And the French stop the momentum...

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Got to love France.

They may have confined the epidemic of stupidity to the Anglo-Saxon nations. Maybe this pressages a tipping point where certain methods of spreading disinformation will no longer be useful to influence the voting public.

Do the panel think that:

1. We have reached the tipping point, and the use of social media in influencing elections will slowly diminish from this high point?

or

2. It is merely a small oscillation in everyone's ever-increasing reliance on social media. Next time it will be even more important.

or

3. It's all too chaotic to call. Something new may come along to supplant the way we consume social media which will change the paradigm yet again.

It is my contention that having just been through a period where society has had to adapt to the birth and nasceny of social media, some period of consolidation is required. Now with historical cycles of similarities getting of smaller duration, this period of consolidation may only be a few weeks long rather than the decades required to bed down similar changes in society in historical times. But I do wonder if the tactics of dropping some "information bomb" when it is too late to be checked has reached its sell-by date, and may now actually become counter-productive. So I guess the intel bods in this asymmetrical warfare will have to come up with new tactics, if not a new strategy entirely.

So what do we think will replace this tactic in the war for the hearts and minds of folk in the computer-dependent nations? The long term drip-feed of disinformation looks to be a brilliant tactic. Look at Poor Hillary. Can't convict on financial things or anything else, as she has been very well-advised, so... Child molesting? Pizzas? Pure genius. (Right up until some nutter starts shooting-up the Pizza place. But that's just collateral damage and doesn't really count.)

Any other intersting tactics spring to anyone's mind? Then, as and if they happen, we can play Intel Tactic Bingo as a drinking game. Not of course that the rest of us need an excuse to seek oblivion from the bottle.

Comments

[unnamed525.livejournal.com]

Vivez la France!

[oportet.livejournal.com]

I think the internet is the big exception to the rule that there is strength in numbers. There may be billions of us - but I think we overestimate our power and influence. We may change a few votes, but I wouldn't credit us for someone winning an election - just like I wouldn't blame us for someone losing one.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

It's not social media so much as hacking and asymmetric propaganda battles using the internet and social media as the battlefield, transforming folks phones, laptops, and pcs into trenches, redoubts, and places for the aristeia of disinformation and propaganda to play out.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/08/macron-hackers-linked-to-russian-affiliated-group-behind-us-attack (https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/may/08/macron-hackers-linked-to-russian-affiliated-group-behind-us-attack)

[abomvubuso.livejournal.com]

They may have confined the epidemic of stupidity to the Anglo-Saxon nations

You're forgetting Hungary :)

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Damn. True. My bad.

[telemann.livejournal.com]

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

"It is my contention that having just been through a period where society has had to adapt to the birth and nasceny of social media"

I think we can all agree that a lot of things are at work. Of course, last minute attacks on your opponents isn't some new thing, at least not in the US. Finding out the Russians are behind it is kinda novel, but as a tactic, it goes back about as far as Presidential elections do. (http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history/2016/08/james_callender_the_attack_dog_who_took_aim_at_alexander_hamilton_and_thomas.html)

There is a bit of nastiness about populism that certainly has made a comeback, but then my take is that it's way more about those who are being left behind by an ever more sophisticated economy striking back at the elites who are benefiting at what they see as their expense. To some extent, they do have a point, at least in the US and UK, the gap between those with the skills to benefit from today's economy and those who don't is growing. You can certainly see this in some of those places where Mrs. Clinton should have done better. Social Media is more the messenger than the cause, which of course make it the first target for those who want to take shots at a new trend.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Social media is the conduit, so in some respects it is both the messenger and the medium, though not the message and the cause.

Do we shoot the messenger? Depends if they have colluded through action or omission in being the vehicle for the spread of disinformation. But then again, that would shut down the National Enquirer. So it's tricky. This is why you need sophisticated laws and a sophisticated judiciary. And why the law costs money. Essentially this is the sort of policing and monitoring of unseen infrastructure which you pay your taxes for. Or not if you're a believer in small government and you think everyone has time to distinguish between all the information and disinformation at the eleventh hour and vote in an informed way.

[mikeyxw.livejournal.com]

I believe in right-sized government, which I'm sure we can all agree on if we move on quickly.

That said, complicated and sophisticated laws benefit those who can afford lawyers, not those who can't. While both political parties in the US are overflowing with lawyers and could thus take advantage of whatever laws get passed, social media platforms, at least when they're starting up, aren't in the same position. Any sophisticated law could easily be used to silence sites such as this one, which is happening in Russia.

Rather than thinking people have time to distinguish between fact and rumor in the last minute, you can certainly suggest to people that those who are releasing stories too late to be verified probably have an agenda other than educating the public. Also pointing out that there is a big difference between CNN, BBC, The Wall Street Journal, and The Guardian on one hand and RT, some random guy's facebook, and a blog by someone you don't know on the other. While Western media has their biases (read about something in both The Wall Street Journal and The Guardian to see this), they do tend to stick to the facts. Sometimes they're wrong, but they make an honest effort, unlike quite a few sources. If CNN is missing out on some huge story on social media, such as Pizzagate or the charges that Trump is a pedophile, there is probably a good reason. This sticks to actual education, which we can probably all agree on as well.

[johnny9fingers.livejournal.com]

Complicated and sophisticated circumstances can't have anything other than expensive oversight. Complexity ups the ante.

When I had some money in my past I commissioned a cabinet-maker friend of mine to make me a bespoke bit of specific work-furniture. I had all sorts of grand designs I presented to him, He looked at my favourite idea, which was pretty and suited my needs completely, sucked his teeth, then said: "curves cost more" and then told me how much more, and why. I opted for straight edges.

We live in a system of such complexity that when someone opts to simplify, you lose the thing you had at the beginning and which was the point of it all in the first place. It's called civilisation. And it has developed alongside technology. And it has to be paid for precisely because the advantages it confers are unimaginable to the first humans developing it.

It really is fucking complicated and chaotic, and the human-created Frankenstein monster of civilisation needs feeding. Because if it dies, so do a huge number of us: the slightly insane self-deluded parasites of the host beast of civilisation. (Because, ontologically, even the idea of machine intelligence indicates that civilisation can continue without us.)

But i meander...