Anti-Misinformation? What could possibly go wrong! I have no doubt plenty of domestic messages are going to get caught up in this and be attributed to some Russian or Chinese troll farm. It's far too easy to dismiss someone as a Russian bot or paid shill. I see this being easily abused.
> As with the other ministries in the novel, the name Ministry of Truth is a misnomer because in reality it serves the opposite: it is responsible for any necessary falsification of historical events.
> However, like the other ministries, the name is also apt because it decides what "truth" is in Oceania.
Low-effort, I know, but what was the point of everyone reading this book in High School English if not for this very moment?
That's a common misconception. The DoW was just the army, and the navy was a separate cabinet department, until the National Military Establishment was created in 1947, and that department, not the DoW, was renamed to the DoD in 1949.
The DoW became the departments of the army and air force, inside the DoD.
See third paragraph in that Wiki link, and second paragraph in this one:
A war on "misinformation" is about as likely to succeed as a war on drugs. The negative effects of it are surely to be even worse. At least "what is a drug?" can be defined fairly easily.
Well. Count me up as one who was a die hard Bernie supporter who has made a very hard right turn as my former home (as a progressive Dem) seems to be arguing in favor of censorship at every turn.
If you want more people like me keep thinking you can stifle speech on the internet.
Ahh yes you mean like having Peter dazick or whatever his name is fact check covid source material on Facebook? When his eco health alliance funded it? Yeah. Fact checks alright. Laughable.
Misinformation is an issue because trust in politicians, the government, journalists, the media and the scientists they use as spokespeople has eroded significantly.
It is probably easier for them to dump 1B into something like this initiative than restore trust in those institutions.
Those institutions—some significantly more than others—sold out their credibility without the aid of any organized conspiracy. What the misinformation actors do do is to smear that mistrust on the good-faith actors.
Alternative? Not manipulating people and being honest?
Here's an example that includes Climate Change.
On the right they deny its existence (they used to believe in it, then didn't as Obama came in, and are turning around again albeit slowly). News and politicians say the scientists are lying and taking money from "Big Green." They then promote coal, oil, and their interest groups. The right is too easy to pick on here because it is just so blatantly anti-science.
On the left there's definitely a significantly closer resemblance to what the scientists are saying, but they ignore what is convenient. There's only really discussions about what is popular. There's minor talk about carbon taxes. There's little to no talk about carbon capture, and when there is they only talk about reforestation (reforestation is great but suspected to not be enough, specifically fast enough) (scientists actually want us to be carbon negative, not zero carbon). There is little discussion outside of electricity and vehicles (which is only 54% of contributions from America). The idea that the crisis is purely political and can be solved politically is still perpetuated, not recognizing we need major scientific advancements (e.g. better batteries, smarter grids, new zero carbon energy sources, inventions in heating, significant reduction in clean energy production that can be exported to developing countries and be cheaper than coal for them --this one is huge actually--, etc). Politicians here blame Republicans for not being able to pass any bill but still are not united on their own front. They still aren't acting with anywhere near the same concern the scientific community has about the issue.
But the real kicker is: why are we listening to politicians about science anyways? I also don't want Bill Nye talking about climate change on TV I want climate scientists. I don't care if it is boring and an unfamiliar face (Fauci was unfamiliar not long ago).
> because of course they're not going to be, and never have been in the history of history.
I wouldn't say that in the past they have been as polarized. In fact you can actually measure this by looking at node connections.[0] But we need to hold politicians accountable. That's the mechanism to keep them in check but we're also failing at that.
Yes, we're living in a particularly polarizing time. I'd suggest that's probably not random, and it's probably not due to typical human behavior of politicans. Were politicians of the past paragons of virtue? In large part of course not.
So what is different now?
My pet theories for suspects are: social media algorithmically enhancing negative emotions and behaviors, a relative lack of enforcement of white-collar crime (especially amongst the rich), large media conglomorates (not a new phenomenon really, but the current ones are a bit different than past) and wealth inequality.
> Were politicians of the past paragons of virtue? In large part of course not.
No one is claiming they were. This isn't a binary thing, it is a spectrum. So what's different now? Where they lie on that spectrum.
> My pet theories for suspects are:
You and pretty much everyone else. This is extremely common. But these are also pretty common things in history. Though again, spectrum. We're in one of the most unequal times in America. Rich rarely got persecuted, ever (hell, remember the Pinkertons?). Rumors and misinformation used to spread faster than horses could travel. So let's instead look at what similarities there are to historical examples.
This isn't the kind of thing that has an easy solution. All the actors in this issue have their own reasons as to why they are incentivized to act the way they have. For example, how news has increasingly become editorialized to try and remain relevant (and profitable) in a changing landscape of how people consume information.
