Comment by boeingUH60 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by boeingUH60 | Hacker News Reader

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This is something that is important to know of; propaganda is not necessarily delivering fake news. It can be foreign actors exploiting a country's problems, e.g., gun violence, racism, pandemic response, religious differences, etc., to sow division among the population. For example, Russian Facebook groups encouraged protests in Texas that riled Christians against supposed Islamization of the state and Muslims to counter-protest [1].

As I once explained in a previous comment on another HN post -- https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33847117 -- I was involved in a political campaign that involved using fake profiles on Twitter and Facebook to boost news that favored the politician and attacked their opponents (I was a naive college kid then). The Twitter account still exists today.

Mind you, this campaign was a small operation in a third world country with less than two dozen people. Imagine what governments with millions to billions of dollars at their disposal could do. America's opponents can obviously not invade it or place sanctions, so they'll try to attack it wherever they can, and you can be sure they are doing it.

After my experience, I stopped paying attention or believing anything from social media. The majority of it are outright lies or half-truths, and I have not the time or strength to sift through them...not to talk of social media being outrage farming for the purpose of securing ad dollars.

1- https://www.npr.org/2017/11/01/561427876/how-russia-used-fac...

> It can be foreign actors exploiting a country's problems, e.g., gun violence, racism, pandemic response, religious differences, etc., to sow division among the population.

Doesn't even have to be foreign. I think most of the propaganda the majority is exposed to comes from our own media and the politicians they cover. When they tell us not to trust X and Y that's just them being scared of losing the narrative.

The US is the most extreme in a western context (don't know much about the east I don't speak their language), the level of polarization in their media is mind-blowing. From the outside it's fucked up to read, and even worse to see normal people acting like this is somehow the other sides' fault.

People need an enemy today, and it can't be those in charge they're making sure of that.

I find it funny to blame the "Russian organizers" as opposed to the thousands of American people who are members of the groups and showed up on the street to protest and fight. Do you think they were brainwashed for $200 in Facebook ad spend?

People will always have social groups that can be exploited to sow discord. Like I said, my personal solution was to stop paying attention to social media altogether, but that obviously won't happen for everyone.

While you blame the "brainwashed", I blame the executives and workers at the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, et al. They know their platform is being exploited to rile up anger but it brings them the sweet ad dollars so they don't care. They can even feel better and feign some self-righteousness by blaming the "brainwashed" instead of the platforms they oversee...very difficult to get them to admit to the problem when their financial interest depends on it.

> my personal solution was to stop paying attention to social media altogether

Agreed. I deleted all my social media accounts except for this one and it helped immensely. I sometimes feel like I live in a different world.

People en mass will always have the gullible. It's either "allowing a system that amplifies such misinformation", or "the actors exploiting it", that deserve blame.

Why would you care to blame the gullible who don't know any better?

I think that people around here get antsy when this topic is raised because mis/disinformation is a cousin of advertising- the cash cow of silicon valley VC power-elite. The conversation often goes to combating these things which could turn into privacy/information regulation which would hurt their paychecks. So they clam up and blame the gullible. Just a thought.

They don't need to be individually gullible at all - the causes they fight for are real and important to them, and the social schisms already exists. Outright misinformation is not necessary to drive a people apart, it just helps if you can get away with it.

Long-lasting societies have a complex dynamic of cohesive and repulsive forces between people - causes that unite them and causes that divide them. It only takes subtle nudges to move the balance, to de-emphasize compromise and stoke conflict. Modern internet surveillance makes it possible to do this with precision, like a finely monitored industrial process. We're not nearly at the end game yet and we don't know how to protect a society from this kind of attack.

The two-party system adds perverse intensives where you win by pushing people as far as possible to the extreme. Moving for conciliation and moderation is ceding ground to the other side.

I think you're not giving them credit when claiming they're all gullible. Who says your point of view is the correct one? If we take the analogy to the pandemic with social media putting the stamp of approval on posts confirming their narrative, while flagging official .gov links.

Then the so called gullible are simply normal people asking for open discussion. And some people on their high horses claim they're brainwashed, gullible, russian agents or bots. Now a lot of that so called misinformation is showing to be true, even the far-fetched lab leak with gain-of-function research funded by a US agency, in fucking China.

What's even real anymore. The most important thing humanity can do today is putting higher standards of truth on themselves and their allies instead of knee-jerk reactions and calling the opposite side gullible. They have their arguments if we take a breath and listen. And there's a good chance you're just as brainwashed as those you oppose.

> Who says your point of view is the correct one?

The whole premise of this article is "believing misinformation". And on that note, it's also not "my point" either.

But, let's also allow words to mean what they mean, shall we? Gullible, "easily deceived or duped", is not too off the mark to describe those who fall victim to misinformation. Especially so when it was generalized to a large population always including those more prone to being gullible in whatever context.

From your last paragraph, I don't think we disagree, but I suspect that what I wrote would come across more accurately, if it wasn't assumed to be inflammatory. In fact, my argument was that it wasn't the fault of "the gullible", because they will always be there, to some extent. But that the blame should perhaps be directed at those aiming to exploit it, or allow it.

But your reply is in a context though so I can only assume it should be taken in context. Still here you refer to them as gullible from your perspective. I don't think they'd identify as gullible in their circle, and they call you gullible. Where can you even meet when that's your view of each other?

Have you ever stopped to think that maybe you're the gullible one?

Who is "them" to you? I'm referring to gullible people by the trait of being gullible. They are by definition gullible. Whether or not I'm within that group depends on the topic, though I'm sure for some, that I am. I don't think you understood that part of my argument. Or, maybe I didn't understand yours. In either case, it seems to me this is rather unproductive. Have a nice day.

> It can be foreign actors

They don't have to be foreign. And tangentially, good propaganda is not recognized as such. For a borderline example, see how Call of Duty changed the attackers in the highway of death from the US to Russia [1]. But since it's only "inspired" by real events, they can claim they didn't falsify history, all the while contributing to a false perception of US forces.

Non-borderline cases are even subtler and more insidious, often indistinguishable from artistic intent, and can be anything from casting choices to subject matter (ever notice how some historical events get more attention than others?). Less overt, less coherent, but when so much media comes from California or New York, it makes their attitudes the default everywhere where that media dominates.

Imagine if the default, ambient culture, was shaped by Mumbai as much as it is today by Hollywood/New York. Yet even with your experience with propaganda, it slips under your radar. That's power.

[1] https://www.vice.com/en/article/mbmwgn/modern-warfare-the-hi...

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