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.
The truth is half of the population is dumber than the average, but the other half is smarter than average. Groups of people are susceptible to bias just like individuals. At least when people vote we know they are considering their own interests.
If you evaluate it on a longer timeline, people achieve a greater political intelligence because of increased voter participation and a quicker policy feedback loop.
Yeah, collectively, humans are still idiots. That being said, we do have a decent amount of technological promise and maybe just enough idealism in our blood to sustain the species. It's probably worth a try.
They apparently do have their own problems and pressures that need to be balanced, but that’s why we don’t just say everyone can decide anything, but with some rules and regulations I really think it can work … I mean it seems to *be* working - just analyze Switzerland.
There is still a need for an Environmental Protection Agency, an Anti Corruption agency, a Police etc, but it seems much closer to the ideal of what a democratic society should look like than what I can see in my own country.
I’ve always thought why not try that out, sure there would be some blunders, but it would be made by us, ourselves, so we can always revisit, fix and learn.
The premise of Humanism is that people should decide for their own future.
It also means we won’t hide the bible in Latin and we’ll translate it in current languages; In other words we’ll educate people. If you don’t trust people, that means school is failing, but remember that we’ve invented democracy in the 1700 across the world, when schools weren’t briliant either. And it was a much better system than anything else. And it outran any other system ever.
Maybe you are not in favour of democracy. Many people support despotism because they think [place any way to choose leaders] will be better.
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).
I've seen no evidence that the democracy model employed across large parts of the western world and elsewhere, is anything other than criminal. Its like watching a punch and judy show where the public get to chose their puppets, but the shadowy puppeteers are lurking in the background, mainly wearing or have worn fancy dress.
:)
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.
I'm fine with distaste for Trump and the realities of disinformation campaigns, but the focus of the Twitter files in this regard is clearly specific to the false Russia Trump connection propagated by Dem polticians and leftists.
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.
Ever heard of Edward Snowden? I mean that's just for starters https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2013/06/05/nsas-v...
The NSA (a US intelligence organization) has verifiably been conducting widespread surveillance of US citizens on US soil for decades.
This is an extremely naive statement with no basis in history. At least you recognize that Russian election interference had little, if any impact on the 2016 election.
Just incredible. Thanks for giving me a hearty laugh. Make sure to refill your pitcher of kool-aid, I see you're running low!
An unbelievably naive statement.
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 dossier that was used as a basis for launching all of this in the first place: "Main Steele dossier source Igor Danchenko was FBI operative: court document" https://nypost.com/2022/09/14/main-steele-dossier-source-igo...
Actually it was discovered that the Clinton campaign paying for "opposition research" was in turn the source of that fake dossier.
The whole thing was made up, that's not even controversial at this point. The fact that you're on here citing those documents as if it wasn't just proves the pervasiveness of the corruption of our system of democracy and media.
Here's coverage on all of this from the journalist that broke the Snowden story and is maligned by our state/corporate/fascist media outlets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-lg5RU8xAI
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.
