hanimmal
Well-Known Member
Are they accounts originating from China?
Bi-Partisan Senate report calls for sweeping effort to stop Russian trolls on social media platforms.
BudmanTX
Well-Known Member
the orignal parent company is in China, TikTok itself isn't......the idea of the orginal ban was to seperate the 2 and give full control of TikTok to the US. Now if people are afraid of China tracking you supposedly, what gonna happen when the US gets to track you and presumably be able to kick you off the internet in total......because you are now the adversary....
here is the Bill:
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
tbh I would rather Americans be in charge of the content that we absorb than a entity that (thanks again to Snowden smuggling them the new millenniums' nuclear arsenal) is in another country that has demonstrated they could give a shit less about our best interests have that power. It is naive to think that just because someone is an American means that they have not been co-opted by foreign nations.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
I’m not sure I want to sign off on giving that power to a government that’s already wrestling with fascists within our borders.
However slowing the flow of disinfo is important enough that it might be the lesser of two awfuls.
Fogdog
Well-Known Member
Political campaigns are adapting and changing their ways in this new era of disinformation.
www.thebulwark.com
The elevator pitch on "The Lie Detectives":
(begins at 5:10 in this podcast)
"We've heard a lot about disinformation and its place in our politics since 2016. In some respects it's been this, like, dominant subplot to almost everything that has happened in our politics. Certainly all the stuff that happened around the 2020 election and January 6, Covid response. And I think we've all heard a lot about the threat it is to democracy, what it is as a geopolitical tool. I think we've heard about the media platforms are or are not doing.
The one thing that seemed to be missing is what does it mean to somebody who is inside a political campaign? That could mean if you are part of a candidate's campaign or a political action committee or a Super PAC and you are in this environment where your opposition is not your opponent. It's not your opponent or the other political party, but is somebody who is spreading some stuff that is online whose name is somebody you don't know, because, you know, they are an anonymous MEME maker in somebody's basement or the belong to a foreign intelligence service or they are somebody who has figured out how to make a buck selling ad clicks onto fake web sites.
And the whole play book that you, sort of, been raised with about how you think about communications, what you say, when you say it, where you say it, what you choose to respond to, what you don't respond to. That was all shaped in an era of television, you know, big central newspapers, where the candidates were the loudest voice for their campaigns -- we are no longer in that environment. And so, this book was my effort to explore what the smartest people in politics were thinking, are thinking about how you run campaigns in this media environment. "
------------------------------------------------------
The book begins in 2016 with a description of what happened during the 2016 Trump campaign to suppress voters. After the Obama campaign used social media to get more people involved and turned out a larger vote than had been expected, in 2016, the Trump campaign under Brad Parscale used Facebook, Darkpost in ways that were novel to drive voters away from the process. Those efforts have continued ever since to mislead and confuse people. If a politician like Joe Biden or Nikki Haley are up against that, what are they doing to counter that?
In summer of 2020, the Biden team studied what kinds of disinformation were "market moving". Most, maybe 97% of disinformation makes no difference overall to their campaign. Yes, it makes a difference to the US overall but it didn't affect them. So they put some resources and effort using data analytics to identify which disinformation would make it harder to win the election in order to focus on countering that.
There is plenty more in this interview but I came away impressed with shrewdness of Biden and his staff to avoid the distractions, learn what was important and stick to working on what was important.
The 2024 campaign is going to have exponentially more disinformation, psy ops and targeted voter suppression efforts. I found this interview to be informative and helpful to me in that it gave me insight into what to look for.
It also gave me optimism in two ways.
First, Democratic Party member's campaigns rejected using the dark forces of the internet that Republicans and Russian intelligence agents have embraced. Democrats don't need to. Mostly because Republicans have so many issues that are working against them that there is no need to make crap up against them. The effort to counter disinformation has morphed from getting companies to take down disinformation and is now all about learning how to counter key disinformation with better messaging. Republicans fail to even recognize that they are relying more and more on disinformation and so have stopped even trying to expand their voter base. Their main focus in on manipulating Democratic voters, not expanding their voter base through new ideas.
