I've been thinking about this a lot as news articles like this one[1] come up in my feed.
This whole anti-tech Russian backlash has me so down trodden. Like who cares if Russia bought ads? Who cares if Russia uses those sites and tweets or shares a photo or whatever. I learned long ago to tune out ads and not trust anything I read on the internet, or at least read with a hefty helping of salt.
I wish the outcome of all these revelations about how Russia (and I'm sure other countries or random people or corporations with various interests) was using facebook, twitter, instagram, etc, was for people to go, "oh, that's good to know. I guess I should believe whatever random posts I come across less." Not, "Uh oh! These services and ads are only for our certain, pre-approved uses, and we need to make laws enforcing that."
We could have used these as a nice ol' inoculation in the meme war and improved ordinary people's understanding of just how the internet works (and doesn't work).
That would be great, but you’re basically wishing for smarter people. The urge for tribalism will always be greater than the the urge for reasoning, and since that’s the case we have to do what we can to stop tribalism from being inflamed by propaganda.
Clear, conspicuous presentation of the provenance of ad spend is what we need. Political ad spend should additionally be tied to positively identified individuals or to organizations with clear, conspicuous ties to positively identified individuals.
And we need this in legislative form. No letting the Facebooks of the world do it on their own out of some PR-spun notion of corporate responsibility.
Is nobody responsible for the content of ads? If nytimes.com started displaying NSFW ads for porn sites, or (hypothetically) grisly death videos chosen by a high bidder that just wants to watch the world burn, they would likely be penalized for running afoul of FCC regulations.
Or, let's say a domestic buyer purchases ads that engage in libelous allegations. There are legal channels with which to pursue retractions and damages from the buyer.
The difference now is that a foreign party is the party that would otherwise be held responsible. Not very effective to sue the ad buyer in this case. So shouldn't the media platform be responsible for either the content, or at least for knowing their customer?
I'm doing a dissertation on Russian propaganda, among other propagandas, so disclaimer for bias.
I don't understand not caring about it, even were I not working on it. I was having discussions with friends in 2015/early 2016 where we were looking at stuff and it was obvious what was going on. The day after the election, Zuckerberg was saying it is "crazy" that Russians could have been involved.
We've got something systematically wrong if the biggest tech companies in the world with all the data and resources either were oblivious to it (seems likely based on their reactions) or were aware of it but kept doing it because it made them money. By all accounts their ad tools actually made this especially easy.
No country, much less one that considers itself a superpower should be willingly letting a foreign nation spread propaganda. That big moat called the Atlantic and all those resources don't matter if you you're gonna let them in the back door. This kind of naivety/ignorance is too common in the power centers of the US. Consider Obama getting outwitted by Putin and Clinton getting beat by an idiot like Trump. Maybe they aren't so clever after all.
That Russia is doing that is annoying, what's offensive is that our leaders allowed it to happen, and what's disturbing is people either acting like it hasn't happened (evidence says otherwise) or just want to shrug it off. It's hard to say how much of the recent domestic unrest is being fueled by it.
Propaganda is a fact of life. It occurs at every level in every field. It is up to the individual to look at what is being said and determine for themselves what is relevant.
So what if a foreign government or foreign company or foreign group takes out advertisements or reveals "information" during any election or other event. Considering the "facts" that are "revealed" by opposing political sides during the pre-election period or during pre-legislative processes, there is no functional or ethical difference.
As one of your respondents pointed out with the question regarding "good for the goose, good for the gander", any group including governments cannot point the finger, if they themselves are actively involved in what they are decrying of others.
You appear to forget that national elections have effects that are extra-territorial, so those extra-territorial affected entities are going to act on their own behalf. The US regularly spreads propaganda during the elections of other sovereign nations, so if you don't want the reverse to happen it is up to you to stand up and fight against your own nation doing it to others.
>No country, much less one that considers itself a superpower should be willingly letting a foreign nation spread propaganda.
Is this a rule you apply equally or is it OK when we do it, like the ex-CIA director says [0]? Should the NED, VoA, Radio Free Asia, etc. all be shut down then?
I'd be happy with people acknowledging it is happening instead of saying it's "nothing" or "McCarthyism" (see this thread). It does no good to lie to yourself.
Some acknowledgement instead of denial is the first step towards...something.
So much is hiding behind the word "allow" in your last paragraph. On balance I think it's a good thing that elite purveyors of propaganda are losing their ability to brand their product as something other than what it is.
