Every time I read an article like this "Welcome to the Internet" by Bo Burnham plays in my head. We built a global network of free flowing information with such potential for greatness, and this...
Every time I read an article like this "Welcome to the Internet" by Bo Burnham plays in my head. We built a global network of free flowing information with such potential for greatness, and this is what we get?
Sure, some amount of lying is to be expected in anything operated by humans; but the sheer amount of people who are willingly led down the rabbit hole of disinformation pipelines and let their whole world view be shaped and consumed by propaganda depresses me a bit. Historically victims of this could at least claim that they had no other sources, as removing dissent is the first order of business of totalitarian states. But now the mechanism is even uglier - instead of listening to them because there's no alternative people do so because they are the most in line with their existing prejudice and the most emotionally engaging - not even with positive emotions, but rather a constant stream of fear and loathing.
We used to just have simple flamewars but it's not only gotten more sophisticated but ideologies are being weaponized. Entire armies of paid farms are being used to sway public opinion in every...
disinformation pipelines and let their whole world view be shaped and consumed by propaganda depresses me a bit.
We used to just have simple flamewars but it's not only gotten more sophisticated but ideologies are being weaponized. Entire armies of paid farms are being used to sway public opinion in every area - from politics to entertainment.
I can hardly imagine how bad it'll get with AI. I'm already seeing the effects of it.
I agree, it is quite depressing. I almost miss the flamewars...
I really don't think the stuff out of India is really paid farms. They're probably a small part of it, but I think it's mostly just a combination of really committed ideologues and "citizen...
I really don't think the stuff out of India is really paid farms. They're probably a small part of it, but I think it's mostly just a combination of really committed ideologues and "citizen journalists" who don't have any kind of worthwhile editorial standards. All a troll farm needs to do is put a slight finger on the scales of content early to get the virality feedback loop going.
It's worth noting that India is huge. Even if there is a roughly uniform distribution within each country of deranged, "extremely online" people posting India ends up with as many, if not more, than the US simply by virtue of its size.
I don't think people from other countries really, genuinely understand the scale of anything "people powered" in India. It's really just a fuck-load of people. Many of them are not just the first generation in their families to go to school, they might be one of the first generations in their families to be functionally literate. Social media just isn't designed to absorb a population like this, frankly.
This stuff happens internally in India as well. Before WhatsApp put some controls around forwards, there was a rash of basically crowd-sourced murders where people would post pictures of guys they wanted dead and mock up fake news about them being pedophiles. It would go viral and mobs would just go and "take care" of it. It's a mechanic not that different from what happened in Myanmar, but less ethnically/religiously tinged. Though now, the religious ideologues have picked up on these strategies too. State capacity is weak and even just a social expectation of not enacting mob justice isn't all that strong outside major cities.
We could put real controls on these things, but many of them would really run afoul of free speech restrictions and would have to happen at the infrastructure and moderation decision level. But the Indian bureaucracy is a gerontocracy and doesn't have much expertise on how the dynamics of social media work besides. Being as how it's all built in the USA, where would they even find someone who gets it?
Every time I read an article like this "Welcome to the Internet" by Bo Burnham plays in my head. We built a global network of free flowing information with such potential for greatness, and this is what we get?
Sure, some amount of lying is to be expected in anything operated by humans; but the sheer amount of people who are willingly led down the rabbit hole of disinformation pipelines and let their whole world view be shaped and consumed by propaganda depresses me a bit. Historically victims of this could at least claim that they had no other sources, as removing dissent is the first order of business of totalitarian states. But now the mechanism is even uglier - instead of listening to them because there's no alternative people do so because they are the most in line with their existing prejudice and the most emotionally engaging - not even with positive emotions, but rather a constant stream of fear and loathing.
We used to just have simple flamewars but it's not only gotten more sophisticated but ideologies are being weaponized. Entire armies of paid farms are being used to sway public opinion in every area - from politics to entertainment.
I can hardly imagine how bad it'll get with AI. I'm already seeing the effects of it.
I agree, it is quite depressing. I almost miss the flamewars...
I really don't think the stuff out of India is really paid farms. They're probably a small part of it, but I think it's mostly just a combination of really committed ideologues and "citizen journalists" who don't have any kind of worthwhile editorial standards. All a troll farm needs to do is put a slight finger on the scales of content early to get the virality feedback loop going.
It's worth noting that India is huge. Even if there is a roughly uniform distribution within each country of deranged, "extremely online" people posting India ends up with as many, if not more, than the US simply by virtue of its size.
I don't think people from other countries really, genuinely understand the scale of anything "people powered" in India. It's really just a fuck-load of people. Many of them are not just the first generation in their families to go to school, they might be one of the first generations in their families to be functionally literate. Social media just isn't designed to absorb a population like this, frankly.
This stuff happens internally in India as well. Before WhatsApp put some controls around forwards, there was a rash of basically crowd-sourced murders where people would post pictures of guys they wanted dead and mock up fake news about them being pedophiles. It would go viral and mobs would just go and "take care" of it. It's a mechanic not that different from what happened in Myanmar, but less ethnically/religiously tinged. Though now, the religious ideologues have picked up on these strategies too. State capacity is weak and even just a social expectation of not enacting mob justice isn't all that strong outside major cities.
We could put real controls on these things, but many of them would really run afoul of free speech restrictions and would have to happen at the infrastructure and moderation decision level. But the Indian bureaucracy is a gerontocracy and doesn't have much expertise on how the dynamics of social media work besides. Being as how it's all built in the USA, where would they even find someone who gets it?
The "lurk moar" mantra of past days needs to come back. It forces people to think about the content they're seeing.