Second, the disinformation tool itself is becoming less effective as it becomes more commonplace. It's so common and so pervasive that people have learned how to screen it out. For example, listening to people who post here, Twitter, (now X) is hardly ever cited as a source for information. We see plenty of video from X but hardly ever do we hear what is being said there. That tool has become less effective as a means of spreading meaningful disinformation. It is has become the shit storm of right wing crap that Bannon said it should become but with that, X has become almost irrelevant to everybody else.
Sasha Issenberg: Politics, Disinformation and 2024 - The Bulwark Podcast - The Bulwark
In 2016, the Trump campaign used microtargeting to suppress the Clinton vote. Since then, digital malfeasance has become the dominant subplot in our politics. How did the Biden team respond to ‘Sleepy Joe’ and ‘Creepy Joe’ in 2020, and what’s the game plan for viral disinfo in ’24? Issenberg...
www.thebulwark.com
The elevator pitch on "The Lie Detectives":
(begins at 5:10 in this podcast)
"We've heard a lot about disinformation and its place in our politics since 2016. In some respects it's been this, like, dominant subplot to almost everything that has happened in our politics. Certainly all the stuff that happened around the 2020 election and January 6, Covid response. And I think we've all heard a lot about the threat it is to democracy, what it is as a geopolitical tool. I think we've heard about the media platforms are or are not doing.
The one thing that seemed to be missing is what does it mean to somebody who is inside a political campaign? That could mean if you are part of a candidate's campaign or a political action committee or a Super PAC and you are in this environment where your opposition is not your opponent. It's not your opponent or the other political party, but is somebody who is spreading some stuff that is online whose name is somebody you don't know, because, you know, they are an anonymous MEME maker in somebody's basement or the belong to a foreign intelligence service or they are somebody who has figured out how to make a buck selling ad clicks onto fake web sites.
And the whole play book that you, sort of, been raised with about how you think about communications, what you say, when you say it, where you say it, what you choose to respond to, what you don't respond to. That was all shaped in an era of television, you know, big central newspapers, where the candidates were the loudest voice for their campaigns -- we are no longer in that environment. And so, this book was my effort to explore what the smartest people in politics were thinking, are thinking about how you run campaigns in this media environment. "
------------------------------------------------------
The book begins in 2016 with a description of what happened during the 2016 Trump campaign to suppress voters. After the Obama campaign used social media to get more people involved and turned out a larger vote than had been expected, in 2016, the Trump campaign under Brad Parscale used Facebook, Darkpost in ways that were novel to drive voters away from the process. Those efforts have continued ever since to mislead and confuse people. If a politician like Joe Biden or Nikki Haley are up against that, what are they doing to counter that?
In summer of 2020, the Biden team studied what kinds of disinformation were "market moving". Most, maybe 97% of disinformation makes no difference overall to their campaign. Yes, it makes a difference to the US overall but it didn't affect them. So they put some resources and effort using data analytics to identify which disinformation would make it harder to win the election in order to focus on countering that.
There is plenty more in this interview but I came away impressed with shrewdness of Biden and his staff to avoid the distractions, learn what was important and stick to working on what was important.
The 2024 campaign is going to have exponentially more disinformation, psy ops and targeted voter suppression efforts. I found this interview to be informative and helpful to me in that it gave me insight into what to look for.
It also gave me optimism in two ways.
First, Democratic Party member's campaigns rejected using the dark forces of the internet that Republicans and Russian intelligence agents have embraced. Democrats don't need to. Mostly because Republicans have so many issues that are working against them that there is no need to make crap up against them. The effort to counter disinformation has morphed from getting companies to take down disinformation and is now all about learning how to counter key disinformation with better messaging. Republicans fail to even recognize that they are relying more and more on disinformation and so have stopped even trying to expand their voter base. Their main focus in on manipulating Democratic voters, not expanding their voter base through new ideas.
