The Arab Spring like the Color Revolution began to despose autocracy, Eleven years the gains made by the Arab Spring are dead. Terrified family dictatorships spent billions to protect their control.
The internet is an incredible tool for free and open communications but also manipulation or worse surveillance. onimap.citizenlab.org
Is "the internet" spying on you. Oh yeah. Coupled with smart devices...it gets creepy. Maybe not political but damn. My favorite story in this collection is Lovense, a sex technology company based in Hong Kong who gathered data on use of their vibrators mindchasers.com/dev/spying-by-…
Its not the singular its the multiple that matters. Big data coupled with AI is the future. Cure the pre-crime Alexa killer robots. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…
Sentiment analysis, neural language and algorithms can mine the words on the internet to measure potential violence, social unrest, opinions, income level and even sexuality. AI also gets it wrong...a lot. technologyreview.com/2021/05/20/102…
Much was said about internet measuring and manipulation during the 2016 election. 2020 seems to have forgotten these tools never went away. This study measured homophily aka bonding and perhaps even tribalism in the 2016 political landscape. jisajournal.springeropen.com/articles/10.11…
In 2020 you didn't even need to vote. Scientists were measuring the race using sentiment analysis. But again, they have a lot of slop in their datasets. The Trump supporters word cloud was gibberish. Biden's easy to track.kaggle.com/manchunhui/us-…
Why? Computer based Sentiment Analysis can be fooled. Easily. Not just by Bot'ing, Brigading, astroturfing etc. But by style of language. Science can't read humor or sarcasm well. Or a balanced viewpoint. They need hot button arguments between dummies. toptal.com/deep-learning/…
IBM Watson was the new Microsoft Bob. Not really.. but it automats opinion sifting on customers who express opinions on products or services. ibm.com/cloud/watson-t…
Watson won on Jeopardy. But when IBM Watson actually ran up against reality...like medicine or politics.. it shit the bed. We all want an "Easy" button. Watson wasn't it. nytimes.com/2021/07/16/tec…
There was a fictional computer called the IBM "HAL 9000" created by Arthur C. Clarke for his Space Odyssey series in 1968. HAL was artificially intelligence and tried to kill people to survive. HAL didn't really exist then..but the concept does now.
China uses computers and contractors using software to monitor and react to opinions on the internet. Officials then seek out and punish those who exhibit seditionary or anti social behavior. journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.11…
So even the fictional idea of ThoughtCrime is real combine that with HAL 9000 and we have that dystopian future they create so well in films. But Orwell never imagined the killer drone.
Patrick Magoohan did the Prisoner in 1967. A bouncing white ball called Rover would catch him every time he tried to escape. Why were artists obsessed with technology defeating freedom in the 60's. How did it actually appear today?
It's called "backsliding' but it really means that our freedoms are invisible.. like fish don't understand water . We are so passive and used to freedom that we don't believe it is slowly being removed bit by bit every day, every hour, every minute. aft.org/ae/fall2020/le…
Are the Oathkeepers fighting for freedom? Is Biden fighting for freedom? Is the hunt for domestic terrorists freedom.Is voter suppression freedom Is the polarized press defending freedom. Is Steve Bannon fighting for "freedom" We need to focus on freedom, people.
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We live in media silos. Choosing what we ingest, who we share it with and monitoring our comments. It is worth taking the time to bathe yourself in the narrative, verbiage, troll age and dog whistling of what was once the Alt Right but now FuckYouTainment. thebulwark.com/i-spent-insurr…
You hear an angry white man, I hear an influencer stirring people up to perform illegal and violent acts,normalizing the role of government as the enemy to the slope pated. Just like my time watching jihadis watch their favorite mullahs on their cel phones.thehill.com/blogs/congress…
America has been down this road before. We spend millions trying to prevent people from being radicalized. We have all the history, metrics and unfortunate results of online radicalization. dhs.gov/sites/default/…
"a partnership between Ukraine’s intel service and Lancaster 6 to build a “state-of-the-art training center” and a “specialized services enterprise”providing “strategic planning, logistics, risk management, security forces training and consulting” time.com/6076035/erik-p…
"The fighter said he was planning to join up with fellow mercenaries. The Kremlin says it has nothing to do with private Russian military contractors whose operatives it describes as volunteers with no connection to the state."reuters.com/world/europe/r…
Russians make great infantry level weapons. High tech not so much. I always remember the contrast between the Soyuz and Apollo. One was a used apartment building boiler the other elegant high tech. realcleardefense.com/articles/2020/…
Russia's edge used to be fast replication of reliable platforms and rapid troop movements. It has devolved into "hybrid warfare" and spoiler tactics. Oh look "super weapons" chathamhouse.org/2021/09/advanc…
A solid reminder of how close wars and chaos are from our borders..and inside our borders via drug movement. The Haiti hit was about drugs not politics. nytimes.com/2021/12/12/wor…
Our government focuses on the border. Because that is a very old concept. Some clueless guy even wanted to build a wall. Oh look...boats. airplanes..bribery...dea.gov/sites/default/…
Borders are where the government gets to stop people and look at stuff. Most seized drugs are found at legal border crossing. That mean's it's a business....man. usatoday.com/story/news/pol…
Back it the day I was called by ABC and asked to urgently rescue Ted Koppel from Cambodia. I did it quietly and smoothly but it opened my eyes to the reporting Thayer had done and how ABC exploited it. khmerpostusa.com/nate-thayer-br…
The actual work product of the extreme right can't actually be shown or played on MSM. It is up to self funded journos to show the ugly guts. Here is the 2016 election. web.archive.org/web/2017030217…