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Comment by TheSpiceIsLife | Hacker News Reader

Poetic, but you shot yourself in the foot in the first paragraph.

"That we have centralized global social networks carries risks that the majority of people are not able to experience"

If the majority of people do not experience the consequences of the risks of whatever-it-is-your-railing-against, if those risks are never realised by the majority, your argument evaporates.

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Perhaps the reason most of us don't experience the risks is because the nature of cyber warfare is more subtle than any other form of warfare in history. Social engineers prefer to be undetectable, that means they're doing it right.

Then it's hard to tell where the line between (cyber) warfare and social engineering can be drawn.

Is what Facebook did[1] (does?) warfare? I sometimes like to dabble in hyperbolic alarmism, so I'm inclined to want to say yes.

Maybe it's a sign of progress that we now consider emotional manipulation "war". It's probably less harmful, by all accounts, than slaughtering each other.

1. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/jun/29/facebook-...

I agree on all accounts. Facebook testing emotional manipulation is corporate psyops weapons development.

Marshall McLuhan postulated back in the 1970 about the future of warfare:

>World War I a railway war of centralization and encirclement. World War II a radio war of decentralization concluded by the Bomb...

>World War III is a guerilla information war with no division between military and civilian participation

Cult-driven intellectual authorities believe that designing and firing rainbow glitter embedded bullets of absolute power at rebels is a justified path to social control. Tech such as FB's is misused accordingly.

Point taken. The majority are not able to experience it because it has not happened for the majority, yet. The data is there, the technology to use that data in the future has not been employed.

I used to be right in to the impending doom of the techno-dystopia, but I've stopped worrying about it. Predicting the future is hard.

We don't need a future info-technologically induced dystopia to commit atrocities. A shibboleth[1] will suffice.

From modern times to way back.

Then said they unto him, Say now Shibboleth: and he said Sibboleth: for he could not frame to pronounce it right. Then they took him, and slew him at the passages of Jordan: and there fell at that time of the Ephraimites forty and two thousand. Judges 12:6

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