Your leaders cant stop it from happening and any attempt to stop it would make free speech situation much worst then attempts to punish hate speech everyone complains about.
Because Russian trolls boil down to speech - speech and could and should have been countered by local speech (which is much better funded anyway). Speech that is not much unlike America paying various political parties around the world (also for sides I liked and agreed with). Yes, purposeful conflict creating is annoying and problem, but it does not seem like Russians caused those divisions in the first place.
It mostly all seem to be an attempt to blame Russia for internal problems.
> It mostly all seem to be an attempt to blame Russia for internal problems.
Agreed. The vast majority of the time I see Russia brought up it's being used by mainstream Democrats to dismiss criticism from both the right and the left. Basically anyone that's not a staunch neoliberal gets accused of being a Russian or a Russian puppet.
They're using it as a scapegoat and it seems to be working.
Well, let me explain to you not caring about it:
Israel and Saudi Arabia regularly run information warfare campaigns in the US, and actually influence election outcomes in obvious ways.
For that matter the US has boasted of fixing the Russian elections in 1996, overtly committed a coup in Ukraine in 2014, and has attempted to do similar things since the fall of the soviet union for example by supporting evil murderous clowns like Khodorkovsky. So, if Russia took out a few ads or posted from twitter accounts; big deal. And that's assuming Russia (rather than Russian people acting on their own) did something -thus far 100% of the "evidence" for this sort of thing has turned out to be a big nothing burger.
The media obsession with finding a Russian under every bed is absolute insanity; McCarthyism pales in comparison to this hysterical nonsense -communism was a real threat back then. It's also obviously organized: basically the same idiots telling us Putin is behind everything they don't like are the same idiots who sold us on the Syrian war, Iraq and so on. I mean, we have Rob Reiner, aka meathead telling us anyone who doubts the former heads of the CIA is a traitor. This is NUTS.
The US, Israelis, and Saudis, among plenty of others, have engaged in campaigns to influence foreign elections, no doubt. I think lumping them all in as information warfare campaigns with the most recent Russian activity is misleading, though - information warfare is more about seeking advantage and spreading disinformation. I doubt the Israelis are both lobbying for their interests with US policy as well as simultaneously running campaigns advocating for Palestinian or Iranian support. Likewise with the Saudis. America has no doubt influenced foreign elections- I've read an autobiography of a CIA case officer describing in detail such activity in the Philippines prior to Marcos' ascendence. Again, though, we were not also simultaneously running campaigns stoking advocacy for Philippine communist groups.
The Russian campaign here is as much about increasing chaos and discord in our civic sphere as it is about trying to push specific positions that favor Russia. Their goal appears less at getting our government to take specific pro-Russian stances as it is to weaken our society as a whole so that we are less able to act as foils to whatever Putin wants to do.
How would you distinguish between such a "sowing chaos" campaign and random Russian people/groups who have different interests in the US?
I'd also wonder why an intelligent person might think this is worse than, say, Saudis and Israelis formenting US wars in the middle east, which we know they have actually done in the corporeal world, rather than the fever dreams of conspiracy theorists.
> How would you distinguish between such a "sowing chaos" campaign and random Russian people/groups who have different interests in the US?
In the latter, superficially opposing strands of propaganda wouldn't trace back to the same actors.
> I'd also wonder why an intelligent person might think this is worse than, say, Saudis and Israelis formenting US wars in the middle east,
Because it's worse—for Americans—to have foreign powers trying to manipulate America into tearing itself apart than to have them trying to manipulate America to use its power on behalf of those foreign powers.
>> How would you distinguish between such a "sowing chaos" campaign and random Russian people/groups who have different interests in the US?
>In the latter, superficially opposing strands of propaganda wouldn't trace back to the same actors.
You mean like "propornot," a cia affiliated group of "Ukrainian nationalists" who published enemy lists of American media sources as being Russian agents of influence ... via establishment mouthpiece Washington Post?
BTW does this foreign interference in the US political process, possibly with CIA aid concern you at all?
> Because it's worse—for Americans—to have foreign powers trying to manipulate America into tearing itself apart ...
Citations needed. When in the history of the human race has anything like this ever been effective? Let alone something like this which seems to have more or less completely taken place ... on twitter.
Meanwhile, the Saudis and Israelis have fomented actual wars, where people, including American people, actually die, interfering with the US electoral process, and limiting the Overton window of acceptable discourse to basically be "some wars" or "more wars." They continue to do so. Seems more dangerous to me than some silly conspiracy theory about "sowing chaos." The only chaos sown is that people like me are off the reservation.
