Slashdot Mirror
Report Claims That 18 Nation's Elections Were Impacted By Social Engineering Last Year (bbc.com)
sqorbit writes: Independent watchdog group Freedom House released a report that claims that 18 nation's elections were "hacked." Of the 65 countries that Freedom House monitors, 30 appear to be using social media in order to affect elections by attempting to control online discussions. The report covers fake news posts, paid online opinion writers and trolling tactics. Other items in the report speak to online censorship and VPN blocking that blocks information within countries to interfere with elections. The report says net freedom could be aided by: large-scale programs that showed people how to spot fake news; putting tight controls on political adverts; and making social media giants do more to remove bots and tune algorithms to be more objective.
Can you BELIEVE IT! Someone used INFORMATION to INFLUENCE people's MINDS! WOW!!!
Only 18? I thought that ALL elections were subject to "Social Engineering".
That's part of the point.
Elections aren't about being fair. They're about preventing civil war.
They do this by predicting how a civil war to reverse their decision would come out - believably enough to convince the losers of the election that they'd also lose the war to reverse their results.
Propaganda and other "fake news", to recruit and radicalize cannon-fodder for the civil ware are integral to the process. The election process SHOULD include them - or it becomes less believable and thus less stabilizing.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I voted a straight ticket, NONE-OF-THE-ABOVE.
I figure I can't go wrong if I opposed EVERYBODY.
...large-scale programs that showed people how to spot fake news...
Fortunately, our president is on the job. Just watch his Twitter, he'll identify all the Fake News! for you.
How can we continue to believe in a just universe and freedom to eat crackers if we have no ale?
So......there were only elections in 18 countries last year? Is that it?
Seriously, the only reason Trump is president is because he was better at social engineering than Clinton. And I have to hand it to Obama, he pushed that "Hope and Change" meme better than anyone before him ever has. It's all been done before, though.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
That's what it is, and it seems that some people don't seem to care that America is losing that one.
And yeah, it's also a shitty movie.
Aren't elections, in general, nothing more but a huge social engineering scheme at scale ?
Look at Canada's Trudeau winning the election on a 10 billions deficit and featuring a 30 billions one in his first budget ? Or is it just "social engineering" when the "wrong side" wins ?
Social media providers will be taking this very seriously as it undermines their systems credibility as genuine platforms for social interaction. If they don't take credible actions to reduce the flow of spam on their systems, people will eventually catch on that their whole system is a waste of time and move on.
I think it's very obvious players like Facebook etc can do a lot more than they currently are to prevent spam. I'd say it hasn't been a high priority for them and they have actually profited from providing the spammers a platform. However, after Trump's election and the inquiries into foreign state influence on the election, the spotlight has been firmly placed on Facebook and others and the priority on developing counter measures against this sort of abuse of their systems would be going way up.
Or Nations'?
Really. Isnt that all that "social engineering" is? People enjoy hearing what they already assume or believe. Play into that a little bit and hope they dont do any real thinking and bam you've been "socially engineered."
Laughable but hey i guess telling people they are morons doesnt work because they dont believe that they are.
And that's just the Washington Post!
Not only that, they used social engineering to cause the /. editors to forget how to write a plural possessive.
Nations', not nation's.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
...because the politicians aren't behind it. The rest of the time its just called a campaign.
Dear aunt, let's set so double the killer delete select all
I wish it were true that people don't want social programs because then we'd stand a chance of actually paying off some of our national debt. As it is try telling even the most conservative person you know that we're going to get rid of their social security or medicare or X, Y or Z tax credit and they mighty unhappy about it. That's why our erstwhile GOP Congress is limited to only increasing the debt by $1.5 trillion dollars with the tax bill.
I'm fine with getting rid of Social Security/Medicare, just give me all the money I paid into it.
Or we could simply cut the military to a reasonable size and tax upper income earners at rates in line with what the rest of the world do. Then we'd be asking how we are going to spend oir massive surplus.
Obama, Clinton and the Democrats were saying the election would not be influenced and that Trump was full of it.
After the election, they changed their tune. So logically this so called article is just butt covering for the fact that leftists lost elections.
