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China Is Perfecting a New Method For Suppressing Dissent On the Internet (vox.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Vox: The art of suppressing dissent has been perfected over the years by authoritarian governments. For most of human history, the solution was simple: force. Punish people severely enough when they step out of line and you deter potential protesters. But in the age of the internet and "fake news," there are easier ways to tame dissent. A new study by Gary King of Harvard University, Jennifer Pan of Stanford University, and Margaret Roberts of the University of California San Diego suggests that China is the leading innovator on this front. Their paper, titled "How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, Not Engaged Argument," shows how Beijing, with the help of a massive army of government-backed internet commentators, floods the web in China with pro-regime propaganda. What's different about China's approach is the content of the propaganda. The government doesn't refute critics or defend policies; instead, it overwhelms the population with positive news (what the researchers call "cheerleading" content) in order to eclipse bad news and divert attention away from actual problems. This has allowed the Chinese government to manipulate citizens without appearing to do so. It permits just enough criticism to maintain the illusion of dissent and only acts overtly when fears of mass protest or collective action arise.
Living in US, my concern is the fact-checking effort from Facebook, Google, Twitter.... https://www.usatoday.com/story... It sounds good on the surface. In the end, it won't be rosy. In a democratic society, the ultimate way to prevent fabricated facts is education. However, our public education system is ...?!
^(oo)^pig~
Orwell would've been amazed at the ingenuity of people and technology and the new ways of manipulating society he never thought of. He would admit that Huxley was closer to reality than him.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
... errrm, wait, they are already. Ok, scratch that.
Basically we're all living in a bubble already, it's only getting bigger and thicker, and China only is ahead a little bit because they have huge amounts of expendable labour to do this sort of thing manually and are a little more on the "single party" side of things that, for instance, the US. But to think that the society of the US is any free'er than that of China (it may be for a privileged group but that's about it) is almost absurd. Same goes for the bubbling void or reality that is the intarweb and it's surroundings here in Europe. Someone at Google just has to turn a few knobs and 2 weeks in a new belief will spread throughout society. This isn't really news.
The interesting thing is that this just emphasiszes what we all know already: The internet isn't the real world and reality in society happens where people meet in RL and interact with one another. No amount of internent communication (manipulated or otherwise) will change that.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
...the Democrats and the institutional media in the US have been playing this game for years and frankly N. Korea has essentially made the Kim family gods using this strategy. It's not really novel to blow smoke up people's asses for the gain of political power, just the methodology has gone digital for the internet age.
Who are you? The new #2 Who is #1? You are #617565. I am not a number, I am a free man! Muhahaha.
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And insidious, too.
Just make sure you have enough crackpots to spread bullshit about. The more insane the conspiracy theory, the better. From Chemtrails to Flat Earth, from Reptiloids to Hitler's base on the dark side of the moon, just make sure you flood everything that people could possibly use to get non-approved news with enough bullshit that nobody would want to wade through the pits of steaming shit in the vain search for tangible information.
It is way more efficient than trying to suppress non-approved information. Because if you try to suppress it, every little bit of leaked info can be scrutinized by the people wanting to see for themselves what the world has in store for them and what really happens. But when you make sure that anything that could threaten your narrative is drowned in the noise of utter bullshit, people will not even bother trying.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If there's anything the internet has shown us, is that Fake News has been occurring ever since there was a media, and especially since the media became operating arms of weapons manufacturers.
Look at Yelp or Glassdoor or any place that allows for "open reviewing and commenting"
Both my apartment complex AND my company regularly spam review sites with "good newz everyone!" reviews. Like multiple 5 star ratings in a day after weeks of bad reviews.
Even on Amazon the review system is notoriously gamed - so it shouldn't be surprising that nations have adopted the same strategies.
You can probably even point to early newspapers that were funded by political cronies as an aspect of the same thing
On the bright side at least the dissenting voices are being heard in China instead of the usual state-run monolithic media.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/06/23/1442206/chinese-government-fabricates-social-media-posts-for-strategic-distraction-not-engaged-argument
In contrast to prior claims, we show that the Chinese regime's strategy is to avoid arguing with skeptics of the party and the government, and to not even discuss controversial issues.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
>As a humorous aside, in a recent meetup in Shanghai I met a guy whose job is "social media censor". Pleasant fella, speaks good English, and assured everyone that "he's a bad censor and never actually suppresses any posts" :)
It might be a surprise to some, but Chinese municipalities do recruit foreigners for work in propaganda departments quite enthusiastically
But to think that the society of the US is any free'er than that of China (it may be for a privileged group but that's about it) is almost absurd.
This is absolutely not correct. In the US, there is indeed constant propaganda that overwhelms our senses, but there are multiple, conflicting streams from a diverse range of sources covering the entire spectrum, and many of those streams directly attack and criticize the government and specific leaders with impunity. This situation does not exist in China. The actual set of ideas that flow through the US system may not be any more true or desirable than the in the Chinese system, but the US is absolutely much more free than the Chinese system solely due to the practical ability of anyone to inject their two-cent's worth of opinions and have those opinions reach the masses.
The hallmark of dictatorships is concentration of unchecked power. Sanctuary cities are undermining the power of the federal government, which makes the US less like a dictatorship. Likewise, Obama not enforcing immigration laws is prudent discretion in enforcement, which is again, a less powerful government, and thus further away from a dictatorship. Some degree of discretion in enforcement is necessary, otherwise the system would collapse, and I'm far more concerned that he didn't jail bankers who crashed the global economy than not shipping out enough brown people.
Now, you could have a dictatorship in regards to immigration law, but it would be the very opposite of what Obama did. If they were deporting without due process or a legal justification, that would indicate a dictatorship.
That's why I'm so confused. Our government has tons of authoritarian tendencies, but lax enforcement of immigration is about the weakest argument I can think of.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Please reconsider. To outsiders, that actually makes America look worse.
If you were "just" a carceral state where non-violent crimes draw long sentences, that could be fixed with a change of leaders and a some legal reforms.
But if you have the highest incarceration rate in the world *legitimately*, it means that Americans *as a people* are criminal, violent, lying, untrustworthy scum. If that much of the population needs to be in concrete boxes, your whole bell curve must be left-shifted. Everybody must be relatively more-criminal than those of other, more honest nations.
Would you like to argue that's not true, that while America has a lot more bad apples that other countries, the rest of the barrel is somehow not spoiled? How about your top-level businessmen, the richest financiers? It looks a LOT to the rest of the world like they did great amounts of lying about asset values to enrich themselves while others lost; and it looks a LOT to everybody in America itself (the rest of us are watching kind of stunned) like your highest levels of politicians accuse each other of constant, and criminal, levels of lying and theft.
What are we SUPPOSED to think but that America is a bunch of crooks? We're trying not to do that, but you, sir, are not helping.
[citation needed]
You can't be a foreigner and be in the Communist Party. They had a few back in the 50s, but they were all arrested and imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution for being dirty capitalist spies.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!