You're free to debunk these and a hundred other sources, but there's something there. Do you really belive an ex KGB officer doesn't use some KGB tactics? That a nation with major economic disadvantages isn't going to rely on alternative methods of attack?
Not looking to get into a whataboutist argument. The US has done shady stuff, plenty of it. Propaganda is in no way limited to the Russians.
Go look up the term "Gish Gallop" -that's the substance of the "Russia is responsible for everything I don't like" conspiracy theory you're writing your dissertation on.
I agree there is something there: just like there was "something there" when these same clowns were selling us the Iraq war. The "something" isn't actual evidence which exists in the corporeal world: it's manufactured nonsense.
I mean, the very absurdity of the accusations on display here: OMG RUSSIANS DID THINGS ON TWITTER AND SOCIAL MEDIA. FWIIW same story with the "all of our intelligence agencies agree" dossier; basically, Russia Today exists. Russia Today, now listed under FARA laws. Somehow the WSJ and WaPo Saudi/Israeli amen chorus manages to escape FARA -wonder how they managed to do this?
"Gish gallop" is a term for a technique used during debating that focuses on overwhelming one's opponent with as many arguments as possible, without regard for accuracy or strength of the arguments.
That's not Gish Gallop. That's two sources that you didn't bother responding to. My conspiracy involves data, yours is blanket denial. Don't understand your motivations.
Can we not be realists about how countries behave? I see nothing incompatible with Russia's actions in the recent past (annexing Crimea with unmarked soldiers) and the use of propaganda. But again, the difference is, I'm willing to test this. Do you just assume it's false without testing?
Noticed in your other post that you called Khodorkovsky a "murderous clown". To my knowledge, his sin was being an oligarch who got on the wrong side of putin, went to jail for it, and now is a critic of him. Who did he murder? Why do you call him that? Do you believe putin (whom there is evidence that has killed political opponents) is guilty of this, too? Just trying to understand your motivations.
Khodorkovsky is a murderer, and anyone who denies this either doesn't know what he's talking about, or works for the same people that tout him in the media.
All the "everything I don't like about the world is Russia's fault" gorp is gish gallop. The two things you linked are literally a clownish witch hunter indicting Russian nationals for ... trolling people on twitter. I do not take this seriously. The fact that anyone is physiologically capable of meeting this with other than hysterical laughter at the bald faced absurdity of it will probably remain beyond my ken.
I believe his point was that even IF some ads were purchased, it’s not that big of a deal, since the potential negative impact isn’t that great and is done regularly by other countries that we curiously don’t seem to be outraged about, like KSA and Israel, which is a valid point and honestly in that context, pointing at the Russians seems a tad xenophobic, just because Russia isn’t under our sphere of influence.
I also feel like it’s important to point out that this has nothing to do with defending Putin, but whether you’re willing to let your fear of the Ruskies deprive people of free speech rights, because by proxy of private companies being required to censor ie RT, it’s also having a chilling effect on independent creators on YouTube and elsewhere, so if you support all this because of fear of the Russians wanting to destroy Western democracy, in a way you’re letting them win.
Having the ability to allow new ideas to emerge and having a government filter to prevent the wrong ideas, are fundamentally in opposition. I look forward to ignoring your paper until The Ministry of Truth approves it's not secrete propaganda, since you did use term "Russian".
That you can't suggest that there might be a legit propaganda problem without people assuming you are calling for restrictions on free speech is absurd. I'm very emphatically not about that.
There's so many tangents not even responding to my post that I'm sorry to have said anything at all.
You did. Now you want to argue about the phrasing.
> That you can't suggest that there might be a legit propaganda problem
What problem? That free speech has an unintended consequences that those in power would not want? That it might result in a society that isn't insularly protected from outside signal? Color me shocked.
Russia has been doing information warfare very effectively since the Czars, and this seems like one more place where they've outmaneuvered us. I've found it frustrating how little discussion and coverage of Russian activity addresses that they weren't just pushing Trump as a candidate or pro-Trump agenda issues, they were pushing issues that they knew were polarizing Americans, simultaneously "Clinton is Satan's Candidate" and "Black Lives Matter" (setting aside the difference in the stridency between simply organizing a fake Black Lives Matter protest vs. the more paranoid baiting of right-wingers, which in itself would be an interesting conversation). The narrative continues to be "Putin tried to help Trump get elected" (which isn't completely false) rather than "Putin shrewdly exploited America's polarized political atmosphere of closed identity affiliations to weaken our core institutions".