Hillary's campaign spent in the 10 digits, largely on "social engineering", with lots of collusion from many media outlets and politically weaponized government agencies. Meanwhile, Trump got elected with his shoe-string incompetent campaign as the (shoe-string incompetent) POTUS.
(Russia spent $100K in "divisive" ads during the election and probably lots of anti-hillary trolling before the election and lots of anti-trump trolling after the election)
Unlimited funding, collusion, and corruption are still not enough to defeat democracy!
you're all idiots.
slashdot = stagnated
That's optimistic. Look at the charts and data in this article, and you'll realize that we don't spend all that much on military. As a total percentage of the budget, it's been shrinking every year, and will continue to do so as healthcare is the real problem we have, with runaway spending. "Tax the rich" is unlikely to fix it, either unfortunately.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So why are incumbent Republicans losing elections now to trans women and lesbians?
Here's a free clue: People are sick of politics as usual and have been for a long time, and so are willing to vote for anything that looks like an outsider who looks like they might have a chance. Which side of politics they come from is irrelevant. That's why they voted for Obama over Hillary, that's why they would have voted for Sanders if he'd been up against an establishment Republican, and that's why they voted for Trump who ran against an establishment Democrat.
Of course now, people are realising that Trump is a shyster who played the greatest confidence trick in American political history. This plan sometimes backfires.
I'm impacted by the gnat that bounces off my forehead. What's the point they're making?
Or we could simply cut the military to a reasonable size and tax upper income earners at rates in line with what the rest of the world do. Then we'd be asking how we are going to spend oir massive surplus.
No. We would be asking what the hell to do with all of these unemployed former military service people.
It is not a pretty picture.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
You're a perfect example of a conservative: Primitive. Tribal. Individualistic.
You want liberals to grow up ? Who acted like fucking 15 year-olds during the last election ? Electing a clown as their fucking president, endangering your country, the whole world, the future of your children and grandchildren, all that just to piss off liberals, like fucking teenagers committing armed robery just to piss off their parents. You're the ones who need to grow the fuck up.
Or rather, you need to EVOLVE. The rest of the civilized world is trying to evolve beyond simple animalistic darwinism, while you conservatives cling desperately to your old individualistic, primitive, savage ways. Life on earth has evolved beyond single-celled to multicellular organisms. Now humanity is also evolving from individualistic to communal society. And there's nothing you can do about. The dinosaurs' time is over. YOUR time is over.
It's funny how you can't admit that giving money away to corporations and compounding the debt further doesn't help anyone in the future in this country. That USED to be what Republicans (when they had any integrity at all) pretended to be concerned about.
Go fuck yourself, Trumptard
Give great speeches that people in different parts of the USA want to listen to.
Ensure that every state is included in visits by a charming politician who can give a long speech.
Find a candidate who can keep talking for a long time.
"Fake news" and "social media" cannot actually make a politician not show up in person all over the different parts of the USA and give a good speech.
People all over the USA remember who they went to see in person and their ability to give a great speech.
Dont lecture people in different states from the elite coast. All the other states can sway that US election so be more aware of local issues all around the USA.
Dont speak of people all over the USA in a negative way. You need their vote and voters do remember all the negative words used to describe their nice parts of the USA.
Try been positive about each part of the USA and just listen to their needs.
Dont stay on the elite east and west coast giving short lectures to the rest of the USA.
Talk about jobs, freedom and wealth. Real people want real ideas about good jobs, education, housing, not more negative lectures on elite issues.
A really great candidate can get out the vote all over the USA. Staying on elite coast talking points did not win an election.
Election observers from different political parties ensured no federal level "hacking" could happen.
Each city, state, town voted for a person they wanted elected.
The vote got counted and the results showed who the US states wanted elected.
Other nations did not bus out millions of their embassy staff to vote in person all over the USA. The FBI would have noticed a few extra million embassy staff in the USA at that time.
Other nations did not vote in the millions all over the USA. Other nations did not "hack" the computer vote as US elections do not get all counted digitally by one national computer.
The votes get counted and the count is observed locally all over the USA.
Real people all over different parts of the USA selected the person they wanted.
