alt Hacker NewsBy meaningful real-world standards there are bot farms sowing dissent and literally driving people into mental illness which has already destroyed many families.
At the same time there's the Cambridge Analytica/SCL strand where a corporation literally sells election fixing services that rely on data gathered from social media accounts.
To be fair these are all extensions of political and media trends that already existed, and which online tech could amplify by some orders of magnitude.
Even so. The damage is very real.
One standard technique is to use attack bots to find a wedge issue and weaponise it by raising the temperature from both sides.
This can easily be automated now, so we're well past the point where literal humanity is the most important element.
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> there are bot farms sowing dissent
Junk messages trying to use "wedge issues" for attention are nothing new, they existed in the 1990s too. You underestimate just how transparent they are, even on modern-day social media which in many ways is a highly favorable environment to such tactics.
>By meaningful real-world standards there are bot farms sowing dissent and literally driving people into mental illness which has already destroyed many families.
Real living standards have been stagnant or falling since 1971. We've been making time up by working more, buying plastic and filling our free time with distractions.
Blaming the internet for 50 years of policy is both stupid and pointless. In short: what governments want you to do instead of asking why your grand father could buy a house at 20.
Propaganda is only effective when it's true.