Second, the disinformation tool itself is becoming less effective as it becomes more commonplace. It's so common and so pervasive that people have learned how to screen it out. For example, listening to people who post here, Twitter, (now X) is hardly ever cited as a source for information. We see plenty of video from X but hardly ever do we hear what is being said there. That tool has become less effective as a means of spreading meaningful disinformation. It is has become the shit storm of right wing crap that Bannon said it should become but with that, X has become almost irrelevant to everybody else.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
ya can’t spell Xitter without XiPolitical campaigns are adapting and changing their ways in this new era of disinformation.
Sasha Issenberg: Politics, Disinformation and 2024 - The Bulwark Podcast - The Bulwark
In 2016, the Trump campaign used microtargeting to suppress the Clinton vote. Since then, digital malfeasance has become the dominant subplot in our politics. How did the Biden team respond to ‘Sleepy Joe’ and ‘Creepy Joe’ in 2020, and what’s the game plan for viral disinfo in ’24? Issenberg...
The elevator pitch on "The Lie Detectives":
(begins at 5:10 in this podcast)
"We've heard a lot about disinformation and its place in our politics since 2016. In some respects it's been this, like, dominant subplot to almost everything that has happened in our politics. Certainly all the stuff that happened around the 2020 election and January 6, Covid response. And I think we've all heard a lot about the threat it is to democracy, what it is as a geopolitical tool. I think we've heard about the media platforms are or are not doing.
The one thing that seemed to be missing is what does it mean to somebody who is inside a political campaign? That could mean if you are part of a candidate's campaign or a political action committee or a Super PAC and you are in this environment where your opposition is not your opponent. It's not your opponent or the other political party, but is somebody who is spreading some stuff that is online whose name is somebody you don't know, because, you know, they are an anonymous MEME maker in somebody's basement or the belong to a foreign intelligence service or they are somebody who has figured out how to make a buck selling ad clicks onto fake web sites.
And the whole play book that you, sort of, been raised with about how you think about communications, what you say, when you say it, where you say it, what you choose to respond to, what you don't respond to. That was all shaped in an era of television, you know, big central newspapers, where the candidates were the loudest voice for their campaigns -- we are no longer in that environment. And so, this book was my effort to explore what the smartest people in politics were thinking, are thinking about how you run campaigns in this media environment. "
------------------------------------------------------
The book begins in 2016 with a description of what happened during the 2016 Trump campaign to suppress voters. After the Obama campaign used social media to get more people involved and turned out a larger vote than had been expected, in 2016, the Trump campaign under Brad Parscale used Facebook, Darkpost in ways that were novel to drive voters away from the process. Those efforts have continued ever since to mislead and confuse people. If a politician like Joe Biden or Nikki Haley are up against that, what are they doing to counter that?
In summer of 2020, the Biden team studied what kinds of disinformation were "market moving". Most, maybe 97% of disinformation makes no difference overall to their campaign. Yes, it makes a difference to the US overall but it didn't affect them. So they put some resources and effort using data analytics to identify which disinformation would make it harder to win the election in order to focus on countering that.
There is plenty more in this interview but I came away impressed with shrewdness of Biden and his staff to avoid the distractions, learn what was important and stick to working on what was important.
The 2024 campaign is going to have exponentially more disinformation, psy ops and targeted voter suppression efforts. I found this interview to be informative and helpful to me in that it gave me insight into what to look for.
It also gave me optimism in two ways.
First, Democratic Party member's campaigns rejected using the dark forces of the internet that Republicans and Russian intelligence agents have embraced. Democrats don't need to. Mostly because Republicans have so many issues that are working against them that there is no need to make crap up against them. The effort to counter disinformation has morphed from getting companies to take down disinformation and is now all about learning how to counter key disinformation with better messaging. Republicans fail to even recognize that they are relying more and more on disinformation and so have stopped even trying to expand their voter base. Their main focus in on manipulating Democratic voters, not expanding their voter base through new ideas.
Second, the disinformation tool itself is becoming less effective as it becomes more commonplace. It's so common and so pervasive that people have learned how to screen it out. For example, listening to people who post here, Twitter, (now X) is hardly ever cited as a source for information. We see plenty of video from X but hardly ever do we hear what is being said there. That tool has become less effective as a means of spreading meaningful disinformation. It is has become the shit storm of right wing crap that Bannon said it should become but with that, X has become almost irrelevant to everybody else.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
I thought the next story was interesting too. I wonder how 17% stacks up to the number of people who truly get addicted to drugs vs those that are able to use recreationally and not get hooked.
https://www.axios.com/2024/03/21/ken-buck-ukraine-discharge-petition
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
I would say it depends on the drug, and the person. I’ve played casually with some known habit-formers, and been bitten by a couple. Others I know have a different vulnerability profile.
