Politics of the Free - It’s because Democrats, stupid. - The Bear and Badger

RedDave2

Liveinadive wrote:

The trees they are planting, I'm here to tell you folks, those trees, they're fake, fake trees folks.

I plant more trees than anyone, i have the best trees. The taliban, they plant fake trees. NOT RIGHT

Bollockoff

I love trees so much, I'm gonna make Our Wall out of Great American Redwoods. The whole thing. All the acres. We're just gonna uproot em and lay em end to end coast to coast. It'll be amazing and so amazingly eco-friendly.

Kow

[Deleted User]

There is something about the way Trump does his speeches that I find oddly fascinating. The mannerisms and the repetition, I think it is because he looks literally like a Muppet or a Spitting Image puppet of himself.

Nina

We've been in the car a lot today, and his speeches are exactly the same as the commercials on the radio. Same repetition, slight change in the way a sentence is build but always simple language, and a few keywords. It's the best, we do it for you, I have experience with this, you won't regret it etc. Always told in a confident voice, slowly enough that you will understand it, trying to earn your trust. Then there's usually a voice that tells terms and conditions, but he's bearly understandable.

Same goes for the only radio station we could tune into while in the mountains, a religious one. Loads of repetition, sentences meant the same but were repeated in different ways so everyone gets a chance to pick one that he/she understands.

Not much information in any of them, there all just making sure you understand what they were saying, doesn't really matter what has been said. As long as you can remember it.

djchump

He probably read about it in a Paul McKenna "How to Hypnotise and Brainwash People the Easy Way" book. Sorry, not book, the audiotape, trump don't read.

Yossarian

Actually, he likely heard it from Robert Mercer (cross-post from current affairs thread): https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage

djchump

Who probably got it from a Paul McKenna audiobook. Or Scientology training.

djchump

Nice to know it's still a fucking clownshow over in the White(st) House: http://www.dailydot.com/layer8/sean-spicer-leak-hunt-immediately-leaks/

poprock

I think a Trump speech is a lot like an early 2000s website. An attempt to shoehorn in lots of keywords to force search engine recognition, without any copywriting skill to turn them into actual sentences.

hunk

Yossarian wrote:

Actually, he likely heard it from Robert Mercer (cross-post from current affairs thread): https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage

It's the darkside of the tech that powers fb and google. An algorithm which harvests data from social media and builds detailed profiles of people with the sole intention of targeted propaganda delivery.

Remember, he who controls the media (read: information data streams) controls the world. That is exactly what Mercer's trying to achieve. Yes, it is creepy and yes it is scary but it was also inevitable someone would use tech in this manner. Sadly, people are not aware they're being goaded by an invisible Right hand. Yet.

poprock

It’s devious, dark, and massively advanced, but it’s still just propaganda. It’s still advertising, backed up by research (admittedly the best research ever possible) and people still need to fall for it, or it’s futile.

There’s a danger in believing the work of Cambridge Analytica et al is some sort of magical voodoo. It’s really just a leap in sophistication of what has always been going on. A combination of market research, advertising, media manipulation, etc.

It’s terrifying, damn right it is, but what we all need to do in order to fight back is to educate. Encouraging a healthy cynicism might still see humanity survive. Bringing kids up to be media-savvy is essential because this stuff won’t go away. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

hunk

It's propagandaX 2.0 and the left and traditional media are just picking up on it. Apparently this next gen propaganda machine has already been weaponized and used succesfully twice with Brexit and the US elections. Third time's a charm?

Next up, elections in the EU.

JonB

poprock wrote:

It’s terrifying, damn right it is, but what we all need to do in order to fight back is to educate. Encouraging a healthy cynicism might still see humanity survive. Bringing kids up to be media-savvy is essential because this stuff won’t go away. You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.

Healthy scepticism? Cynicism suggests acceptance despite understanding how things work.

It may seem an unnecessary distinction, but the prevalent type of cynical ideology (yeah, I know but human are just shit/there's nothing we can do/there's no alternative) is in some ways as dangerous as the more obvious right-wing kind.

poprock

I’m fuzzy on the semantics of that, to be honest.

I think the important point is that media literacy is vital. Knowing what to take with a pinch of salt (ie. everything) and how to understand bias, filter bubbles, manipulation, targeting, and so on. Get media studies on to school curriculums worldwide in a meaningful way.

Mostly because you can’t fight opinions, you can only refute lies and promote facts. Making sure that future generations are able to tell the difference and internalise them accordingly makes far more sense than trying in vain to un-invent propaganda methods.

JonB

Yeah, it's more being sceptical, critical, questioning.

Exactly the kind of thinking that the whole learning by rote approach to exams undermines, of course.