A lot of these things change slowly (and are decades in the making), but aren't apparent until they have changed too much to easily fix so they require a lot of collective work to restore, which is extremely difficult because it often works against the incentives laid out by the environment that caused them to be this way. Using the news example, media sources could simply try to become more rigorous in their pursuit of being trustworthy again, but clearly society has incentivized them to move in the way they have. Running against those incentives runs the risk that it just makes them unprofitable again and then unable to report news all together when they go out of business (or become bought out by wealthy interests with an agenda). So the 'solution' would have to come in some sort of innovation in how people consume media that aligns journalistic rigor and being profitable, which nobody has really figured out how to do yet.
Maybe by our institutions admitting their mistakes and being open and honest about their conclusions.
Do you know how many anti-vaxxers talk about Biden and Harris saying they'd never take the vaccine last year until it was fully FDA certified, or how masks likely don't work because the CDC and FDA said they were mostly worthless to anyone who wasn't a trained professional (before changing their viewpoint, without explanation, last summer)?
How many newspapers, online, and tv presenters either don't even bother with corrections, or run them on page 11 in small font at the bottom? If it hurts the ax they are grinding, they'll never admit a mistake.
Nothing. The 2016 Russian Facebook campaign had less exposure than most blogs I read, and who even reads blogs any more?
This is going to do far more harm than it could every possibly do good. Mostly by disenfranchising Americans from participating in the public debate, something I'm pretty sure the US government is expressly forbidden from doing to anyone, even non-citizens.
I think it's pretty normal to be concerned about both foreign and domestic misinformation campaigns, even when the domestic campaigns are billed as 'anti-misinformation'.
Half the people on this website can't seem to spend 5 seconds to click through to an article, and you expect 340 million people to be able to spend even more time informing themselves so they can think critically about political issues?
Then I’m afraid the only option left is to fundamentally change technology. Faster isn’t always better. Maybe if people were forced to stare at loading pages anymore it would compel them to dig deeper instead of mindlessly scroll.
>"invest in education, and give people the ability to spend 30 extra seconds critically thinking about the information they see and where it came from "
People have been demanding we teach critical thinking in education for decades. And it's not like teacher's haven't been trying to get people to think critically all this time.
The truth is, when we see information that conforms to our worldview, we naturally accept it. We only think critically when we see something we disagree with. Try it yourself, just start disagreeing with someone and watch how good they become at critiquing your arguments.
Arguably, the phenomenon of “fake news” was caused by teaching media literacy that only could identify bias and fake stories in respectable mainstream publications. The tools as taught were not designed to handle blatantly absurd claims.
as an example, I think I saw a few days of material on logical fallacy in 10th grade. It should be a basic competency that is made a priority throughout middle school and high school at every year.
I think this is really a human-nature problem rather than an education or lack of training problem. I believe this to be the case because of all the cognitive biases that we are born with. I also think people's willingness to 'think critically' is dependent on the personality they have. Some people are naturally more curious and open minded than others and no amount of education will change that.
I don't think it is a hopeless cause, however, and it's good to teach critical thinking methods. But I look at this in a similar way to health education. We have been teaching people about good nutrition, healthy eating, and the benefits of an active lifestyle for years but most people don't apply the lessons. At some point more education on the same topics isn't going to help anymore because it's a different kind of problem than not having been taught.
Lets invest $1B into a program to objectively measure which people are least vulnerable to logical fallacies, examine how they cultivated that skill, and build a curriculum for use in every public classroom.
Whenever I see a response like this it feels like the person who wrote it is a prime target for misinformation. When you think that someone who falls victim to a misinformation campaign are just undedicated or lack "the ability to spend 30 seconds critically thinking", you're not acknowledging that we all process far too much information every day to vet all of it. This isn't something that only affects people who are stupid and/or ignorant.
Ironically, your position as I understand it seems to be the most susceptible to misinformation. Outsourcing critical thought to some trusted authority just means you get that authority's version.
Anyway, pretending that critical thinking is the same as vetting every piece of information you see is disingenuous. Like anything else, there is some severity vs ease of checking position that a given putative fact has. If you're going to die imminently, best to make sure you carefully understand. If it's today's urgent revelations on the news about ongoing issue x y or z, why worry too much how accurate it is.
I do agree it's not the same as "stupid or ignorant" and often these labels are applied to people challenging orthodoxy as opposed to those not thinking critically. It has more to do with credulity, need for acceptance/ belonging, and what I would call religious tendencies.
I read your comment as suggesting that this problem only needs to be addressed at the consumption end - that is, by empowering the public with better critical thinking skills. But I fundamentally disagree, both with the premise that people who are affected by misinformation simply lack critical thinking skills, and by the idea that this is a practical solution to the problem.
This perspective is popular among the intellectual crowd because it appeals to our shared love for learning, but also because it's self-congratulatory. It says "if people just had the skills I have, they wouldn't be taken in", but history shows that's not the case as a general statement. We're all affected by advertising, after all.
As for "outsourcing critical thinking to some trusted authority", that's one of the heuristics we all use, no matter how educated we are, and we all have a collection of trusted authorities. Educated people probably tend to have different trusted authorities and different ways of selecting them - they may produce a better outcome but the strategy is very similar.
