the only way to solve problems is a change of systems. (This does not absolve one of their personal responsibility to act morally though)
I’m not freeing kids from cages nor registering people to vote, I am not from the US and have never been there so that’s not the issues I have to tackle.
Your point seems to be that we the west should let Myanmar deal with its own problems, when in fact we already play a role in it with having exported Facebook there.
What I see in my society is how Facebook has fueled a resurgence of right wing extremism and led to a wider spread of conspiracy theories. I have deleted my Facebook account but do not see what I can do more than ask my government for better regulation of Facebook.
We are one of the easiest countries in the world to immigrate to, and have an extremely immigrant-friendly culture.
There is nothing about democracy or its construction that precludes corruption. You literally just made up nonsense.
> You're just looking for a fight.
No. I believe you are projecting.
> Go for a fresh air walk outside instead.
Go read about the solomon islands. This issue is about corruption in solomon islands - a democracy. Or go crack open a book and learn about democracy and its history. Why everyone from the ancient greeks, who gave us democracy, and the founding fathers, who gave us modern democracy, all distrusted democracy.
As a matter of fact, democracies are by nature corrupt ( tyranny of the majority ) and that's why most democracies have measures to product the citizens from democracy. Rather than regurgitating nonsense you've seen on tv or the news, learn about democracies or take a moment to think about it.
It's unbelievable that anyone can hate Facebook so much that they side with authoritarian regimes.
Who is doing that here? 2 Things can be bad at the same time. Just because people are critical of FB in the west it doesn't mean they support authoritarian regimes.
I think that very well captures 95% of the effect.
I also think the 5% which doesn't fit relates to the individual profit motive. I don't know how users of social media profit in the spirit of the CAP. I would replace "profit motive" with "ignorance that their passive involvement enables" the destructive direction social media is heading.
There was much less difference between a government and a corporation if you happened to deal with the East India Company, or US worker towns of old.
It is simply a deflection from the central point that frequently the state will involve itself in things that it really shouldn't be involving itself in. This is frequenly because it must justify its ever increasing size. Saying that the state should have well defined responsibilities shouldn't be controversial. What those should be is a different conversation.
However I have no such choice when it comes to Government. Whatever they choose to decide I have to abide by or face fines, jail and other reprocussions. Some of those decisions maybe just which aren't a problem. However some of them maybe unjust. If those decisions are unjust I have almost no direct way to address it especially if I am in the minority.
I don't use Facebook, but it still has a huge impact on my life.
What device would you use? How would you find information? It’s all possible, but not straightforward. There is likely a good sci-fi or black mirror plot in here somewhere.
If I don't want to use Windows or MacOS, I can use an alternative operating system. If I don't want to use Google's search engine there are many other alternatives. If I don't want to use a companies webmail solution I can setup my own.
It is very simple to not deal with these tech companies.
You may find it easy, and well done if so.
Every step you have listed there is quite hard, even if you let some through (Apple in my case). Some of the things you are cutting out are very good, and that’s how they get you.
There is still lots of stuff I kinda have to use but I've managed to massively reduce my use of most of this stuff.
Obviously if your job/business relies on using this stuff then you gotta use it. I wouldn't advocate that you put yourself out on the street for the source code freedoms.
I have personally concluded that there is no practical difference between credulity and corruptability - both make it easy to get them to support and commit evil. I can only conclude that a lack of critical thinking is a moral flaw in itself as strange it may sound at first blush. But really if greed can get people to do bad things nobody would deny that it is a moral flaw so why should credulity be any different?
Who exactly is siding with an authoritarian regime here? The article indicates it was a unilateral decision on the part of the government. The article also states:
>I't has drawn a heated response from the Government's opponents, with Opposition leader Matthew Wale labelling the ban "pathetic" and unjust."
"Facebook is an authoritarian regime." means "Within the context of users' actions on the platform (and actions of non-users that are nevertheless tracked by the company), Facebook acts in ways that are analogous to how an authoritarian regime acts towards its citizens."
And, of course, TikTok ended up on that same administration's radar days after it was used to smear egg all over the RNC. (Through the massive no-deposit no-show ticket pre-ordering campaign.)
Much like in the Solomon Islands, these correlations, are, of course, purely coincidental.
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Censorship is Unity