Roberto von Archimboldi on Nostr: this is interesting. Thank you everyone. There are few unresolved here. My major ...
this is interesting. Thank you everyone. There are few unresolved here. My major objection is that there is a world of difference between targeted espionage of a political figure, a la the NYT bureau chief, and mass surveillance +/- propoganda. The person quoted elides the two and, for me, that is just 'red scare' propoganda.
As some of the participants here have pointed out though, control of social media is a powerful political tool. This is undeniable, though, for my money, some versions of it are overblown in at least two dimensions.
Dimension one is that there is an ideal liberal democratic that has been corrupted by nefarious forces. The worst version of that is the antisemitic one in which the Democratic party is/ was commited to the destruction of Gaza because of AIPAC/'the Jewish lobby'. Nobody here has made that ludicrous claim, but that Trump or Brexit are somehow the result of evil billionaires flooding the zoned with shit comes close. These are powerful, political movements of a section of the establishment that garnered political support largely because of a failure of the other parts of the establishment and also of the revolutionary left.
Dimension two is an overestimation of the power of data collection. The surveillance tech industry has a lot of data to sell. They want the buyers to believe that they can do miracles with it. As far as I can see though, Cambridge Analytica's success was down to having a very large database and a very large amount of money. They threw a lot, and I mean a lot, of mud at the wall and some of it stuck.
If I am right about those two dimensions, the problem with social media is in fact a problem with our political leadership. They have terrible agendas and that is going to be amplified through social media because the agenda is already out there and it is well funded. Ultimately that brings me back to my 'red scare' observation. The CCP is not my friend but nor is either flavour of the US establishment ( as Nyere said, the US is a one party state but with typical American exuberance they have two of them). We need both sides to lose and until they have who controls the media is not a massive issue. The issue is who is in control of both the missiles and the agenda
As some of the participants here have pointed out though, control of social media is a powerful political tool. This is undeniable, though, for my money, some versions of it are overblown in at least two dimensions.
Dimension one is that there is an ideal liberal democratic that has been corrupted by nefarious forces. The worst version of that is the antisemitic one in which the Democratic party is/ was commited to the destruction of Gaza because of AIPAC/'the Jewish lobby'. Nobody here has made that ludicrous claim, but that Trump or Brexit are somehow the result of evil billionaires flooding the zoned with shit comes close. These are powerful, political movements of a section of the establishment that garnered political support largely because of a failure of the other parts of the establishment and also of the revolutionary left.
Dimension two is an overestimation of the power of data collection. The surveillance tech industry has a lot of data to sell. They want the buyers to believe that they can do miracles with it. As far as I can see though, Cambridge Analytica's success was down to having a very large database and a very large amount of money. They threw a lot, and I mean a lot, of mud at the wall and some of it stuck.
If I am right about those two dimensions, the problem with social media is in fact a problem with our political leadership. They have terrible agendas and that is going to be amplified through social media because the agenda is already out there and it is well funded. Ultimately that brings me back to my 'red scare' observation. The CCP is not my friend but nor is either flavour of the US establishment ( as Nyere said, the US is a one party state but with typical American exuberance they have two of them). We need both sides to lose and until they have who controls the media is not a massive issue. The issue is who is in control of both the missiles and the agenda