Right. So that's what one guy can do.
When you realize how much astroturf is going into Reddit, most social media platforms, and the efforts to manipulate wikipedia for political gain, this is a very real problem.
When you realize how much astroturf is going into Reddit, most social media platforms, and the efforts to manipulate wikipedia for political gain, this is a very real problem.
This has led to many a “that doesn’t sound right” when looking things up with friends, or odd technical questions that have serviceable information available but not at the top of results.
Before you had one big influencer, usually the state, manipulating the news of your country. The alternative players were more trustworthy, because they had to if they wanted to keep credibility.
Now, any big company can buy a narrative when they need one. No reputation matters. No memory. No consequences for the long run.
It's literally pay to play.
There isn't much in the way of evidence that is true. What we discovered when the internet came around is that the major players in the public sphere are generally low-credibility and just keep repeating that they are credible over and over again. As more diverse alternatives appear with the internet that narrative has been struggling. The new replacements have proven to be low-quality and a lot better than what they are overtaking.
The US discourse is a fascinating example of this where the traditional narrative setters may have gone legitimately crazy trying to rationalise how they're part of the reasonable and credible crowd and they just got rolled by Trump screaming that they were liars and that Mexico was going to pay for a border wall. That's what US voters thought looked like a better bet than these traditionally credible alternatives.
And therefore critical thinking is more important than ever. That isn't intrinsically a problem, but it is a problem for people that lack it.
How does that saying go? If you can't identify the mark in the room, you're the mark. Diligence and a good amount of skepticism serve you well before AI, and certainly post-AI.
A famous case is the CAMERA's takeover of key administrator positions in Wikipedia back in 2008, but in local communities it went probably unnoticed.