If a political party wants their vote, fly out to their state and talk to lots of people in person.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
It's funny how you can't admit that giving money away to corporations and compounding the debt further doesn't help anyone in the future in this country.
I have no idea what you are talking about. Did you reply to the wrong person?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Your candidate was such a huge pile of shit that she lost to goddamn Trump of all fucking people. All you had to do was put up a halfway decent candidate and you'd have won.
But you didn't, because you dumbass Millenials thought you were entitled to win. And the resulting cognisant dissonance is so severe that you seriously believe that Russian propaganda and online Trolls were the reason.
Fuck, you are dumb. Clinton is a liar and a cheat, and Sanders is a doddering old fool. Pull your head out of your Very Special Ass, snowflake, or next time it'll be someone Competent who wins and then you'll really be fucked.
or, in some countries, nations's.
Communal society was the predecessor to individualistic society, not the other way around.
And you are woefully misinformed about what the "rest of the world" is doing.
Clinton isn't going to prison with the rest of the administration. Chump is. Try to stay focused, Cuckservatives.
Let the brain pounding begin!
The issue is that people care more about what other folks post or who liked their posts on Facebook or what's on the next episode of Big Brother than who they're voting for.
AND THEN THEY ACTUALLY GO AHEAD AND VOTE ANYWAYS!!!!!!
Of course the trying-to-be-elected are going to abuse the shit out of that, who wouldn't?
I'm over-generalising, sure. But I'm not THAT far off.
I didn't vote in the last Canadian election because every choice sucked. The country's going to hell and all we care about is muslim women wearing cloths in front of their faces. Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with people?? Sorry I've had a few to drink this evening.
I tend to rant.
The real story is that there is a shift in the media market. People no longer go to TV news and news paper they now go to all variation of fast-food media where source of the message is no longer checked. With the amount of information that flows we no longer can look at them with a grain of salt. In old well established news outlets messages were curated for weeks. Now if you do not post in 10 min you are already late.
You lost because people are sick and tired of your excessive political correctness. Stop whining and quit trying to force your unwanted social programs down everyone's throats. You lost because you are out of touch with what the people want and need. Grow up, liberals, and get over yourself.
Thank you for your divisive comments comrade. You've earned your Rubles for today...
All elections held in nations were impacted by social engineering every year they were held.
I love how blatantly your publishing your intent to commit genocide against the non-compliant "tribes".
You get arrested for saying anything AGAINST bad leader, sometimes killed, and on top of that you get social engineering saying "bad leader is good leader, most popular leader with everyone ever".... i.e. the attempt to keep the people from forming opposing groups.
You see this in Russia with Putin, media that reports anything negative finds their staff arrested, opposition leaders who say Putin is corrupt get arrested 'for corruption', and social media pretends Putin is ultra popular beloved by all, when the last free election they he didn't get a majority. Literally pro-Putin districts changed their tally from marginal support for Putin, and reported 92% support for Putin and 98% turnout to swing the vote. That was the last time the rigging was so obviously visible in Russia.
"but thats the price we pay for both free speech and open and free elections."
They don't have those either. The social engineering is to cover the rigging.
USA does NOT have free and fair elections, the people voted against Trump by millions and millions of votes and he got the Whitehouse anyway. Look at Heritage Foundation now, they are vote suppressors, they dream up laws to exclude voters from voting, those laws are passed in Republican controlled States to turn the Senate/Congress votes Republican too.
Trump has created an Election Commissions to turn his loss into a win by suppressing a target of 5 million more votes. The main party in that Commission is the Heritage Foundation representative. That commissions has asked for voting data on everyone in every state, and their party alliance where known (and postal voting record where they postal vote). That data is handed FROM the Election Commission to the Heritage Foundation, who will then analyze it, datamine it, and dream up State law changes to favor their group*.
This is what happens when a subgroup choose the leader, the leader rigs the election to favor the subgroup and politicians state their allegience to that group.
Paul Reynolds, the Republican national committeeman from Alabama said "“My gosh, it's The Washington Post. If I’ve got a choice of putting my welfare into the hands of [Russian President Vladimir] Putin or The Washington Post, Putin wins every time,"
You see how he's laying out his stall to get some Russian hacking, troll and troll money sent his way? You'll see a lot more of that among US politicians.
