Clicked through and went into the rabbit hole on the Infocalypse, and was reminded of a scifi book (of course) predicated on exactly this: "There’s “diplomacy manipulation,” in which a malicious actor uses advanced technology to “create the belief that an event has occurred” to influence geopolitics. Imagine, for example, a machine-learning algorithm (which analyzes gobs of data in order to teach itself to perform a particular function) fed on hundreds of hours of footage of Donald Trump or North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, which could then spit out a near-perfect — and virtually impossible to distinguish from reality — audio or video clip of the leader declaring nuclear or biological war. “It doesn’t have to be perfect — just good enough to make the enemy think something happened that it provokes a knee-jerk and reckless response of retaliation.” It's Caleb Carr's so-so book, Killing Time, with an absolutely killer and prescient premise, “It is the greatest truth of our age: Information is not knowledge.”
Great points about the “false dichotomy” of “binary” deplatforming.
That is complementary to an even broader and more foundational way to return nuance to our marketplace of ideas, as addressed by several notable proposals (including Dorsey’s Bluesky initiative) explored in Tech Policy Press: “The Internet Beyond Social Media Thought-Robber Barons” (http://bit.ly/SavDem1).
A surgical restructuring of the platforms -- to an open market strategy that shifts control over our social media feeds to each of the users they serve -- is the only practical way to limit the harms and enable the full benefits of social media. That would take us beyond the current “shallow understanding of what platforms do” to distinguish the posting and access functions of expression from the filtering functions that each user should control for themselves, and which have few network effects. It would enable smart uses of friction and control of immediacy, and more nuanced contextualization.
A different set of rules for powerful people? I'm sick to death of powerful people playing by their own set of rules. The solution is the creation of additional platforms, and if Trump is too lazy to do that, then he's shown he's fine being Kid Mayor.
I can't stop seeing bears falling out of trees for a couple hours now. I can't unsee all those bears, in freefall, each probably wishing it was a cat right then. It makes my day for reasons everything to do with bears but otherwise best left unexplained. Thanks for that.
I'm thinking this blog isn't really going anywhere, other than plowing the same, worn out ground.
How different was Trump? He crapped on other countries that didn't bow to our elites and military, made a bunch of empty promises to much of this country, while leaving the same hands in the cookie jar.
Obama gave the banks a trillion dollars after their gambles went south, "foamed the runway" with a lot of mortgage holders, blew up various countries, from Ukraine to Libya, left the Saudis to blow up Yemen, droned a few weddings. How shallow are we, that there is supposed to be so much difference?
Then there is the debt. Contrary to Dick Cheney, debt doesn't matter, until it does. We can just print money forever? Historical note; All the Marks in circulation in the spring of 1922, wouldn't have bought a loaf of bread in the fall of 1923. Are they going to stop, before it gets to that point? No. There is no understanding of reality, beyond the political horse race.
The pathetic irony of Donald Trump is that everyone else sunk to his level and just threw sh!t for four years. They played his game and turned a gossip column clown into an arch villain. He is the reincarnation of Hitler? Yes and my daughter's pony is Secretariat.
Sooner or later the bubble is going to pop and a lot of people are going to get a serious reality check, because ignoring everything outside the bubble is politically incorrect.
I actually believe Milo the new heterosexual would be a fun read on Twitter. Let's give him a chance.
Madam Mao was all into cutting out tongues and breaking political enemies fingers. And this was before she threw them in the Chinese gulag to have them tortured as state enemies and beaten to death with a hose. (Bullets cost money)
That you could write this piece with a straight face Charlie tells me all about YOU.
Free Speech for ALL, especially "bad actors" is the ONLY answer at this juncture in American History.
When the Pizzagate forum on reddit comes back online and Trump supporters can comfortably wear MAGA hats without any fear of being punched in the face, then we will know that free speech is back in America.
Bottom-up solutions are UX-based: increase friction, increase context. Top-down solutions are regulatory: Section 230, banning, and other heavy-handed measures. Bottom-up puts the onus on the platforms to make meaningful change that scales, and are *persistent and consistent*. Top-down will always be a distracting PR band-aids that are built on *exceptions and outliers* instead of the core experience. Bad actors are excellent and finding ways around this (see ad tech "fixing" their issues for 10+ years). Scooping water out of a sinking boat instead of plugging the holes.
I think it's worth trying to parse out the specific types of damage that these bad actors have on the Facebooks. djt seemed to have an incendiary or catalytic effect, and was able to instantly galvanize people (and bots) around a topic. Others seem to have a foundational effect (think of djt throwing the match on a gasoline pool that these folks filled). People that astroturf and manipulate the algo to maximize reach like the Daily Wire jabronis or people like Dan Bongino (although I am willing to admit that I get the "I Wanna Go To The RNC" song stuck in my head once a month) arguably are a bigger "problem" than some super-shitposter like Milo or djt, and require much more tact and nuance to extricate from people's feeds.