Not implying that the West can't successfully withstand Russia's disinformation efforts, but it's worth saying that when you have fewer moral restrictions it becomes significantly easier to "outmaneuver" your high-ethics peers.
Not in competence, but in political systems. Western countries have more societal control over government which leaves less room for low-ethics decisions.
> The real problem isn’t fake news; it’s that people have given up on that search for truth.
This is where it almost gets profound. The philosopher Harry Frankfurt pointed out, in his "On Bullshit", that the greatest danger isn't lack of truth or even direct falsehoods - it is when we give up searching for truth, or don't care about speaking truthfully. I.e. Bullshit.
However, whatever the people can do to demand rigour and educate themselves on the matters, pales next to a media trying to hold itself to standards. When the media gives up, we are in dire straits indeed, if not utterly lost.
Where I am from in Europe, we have pretty good media standards. But at least one of our biggest newspapers is actively working to muddle the waters for a party.
Without being any kind of expert, other nations do not seem so well off.
Those who’re spinning this narrative definitely don’t want the public to be immunized against all propaganda. They just want to be in control of the propaganda machine.
There is a difference between editorial bent and journalistic integrity on the news side.
Members of my family were on the wrong side of an editorial board 30 years ago. The reporters didn’t report anything that wasn’t true, but the editors chose to publish certain stories and editorials at times that were helpful to some and hurtful to others.
The difference today is that news organizations are using propaganda blogs or worse first person tweets as content. That’s Trump’s secret — his stream of consciousness drives the news.
There is the Western media mindset which is as brain-washed in its own special way as the craziest of religious cults. Most of the official government history is a lie, it has been one big fight for oil and other resources, not this 'war against terror' or whatever the clown in chief says.
To escape the Western media mindset usually involves being brain washed with something else. Or living in a country where the truth does not match the reality on the ground. For instance, Syria, people that live there know that what all is told on the news on the television in the West is utter rubbish written and presented by people who have made up minds and don't care.
The Western media mindset is cunning in that the better educated people that read broadsheet newspapers have indoctrinated themselves further into it, even if they think of themselves as being the educated, questioning one.
Most people do not have the capability to appreciate the criminality that has gone on in Washington, London and elsewhere over the years. So this criminality goes on and the Western democracies exist in their special lawless way, preparing for war and actively beating up the world for profit.
The funniest bullshit is the 'al-qaeda' nonsense. Not one person has ever met an al-qaeda person even if dead people in brown parts of the world are obviously al-qaeda. In previous wars you at least knew the enemy existed, now it is just fake news that you have to believe, on the Koolaid.
> Most people do not have the capability to appreciate the criminality that has gone on in Washington, London and elsewhere over the years. So this criminality goes on and the Western democracies exist in their special lawless way, preparing for war and actively beating up the world for profit.
The problem is that the idea of law is one of the Western definition. Unless I'm not aware of something, it is almost certainly (domestically) lawful for Washington to act in a way that allows for expansionist and imperialist policies. Whether it is a good idea in the long term (winning hearts and minds) is another debate to be had.
> The funniest bullshit is the 'al-qaeda' nonsense. Not one person has ever met an al-qaeda person even if dead people in brown parts of the world are obviously al-qaeda. In previous wars you at least knew the enemy existed, now it is just fake news that you have to believe, on the Koolaid.
I'm really not sure if I have understood you correctly. I'm inclined to believe Al-qaeda was a thing. Whether it was an existential threat the the US is certainly questionable and whether the military response was therefore justified is certainly questionable, especially given that they have so far included four of the six countries listed in Rebuilding America's Defences [0]. I am inclined to agree there was a degree of dehumanisation of the civilian casualties of the ensuing wars that had at least the undertones of racism.
[0] Rebuilding America's Defences was a 2000 publication by "The Project for the New American Century." It contains a a list of countries the think tank argued the USA should invade, including Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and North Korea. Afghanistan was mentioned as a training ground for terrorism. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/pdf/RebuildingAmeri...
Your only knowledge of the existence of 'al-qaeda' is from what the people that brief the news men have chosen to tell you. For instance, there was a stand off between India and Pakistan during the glory days of The War Against Terror where it was alleged that there was 'al-qaeda' in between the two countries causing the trouble and that Uncle Sam could fix it. Obviously there were also the fake terror warnings where it could be red or orange depending on what random rubbish had been told to the media that day. Then there are independence movements in Africa where it is too complicated so 'al-qaeda' gets 'affiliated' so the story is explained that way. Then there is the actual creation myth of 'al-qaeda', wasn't it made up on the testimony of one unreliable witness in a New York court room? Wasn't there motive for inventing 'al-qaeda' in trying to prosecute Osama bin Laden under RICO laws, for which some organisation needed to be invented? Or did I imagine that?
