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Comment by mnw21cam | Hacker News Reader

Surely we can widen the issue from state-backed manipulation to lots-of-money-backed manipulation.

And the article's suggested solution is:

> These companies should therefore increase their efforts to flag and remove disinformation, along with all cyber troop accounts which are used to spread harmful content online.

So the suggested solution is to have different lots-of-money companies stop the lots-of-money manipulation. Of course, if you are doing the right kind of manipulation (ads), that's allowed.

Seems a bit hypocritical to me.

Lots-of-money-backed manipulation is how things have been traditionally. "Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel". It tends to be a stabilizing force for society, despite the malevolence (eg Iraq war). Meanwhile state-backed (or alternatively, lots-of-foreign-money-backed) seems to be a destabilizing force. We've presently got two large political movements, both essentially protesting against out of control government, but yet they've ended up being each other's enemy.

I don't think the distinction between state-backed or lots-of-money-backed manipulation is really what makes it stabilising or destabilising. Rather, I think it whether the manipulation separates out the manipulated into an echo-chamber of similarly-minded outrage or not.

For example, a government statement based on scientific investigation, such as "Covid-19 is a dangerous disease, but it helps if you wear a mask" is state-backed manipulation, but it doesn't try to isolate the manipulated into an echo-chamber, and it is intending to be stabilising.

Conversely, some of the worst parts of social media can whip up a storm of outrage and hatred because the algorithm (which is intended to maximise the advertising profits of a commercial company) recommends outrageous stories that make you angry, but that you are likely to agree with. This is lots-of-money-backed manipulation, but it does isolate people into echo-chambers, and it is destabilising.

Regarding having two large political movements that have become enemies, I think this is an emergent property of a complex interaction between politics and the tendency of people to get sucked into echo-chambers that (as an emergent property, not an intended outcome) steer people towards thinking that the other side is the devil incarnate. Political parties will always disagree with each other. I admire politicians who can say to each other that they disagree strongly with the other's point of view, but they respect them as a person and get on with them well.

I think it will be very hard to destroy the natural tendency of social media to form echo-chambers, but it should be attempted. Regarding politics, I think it's interesting that countries that have election systems that discourage two-party politics in favour of multiple parties having to make compromises with each other tend to be more stable and friendly about it.

But back in the old days, you still had the same thing. Find a list of the names of local newspapers. Look at the names of them. Notice how many have "Democrat" in the name. Most (all?) of those were papers that took an explicit editorial stance in favor of the Democratic Party. There were some explicitly Republican papers as well, but I think these were fewer in number.

That is, when you were getting your news from a newspaper, you could still live in a filter bubble...

I agree that filter bubbles and algorithmic engagement is a serious issue, but that's somewhat orthogonal to how I took your initial point.

"State-backed" is generally implying foreign states. The real distinction being foreign versus domestic, regardless of whether the actor is part of a bona fide government or not. A domestic actor will push their own interests, but generally not to the catastrophic detriment of the larger country. Whereas a foreign actor's entire goal might be to incite chaos.

> It tends to be a stabilizing force for society, despite the malevolence (eg Iraq war).

Brave words. Stabilizing for whom?

... and the social media giants have lots of money, and are in the perfect position to manipulate.

Motivation and opportunity ...

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