For my part I think this problem needs to be addressed on the supply /distribution side as well. We need to work against the purveyors of lies and fraud, and that's how it's always been. That was how we cleaned up the patent medicine system and made the stock market more trustworthy, and in some form (probably not through the DoD) we as a society will need strategies to combat other kinds of misinformation as well.
But who would teach it? Who would write the text book? Who would design the curriculum? How would this be protected from the same abuses that an "anti-misinformation" project would be susceptible to?
How would this happen at meaningful scale without drawing a response like "CRT" is drawing now and "evolution/creation" did before and in some areas still does?
How do we prevent it from just deepening existing divides?
The misinformation age worries me more than any other current threat because it compounds every other problem and I don't really see a solution. I think it's actually just getting started. (And yes of course propaganda is not new, but the scale, effectiveness, and saturation of it has increased observably in my own lifetime. As a species we are getting better at it.)
If someone convinces me this is solvable or not a real problem you'll genuinely make my day; I really want to be super wrong about this...
Some groups (in the US) are actively trying to ban teaching it (or some definition of it) in school and some groups think it's essential learning. I'm guessing most have no idea what actually was or wasn't being taught, but that's another issue. The point here isn't whether they're right or wrong to do so it's that obviously education isn't "neutral territory" or something the country is comfortable leaving to the education community. Creation/evolution is the "classic" example of this.
As soon as you try to do media studies or critical thinking at scale somewhere in K-12 someone is going to think that you're doing it maliciously to advance or attack a worldview and it's going to become a mess. Another commenter mentioned letting kids dissect Fox and CNN - how long before those kids say something to their parent that Really Believes one of those channels and that parent goes to the school board with a mob of other Believers? Or someone tries to get a class started or teach a class that claims to be critical thinking but focuses all its time on the flaws in a particular perspective?
>As soon as you try to do media studies or critical thinking at scale somewhere in K-12 someone is going to think that you're doing it maliciously to advance or attack a worldview and it's going to become a mess. Another commenter mentioned letting kids dissect Fox and CNN - how long before those kids say something to their parent that Really Believes one of those channels and that parent goes to the school board with a mob of other Believers? Or someone tries to get a class started or teach a class that claims to be critical thinking but focuses all its time on the flaws in a particular perspective?
wow, I didn't actually thought about it, but it kinda makes sense
it's hard to believe people would fight (at scale) those old and common topics like logical fallacies.
>Some groups (in the US) are actively trying to ban teaching it (or some definition of it) in school and some groups think it's essential learning. I'm guessing most have no idea what actually was or wasn't being taught, but that's another issue. The point here isn't whether they're right or wrong to do so it's that obviously education isn't "neutral territory" or something the country is comfortable leaving to the education community. Creation/evolution is the "classic" example of this.
I've heard people complaining that teachers are incompetent to teach this, is it true?
On the logic front, I'll tangentially throw out that I think the problem isn't invalid arguments, but unsound arguments, which doesn't get properly addressed in discussions of misinformation. We're all blindly talking past each other because no one agrees to the premises or on any means of verifying them.
On teacher competency, I would, on balance, trust the teachers I had growing up and the teachers I know now to handle CRT appropriately if they were teaching my children.
To the CRT (and evolution before it) issue, it's an ideological (rather than practical) debate.
To wit, neither side is making arguments in support of their position in good faith. They're saying whatever they think will accomplish their goals, because they're Right (tm) and the other side is Wrong (tm), and thus anything is justified.
Which is the real tragedy of polarization, in that it reduces thinking, independent human beings into mindless ideological automatons.
I work at a K-12. Digital citizenship and online critical thinking is 100% a part of the curriculum at every grade level. I've gone into classrooms at elementaries, middle schools, and high schools and seen materials explaining how to evaluate the credibility of information online.
Unfortunately, approximately 85% of the voting population will never benefit from these classes, because the idea of them being necessary or useful had not occurred to anyone when they were in school. It's the same reason nobody over 50 learned how to use a computer in grade school. They did not exist.
This is a problem that will become vastly less serious three generations from now.
The subject is usually called "digital literacy", although it's often paired with "digital citizenship" because they're closely related or taught together. You might also include "credibility," "media literacy," or "social media literacy."
Including "K-12" or "curriculum" will get you more resources that teachers might use.
Every high school english class I took covered this, save for British Literature. The problem is that grade school is inundated with busywork, memorization, and standardized test prep that no one but the top students cares about anything beyond their SAT score, if not just passing classes.
Grade school needs to be rethought entirely. It's completely broken for the Information Age; no one needs to bother with memorizing minutia anymore, we need to focus on critical thinking.
Personal hot take: memorization still serves both practical and brain developmental goals.
Most kids nowadays can't even do basic single digit multiplication in their heads. Because they never memorized tables.