I think you need to be checking primary sources for this 'al-qaeda' and doing some checking of facts, 'inclined to believe' is fine if it is a religion, but history is not a religion.
I had no idea this was contentious, but it really does seem it is. Robin Cook, a former UK Minister who I had immense respect for due to his stepping down over the invasion of Iraq, had this to say shortly before his death:
> Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by Western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaeda, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. [0]
As you imply you know of some, could you give some pointers for primary sources surrounding this?
So we are just dancing puppets. Well, look at all these presidents, who didnt like the vietnam protest muppet show. Why does such a event never occur in all those other free countrys?
Why was there never a reported protest against fake news in Syria, in china, in the Caliphate, in Russia?
The problem is that other countrys use the public debate and free media as attack vector- and in a very subtle way undermine democracy. Its not that free markets and free speech would undermine dictatorships, quite the other way around.
PS: You are free to draft and propose a better democratic system and public debate concept.
The younger generation of the left is all-in on postmodernist philosophy. They’ll happily tell you that the concept of objective reality was fabricated as a tool of the patriarchy. This is the right direction to look in to understand what’s going on - valuing the truth for its own sake is an antiquated notion. Now facts are simply instruments of power, to be deployed when useful.
I hope to see a resurgence in my parents’ brand of liberalism, but it isn’t going to come from my politically active college classmates.
Engineers used to be evenly distributed across non engineers, where they were able to influence family and friends with their methodical thinking. They used to be respected, seen as peers, part of the middle class like all others.
Now, they've all relocated to the west. They command upper middle class salaries, most are the new rich.
Eroded of their engineers, most of the country rallies behind their familiar team.
Isolated and newly rich, the engineers are no longer being fed data about the average non engineer. Therefore they are applying the engineer rational to a biased subset of the data, limiting their effectiveness.
And so here we are. Non engineers know the true reality of their problems, but don't have the tools to solve them. So they rally behind charlatans. While engineers have the skill set to solve problems, but no longer know the realities of the problems to solve.
This comment is peak HN arrogance. People rally behind charlatans because they don't have enough proximity to us engineers to think sanely about things? Maybe we could make them an app where they can get one of us engineers on the line so they're finally able to use their brains again and realize that they need to vote democrat.
How does that interact with the peak arrogance premise? You'd have to say they were knowingly lying and using that intro to deflect it being challenged on a serious intellectual basis. That's a step too far imo, and goes against leaning toward good faith as far as other members go.
The problem with both this comment and the article is that it assumes that the tech industry is predominantly led by, or even populated with, those with the engineering mindset. In fact, I would go as far as to question that a majority of software engineers even have that engineering mindset, at least with regards to social matters or issues beyond their engineering work.
That interpretation didn't occur to me, but it seems even less likely than internal migration within the US.
The rest of the world has 22 times the population of the US. It would take an enormous amount of immigration to the US by engineers to affect the collective brain power of the home countries to the extent suggested by the parent.
One suspects that "engineers" (are we talking actual engineers? or those who write software?) are not so central to the beneficial functioning of society as this theory assumes.
If you meant those who drive locomotives, then I withdraw my suspicion. They are important.
Somehow the first substitution makes the analogy more arrogant. Whereas the original comment ultimately refers to those who are qualified for engineering jobs ("engineers") the substitution suggested here implies the engineer mindset is only present in engineers.
If anything, I've seen more engineers shedding their engineer mindset, but that's another conversation. (Disclaimer: this side remark is not about "fake news" or the 2016 election)
Oh, reading it again, I agree with you. I had read your comment as if you were translating the original comment, but it's actually replacing the original terms to make the phrase more accurate.
Yeesh, no thanks. In this context that word calls to mind this passage from ItBwtCL:
...during this century, intellectualism failed, and everyone knows it. In places like Russia and Germany, the common people agreed to loosen their grip on traditional folkways, mores, and religion, and let the intellectuals run with the ball, and they screwed everything up and turned the century into an abattoir. Those wordy intellectuals used to be merely tedious; now they seem kind of dangerous as well.