Does anyone actually believe that local churches don't interfere in elections as well as thousands of commercial organizations? I am certain that the US does a great deal to influence the results of foreign elections as well . Look at lunatic groups like the Tea Party that devote themselves to do nothing but influence elections. Sure, you can bet that if Russia feels that a certain outcome in the US will be better for Russia that great efforts will be made. Our best answer is a much higher level of education for all of our youth. Right now we have a general public that is infested with all kinds of garbage that they believe to be the truth. I fear that if the general public starts to catch on to what is going on around them that all hell will break out and our nation and society might completely melt down. Look at the immoral vampires that now occupy the White House. They want to suck the life blood out of our nation and contribute nothing at all. An entire year has passed and the supposedly important wall is not being built at all. Congress and the Senate are doing nothing good for America or our people.
Slowly merging the language of the insane hyperbole of "election hacking" narrative with the language of traditional political campaigning.
And I'm not even a writer, an editor, or on any sort of online or offline publishing.
Look, I am not discussing the politics here but cannot resist to point out few things.
Tribal is good. Tribes did not allow "redundant people" to exist, it would be stupid for a small group. Tribes were way more egalitarian than anything civilization has produced. So why the negative undertones? What does individualism has to do with tribalism?!? Those are diametrically opposite, yet you bundle them together into your "negative" package?
What is "animal Darwinism"?!? All mammals are cooperative; it is one of our major strengths. The mammal's social structure is not "nature red in tooth and claw" though of course competition for survival and procreation is a given. But it is us, humans who forgot about it all and build economic totalitarian system which emphasizes too much on competition and greed and too little on cooperation.
It is in our system that the leaders get all the benefits but do not take the responsibility to face the music and protect the people who surrendered their power to them (but this arrangement is a contract, did you forget that?!?) The alpha gorilla meets all danger head on. The tribal chief meets danger head on. The CEO gets golden handshake for ruining people's lives, the president hides in a bunker while the soldiers die...
Conservatives are against biology for mostly religious reasons, but I always wonder why lefties are also so ignorant in it as well. Again I am not disputing your political stance and such.....but there is quite a mess in your head about biology, ecology and anthropology. Just saying...
If you haven't seen it already, you really need to see it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
READY.
PRINT ""+-0
large-scale programs that showed people how to spot fake news, in other words, a central authority that tells people what they should consider true
putting tight controls on political adverts, in other words, disallowing political speech considered untrue by a central authority
making social media giants do more to remove bots and tune algorithms to be more objective, in other words, a central authority telling people how to run a website
Freedom is slavery.
The problem could be solved by educating people to question what they read and do their own research when a subject matters rather than blindly believing what someone else tells them...
But an educated populace is not what the incumbents want, they like the idea of a populace that believes whatever propaganda they read, what they don't like is for anyone else to have the ability to put propaganda infront of large numbers of people.
http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
Thank you for ensuring Trump wins in 2020.
Actually, it's because the highly-urban region of Northern Virginia (mostly Fairfax County) has been growing in population, and since the last redistricting, the state districts in that area have more urban and less rural population. This is frightfully obvious who takes even the quickest glance at the districts that the Democrats won (or rather, in many cases, took back).
There was no swelling of anti-Trump sentiment, and now change in perceptions or opinions among the population. It's just geography again, like it's been for the past 30 years. As NoVa grows, it gets more districts.
I've always liked Freedom House and often linked to this map as evidence that the countries the US protected ended up more free than the ones the Commies managed to overrun.
https://freedomhouse.org/repor...
Of course when I did that the US left would say that Freedom House was 'a right wing site'.
Now it seems Freedom House - who are doggedly anti Russia/China and pro US - have released a report which fits the 'Russians influenced the election' narrative and it seems that Freedom House are suddenly a trusted source.
Amazing.
echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
Well said and very true, however we'll never reach this state because an easily manipulated population is exactly what those in power want, they just want the exclusive ability to manipulate.