How they're going to work through complex higher math problems efficiently, when every multiplication (and therefore every division) is a trip to the calculator, is beyond me.
And furthermore, I can't believe all that memorization happened without changes in brain structure, especially at those ages.
IMHO, we need to re-evaluate what we're having them memorize, and probably reduce the amount in favor of more critical thinking, but there's still a requirement for it.
If nothing else, so that you're prepared for higher education, where one of the goals is to cram the fundamental information for your profession into imediate recall.
Right, yes. There are certainly some things you need to know off the top of your head to facilitate learning. Generally the sets of data we explicitly have to memorize are fine- I’m more talking about exams where you’re tested over minutia rather than your understanding of the content as a whole.
For example, I took a history exam where it asked “which of these books was not important to the civil rights movement?” listing three books explicitly mentioned in one sentence of the text and one that wasn’t. That’s the kind of memorization we need to get rid of- we need to be teaching people how to analyze concepts as a whole rather than simply being able to regurgitate the text.
> invest in education, and give people the ability to spend 30 extra seconds critically thinking about the information they see and where it came from
Where might people who are long out of school receive such an education, if they are not seeking it? And what if it doesn't work as well as you hope it would?
doing nothing is also a choice, with consequences(which are observably harmful) should be considered against the possible benefits/consequences of trying.
To me it is seems worth the attempt, but I'm also not an expert in education policy
> doing nothing is also a choice, with consequences(which are observably harmful) should be considered against the possible benefits/consequences of trying.
> To me it is seems worth the attempt, but I'm also not an expert in education policy
My point is that relying on an ill-specified "invest[ment] in education" with idealistic hopes for its effectiveness is pretty much equivalent to "doing nothing." The people who most need it will not seek it out. If it works (a big if) and it's incorporated into compulsory education, it'll take at least a decade to show any results at all, and whole generation or two to work its way through the population and have a chance to actually solve the problem. And like another commenter mentioned, it's not like our current educational system hasn't been trying to instill critical thinking since before any of us were born, so I have little hope that some new investment will solve that problem.
Relying on education in this case is like having window break during a rainstorm and deciding to fix the problem by ordering a new window from the manufacturer, with a lead time of a month. That might eventually fix the broken window, but it's not going to solve the problem of rain pouring through the broken window now. If you've got a rainy month ahead, the incomplete solution may even lead to more problems, like mold.
This is a problem that requires both long-term strategic and shorter-term tactical solutions.
Nobody in government or political class wants people to actually think critically. They want people to blindly swallow whatever they are told from "approved sources" and consider any dissenting opinions to be "fake news". Its in nobody's interest except the individual's to think critically. You don't need to look very far in any direction right now to see how frowned upon critical thought is
Would be nice if people invested their own money if they felt like it, and kept their hands out of my pocket.
With the atrocious behavior of teacher unions, ignorant government initiatives, and corruption of boards, the education sector is due to be burned, leveled, and completely reinvented at this point.
that's part of living in a society. I agree the current state of education could use a major overhaul, but even what's in your pocket doesn't have inherent value. It is entirely dependent on the strength of the Country issuing its currency. It is ultimately self defeating to desire the country go to shit so you can pay a few less % in taxes
Teach kids in schools how to be critical of all you read? Teach them persuasion techniques and how to spot them, logical fallacies and how to understand them. If your stated goal is really fighting misinformation this will do.
If your stated goal, however, is indoctrination, then yes indeed you need a $1B contract to "fight misinformation with misinformation"
How about a "Modern Propaganda Techniques" class? In other words, here's how you deceive people and here are tips on effective sophistry. Maybe if you train people to see the patterns that will be enough.
I might have misunderstood what you meant. Of course the teacher would know about identifying deception.
I thought you were looking for a way to teach others without using partisan examples/current events because that would imply taking a stand on the issue. And, if you took a stand that might turn people off.
Perhaps people could use various examples from history on now 'settled issues' like prohibition and free-silver. Show them what kind of underhanded techniques they used and ask them to try a modern digital campaign.
> I thought you were looking for a way to teach others without using partisan examples/current events because that would imply taking a stand on the issue. And, if you took a stand that might turn people off.
These sorts of ideas are precisely what I was inquiring about. You seem to be implying that any claim that's involved in partisan politics is either impervious to critical thinking, or that we ought to avoid thinking about such a claim critically because it might upset some people. In either case, that would be the extreme opposite of what any class that teaches critical thinking ought to be teaching.
>"You seem to be implying that any claim that's involved in partisan politics is either impervious to critical thinking, or that we ought to avoid thinking about such a claim critically because it might upset some people."
I wasn't trying to imply that, but I do see how what I wrote was viewed that way. I was looking at this from the angle of the class being an elective. From that perspective, you would be hard-pressed to present modern issues in a way that doesn't alienate half (presumably) of the prospective students. I'm not saying it can't be done but I don't know how to design such a curriculum.