Not sure if you intended this, but reading your 'absurd theory' - I automatically read a parallel story that basically replaced engineer with 'big news portal' - it's not just engineers, but reporters, editors, and algorithms that spew what is expected to be the 'right way' - 'politically correct' is another term that I think needs an update to 'socially acceptable to my upper tier peers'...
This disconnect was seen in the reporting up to the last big election, and yet it's still seen by the 'average joes' who are bombarded with the flood of not-so'fake'-news, as much as it's really one sided so much that it seems desperate.. desperate to want truth a certain way or to convince others that things could be a utopia if they just understood what the elites know is right around their ivory towers / neighborhoods.
If you look at the yahoo homepage, comcast home page, similar news aggregators the past few days, does it seem that there is a diverse group of editors offering different viewpoints or does it seem more like a tight niche group who really wants the world to see things a certain way, no matter how 80% of the country has to see reality different, no matter how they might like it to be.
Maybe it's just me, anyhow your absurd theory added another dimension to this for me.. to consider that engineers are also buying into, or have bought into the gated communities and want the rest of the world to accept how they want things.
So the upper class has even more concentrated power by getting the engineers to be part of their illusion it seems.
I've also been seeing posts by people who say even though their team raises concerns about the way corporation X is deciding to do things, ultimately it's their bosses (ultra wealthy) pushing the decisions to do Y... so for as long as the engineers accept the higher class handouts, follow the group think, and help the ivory tower messaging, they can stay in the bubble valleys and nice coastal facades.
Another way to see it is the Internet was supposed to make sharing what one understood as truth easier; instead, what it did was democratize Chomsky's propaganda model by making entry into becoming the media much cheaper; the Internet-based media newcomers essentially copied as best as they could the traditional media's model of _imposing_ their view of reality and manufacturing consent.
In this view, what we're seeing is a power struggle for influence between the media who traditionally held the power to manufacture consent and the Internet-based newcomers.
> The real problem is that the engineer’s mindset, wherein one weighs the available evidence, and accept and incorporate new evidence even if it contradicts what you previously believed, has never been more rare.
This is the author's premise. It would have been nice to get some discussion around why that is the case (or even that it is true), but alas the article simply states it.
Ironic to provide no details given the subject matter.
You're right that it would be nice if the article would provide more evidence to back that claim up (especially given the article's content), however I don't think it's such an outlandish claim if you look at the facts. To greatly oversimplify (with the inherent dangers of oversimplifying), suppose 50% of the population believes news item "A" is true while the other 50% of the population believes "not A" to be true. There could be different reasons for such a scenario, but if "A" is something that can actually be verified with relative ease, then having such a high percentage of people disputing "A" could very well imply that way too many people are more interested in holding on to an opinion that suits their agenda (be it psychological, political or other) than to seek out what is true.
I mean, even engineers don't think and act like that when it comes to politics. They don't think and act like that even when it is about technology, but they are already invested and really want to be or at least be seen as right.
Example 1: anyone who refuse new architecture or tech cause it is new (and that exists a lot outside startup world).
Example 2: anyone who jump into new tech even when it is irrational and not ready or simply not suitable for task at hand.
Example 3: all engineers who talk with utter conviction about history or art or political/social problem - after they spent like an evening on wikipedia and cherry picked whatever fit their pre-existing simple worldview.
There was heavy manipulation of the media in favor of Clinton during the last election. Reddit, for example, was very active in promoting pro-Clinton news and downvoting pro-Trump news. It was so obviously an orchestrated campaign it was actually funny. CNN was relentlessly pro-Clinton. Clinton bought the machinery of the DNC to ensure her primary victory.
Now, I'm not suggesting any of that is or should be illegal. But any discussion of Clinton losing because of propaganda should consider the converse.
You're right. CNN ran comically doctored glamour shots of Hillary Clinton, every picture of Donald Trump showed him in a bad light.
It's alarming that so many outlets (on the left AND the right) are trying so hard to control the minds of the masses. I hope we find better ways to de-politicize 'news' sources.
There isn't a better way than free speech, which is why political speech is the most protected free speech. I've never even heard this mentioned in any of the news about the Russian propaganda, and it should be a central discussion point.
The main thrust, that we ought to value the truth, is hard to disagree with. Certainly, it would be good if instead of adopting a Machiavellian ethos in which the goal is to "win" at all costs and where the spoken and written word isn't about communicating truths but rather functions as an instrument of manipulation and power, we were at least committed to the truth even as we honestly disagree.