There would be Ph.D.s in this, should the political climate change enough to fund unbiased research, without either a Tobacco Institute or a church injecting their agenda.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
I used to eat fast food on the regular.
If you don’t count taquerías, my intake is near zero.
For me, it isn’t in the same weight class as cold turkey from methadone was.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
True, I meant more starvation in general though for kicking food altogether. The fast food part of it though I guess made my bullshit statement fall apart.
It does suck though that you can't go anywhere without it being pushed on you. Candy next to every spot we pay for stuff and no actual food options in sight is a tough spot.
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
If what you mean is the prevalence of processed high-glycemic foods, totally.
A friend with more knowledge of physiology than this white rabbit described the typical western diet as much like the cattle-finishing diet, which packs on weight and fat in the months before slaughter. Sustain such a diet for years, and (look around you at Walmart —even the kids!)
It takes real effort to build and stay with a menu that cuts out the stuff Americans call “bread”, hot dogs, Highly Fuctup Corn Syrup and on and on.
I was on a minimal-processed-foods diet not long ago, lost weight, improved my blood chemistry. Now I’m too happy learning to cook Mexican and pizza from scratch to go back on the gustatory austerity program.
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
https://apnews.com/article/misinformation-anonymous-accounts-social-media-2024-election-8a6b0f8d727734200902d96a59b84bf7
“Extremely concerning,” X owner Elon Musk replied twice to the post this past week.
“Are migrants registering to vote using SSN?” Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, an ally of former President Donald Trump, asked on Instagram, using the acronym for Social Security number.
Trump himself posted to his own social platform within hours to ask, “Who are all those voters registering without a Photo ID in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Arizona??? What is going on???”
State election officials soon found themselves forced to respond. They said the user, who pledges to fight, expose and mock “wokeness,” was wrongand had distorted Social Security Administration data. Actual voter registrations during the time period cited were much lower than the numbers being shared online.
Stephen Richer, the recorder in Maricopa County, Arizona, which includes Phoenix, refuted the claim in multipleX posts while Jane Nelson, the secretary of state in Texas, issued a statement calling it “totally inaccurate.”
Yet by the time they tried to correct the record, the false claim had spread widely. In three days, the pseudonymous user’s claim amassed more than 63 million views on X, according to the platform’s metrics. A thorough explanation from Richer attracted a fraction of that, reaching 2.4 million users.
The incident sheds light on how social media accounts that shield the identities of the people or groups behind them through clever slogans and cartoon avatars have come to dominate right-wing political discussion online even as they spread false information.
The accounts enjoy a massive reach that is boosted by engagement algorithms, by social media companies greatly reducing or eliminating efforts to remove phony or harmful material, and by endorsements from high-profile figures such as Musk. They also can generate substantial financial rewards from X and other platforms by ginning up outrage against Democrats.
Many such internet personalities identify as patriotic citizen journalists uncovering real corruption. Yet their demonstrated ability to spread misinformation unchecked while disguising their true motives worries experts with the United States in a presidential election year.
They are exploiting a long history of trust in American whistleblowers and anonymous sources, said Samuel Woolley, director of the Propaganda Research Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.
“With these types of accounts, there’s an allure of covertness, there’s this idea that they somehow might know something that other people don’t,” he said. “They’re co-opting the language of genuine whistleblowing or democratically inclined leaking. In fact what they’re doing is antithetical to democracy.”
The claim that spread online this past week misused Social Security Administration data tracking routine requests made by states to verify the identity of individuals who registered to vote using the last four digits of their Social Security number. These requests are often made multiple times for the same individual, meaning they do not necessarily correspond one-to-one with people registering to vote.