I feel like you'd have to ease in to examining current partisan issues, otherwise the cognitive dissonance would be too strong. Otherwise I think half of the students would just shut down and not take any lessons to heart.
Okay, I see what you’re saying, but that’s literally what thinking critically is. It’s vital that one be taught to identify when they’re not thinking critically. Perhaps it is the case that many people simply refuse to think critically, in which case education about how to think critically is clearly not the problem.
Educate people to be independent thinkers capable of assessing facts rationally. That is a threat to some people who don't want their sacred cows challenged so we are where we are today.
- making data easily accessible and publishing our own narratives
- building better consensus mechanisms, which can be federated in nature
One of our problems in the US is the media spreading its own misinformation — eg, hyper focusing on a few dozen wrongfully killed black men, while ignoring the thousands dead from depolicing. That kind of misinformation for the sake of narrative has literally killed thousands of Americans.
Contrarily, Russian “misinformation” tends to focus on actual but inconvenient facts — such as US institutions suppressing negative coverage of the Bidens, emphasizing Bidens racist/sexist policies, emphasizing the hypocrisy of the wealthy, etc.
We can’t fight foreign influence operations by way of selective truth telling by bolstering the domestic propaganda — as these programs tend to suggest.
We must innovate better tools for an informed citizenry.
I would agree if I hadn't had such a vast array of experience trying to counter misinformation in my online interactions with others already. I blame the bullshit asymmetry principle, aka Brandolini's Law.
Edit: This could be as simple as something that someone heard once and genuinely believes, passing on old wives' tales. Trying to combat a dedicated disinformation adversary is even more difficult.
Right speech is only a natural outcome of free speech if you have a very disciplined population. (Disciplined intellectually, morally, perhaps other ways as well.) Without that... not so much.
So, do we have that kind of population? Examine the empirical evidence. Do we?
I'm not in favor of censorship, but your position here doesn't work.
The point is to be aware that it is happening. Are you suggesting just letting Senators amplify the message that Hillary Clinton drinks baby blood and is a demon, and 20% of the population believes it? When do you step in and say, "Ok dipshits, stop making shit up to scare the rubes"? Or are you OK with just streams of shit clogging the channels, like Bannon suggested?
EDIT: At some point we need some kind of factual moderation. We can't have the US turn into 4chan, it needs a DanG to stay like HN. I don't buy all your slippery slope paranoia, right now the US is turning into a shit-show because half the country is running around saying "well nothing is really true borkborkbork" and electing autocratic criminals. Fuck. That.
a full decade ago, this image macro was made https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/just-go-on-the-internet-and-t... with the point being that it's ridiculous to assume that everything you read on the Web is truthful. this was understood by everyone who had used the Internet for more than a week. what happened to get us to the point where people like yourself expect, nay demand that the Web contains only truth? how is this mythical Truth supposed to be determined?
Do you really want the government deciding what disinformation is and having the authority to silence it? Remember, Trump was president less than a year ago.
Honestly, I'm frustrated as hell that known bullshit is taken as truth (flat earth? come on!) and I agree with other responses (including yours) that picking one person or group to be "the authority" clearly is a target for manipulation. But when is enough, enough? There was a time when academics were the source of truth, and yes, sometimes they bone it, but they at least try to correct it. I dunno, I'm ready to go back to that, because this free-for-all of "alternative facts" can't be a good thing, can it?
All it takes is one look at the reproducibility crisis to know that “academics” are just
as corrupt, greedy, and politics driven as any politician.
Thing is, flat earth is easy to point at and yell “lies!”
How about the Trump/Russia collusion? Pushed by powerful interests with an axe to grind, and in the end debunked. But there are many who believe there is more there than meets the eye. Perhaps they are right.
Frankly, “disinformation” labels, given by any authority, can and will be manipulated. People calling for that are idiots who can’t understand second order effects of their choices.
You act like there is one objective reality, and you know it and others don’t. This is false.
“Alternative facts” are differences of opinion on things that 99% of people have no personal knowledge of.
Does Hilary Clinton eat babies? Hell, I don’t know. I’d say probably not. But one of her top donors, Ed Buck, did just get charged with tying up homeless black men and injecting them with meth to OD them while He got off.
Who knows? Not you, not me.
TLDR: None of us have the proper insight to truly discern “misinformation” despite what we think. I may get downvoted to hell, but this is the truth.
Our world is shaped by narratives outside of our control.
> Thing is, flat earth is easy to point at and yell “lies!”
> You act like there is one objective reality, ... This is false.
They got you. Because you just contradicted yourself. Why did you do that? On top of it, you are reciting a certain political party's claims. That's a dead giveaway.
WE could start simple.
1. The earth is not flat
But you already believe this not to be true, or you do, I can't tell because you're reply is mishmash Bannon-esque nonsense.
I don’t know what “Brannon-esque” means. I feel like you’re butt hurt that I used more right wing examples.
Let me shift. “I don’t know if Trump made up the Obama birth certificate scandal for publicity. But Trump has bent the truth like an Olympic gymnast in the past, so maybe.”