Clicked through and went into the rabbit hole on the Infocalypse, and was reminded of a scifi book (of course) predicated on exactly this: "There’s “diplomacy manipulation,” in which a malicious actor uses advanced technology to “create the belief that an event has occurred” to influence geopolitics. Imagine, for example, a machine-learning algorithm (which analyzes gobs of data in order to teach itself to perform a particular function) fed on hundreds of hours of footage of Donald Trump or North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, which could then spit out a near-perfect — and virtually impossible to distinguish from reality — audio or video clip of the leader declaring nuclear or biological war. “It doesn’t have to be perfect — just good enough to make the enemy think something happened that it provokes a knee-jerk and reckless response of retaliation.” It's Caleb Carr's so-so book, Killing Time, with an absolutely killer and prescient premise, “It is the greatest truth of our age: Information is not knowledge.”
I'd like the delayed posting thing for *myself.*
Great points about the “false dichotomy” of “binary” deplatforming.
That is complementary to an even broader and more foundational way to return nuance to our marketplace of ideas, as addressed by several notable proposals (including Dorsey’s Bluesky initiative) explored in Tech Policy Press: “The Internet Beyond Social Media Thought-Robber Barons” (http://bit.ly/SavDem1).
A surgical restructuring of the platforms -- to an open market strategy that shifts control over our social media feeds to each of the users they serve -- is the only practical way to limit the harms and enable the full benefits of social media. That would take us beyond the current “shallow understanding of what platforms do” to distinguish the posting and access functions of expression from the filtering functions that each user should control for themselves, and which have few network effects. It would enable smart uses of friction and control of immediacy, and more nuanced contextualization.
A different set of rules for powerful people? I'm sick to death of powerful people playing by their own set of rules. The solution is the creation of additional platforms, and if Trump is too lazy to do that, then he's shown he's fine being Kid Mayor.
I can't stop seeing bears falling out of trees for a couple hours now. I can't unsee all those bears, in freefall, each probably wishing it was a cat right then. It makes my day for reasons everything to do with bears but otherwise best left unexplained. Thanks for that.
Comments are coming in fast and thick on this one Charlie! Way to break the internet with your prose. If only you weren't such a weenie: https://videos.files.wordpress.com/WPCppgpO/mcstitchedvideohd-1-2_mp4_hd.mp4
I'm thinking this blog isn't really going anywhere, other than plowing the same, worn out ground.
How different was Trump? He crapped on other countries that didn't bow to our elites and military, made a bunch of empty promises to much of this country, while leaving the same hands in the cookie jar.
Obama gave the banks a trillion dollars after their gambles went south, "foamed the runway" with a lot of mortgage holders, blew up various countries, from Ukraine to Libya, left the Saudis to blow up Yemen, droned a few weddings. How shallow are we, that there is supposed to be so much difference?
Then there is the debt. Contrary to Dick Cheney, debt doesn't matter, until it does. We can just print money forever? Historical note; All the Marks in circulation in the spring of 1922, wouldn't have bought a loaf of bread in the fall of 1923. Are they going to stop, before it gets to that point? No. There is no understanding of reality, beyond the political horse race.
The pathetic irony of Donald Trump is that everyone else sunk to his level and just threw sh!t for four years. They played his game and turned a gossip column clown into an arch villain. He is the reincarnation of Hitler? Yes and my daughter's pony is Secretariat.
Sooner or later the bubble is going to pop and a lot of people are going to get a serious reality check, because ignoring everything outside the bubble is politically incorrect.
I blogged your piece here Charlie: https://jennyhatch.com/2021/04/28/charlie-warzel-on-substack/
I actually believe Milo the new heterosexual would be a fun read on Twitter. Let's give him a chance.
Madam Mao was all into cutting out tongues and breaking political enemies fingers. And this was before she threw them in the Chinese gulag to have them tortured as state enemies and beaten to death with a hose. (Bullets cost money)
That you could write this piece with a straight face Charlie tells me all about YOU.
Free Speech for ALL, especially "bad actors" is the ONLY answer at this juncture in American History.
When the Pizzagate forum on reddit comes back online and Trump supporters can comfortably wear MAGA hats without any fear of being punched in the face, then we will know that free speech is back in America.
Cheers!
Jenny Hatch
https://naturalfamilyblog.wordpress.com/2016/11/22/reddit-is-deleting-the-whole-pizzagate-subreddit-today-at-4pm-here-are-a-few-important-arguments-for-furthering-the-investigation/
Bottom-up solutions are UX-based: increase friction, increase context. Top-down solutions are regulatory: Section 230, banning, and other heavy-handed measures. Bottom-up puts the onus on the platforms to make meaningful change that scales, and are *persistent and consistent*. Top-down will always be a distracting PR band-aids that are built on *exceptions and outliers* instead of the core experience. Bad actors are excellent and finding ways around this (see ad tech "fixing" their issues for 10+ years). Scooping water out of a sinking boat instead of plugging the holes.
I think it's worth trying to parse out the specific types of damage that these bad actors have on the Facebooks. djt seemed to have an incendiary or catalytic effect, and was able to instantly galvanize people (and bots) around a topic. Others seem to have a foundational effect (think of djt throwing the match on a gasoline pool that these folks filled). People that astroturf and manipulate the algo to maximize reach like the Daily Wire jabronis or people like Dan Bongino (although I am willing to admit that I get the "I Wanna Go To The RNC" song stuck in my head once a month) arguably are a bigger "problem" than some super-shitposter like Milo or djt, and require much more tact and nuance to extricate from people's feeds.