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Comment by faidit | Hacker News Reader

This narrative has been popularized all over social media for the last couple years.

Obviously it's true and not a surprise to anyone familiar with the history. But no one is asking more complex questions: why is it being pushed by algorithms and networks ultimately controlled by the same powers? Is it a "limited hangout"? Well poisoning? What does the "CIA" gain from revealing a sliver of its past activities and discrediting (both directly and by insinuation) a large number of radical artists and thinkers?

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My brain tingles when I hear "three letter letter agency did X"

But my take on the question: "why is it being pushed by algorithms" is that it is a property of the medium of "algorithmic feeds".

YT, shorts, etc. are a great medium for attention grabbing in a way that is district from TV. Broadcast TV caters to the "average" viewer, ex. Sienfeld, Johnny Carson show. "Algorithmic TV" caters to specialized viewers. Fringe ideas and science, "the truth about X". The crown prince of "algorithmic TV" (IMO of course) is Joe Rogan. For every niche quest he has on, there's many more YT channels on that topic. Weird history, ancient aliens, psychedelics.

So I don't really think the "algorithms" are controlled, rather they "algorithm" elevate weird ideas more than other mediums.

As the Facebook–Cambridge Analytica data scandal showed, the social network algorithms can be used to send political messages according to your psychological profile. (Political messages shown to you, can be different from political messages shown to your neighbor).

Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign used the harvested data to build psychographic profiles, determining users' personality traits based on their Facebook activity. The campaign team used this information as a micro-targeting technique, displaying customized messages about Trump to different US voters on various digital platforms. Ads were segmented into different categories, mainly based on whether individuals were Trump supporters or potential swing votes. As described by Cambridge Analytica's CEO, the key was to identify those who might be enticed to vote for their client or be discouraged to vote for their opponent. Supporters of Trump received triumphant visuals of him, as well as information regarding polling stations. Swing voters were instead often shown images of Trump's more notable supporters and negative graphics or ideas about his opponent, Hillary Clinton. For example, the collected data was specifically used by "Make America Number 1 Super PAC" to attack Clinton through constructed advertisements that accused Clinton of corruption as a way of propping up Trump as a better candidate for the presidency

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook%E2%80%93Cambridge_Ana...

Except that was the whole problem with the CCP having hooks into TikTok. It's thing to be "oh it's just the algorithm", but if China's involved, they're gonna have a finger on the scale, but then when it's up to the US, we're supposed to think that no one's not messing with the algorithm to do... something? It's a comforting belief to think that there's some grand master plan and we're not all out here doing the best we can with what we've got and it's all up to random chance, but at the level where there is YouTube/Instagram/TikTok, it's hard to believe that there's no one guiding the algorithm for some purpose that isn't just make more money. Or maybe money is it and it's all an application of Goodhart's law.

One idea - these days there are many MANY more players using the same strategy - maybe the CIA wants us to be aware of the technique to limit its effectiveness.

Simple enough mechanism used that everyday people on YouTube can grasp, vague nationalistic bend, and plenty of people who don’t know about it, all makes great YouTube clickthrough rates.

I like your comment, though.

Not a direct response to your question; I figure you or others reading this may be interested in the thoughts of the host of The War on Beauty (best found on youtube).

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