My point about the flat earth comment, is there are low hanging fruit of obvious lies that are used to push for labels of misinformation on non-objective opinions.
I know, for a fact, the earth is not flat. As a submarine radioman, I relied on this fact for everything from navigation to satcomms.
I do not know HRC or Trump personally, so I only have my views that were fed to me through the distorted lens of the media, my own experiences, and personal biases.
Try reading again for comprehension, and not deceptively editing my quotes next time.
Idk what you think is actually going to happen here though. This is a DoD program targeting global adversaries. I seriously doubt their policy is going to be finding misleading Facebook posts and issuing takedown requests. They're probably looking for major sources of disinformation campaigns to target for countermeasures. They really can't go after US citizens.
Developing a technology, if it's not kept strictly contained (and honestly, who thinks that's really possible), means that it can be uses by others and for purposes not originally intended.
This isn't a "don't make it, it will only lead to problems" stance, as I think it's going to come about no matter what, but I think it's naive of us to assume it won't make it's way into use in some way against us as well. In this case it's fairly simple to see happening. Company that develops this creates separate division with talent from this program (or they leave to form separate company), and they market this in a way that it is used by some company/state against US citizens. We should just assume that at this point.
You have more faith in the US government than I do. I could see them finding out that there exists, for example, a campaign by global adversaries to spread vaccine misinformation. It's an easy step for them to start gathering and investigating all anti-vaccine posts with a certain size following on social media networks whether they are posted by a US citizen or not, in order to determine if they are related. Sure, the military can't act against US citizens directly, but they could easily hand them off to the FBI, who can.
I'll wait and see, though, I guess. It will be interesting to see what "misinformation" they decide to go after first. It's not liking choosing their target could be easily abused or anything.
The FBI creates a group, invites all of them to join, proposes a terror plot, arrests all of them for being in a terror group, and pats themselves on the back for another job well done.
Posting anti-vax material isn't illegal. If they find actual illegal material like promoting violence or insurrection, then great because that's a punishable crime.
1.) The Russia and China do not fall under the purview of this contract as pointed out in another comment.
2.) Since this is paid for by the Gov't it does fall under the 1st amendment and I have a heard time believing that if it was systematically abused that it would go unnoticed or unchallenged.
3.) Do you suggest that no countermeasures be taken against weaponized misinformation and recruiting? Particularly given how well demonstrated its (foreign propaganda's) efficacy is?
It sounds like the goal is to hoover up social media data to generate intelligence that can be used to target propaganda sources (I imagine this could be anything from imposing sanctions to cyber sabotage to sharing suspicious activity with social media companies.)
It's not like the DoD is going to be flagging FB posts. It's likely a program designed to disrupt foreign interference in our affairs. It's an intelligence program. In this space, it's specifically ISIS recruiting efforts.
I feel like you have a gross misinterpretation of what the DoD's mandate is...
Well, here's an innocent, well-meaning American - not a bot or a shill - who has decided, for whatever reason, that RT is a trustworthy source of information. They regularly repost what RT says on Facebook. Now, what are you going to do? Block them as a source of disinformation (because what they are reposting is in fact disinformation)? Or allow them to keep going, because they are innocent and confused?
You might want to read up on them. Getting people to go 'oh its all the same' is pretty much the mission of these types of outlets. RT works by seeming like just another news source while subtly pushing the agenda on key issues of the Russian state.
The simpler story would have been trump is a chump surrounded by grasping idiots who could be used / supported by Russia. I thought that would have been a bit easier to argue for than this big collusion.
MH17 is very illustrative example in the context of OP. The MH17 coverage was a massive pure propaganda battle - no major media on either side voiced the true story (ie. the story compatible with all the related "before-the-fact" evidence). RT was doing bidding of its masters and trying to dismiss the truly obvious fact (confirmed by multiple "before-the-fact" evidence) that the rebels shot MH17 down mistaking it for Ukrainian military transport while the West media completely dismissed the fact that a bit more than 2 weeks before the MH17 the rebels captured an Ukrainian Buk launcher - that story [1] was widely publicized in Ukrainian and Russian media and confirmed by Ukrainian military at the time (i.e. "before-the-fact") - and doubled down instead on the unrealistic, yet politically very effective, theory of Russia transferring rebels a single Buk launcher "confirmed" only by the very bad grainy images surfacing only "after-the-fact" of MH17 shooting as well as dismissing various less direct evidence like the shrapnel type, related twitter posts made before-the-fact, etc.
If you block them(the user for spreading 'disinformation) , they will just move on to a different social media platform that's less/not moderated = Parler, Gab, MeWe, Gettr, 4chan /pol/ .
If you block RT, don't be surprised to see BBC, NPR, CBC and other (govt funded) news outlets banned as well in many territories. People have a distrust for their own governments - because its their own government that spies on them and has the ability to oppress them.
