Russian Trolls apparently to blame for 20% of TLJ discourse

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-t ... eets-study

This is a headline that exists now.

The Onion is over. Clickhole is dead. and I just...I don't know how to keep track of reality anymore. What...why? How?

[TGLS]

Just goes to show you Russian trolls have good taste in movies. Rimshot!

--

Honestly, I'm a little inclined to think this is a meta-Russian plot trying to make their intelligence-trolling efforts appear omnipotent.

[clearspira]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-t ... eets-study

This is a headline that exists now.

The Onion is over. Clickhole is dead. and I just...I don't know how to keep track of reality anymore. What...why? How?

1) What would they have to gain?

2) I didn't need no Russian bot to rile me up, Rian. Making Luke Skywalker a coward had done that to me before I left the cinema.

[LittleRaven]

Are you familiar with the concept of Too Cheap to Meter? Think spores. Most fungi don't bother doing much if anything to make sure their spores get to the 'right' place. They just make billions and billions of them, release them everywhere, and trust that at least of a few of them will find their way to the right spot.

That's what we're starting to see right now. Disinformation and propaganda campaigns have been with us for all of recorded history, and probably much longer. Heck, much of our earliest recorded history is literally propaganda. However, up until now, such campaigns have been relatively expensive. That didn't stop them from happening, but it did mean that they were targeted. Clearspira's question would apply: there would always be something meaningful to gain from a campaign, or it wouldn't happen.

Thanks to technology, that's changed. A bot can pump out the BS non stop for only a couple of pennies a month. Plug a server farm of bots into an algorithm that gives them a certain goal, and all kinds of strange things start happening. Even the smartest eggheads can't predict where such experiments will lead.

Facebook abandoned an experiment after two artificially intelligent programs appeared to be chatting to each other in a strange language only they understood.

If you're a Russian propagandist, then you're pretty happy if you can just sow chaos. Sure, ideally you'd control it somehow, but just generating it more than justifies your existence. I wouldn't be at all surprised if no human ever intended for TLJ to be part of anything. It just ended up getting swept up into the algorithm by a bot, and like ants following a chemical trail, others soon followed.

Meanwhile, very convincing, very cheap artificial video is coming. Soon. The world is about to get very weird.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-t ... eets-study

This is a headline that exists now.

The Onion is over. Clickhole is dead. and I just...I don't know how to keep track of reality anymore. What...why? How?

1) What would they have to gain?

2) I didn't need no Russian bot to rile me up, Rian. Making Luke Skywalker a coward had done that to me before I left the cinema.

Jedi are always cowards. When the shit gets tough, they go "oh dear, my hands are tied" and fuck right off. Yoda put off an awkward conversation till his very death bed.

[Admiral X]

When in doubt, blame the Russians.

[Karha of Honor]

Are you familiar with the concept of Too Cheap to Meter? Think spores. Most fungi don't bother doing much if anything to make sure their spores get to the 'right' place. They just make billions and billions of them, release them everywhere, and trust that at least of a few of them will find their way to the right spot.

That's what we're starting to see right now. Disinformation and propaganda campaigns have been with us for all of recorded history, and probably much longer. Heck, much of our earliest recorded history is literally propaganda. However, up until now, such campaigns have been relatively expensive. That didn't stop them from happening, but it did mean that they were targeted. Clearspira's question would apply: there would always be something meaningful to gain from a campaign, or it wouldn't happen.

Thanks to technology, that's changed. A bot can pump out the BS non stop for only a couple of pennies a month. Plug a server farm of bots into an algorithm that gives them a certain goal, and all kinds of strange things start happening. Even the smartest eggheads can't predict where such experiments will lead.

Facebook abandoned an experiment after two artificially intelligent programs appeared to be chatting to each other in a strange language only they understood.