Except for situations where "those in power" happen to *actually be* the population.
There's this term "direct democracy". You should research it.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Get rid of the imaginary property laws and start government research programs to new medicines. And I mean the government doing it themselves, not giving money to a private company in the hope they do it for you. Privatizing and monopolizing a market where "consumers", aka patients, have no choice does not work.
and how they have mastered election interference and manufacturing dissent.
When will people understand that social-media stories are NOT news...it's GOSSIP.
As a tech community, I believe we should ensure victory for one of these less popular candidates:
(a) Nils Torvalds, Linus's father
(b) Petrus Pennanen, the Pirate Party candidate
It's a tough choice between the two, but I think we'll be happy either way, so let's start the social media engineering right away. Alas, we still use paper ballots, so no machines to hack there.
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
I'm certain this also explains why the last French election came down to two outsiders, Macron and Le Pen.
Can we please stop saying these elections were "hacked" just because the sheeple voters were easily manipulated? If you show me an article where it is proven someone gained access to a voting booth or tabulation machine and altered the numbers, that is hacking.
What has happened here is exactly what has happened every election - everyone involved lied. Why isn't it considered hacking when one campaign puts out an ad that is a blatant lie, but it is called hacking if the same lie is on some foreign blog site?
Why isn't it considered collusion when the major media in a country openly sides with one candidate where they give only favorable coverage and bury negative stories, but for the other candidate they send out armies of investigators to dig up dirt and purposefully time the release of salacious, unverified information until weeks before the election so as to cause the most public opinion damage without providing sufficient time for the campaign to respond?
If people are so damned stupid that they can be so easily manipulated into altering their vote by lies and misinformation, either from the campaigns themselves or outside actors, then perhaps it is time to institute an idiocy test before you're allowed to vote. Present each potential voter with 10 news stories, if they can't identify at least 50% of the fake ones they don't get a voter id card.
The system in the US is set up around communities of people. The vast majority of communities (typically farming and blue collar communities) in the US votes republican.
If it were a popular vote, we would only have protections for apple, orange and avocado farmers because those are what comprises California and New York.
The system in the US works around equal protection from mob rule. It also protects against anyone stealing the vote in any particular region or certain regions being locally corrupted, if certain counties in Texas reports millions of extra voters because they allow illegal immigrants to vote or simply pay Mexicans to come across the border to vote, you donâ(TM)t want that to be influencing the vote across the nation.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
You lost because people are sick and tired of your excessive political correctness. Stop whining and quit trying to force your unwanted social programs down everyone's throats. You lost because you are out of touch with what the people want and need. Grow up, liberals, and get over yourself.
Yes, yes, we must march in lock-step with Conservative Ideals, no matter what oppressive and regressive social programs they try to push down everyone's throats, we must respect how they know what we, the people want and need, no matter how much we reject them, no matter how much we protest, it's our fault for not knowing their beneficence is unquestionable, we need to wise up, and stop protesting their sublime authority.
Your attitude is what lost Hillary the election. The supposed superiority of your position and denigration of the other side is not only arrogant, but anti-scientific. Why? Because psychology is science, and psychology tells you that you can't insult someone and expect them to maintain a sufficiently positive attitude to entertain listening to you, much less convince them to process your position in any way that would alter their own. Hillary fucked up by being inherently fake, arrogant, ignoring swing states in favor of trying to turn red states purple or blue, and being insulting to 'deplorables' during her campaign. Russia had no measurable influence AT ALL. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence. Present it now or go away.
So basically you want communism, even though it has failed in every country it has been tried in. More people have died due to wars & starvation directly related to communist revolutions in the world than were killed by the Nazis. You really want communism???
Yet, New Mexican voters have about twice the influence on the electoral college that North Carolinian voters do.
The information was not "blessed" by George Soros and his fellow NY banksters. Neither did their tool Angela "Arabize Germany" Merkel give her consent !!!
The 1 percent are scared that they cannot easily throw more nations like Iraq into the gutter of war. They are really super-concerned that they can no longer lie to the populace as they did during GWB's time.
So what they now want is a Ministry of Truth, in order to enable more wars, more profits and more homicidal action in a weak and helpless nation far away.