A Russian will trust US media more than his countries own media because they are heavily influenced by the government. Same goes for many US consumers. Media/News company owners have a close relationship with the government.
And you don't even need to generate the propaganda. The internet is so full of voices that you just silence anyone who doesn't fit your agenda.
What's even more worrying is if one of the 'adversaries' gains control of this system. Maybe Russia or China is deliberating sowing division and dysfunction in the country, and has bought off a few key officials. How would we know? Anyone investigating the topic would be silenced by the same mechanism.
I wouldn't be so confident they actual combat misinfomration in any way shape or form. My guess is $950mm of this money goes into the bank accounts of politically connected people, and $50mm is spent fecklessly pretending to do their job for the sake of covering their asses.
Readers might note what a "task order" is. It's explained in the article, but this is an additional order on top of a contract they were already awarded and have been fulfilling since 2016. Also, Russia and China are not under the purview of CENTCOM, so this has nothing to do with attributing posts to Russian and Chinese troll farms. This specific effort's main purpose is to counter ISIS social media recruiting.
The United States Central Command (USCENTCOM or CENTCOM) is one of the eleven unified combatant commands of the U.S. Department of Defense.
Its Area of Responsibility (AOR) includes the Middle East, including Egypt in Africa, and Central Asia and parts of South Asia. The command has been the main American presence in many military operations, including the Persian Gulf War's Operation Desert Storm in 1991, the War in Afghanistan, and the Iraq War from 2003 to 2011. As of 2015, CENTCOM forces are deployed primarily in Afghanistan under the auspices of Operation Freedom's Sentinel, which is itself part of NATO's Resolute Support Mission (from 2015 to the present), and in Iraq and Syria as part of Operation Inherent Resolve since 2014 in supporting and advise-and-assist roles.
The U.S. Army Central area of responsibility (AOR) spans more than 4 million square miles, stretching from Northeast Africa, across the Middle East, to Central and South Asia.
The 20 nations of the AOR include: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen.
> This specific effort's main purpose is to counter ISIS social media recruiting.
I have a feeling these people aren't fighting us simply because of bad information somewhere. I also highly doubt spending $1 billion in this way isn't going to simply harden their resolve or drive them further underground.
All I can think of is two countries paying mountains of money to write lies about each other on the internet, and whomever has the most people/bots wins.
It does mean there are some nice things we cannot have.
Anonymity. Freedom. Access to weapons of mass destruction. Access to precursors of weapons of mass destruction. Access to bulk amounts of precursors that can be used to synthesize controlled substances.
If everyone played nice, we could have the absolute form of all of these things. In reality, we can't.
Yeah, but NATO was better, and they "won" because of it. Most people in the West are still completely unaware of the close operational ties between huge "trusted" media firms like BBC, Reuters, literal NATO propaganda outlets like VoA and RFE/RL, and NATO intelligence agencies. In this respect, the Cold War never ended.
Misinformation is extremely hard to counter because it's hard to attribute information correctly. Conspiracy theorists may be flagged as state actors by mistake and then have their media countered publicly. This amplifies their message and validates their concern.
If their concerns are validated, are they still "conspiracy theorists"?
I mean, this reads a bit like "don't kill rabbits or else those people who say you kill rabbits will be further validated with their conspiracy theories!"
It validates the concern in their mind. I should have added that. It may depend on the conspiracy though. If your conspiracy is around government propaganda, it may objectively be validated by being countered by propaganda.
Misinformation is hard to counter because ignorant are easily persuaded by what they want to hear regardless of authenticity. It’s primarily why people prefer news only from certain sources that fit their political lean or why some people prefer social media gossip over news.
Its more fundamental than that. People are biased, will consciously disregard information that runs counter to their biases even when they know its true. There is almost nobody who is truly committed to the truth for the sake of the truth. People will compromise to lies for all sorts of reasons. Its Human nature.
Objectivity is an identifiable and measurable personality trait. It’s rare, but not as rare as you suggest. Objectivity is completely orthogonal to intelligence and generally inflates the appearance of a person’s intelligence but can also do the opposite if counter to a deeply invested truth.
The Streisand Effect refers to the outcome of an attempt to suppress information, eg. having your lawyer threaten to sue a news organization. The attempt need not be successful.
Maybe more clearly - the Sreisand Effect is the resultant *BackLash* to censorship attempts
Censorship happens.
Censorship attempts happen.
The Streisand Effect is a backlash to the failed attempt at censoring something which a minority wants to keep information from a majority.
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I think there are some higher-level Streisand-Effects that we have yet to experience.
Of which, it will always, ultimately, manifest as a violent act against those who are publishing (regardless of medium), information which the opposing elite(^Citation Needed) - want to quell...
It's quite similar, but you're technically right according to the wiki definition. I think both evoke similar feelings in the original poster or poster's Internet social circle.
What would you have the DoD do? They don't set budget priorities, the civilian government does. The military is completely subordinate to congress and the President. They're spending money as they see fit, and those purse strings are controlled by legislators.