But what's this about an "engineering mindset"? It's an incredibly bizarre thing to appeal to in this context. Engineers are not somehow the quintessential pursuers of truth -- indeed, their pragmatic approach is less about the truth of the matter and more about effectiveness. Engineers are not, by virtue of being engineers, somehow particularly competent or qualified at understanding political issues. Politics is not a technology. Indeed, viewing politics in technocratic terms is positively dystopian. Perhaps the author of the article, writing for tech media, has fallen prey to the specialist's syndrome. To a hammer, everything is a nail.
Furthermore, there is more to politics than just the evidence of the matter at hand. There are things which affect politics that are not political as such. The importance of truth, the proper relations between state, society and individual, and so on.
> "The real problem isn’t fake news; it’s that people have given up on that search for truth"
I disagree. Most people have neither the time, inclination, or often the tools to "seek the truth" by themselves, and therefore they rely on the media to (in)form their views.
Moreover there is such a thing as influencers and trend-setters. The media do not simply report on what people are expressing, they can also (and often very much do) set an agenda. Knowing this, it's journalists' duty to report the news accurately and not mix reporting with opinions, not manufacture or distort facts, and avoid feeding into the Outrage Economy and its endless echo chamber.
By chance, I stumbled on a "meta-journalism" website just today, that analyses how mainstream print media (both left- and right-leaning) cover the news, it's pretty interesting. It's also often pretty damning. I hope they become better known:
Lest we as an audience be overly flattered by the "engineer's mindset," it's probably best to remind ourselves that in the field of software there are plenty of discussions and divisions that are frequently litigated in a tribal, adversarial manner. And that's just inside the field. Software engineers don't exactly end up uniformly distributed politically either.
So either we don't apply the engineer's mindset all the time, or the engineer's mindset has limits itself when it comes to bringing consensus. I suspect it's both, but maybe particularly the latter: every problem human engineers care about includes human values at some level, and human values aren't equally weighted (or even shared at all) across humans.
The mindset required to work on that last problem might not be engineer's mindset or lawyer's mindset.
While I agree with the articles sentiment I think missing enough with the engineers mindset is only part of the problem.
I recently wrote thoughts on the rest of the problem (having honest disusssions about problems to gather the insight and data to engineer with in the first place).
It was in response to a friend's social media post which read something to the effect of "Whats your most controversial opinion? No judgement"
"[... It] is nearly impossible to have completely honest versions of these conversations attached to your identity today because of a mixture of
- extreme militantly politically correct culture
- the existence of social media itself (allowing for identification and easy witch hunts from the comfort of your home)
- and in aggregate many people operating from completely different and often incompatible belief systems and sets of facts
For instance try to have any conversation in public with even slightest bit of negativity about any group of humans that are not rich, male, and white.
People in most of western civilization today would be hard pressed to voice any opinions because they would instantaneously be labeled a "fascist", "misogynist" , "racist", or a litany of other "-ists" with a dizzying amount of speed and force.
No matter how well you argue any point you are now inextricably linked with some "-ism".
Someone screenshots this opinion and posts to a group like Occupy Democrats with a person's full name...
And bam life quite possibly on the way to ruin.
It will affect your social and professional lives for quite some time.
I feel like until we can come to some form of consensus around the state of the world and how to use observations about it to discuss it we will continue to have situations where people cannot understand each others side and constantly talk past each other to all our detriment."
Our post modern culture has now taken to saying things like "my truth" and "your truth", as if it can be possessed and is unique to individuals.
But there does seem to be a general lack of understanding or belief that truth is outside of our personal perception.
It doesn't surprise me that we can't seem to agree on what's true when we identify truth as somehow representing me or you, and therefore we have a personal stake in defending "our truth" rather than seeking "the truth" as best we can understand it.
The discussion between Eric Weinstein, Ben Shapiro and Sara Fischer on the future of news is a great watch for anyone interested in this subject. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOxmIjiRqTw
No you're thinking of submarine pieces. Fake news came to prominence as a term when conservative clickbait from random domains started popping up in early 2016. The left started using the term very prominently, but then when Facebook tried to crack down on it all, the right appropriated the term as a general term of derision towards non-conservative news sites.
I don't understand the argument you're making with the Google trends link.
What I see is that a term which entered the common lexicon specifically to describe things such as Pizzagate is correlated with searches for the thing it describes.
