Row 2508

Row ID: 2508 | Dataset Entry | Axioma AXP Content Repository

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Wanted to remind everyone how much more sophisticated the political propaganda machine has gotten since the days of astroturfing and sockpuppet accounts. I read Woolley's last book earlier this year because this kind of stuff interests me. He talks about campaigns by private actors using tens of thousands of bots on social media to shape public opinion & perception. They're sophisticated enough that, when he was writing last year, operators would take over for a bot when interactions with real accounts got the person on the other end suspicious. The cost of doing this is only getting cheaper, and there are people out there running solo missions to boost their pet projects. This has led to what he refers to as the *democratization of propaganda*, and it is used to *manufacture consensus*. I think I've interacted with some of these bots, which can only have gotten more capable.

There's a relevant, interesting video about ["collective illusions" with Todd Rose](https://youtu.be/BD_Euf_CBbs?si=ZeB5y3ueGdif_ysz). Collective illusions "are situations where most people in a group go along with a view they don't agree with because they incorrectly believe that most people agree with it ... the majority thinks the majority believes something that they don't ... the most damaging consequence is that *an illusion in one generation tends to become the private opinion of the next generation*."

If there's one business that's contributed more to our understanding of the Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic mind, it's advertising. Advertisers continue to research the most appropriate number of exclamation points that would reliably influence our behavior towards buying whatever they're selling. Advertisers had the whole 20th century to practice but they couldn't tell you exactly how much money the billboard on the side of the road was bringing in since everybody sees it but not everybody buys. This was addressed when shopping online became an option and you could be tracked from click to purchase. In 2009, Google introduced customized search: no longer would Google show you the most broadly popular search results, they would show you what they thought you were most likely to click on. Since then, everyone's experience of the internet has been different. Online retailers change not only their page layouts but prices based on what they already know about you before their homepage finishes loading. Focus groups and surveys are still a thing, but thousands of AB tests are done every day to everyone. It's automated. The 21st century, however, is already the century of AI. When it gets good enough, nobody will be better at hacking human behavior, and it won't take long for it to recognize vulnerabilities in our collective and individual psychologies we don't even know are there. This is inevitable.

So as you go out there and try to increase awareness, alert the masses, expose the lies, I urge you to take some comfort in the fact that your opposition may very well be people following the lead of privately operated bot armies *as well as the bots themselves*.

This is what I believe we're seeing as public opinion is shifting about Gaza. When a screenshot means you can't take back a tweet, what can you do but repeat your denial, and who better to repeat it than thousands of bots that do it when prompted automatically. They're sophisticated enough on their own to not need human intervention as often as before, and they know when to delete their comments and posts or make them private if they can't steer the conversation or information is being shared they don't want to be shared.

I'm not saying they're all bots, but the efficiency and speed with which they downvote anything sympathetic towards Palestinians on every corner of reddit has been almost mechanical.

These are human thoughts, by the way. Not a bot.

FieldValue
text Wanted to remind everyone how much more sophisticated the political propaganda machine has gotten since the days of astroturfing and sockpuppet accounts. I read Woolley's last book earlier this year because this kind of stuff interests me. He talks about campaigns by private actors using tens of thousands of bots on social media to shape public opinion & perception. They're sophisticated enough that, when he was writing last year, operators would take over for a bot when interactions with real…
label r/propaganda
dataType post
communityName r/propaganda
datetime 2023-10-24
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Raw Record

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  "text": "Wanted to remind everyone how much more sophisticated the political propaganda machine has gotten since the days of astroturfing and sockpuppet accounts.   I read Woolley's last book earlier this year because this kind of stuff interests me. He talks about campaigns by private actors using tens of thousands of bots on social media to shape public opinion & perception. They're sophisticated enough that, when he was writing last year, operators would take over for a bot when interactions with real accounts got the person on the other end suspicious. The cost of doing this is only getting cheaper, and there are people out there running solo missions to boost their pet projects. This has led to what he refers to as the *democratization of propaganda*, and it is used to *manufacture consensus*. I think I've interacted with some of these bots, which can only have gotten more capable.   \n\nThere's a relevant, interesting video about [\"collective illusions\" with Todd Rose](https://youtu.be/BD_Euf_CBbs?si=ZeB5y3ueGdif_ysz). Collective illusions \"are situations where most people in a group go along with a view they don't agree with because they incorrectly believe that most people agree with it ... the majority thinks the majority believes something that they don't ... the most damaging consequence is that *an illusion in one generation tends to become the private opinion of the next generation*.\"  \n\nIf there's one business that's contributed more to our understanding of the Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic mind, it's advertising. Advertisers continue to research the most appropriate number of exclamation points that would reliably influence our behavior towards buying whatever they're selling. Advertisers had the whole 20th century to practice but they couldn't tell you exactly how much money the billboard on the side of the road was bringing in since everybody sees it but not everybody buys. This was addressed when shopping online became an option and you could be tracked from click to purchase. In 2009, Google introduced customized search: no longer would Google show you the most broadly popular search results, they would show you what they thought you were most likely to click on. Since then, everyone's experience of the internet has been different. Online retailers change not only their page layouts but prices based on what they already know about you before their homepage finishes loading. Focus groups and surveys are still a thing, but thousands of AB tests are done every day to everyone. It's automated.  The 21st century, however, is already the century of AI. When it gets good enough, nobody will be better at hacking human behavior, and it won't take long for it to recognize vulnerabilities in our collective and individual psychologies we don't even know are there. This is inevitable.  \n\nSo as you go out there and try to increase awareness, alert the masses, expose the lies, I urge you to take some comfort in the fact that your opposition may very well be people following the lead of privately operated bot armies *as well as the bots themselves*.   \n\nThis is what I believe we're seeing as public opinion is shifting about Gaza. When a screenshot means you can't take back a tweet, what can you do but repeat your denial, and who better to repeat it than thousands of bots that do it when prompted automatically. They're sophisticated enough on their own to not need human intervention as often as before, and they know when to delete their comments and posts or make them private if they can't steer the conversation or information is being shared they don't want to be shared.  \n\nI'm not saying they're all bots, but the efficiency and speed with which they downvote anything sympathetic towards Palestinians on every corner of reddit has been almost mechanical.  \n\nThese are human thoughts, by the way. Not a bot.",
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