The "US government" isn't a monolithic block. If you want change, vote and convince others to do the same. But to complain that the DoD should be spending their money elsewhere is just not how it works.
I feel like someone missed highschool civics class...
Lol, you know why governments loveeeee bureaucracy? Cause people like you looooooove to point out "oh thats not how you're supposed to complain about the budget."
I don't get to pick and choose where my taxes go, so for all intents and purposes, all of the government is fair to criticize.
> "I feel like someone missed highschool civics class... "
A high school civics class is not, and should not be necessary to criticize the government. Stop gatekeeping how criticism has to work.
Are you trolling at this point? I'm not saying you can't criticize the government, I'm saying you clearly lack knowledge of how the government works. Roasting the DoD for spending money they were allotted by elected representatives is literally how the process works. Complete waste of time and a total misunderstanding of how the government functions.
Is your point that DoD shouldn't address threats until we have socialized medicine and end racism? This thread is nothing but straw men and moving goal posts.
A lot of that covid “misinformation” is simply stuff that goes against the narrative that covid is Black Plague 2.0. The fact that anybody who disagrees with our covid policies gets cast as a spreader of “misinformation” is exactly why crap like this $1B contract has no business existing.
When the only voices allowed to speak are a very specific set of voices, that is some scary shit.
If the DoD (and other agencies, and for that matter government(s) in general) were more upright and transparent about what they were doing and why it was necessary and why it was in the best in the best interest of those funding it or being asked to sacrifice for it, there would probably be much less incentive and opportunity for disinformation in the first place.
Deception and corruption and cover ups lead to mistrust. Mistrust leads to misinformation. You can't try to put the toothpaste back in the tube at that point. You must be trustworthy from the beginning, even if it's easier to deceive, even if "people are too dumb to get it", even if none of the choices are politically nice sounding, even if really bad mistakes have been made in the past.
I wonder if they've considered just allowing people to say what they want. Maybe they could create some form of legal provision, perhaps even an amendment to our constitution, which would allow for freedom of speech. Thoughts on this idea?
Plato's Five Regimes - we're basically skipping straight to the end.
There is no going back once we are there, so I hope you have all your ducks in a row and have enjoyed everything you wanted to before we arrive. Once were there, it's over; for everyone.
Kinda off topic but when I see how much politicians are struggling with infrastructure for years and finally now there is a bill with the $1B bill in infrastructure (and in reality it’s $500M in new investment). But at the same time we see so many agencies spending billions here and there... I think some process of how the gov works should be rethought. And how budgeting works too.
In the end American taxpayers will be shelling out $50/word for ineffective propaganda aimed mostly at home. Nothing can be done about it in this broken country. Maybe my response is "misinformation" too. Just grinning while I bear it, I guess.
This is blatantly unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Supreme Court has already ruled in the past that it is unconstitutional for the government to punt to the private sector infringements on the constitution that it is prevented from doing itself.
What about this is blatantly unconstitutional? The linked article isn't particularly specific, "countering misinformation" could mean replying to "misinformation" with debunking facts. Unless there's something else I'm missing, this seems like an overreaction.
Disclaimer: I’m not an American, definitely not a lawyer.
But I agree with your take. The wording in the linked text makes it seem to have much more to do with counter-messaging than preventing or stifling speech in the first place.
> Do you really think the US government should have the power to force you to "debunk" something?
You're the only one suggesting that the government might be forcing anyone to do anything.
Calling this a blatant first amendment violation is an over the top knee-jerk reaction to the headline; it's a hot take that is completely unsubstantiated in the article itself.
>This is blatantly unconstitutional under the First Amendment.
Uh. Maybe inside US borders, re: speech by US nationals. I don't see how this could be unconstitutional if we're talking about 'speech' in say the form of blog, news, video posts by non-US nationals, hosted outside of the US.
> Supreme Court has already ruled in the past that it is unconstitutional for the government to punt to the private sector infringements on the constitution that it is prevented from doing itself.
That may be, but that also seems to be remarkably underenforced in any case.
Blocking it? Unconstitutional (I hope) for US nationals.
Countering it? If an employee of a government contractor shows up here, says "Actually AnimalMuppet is a Russian disinformation operator, don't believe anything he says", is that a violation of my constitutional rights? IANAL, but I would say no, not if my original post isn't removed. (It might still be libel, though.)
Saying that someone else is wrong is not censorship.
> If an employee of a government contractor shows up here, says "Actually AnimalMuppet is a Russian disinformation operator, don't believe anything he says", is that a violation of my constitutional rights?
If that contractor then says to HN - you must ban them, or you must put a user flair saying they are a spy. Then yes, it is a violation of the first amendment.
Given that this is the DoD, isn't the Third Amendment also relevant?
"No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law."
If the government wants to fight a cyberwar on civilian property, it needs to put into law exactly what abilities it is giving itself, and actually declare such a war so we know who the supposed enemies are.