WMD ! Ballistic Missiles ! Yellow Cake !
So far the Russkies have secured their part of the inheritance when the US and Poland staged a coup d'etat in Kiew. Ukraine was always inhabited by lots of people who considered themselves Russians.
The Crimea was acquired by Russia/Moscow and never by Kiew.
Plus, German, American and British tanks now stand at the border to Russia and Belarus. Of course Russia is concerned about that situation.
The rest of your rant is Business Development for the NATO war industry.
Are as effective as 1 billion of Hillary Dollars. That's what the 1 percent elite of sore losers and their lefty tools want to convince us.
In reality, they cannot play by the rules (lose an election and get on with it) and now they make up stuff in order to question the legitimacy of the other candidate's rule.
Sore losers, warmongers and election cheaters (DNC/Sanders). Thats what they are.
of civil war.
Obama tortured the naive boy Bradley Manning by means of Sleep Deprivation.
Just because he is the lefties poster child of "diversity" means nothing. Obama was a sweet talking tool of the 1 percent in their quest to make more money by means of war against small helpless nations.
are similar in that they first erect some idealist premise of "injustice" and then proceeding to "fight the injustice by all means": Torture, murder, Stormtroopers, control of information.
You should not be surprised to see Marxists and Mohammedists join forces. They are quite similar in many ways. The Marxists hate European culture so much that they want the Mohammedists to destroy it for them. Never mind Mohammedism will erase Marxism, too.
Yeah, what could possibly go wrong with censorship ?
Boy, the internet will find ways around the Zuckerbug-Brin Communist-Network. The internet existed before these 1 percent stooges came along and it will exist after them.
RPI home servers
YaCY
USENET
Yabber
IRC
George Soros, Blankfein, Albright, Merkel, the Bushes and Obama had told Hillary that the one percent had unanimously voted for her. She was now convinced the one percent controlled media would make her walk into the white house a peace of cake.
What the hell are people thinking when they did not vote like the one percent had decided for them ? How dare the plebejans to have an opinion of their own ?
Hillary, due to her great intelligence, figured it: The Rooskies had spooked the plebejans !
"18 Nation's elections"
Should be:
"18 Nations' elections"*
The fact that some conservatives always bring up communism as the only possible system of communal society says a lot about the simplicity of their mind and the limits of their reasoning power.
You know, there is this one thing called "socialism", of which there are different degrees. In this system, the weak are not prayed on by the strong. Individuals are willing the sacrifice a small part of their earnings for the well-being of the community as a whole. Crime is adressed by trying to curb the underlying social/economic causes first, and repression is used as a last resort, not as the primary mechanism of control. Things like universal healtcare benefit everyone, not just the privileged born with a silver spoon in their mouths.
Of all the G20 countries, the U.S. is the least socialist. The U.S. also has the highest infant mortality rate, the highest crime rate, the largest proportion of people incarcerated, the highest level of obesity and other forms of chronic health issues, etc etc.
Draw your own conclusions.
Correction: All nations' elections have been impacted by social engineering all years through history.
Covert? MMmm hmmmmm.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
Communal society was the predecessor to individualistic society, not the other way around.
What ?! In what fucking universe ?! So countries appeared before kingdoms ? Kingdoms before city nations ? City nations before cities ? Cities before villages ? Villages before tribes ? Are you a fucking troll or are you really that stupid ? Next you'll tell me that multicellular organisms appeared before microbes ?!?!
And you are woefully misinformed about what the "rest of the world" is doing.
Like all good conservatives, you've probably never travelled beyond your own state, let alone to other countries. The only thing you now about the rest of the world is what you hear and read on Fox. Pathetic.
Soviet Pharmaceuticals???
Hillary Clinton tried to steal the election by manipulating the news reports on CNN and other sources, but enough people saw through it and used social media.
I published it two years ago on CNN's youtube channel that Clinton would try to steal the election and if she failed, she would blame Russia which is exactly what happened.
Back in 2012 the same tactics were used to steal the primary election away from Ron Paul. Want proof? See below.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_WBo4sfmi4
I don't think this has to do with social media influencing elections insomuch as it might be used nefariously using "Fake News" to unduly impact outcomes.