Tempy

So what exactly is being done with these digital profiles that tabloids over here and US shock jocks/lightweight TV news isn't already accomplishing?

edit: some clarification - from what i gathered from the article these AI systems (which seems like a buzzword for talking about systems that are anything but intelligent) are creepily mining our data which then allows business men such as Mercer to fund sites like Breitbart... which then play on the same fears and insecurities as less technogically lubricated press, using the same rhetoric as before.

Now I know that media literacy is important, but given amazon's incredible ability to recommend me things I bought from them a week ago, repeatedly and without fail, I think the tech is overstated but the shitty manipulation of people is still very much real.

g.man

Amazon are recommending I stock up on dried cat food at the mo...

monkey

Good bartering to be had with that after the forthcoming apocalypse.

hunk

Targeted propaganda is a lot like targeted ads. It may nudge undecided people on fb and twitter in the direction the propaganda wants them to. It may not effect you per se but on a population level gains in percentage could be significant enough to turn an election. Thus proving the propaganda's effect on a population level and a nation as a whole.

RedDave2

Tempy wrote:

given amazon's incredible ability to recommend me things I bought from them a week ago, repeatedly and without fail, I think the tech is overstated but the shitty manipulation of people is still very much real.

Yeah, I love how after buying a HDMI cable from Amazon it then tells me that other people who bought a HDMI cable also bought... another HDMI cable?

Diluted Dante

Yeah, you bought the wrong one.

Kow

Trip Advisor always recommends places I've just been, even paid through their site. Idiots.

RedDave2

Diluted Dante wrote:

Yeah, you bought the wrong one.

God dammit Amazon...

dynamiteReady

http://fortune.com/2012/07/30/amazons-recommendation-secret/

But yeah. Big Data is the new Web 2.0 / Clod / Y2K.

That said...

https://arxiv.org/abs/1702.06683#

Fascinating idea, as it feels like a very common hunch, no?

poprock

Tempy wrote:

So what exactly is being done with these digital profiles that tabloids over here and US shock jocks/lightweight TV news isn't already accomplishing?

It’s powers of ten more effective than past methods.

The feedback loop is what does it. Learn where people’s views lean, block opposing news from ever reaching them, fill their media bubble with personalised arguments nudging them just a little further towards your agenda. Scan the data again and repeat. It’s a vicious circle that genuinely changes minds far more often than anything the ad industry have ever come up with, because it’s based on emotional responses and activities and it functions on a level the end user/victim has barely (if any) awareness of (and in an area the user thinks is private and personal, where they freely share more extreme views).

The same rules could apply anywhere, but it’s Facebook that really is the gold standard right now.

Tempy

hunk wrote:

Targeted propaganda is a lot like targeted ads. It may nudge undecided people on fb and twitter in the direction the propaganda wants them to. It may not effect you per se but on a population level gains in percentage could be significant enough to turn an election. Thus proving the propaganda's effect on a population level and a nation as a whole.

I am sure it can but I also don't think it's the dystopic sci-fi super weapon suggested here, more that it's just another small weapon in the vast suite of a media well equipped to preying on human nature

poprock

Tempy wrote:

I don't think it's the dystopic sci-fi super weapon suggested here, more that it's just another small weapon in the vast suite of a media well equipped to preying on human nature

Yes, and it’s vital to remember that it’s nothing new, but that said it is by far the most powerful weapon that predatory media have ever got their grubby little hands on.

The original German article on this has been lost, because Vice bought it up and did their own English language version (removing unofficial translations from other sites), but here’s Vice’s version for you.

And one example of the insidious (and persuasive) nature of this new style of propaganda tailoring:

In the Miami district of Little Haiti, for instance, Trump's campaign provided inhabitants with news about the failure of the Clinton Foundation following the earthquake in Haiti, in order to keep them from voting for Hillary Clinton. This was one of the goals: to keep potential Clinton voters (which include wavering left-wingers, African-Americans, and young women) away from the ballot box, to "suppress" their vote, as one senior campaign official told Bloomberg in the weeks before the election. These "dark posts"—sponsored news-feed-style ads in Facebook timelines that can only be seen by users with specific profiles—included videos aimed at African-Americans in which Hillary Clinton refers to black men as predators, for example.

You want to prevent people voting for Clinton in an area where the polling indicates she has a chance. So you edit together a spurious piece of news footage that seems to portray her being racist. Then you show that ad only to African-American people who you know are on the fence and care about race as a key issue, in that specific region. Nobody outside that demographic even knows your piece of footage exists, so no counter-arguments are ever given.

djchump

I think it's the unique, tailored-for-the-individual approach that makes it so insidious/worrying. Previously, propaganda was generally a spread-bet aimed at the common denominator(s) of the demographic being broadcast to - now it's a narrowcast direct to an individual that can push buttons that a spread-bet couldn't tailor-for.

I_R

It's a bit like the alt right stuff, more people claiming to have an impact on the election who can gain by seeming important. Not to dismiss it entirely, but there are more obvious reasons why Trump won.

Howdy, Stranger!

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