If you're a Russian propagandist, then you're pretty happy if you can just sow chaos. Sure, ideally you'd control it somehow, but just generating it more than justifies your existence. I wouldn't be at all surprised if no human ever intended for TLJ to be part of anything. It just ended up getting swept up into the algorithm by a bot, and like ants following a chemical trail, others soon followed.

Meanwhile, very convincing, very cheap artificial video is coming. Soon. The world is about to get very weird.

We never had a more skeptical population. It's gonna be fine.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

Are you familiar with the concept of Too Cheap to Meter? Think spores. Most fungi don't bother doing much if anything to make sure their spores get to the 'right' place. They just make billions and billions of them, release them everywhere, and trust that at least of a few of them will find their way to the right spot.

That's what we're starting to see right now. Disinformation and propaganda campaigns have been with us for all of recorded history, and probably much longer. Heck, much of our earliest recorded history is literally propaganda. However, up until now, such campaigns have been relatively expensive. That didn't stop them from happening, but it did mean that they were targeted. Clearspira's question would apply: there would always be something meaningful to gain from a campaign, or it wouldn't happen.

Thanks to technology, that's changed. A bot can pump out the BS non stop for only a couple of pennies a month. Plug a server farm of bots into an algorithm that gives them a certain goal, and all kinds of strange things start happening. Even the smartest eggheads can't predict where such experiments will lead.

Facebook abandoned an experiment after two artificially intelligent programs appeared to be chatting to each other in a strange language only they understood.

If you're a Russian propagandist, then you're pretty happy if you can just sow chaos. Sure, ideally you'd control it somehow, but just generating it more than justifies your existence. I wouldn't be at all surprised if no human ever intended for TLJ to be part of anything. It just ended up getting swept up into the algorithm by a bot, and like ants following a chemical trail, others soon followed.

Meanwhile, very convincing, very cheap artificial video is coming. Soon. The world is about to get very weird.

We never had a more skeptical population. It's gonna be fine.

Do we? Because the last three years have really fried my capacity to assess what's probable or not. I lived through a hot sauce scandal and a clown panic.

Also if we had such a skeptical population, I don't think the Flat Earth Movement would have members all around the globe.

[Karha of Honor]

Are you familiar with the concept of Too Cheap to Meter? Think spores. Most fungi don't bother doing much if anything to make sure their spores get to the 'right' place. They just make billions and billions of them, release them everywhere, and trust that at least of a few of them will find their way to the right spot.

That's what we're starting to see right now. Disinformation and propaganda campaigns have been with us for all of recorded history, and probably much longer. Heck, much of our earliest recorded history is literally propaganda. However, up until now, such campaigns have been relatively expensive. That didn't stop them from happening, but it did mean that they were targeted. Clearspira's question would apply: there would always be something meaningful to gain from a campaign, or it wouldn't happen.

Thanks to technology, that's changed. A bot can pump out the BS non stop for only a couple of pennies a month. Plug a server farm of bots into an algorithm that gives them a certain goal, and all kinds of strange things start happening. Even the smartest eggheads can't predict where such experiments will lead.

Facebook abandoned an experiment after two artificially intelligent programs appeared to be chatting to each other in a strange language only they understood.

If you're a Russian propagandist, then you're pretty happy if you can just sow chaos. Sure, ideally you'd control it somehow, but just generating it more than justifies your existence. I wouldn't be at all surprised if no human ever intended for TLJ to be part of anything. It just ended up getting swept up into the algorithm by a bot, and like ants following a chemical trail, others soon followed.

Meanwhile, very convincing, very cheap artificial video is coming. Soon. The world is about to get very weird.

We never had a more skeptical population. It's gonna be fine.

Do we? Because the last three years have really fried my capacity to assess what's probable or not. I lived through a hot sauce scandal and a clown panic.

Also if we had such a skeptical population, I don't think the Flat Earth Movement would have members all around the globe.

better/=/perfect.

[Admiral X]

Why do people think flat-earthers are anything more than a tiny fringe that everyone else likes to make fun of?