More chart illiteracy probably. Here's a chart zoomed in https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=2016-09-01%202... and the fake news area under the curve is quite a bit larger until around the time of the election. About the most honest thing you can actually say is that around the election people just started googling it more. Big whoop. There isn't any correlation with the term "fake news" as you may glean from the first chart.
"Fake news" was in the lexicon well before pizzagate, which you can see in the link. The point I'm trying to make is that the phrase "fake news" was pushed in place of the phrase "pizzagate", and this was done by all the major media outlets when the phrase pizzagate came to prominence.
To my mind, if there had been no "pizzagate", there would have been no spike in "fake news", and we wouldn't even be talking about "fake news" today.
Yes, putting the two words "fake" and "news" together into a Google search happened prior to pizzagate. But the term "fake news" as it's understood now came about as a result of the propaganda that was spread during the election and only recently became part of our lexicon, lexicon meaning common usage.
Fake news was not part of our lexicon well before pizzagate.
Pizzagate refers to one instance of fake news, but fake news cannot be used in place of the phrase. I would say the term may have been pushed in place of "propaganda" since media outlets wanted to distance themselves from the tactics, but pizzagate cannot be used to refer to any fake news in general.
Had there been no pizzagate we would still be discussing fake news, as it is only one of a multitude of examples.
I respect your opinion. But when Hillary Clinton gives a speech rolling up "foreign propaganda", "fake news", and "silicon valley" all in one sentence, and following directly in the wake of the shooting at Comet Ping Pong (4 days later), you can be pretty sure that some serious connections are being formed. (Even if only in your own brain.)
In case anyone is curious, the sentence spoken by Hillary Clinton on December 8, 2016 is "Bipartisan legislation is making its way through Congress to boost the government's response to foreign propaganda, and Silicon Valley is starting to grapple with the challenge and threat of fake news."
The term was adopted by Trump as a way of subverting its then-emerging use to label the phenomenon of propaganda being produced supporting the Trump campaign following what a RAND Corp report has described, in its recent application by the Russian government, the “firehose of falsehoods” model (at the time this was seen as analogous to the Russian use of that propaganda style; it's since become clear that at least some of it was, in fact, Russian state propaganda, making it following a current style of propaganda observed in Russian state propaganda less surprising.)
Trump's adoption of the term to preempt that use was very successful, as is evident in the common perception that it is something he invented.
I'm not trying to say that people who use the term now are using it in place of "pizzagate", but that media outlets, during the months of December 2016 and early 2017, used the phrase to talk around "pizzagate"; and now "pizzagate" has faded, but "fake news" remains.
I think propaganda is a more appopriate word, and we should just use that. But because of the way associations work, whenever I see "fake news", I am reminded of "pizzagate". And I know I'm not the only one.
As I recall he (mis)appropriated the term, as is his habit. It wouldn't be surprising if tomorrow he started talking about how "woke" he is and how that adjective actually doesn't mean what we think it means. "Fake news" was originally a term for news-like narratives from sources other than the news media.
Of course a writer for Techcrunch believes that fake news is not the problem. That's like the NRA saying that guns don't kill people, people kill people.
The problem is that we are so deluged with inaccurate articles written by bloggers who have no real concept of journalistic integrity. We can't tell what is real and what is fake. So what happens is that people will start rejecting all news.
There's no accountability for writing shitty and inaccurate articles, and that's the problem. They believe that news can be buggy like software and can be corrected later, but it's not. It should be held to a higher standard because we rely on it.
All that will happen now is that people will stop believe everything they read and even worse, they're going to stop caring. That is extremely dangerous for us as a society because it means people can start doing things in broad daylight and no one will believe it or care. This appears to be what this current administration is doing and Republicans don't appear to fear the consequences, because they're right. There's a very loud minority but the vast majority are really starting to not care.
This whole anti-tech Russian backlash has me so down trodden. Like who cares if Russia bought ads? Who cares if Russia uses those sites and tweets or shares a photo or whatever. I learned long ago to tune out ads and not trust anything I read on the internet, or at least read with a hefty helping of salt.
I wish the outcome of all these revelations about how Russia (and I'm sure other countries or random people or corporations with various interests) was using facebook, twitter, instagram, etc, was for people to go, "oh, that's good to know. I guess I should believe whatever random posts I come across less." Not, "Uh oh! These services and ads are only for our certain, pre-approved uses, and we need to make laws enforcing that."
We could have used these as a nice ol' inoculation in the meme war and improved ordinary people's understanding of just how the internet works (and doesn't work).
[1] https://twitter.com/raju/status/965023245459214336?utm_sourc...