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Comment by pjc50 | Hacker News Reader

It went the other way: corrupt dictatorships started buying advertising, politicians, and media in the West. To the point that half the population now no longer know which way is up.

The Telegraph, who employ the Prime Minister, managed to get a push poll claiming over 50% support for suspending democracy in the UK.

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This doesn’t apply to the dictators of North Korea or Turkmenistan, who are still doing their dictatoring the old fashioned way. Heck, the authoritarians of China are still stuck using methods from the 1960s and aren’t expected to modernize until after Xi.

I thought the social credit score thing coupled with facial recognition and ubiquitous online monitoring was fairly modern.

It's certainly intended to be modern, but the implementation is very different from how people imagine it to be.

The "social credit system" is far from being automated; all current pilot projects involve officials leaving remarks on someone's file. The only novelty is that the file is digital and the remark may have a point value assigned.

Every time a new issue blows up on social media, the "ubiquitous online monitoring" (read: thousands of people whose job it is to remove objectionable content) takes days to clean up the outraged comments posted in a few hours.

Facial recognition is maybe the most futuristic, but unless they magically achieve higher precision than anyone else, filtering the results is still going to require lots of manual work. Otherwise they might accidentally offend someone with connections: https://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/2174564/facial-...

That’s in subjugation, not propaganda or controlling public sentiment, which is still very primitive by the standards of how western politicians do it much more subtly.

Actually, it is happening.

There are several European construction companies in Turkmenistan. Country is in crisis for past 3-4 years but, construction projects are going on. Siphoning lots of money for pro-government lobbying in Europe.

>managed to get a push poll claiming over 50% support for suspending democracy in the UK.

Also, they didn't, they are just lying about that -

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/staggers/2019/08/no-mo...

One garbage publication with an agenda criticizing another garbage publication with an agenda.

I'll add another 'garbage publication' to tip the balance if it makes you feel better?

https://www.politics.co.uk/blogs/2019/08/13/psychological-wa...

Why would it make me feel better? Why are my feelings even a relevent topic here? There is absolutely no shortage of grandstanding in both camps.

Since you care about my feelings you might like to know that the thing that upsets me most is the almost complete lack of rational debate surrounding this issue. If you could link to a non-partisan, fact based article designed to actually impart information and enable people to make up their own minds, rather than an article designed solely to sway opinion, that might make me feel better.

If you are looking for factual reporting, why did you personally take the time to create FUD around a sourced fact in one article, regarding the Telegraph lying about a poll in another?

'The New Statesman' is hardly my cup of tea either, but the article included the details of the original poll to back up the allegation, so irrespective of tone, it was one of these fact based articles designed to actually impart information, that you claim to be looking for.

edit - If you are looking for as non partisan as I can find, a magazine website for people working in the consumer research industry has taken note of the Telegraph's bullshit - https://www.research-live.com/article/news/telegraph-brexit-...

>Ben Page, chief executive of Ipsos Mori, tweeted: "Telegraph reporting taking the piss by ignoring "don't knows" to present an apparent majority."

Thanks, but I didn't need convincing that the Telegraphs article was bullshit. I already knew that and acknowledged them as a "garbage publication" in my first post.

The link you posted is a far better example of journalism imo. I wonder how many views they get compared to the usual clickbait?

>Thanks, but I didn't need convincing that the Telegraphs article was bullshit. I already knew that and acknowledged them as a "garbage publication" in my first post.

The issue is, that you are showing more discernment than other media, such as the BBC, which have gone on to repeat the claim by the Telegraph, without pointing out that is bullshit. And so lies quickly become 'common knowledge' by a large swathe of the population, especially if they are not called out.

And if you go back through, you can see that I posted the article in response to the lie being presented as common knowledge. I wasn't trying to convince you that the Telegraph's article was bullshit. I was pointing it out to someone else, who had already erred in taking the rag at face value.

You may dislike the source I used to do this, or other things they write, but surely you support the calling out of a lie, especially one that has already made the way into general discourse as an accepted fact?

Your comment seemed to indicate that one article balanced out the other, I was tipping the balance for you.

Both linked articles include the original question, vote percentages and how the Telegraph got to it's percentage, more than enough for an informed if not rational debate.

If you would like non partisan the New Statesman helpfully links to the survey (below), that seems about as impartial as we are likely to get.

https://www.comresglobal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/The-...

One of them lied about a poll and the other pointed it out. Whatever the agenda, that is pretty cut and dry.

I don't think it's so cut and dry. The Telegraph stupidly exaggerated the results of the poll in order to generate a click-baity headline, which was completely un-necessary. Then you have publications like the New Statesman who then exaggerated the transgression by the Telegraph, calling them "Lies, damned lies", as if 99% of the mainstream media don't exaggerate things in exactly the same way, all whilst injecting a bit of their own unfounded hysteria into the mix ("empty shelves and lorry queues and punch ups outside pharmacies that will inevitably follow").

The media is spiralling out of control. Each trying to out-do the other with ever more outrageous claims and deceitful exaggerations until the whole thing has escalated to tribalistic warfare. Casualty #1: rational debate.

>you have publications like the New Statesman who then exaggerated the transgression by the Telegraph, calling them "Lies, damned lies"

Ahh, I think you may have completely missed the context there.

As the article is about polling, they are referencing the old phrase 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.' that was first popularised by Twain, who attributed it to Disrali. Is a sardonic framing, not an ernest entreaty.

From my point of view the Jedi are evil!

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