Now in politics, generally speaking in the best of times, one party's "facts" are another's "lies". However there is a bit of a seperation between what might be a difference of opinion based on ideology VS something that is essentially totally made up. This line is sometimes blurred by those politicians that might shall we say bend the truth a bit more than others, but that has probably been the case since the first election was ever called.
What is more disturbing I think is a failure of journalism in the last decade or so. I think it used to be that news outlets were a bit more independent, and less "affiliated" (i.e. owned) by one partisan group or another, and the people involved had a bit more integrity. The problem arises is when these fake news things happen on things like social media the people have little to turn to in terms of "legitimate" news to tell them any differently. Thus it becomes increasing difficult for people to determine what is "truth" VS what is not, in particular for those people who might not be all that interested in finding out or not really all that engaged in politics in the first place. Again you have whole news sectors essentially pandering to a crowd selling them a service they want to hear, rather than trying to be an unbiased source of information for the population. It is all very idealistic I know, but in a general sense there has been that downward slide it seems, which has allowed these alternative media sources (social) to flourish and be a successful avenue in the first place. I don't think we would even be having this conversation if the legitimate news environment was a healthy one, as people would be more able to easily see the BS for what it is...
It's a direct path to Tyranny, and we already have too much of that.
I won't tolerate government obstruction.
we used to call that "social engineering" stuff ADVERTISING. It's designed to stifle your objections and make you buy the product on offer.
Maybe one of you young bucks can elucidate how this differs from what's going on today?
Look up "muck raking" and "pamphleteering".
Whatever happened to "affected"?
Does everything have to be compared to a meteor strike?
Or is it possible there was no true "impact", in which case the OP was trolling for clicks?
Does this action fall under "social engineering"?
> Taking actual facts and dressing them up with inaccurate emotionally-loaded descriptions to influence recipients to draw conclusions that are not supported by the facts themselves
If so, this slashdot summary clearly qualifies. Instead of using the correct term "propaganda" and acknowledging there is nothing new about this "news" it substitutes scarier words like "hacked" and "social engineering". As a result, it is guilty of the very thing it complains about.
Applying its own standards for word choice, we can conclude that "Slashdot has been hacked by social engineers to deliver fake news to nerds instead of stuff that matters".
Yeah, the same way a living organism is willing to destroy the cells of his own body that revert to primitive, individualistic behavior, i.e.: cancer cells.
So sue me.
Once you start calling it "social engineering" (to make it sound more threatening, I guess?) you actually remove most of the meaning. Because, let's face it, there have been virtually no elections, ever, that were not primarily decided by social engineering. Indeed, the very foundation of democracy is that The People are required to socially engineer, i.e. act individually (vote) to cause change in other people (via goverment).
Stick to calling what you're talking about "hacking" or propaganda or something. Just realize that as you speak more generally, your general terms are going to include lots of things that most people want to be part of politics, or at least thing that people have decided it's better to tolerate than to prevent. (e.g. ads.)
You're a perfect example of a conservative: Primitive. Tribal. Individualistic.
Accuse others of that which you are guilty. Go watch some election protest videos and see people getting bloodied for no reason other than having an opinion that the left disagrees with.
Instead of attempting to reform and moving past divisive identity politics, it obviously has been decided to go with a Big Lie to hand wave away that loss. Clearly, the social media manipulation and media shilling wasn't thorough enough, so now Russia is being used as an excuse to further the goals of corporate censorship and astroturfing. Tapping into fear, the most primal emotion of all, to use as a kudgel to silence critics and the opposition, and undermine freedom of expression - and here on display is a temper tantrum telling others to evolve and grow the fuck up. The complete lack of self awareness is utterly dismal.
This is the reason why Trump will get elected again if self absorbed assholes can't figure out that their shit stinks.
Isn't everything affected by social engineering in some way? Just being a realist, whether it be news, social media, TV, Hollywood movies, video games all play some role in social engineering society and there are more aspects to this that probably haven't even been thought of or publicized. Basing your life around everything you see or hear is definitely not wise. At the end of the day people need to be smart enough to make educated decisions by taking all things into account and with a grain of salt.
