And how political messaging got adjusted and personalized according to hopes, dreams, fears etc. with personality data and a/b testing over the years
That same disinfo + algorithm combination took all the authoritarians, which generally exist across political spectrums, and pushed them rightward using fear, anger, a sense of disenfranchisement, gave them new welcoming groups, new exciting goals, new leases on life, new targets
The #TantonNetwork has been testing out messaging like this on Americans for decades, but data and algorithms supercharged it and turned entire countries into disinfo labs in the process, because entitled assholes just wanted to see what would happen. nytimes.com/2018/10/15/tec…
Call it a confluence of aligned interests — hypercorporate entities and the global far right, grabbing up whatever they can under a thick cloud of misdirection and lies before the world changes enough that they’re forever irrelevant. That’s what I’m trying to stop.
You know why countries are moving to harden borders and demonize immigrabrs? Because they’re anticipating that there are about to be a whole lot of people trying to get in. It’s not abstract. Some of those people might be me. Or you.
And that’s why I say: This is a coordinated power and resource grab by the global far right aided by social media platforms.
Why the fuck does my shit-ass phone autocorrect “immigrants” to “immigrabrs”? These people can’t even get autocorrect right and they think they’re capable of running a planet
Further reading. Well before disinfo was my thing, borders and climate change were pnas.org/content/117/43…
One of the reasons - but by no means the only reason - I push back against “caravan” disinfo is because I see what they truly are: Climate refugees. Which means all that surveillance tech at the border isn’t really to keep us safe.
Remember the lesson I’ve learned over and over again in the last few years, when I apparently interfered with a lot of burgeoning business models. Borders also keep you in. pressfreedomtracker.us/all-incidents/…
This is the #TantonNetwork I've been talking about, funded by Scaife money. I'm happy to see others catching on to this; they have been allowed to shit up the immigration conversation with their disinfo for far too long before infesting the Trump admin.
Reporters are catching on!! Here's another story, this from yesterday. These are the groups I've been doing all those threads about. It's working! Let's get some sunshine on their asses
Well no shit, look at the sort of pro-violence propaganda inflicted on our whole culture, particularly after 9/11 and Iraq. People we now know despise women shat up our entertainment until we started treating violence like it was sex appeal and sex appeal like it was a weapon.
For example, I hate all those “procedure” shows about criminal investigations that always seem to start with the camera lingering over some beautiful dead young woman, artfully arranged in a pool of her blood etc. It’s been like this for decades, very Welcome to the Monkey House
It used to be that pointing this out got women branded “sensitive” or “hysterical,” but the #MeToo movement has removed a lot of plausible deniability. Toxic masculinity has weakened and corrupted our national culture.
Roger Stone's old business partner was Paul Manafort. They were practitioners of what is sometimes called "black ops" for corrupt politicians. One of their first clients, in 1980, was Donald Trump.
Roger Stone organized the "Brooks Brothers riots" in 2000 to swing the election in favor of the GOP, with the help of Joel Kaplan (now at Facebook) and Republican strategist and Backpfeifengesicht poster boy Matt Schlapp
That's the whole reason we have freedom of speech laws though, so that we -- civil society -- decide what our limits are, rather than any government. It was never intended to be limitless.
And it also means that everybody gets to speak. It doesn't mean that a few exceptionally loud, shrill people get to speak over everybody else or intimidate others into silence with threats or smears. That's not freedom of speech, that's impunity for some.
That's why we should constantly be having this discussion, openly and honestly, and why we should support those testing its limits without letting them shit all over our societal boundaries. It's not an easy balance, it's a huge responsibility, but it's worth it.