What we now see is an evolution into social media.
Al Jazeera had prepared a story on the tentacles AIPAC had into US politics, but at the time Mohammed bin Salman was making serious noises about invading Qatar,one of the reasons being Al Jazeera's reportage.
The story was dropped and MbS was persuaded to back off.
https://www.justsecurity.org/69094/timeline-on-jared-kushner...
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/mideast/open-secret-saudi-arabi...
Surprising, unless the guys are actually just good at lying to potential customers, to fleece them of as much $$ as possible. I'm not saying they don't use sock puppet social media accounts, etc. but really, how would any of their customers know if it was at all effective? They wouldn't. After the fact, if they won, they wouldn't know if this helped, and if they lost, it's not like they could sue in court, or even just complain loudly to trash this group's reputation.
It seems quite ripe for inflated claims and ineffective results. Of course, they might also be trying, or who knows maybe even succeeding, but it would be a lot simpler just to put up a show for your customer and collect the money.
I don't see how the realities of such an industry wouldn't be a race to the bottom
A more interesting question is why haven't governments - or even the platforms themselves - worked hard to shut down these known vulnerabilities? Doesn't it undermine the trust of the users to know that there are professional organizations actively creating thousands of fake accounts that deliberately spread (at best) partisan propaganda and (at worst) outright disinformation? Doesn't it work against the lofty ideals of social media being a community space where real people can engage with one another? The fact the companies are so unresponsive to removing abusers shows their incentives are not aligned with those of their users.
The sad thing is we’re probably trivially close to the tech needed for direct democracy, but the powers that be use tech to confuse and supplant democratic institutions and propose their authoritarian rule.
Tech isn't the issue, making everyone find time to stay sufficiently informed is.
I already have one full-time job, I don't need 2-3 more (city and county which might be part-time, state, maybe federal).
:)
You know what is terrifying? That upon learning about Russia having a major hand in Western election, nothing concrete was done. In Britain we learned the whole Brexit movement was paid for, and manipulated by Russian money (and it was arguably a crucial milestone mentioned in the infamous Foundations of Geopolitics book), yet there was a little noise on printed media that went nowhere. No one investigated, no top politician jailed, just business as usual.
I'm not even sure that what they're selling us in our free Western countries is democracy at all.
If this was indeed a sarcastic comment, I would consider dialing back the subtlety so you don’t inadvertently appear to lend credence to misinformation currently being spread among less scrupulous portions of the population.
Did the Russians interfere in the US election? This is unquestionably true. The DNC did not leak their strategy docs by themselves.
Was Russian interference in the 2016 election decisive? Highly unlikely. Imo, it would be generous to say the effect was marginal at best.
In hindsight the whole thing was pretty stupid; and lines with the Russian government’s increasingly erratic and incompetent behavior. They could have achieved the same end with none of the blowback by just doing nothing.
These groups, some commercial and some governmental inside the US, Israel, Italy, and elsewhere, can hack the phones and mobile devices of Presidents/Prime Ministers, member of Congress/Parliament, Supreme Court justices, and the military. This presents the risk of blackmail/extortion being used to control critical decisions and actions made by these people every day. They are not shy about advertising these capabilities and the rules they put in place to limit damage mostly concern damage to the hacking groups, not to countries or people.
I'm not saying that votes are fixed (though I wouldn't be surprised), but lots of money goes into essentially buying seats of power.
The meddling in our elections was the social media companies suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story right before the election, which the media also claimed was "Russian ops" while Hunter since admitted it was his laptop (full of emails detailing the corruption in his family).
The amount of propaganda and lies that is fed to the American public through these corporate media outlets is absolutely astounding.
- https://www.justice.gov/file/1080281/download
- https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
- https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/ICA_2017_01.pdf
- https://www.intelligence.senate.gov/sites/default/files/docu...
- https://www.justice.gov/archives/sco/file/1373816/download
Spending some time flipping through these (ignore the last two if you please, one heavily redacted and the other focusing on Trump) after reading your comment makes me wonder if we live in two parallel universes that are in the process of converging.
The only official actions that should have been taken in response were sanctions or other international relations consequences for Russia. Trump's biggest failing on this issue was to not realize he could do this without compromising the legitimacy of his election.
There were concerted efforts to push messaging via left-wing sub-reddits. I saw how the narrative pushed had little logical basis towards achieving the ends they pretended to push. I watched as the trolls waxed and waned with the war effort. I watched the same spaces push anti-Ukraine messaging when it had nothing whatsoever to do with their claimed political goals. Then I watched most of them disappear after enough people pointed out what they were doing.
https://old.reddit.com/r/ActiveMeasures/comments/titwwg/fyi_...
I don't think that's entirely fair. There's been no political route open to prosecuting anyone for the above, but there's been plenty of concrete actions. Western opposition to Russia has increased substantially in recent years.
Would we have been as vigorous in our support for Ukraine and eager to supply weapons and all the other things if Russia hadn't been pulling off all these shenanigans? It probably had an effect and Russia is certainly facing consequences.
Western intelligence has also been a lot more proactive in combatting Russian misinformation.
“WASHINGTON (TND) — The latest Twitter files release shows the company knew there was no evidence of Russians spreading disinformation on the platform as Democrats pushed those accusations in the media.”
https://abcnews4.com/news/nation-world/russian-disinformatio...
Only one ?
Who is gonna protect you if the next village town or city decides your individual property is somehow theirs and they have the means and will to enforce it?
As much as you can prep to defend yourself against attacks bh other individuals, nobody around you is bannaed from forming a band/group/nation. And if they are banned, who is going to enforce it?
In the end it all comes down to the ability to direct violence, the society with the bigger stick wins in the end, and nations and systems of governance that can produce smaller sticks are just eventually snuffed from existence, no matter how bright egalitarian and fair they are to their participants … just look at Armenia, Georgia, Cechnia and Ukraine.