The larger implication is that the cited data represents people who entered the U.S. illegally and are supposedly registering to vote with Social Security numbers they received for work authorization documents. But only U.S. citizens are allowed to vote in federal elections and illegal voting by those who are not is exceedingly rare because states have processes to prevent it.
Accounts that do not disclose the identities of those behind them have thrived online for years, gaining followers for their content on politics, humor, human rights and more. People have used anonymity on social media to avoid persecution by repressive authorities or to speak freely about sensitive experiences. Many left-wing protesters adopted anonymous online identities during the Occupy Wall Street movement of the early 2010s.
The meteoric rise of a group of right-wing pseudonymous influencers who act as alternative information sources has been more recent. It’s coincided with a decline in public trust in government and media through the 2020 presidential election and the COVID-19 pandemic.
These influencers frequently spread misinformation and otherwise misleading content, often in service of the same recurring narratives such as alleged voter fraud, the “woke agenda” or Democrats supposedly encouraging a surge of people through illegal immigration to steal elections or replace whites. They often use similar content and reshare each other’s posts.
The account that posted the recent misinformation also has spread bogus information about the Israel-Hamas war, sharing a post last fall that falsely claimed to show a Palestinian “crisis actor” pretending to be seriously injured.
Since his takeover of Twitter in 2022, Musk has nurtured the rise of these accounts, frequently commenting on their posts and sharing their content. He also has protected their anonymity. In March, X updated its privacy policy to ban people from exposing the identity of an anonymous user.
Musk also rewards high engagement with financial payouts. The X user who spread the false information about new voter registrants has racked up more than 2.4 million followers since joining the platform in 2022. The user, in a post last July, reported earning more than $10,000 from X’s new creator ad revenue program. X did not respond to a request for comment, which was met with an automated reply.
Tech watchdogs said that while it’s critical to maintain spaces for anonymous voices online, they shouldn’t be allowed to spread lies without accountability.
“Companies must vigorously enforce terms of service and content policies that promote election integrity and information integrity generally,” said Kate Ruane, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology.
The success of these accounts shows how financially savvy users have deployed the online trolling playbook to their advantage, said Dale Beran, a lecturer at Morgan State University and the author of “It Came from Something Awful: How a Toxic Troll Army Accidentally Memed Donald Trump into Office.”
“The art of trolling is to get the other person enraged,” he said. “And we now know getting someone enraged really fuels engagement and gives you followers and so will get you paid. So now it’s sort of a business.”
Some pseudonymous accounts on X have used their brands to build loyal audiences on other platforms, from Instagram to the video-sharing platform Rumble and the encrypted messaging platform Telegram. The accounts themselves — and many of their followers — publicly promote their pride in America and its founding documents.
It’s concerning that many Americans place their trust in these shadowy online sources without thinking critically about who is behind them or how they may want to harm the country, said Kara Alaimo, a communications professor at Farleigh Dickinson University who has written about toxicity on social media.
“We know that foreign governments including China and Russia are actively creating social media accounts designed to sow domestic discord because they think weakening our social fabric gives their countries a competitive advantage,” she said. “And they’re right.”
cannabineer
Ursus marijanus
“Extremely concerning” from the man who has positively rolled out the red carpet for disinformers!
hanimmal
Well-Known Member
After rereading it, I think he was giving credence to the troll post by saying the bullshit it was claiming is what was 'very concerning' not the fact that he is currently paying tens of thousands of dollars to right wing trolls attacking our society with their lies.
I might be wrong though. I feel like I need some more coffee.
Nugnewbie
Well-Known Member
Russia's popularity with Americans is growing
The Pew Research Center poll found that more Americans had a favorable view of Russia than last year.
www.newsweek.com
Seems to be working on some Americans
CANON_Grow
Well-Known Member
Not just Americans…. It certainly feels like the global powder keg fuse has been lit. It’s going to take something brutally horrible to happen before reality snaps back into focus for many.Russia's popularity with Americans is growing
The Pew Research Center poll found that more Americans had a favorable view of Russia than last year.
Seems to be working on some Americans
Lest we forget
Early Nazi foreign policy – The Holocaust Explained: Designed for schools
www.theholocaustexplained.org
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