What about the Old Mexican voters? Are their votes still worth chupacabra?
I quote the whole paragraph because the cognitive dissonance it displays is just exquisite.
I honestly don't think government doing the research themselves would work very well, although I'm open to arguments to the contrary.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Why does everything turn on the "basket of deplorables"? Trump threw out insults like they were candy wrappers, but Clinton wasn't allowed a single insult? There's more to this than the Republicans want to talk about.
Also, Russia bought ads. Russia tried to influence the campaign. Assuming Russians aren't stupid, this suggests that they had some influence. The extraordinary claim would be that Russian efforts were entirely ineffectual.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Who acted like fucking 15 year-olds during the last election ?
As someone who is not fond of either Liberals or Conservatives, the answer to your question is definitely Liberals.
Conservative leaders got blind-sided/their asses kicked by Trump (and the Conservative base full of weirdos), but Liberal millennials went full-fucking-retard, and it left a terrible taste in everyone else's mouth.
You're a perfect example of a conservative: Primitive. Tribal. Individualistic.
Love it - this is the quintessential Liberal judgement. It only scores points with people who already on your team.
I think what the Russians did was simply to stir up shit in the hopes that something would gain traction. Then they could throw their weight behind it. There isn't much to indicate that they scored a "hit" to focus on, but that doesn't mean they didn't try.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
Social Engineering is conning people out of information needed to gain entry to a computer, or in Sociology trying provide information to alter behaviour and improve society.
Trying to persuade people to vote for someone is called Electioneering. People complain that the Russians are too antidemocratic, then when they do try to join in they attack them, hypocrites! The Republicans also posted a lot of stuff on Facebook to try and convince people not to vote for Hillary, so why isn't the FBI investigating the Russians for associating with Republicans?
The obvious solution is for Facebook to put the identity of the person making a post or paying for an ad on posts. As long as people know that the "ease sanctions against Russia" post is coming from the Russians there is no problem. Unless your education system turns out people incapable of processing information sensibly.
Some parts are definitely new!
- The massive scale. Through Facebook you can reach a lot of people.
- The plausible deniability: "it's was just a few hackers working on their own".
- The targeting. You can target individuals. Old propaganda couldn't.
- The intensity. These systems use 'psychographics' to create models of your psychological weaknesses and use that knowledge to make their messages more difficult to rationally shield yourself against. That's why a well educated populace is not enough.
It's also important to point this out in general, as many geeks still believe that digital technologies will automatically make the world better, and should be embraced as quickly and uncritically as possible. Disruption! Innovation! Yay!
On a side note: I'm always surprised at the immediate "ZOMG this is not new" argumentation. Technological innovation rarely does anything really new (revolution). What technological innovation mostly does is scale things up while lowering the barrier to entry (evolution). But that does change the nature of the thing!
Look at Google Streetview for example. Taking pictures on the street is not new. But scaling it up and automating it breaks through established privacy norms, and really should require a public debate. But this "it's not new" argument hinders having that debate.
Now we can be absolutely sure that the real reason The Donald is president is due to voters being manipulated by Fakebook posts.
The election results had absolutely nothing to do with a poorly run campaign by a candidate who deliberately alienated the Bernie-bros and didn't even bother to try to connect with moderates and independents.
What a relief to have that issue finally resolved. /sarcasm
"hacked" using "social media" - ? This is amazing since it has been shown repeatedly that spending vast amounts of money will not guarantee an election win. Who knew that it was enough to sign up for Twitter?
I keep getting redirected to mob rule, group think, and mass hysteria.
Yeah, that's why Switzerland never survived past their first vote... no, wait !
(You, know perhaps making you think that direct democracy couldn't ever be effectively put into practice, *is also* "exactly what those in power want, they just want the exclusive ability to manipulate", as stated by the parent poster.)
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
People do not need governments.
Ideas are conceived quite differently than they are applied.
Masked ideologies can be really harmful for humanity.
Not getting self organized and sustainable is pure surrender to the system.
System is all about sitting on our asses here we come.