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Comment by herbst | Hacker News Reader

I don't get the thought that additional unauthorised propaganda somehow changes the outcome of a voting in a negative way.

In other words who says the authorised propaganda is better or more true. The are doing the exact same and the deeper the pockets the deeper their social media influence is.

Why is it Suddenly ok that propaganda has to be authorised to be 'valid'

It's all just additional information. Isn't it the peoples job to build their own image? Do we really want to regulate what perception people get of 'things'?

I hope someone can follow what I am trying to say...

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It's a decent question, here's the reason why people are upset...

Politics is something that we create to allow sharing of power between people NOT only in direct proportion to their money/military power but one man one vote.

Now as you notice it's not quite that simple because there is propaganda, which has to be paid for.

So some of this propaganda is paid for by specific interests, but all countries have limitations on this. Eg. in the UK we're currently on the borderline of arresting people because they may have exceeded campaign spending limits. All our politicians have complicated rules about donations, spending limits and broadcasts around elections.

Now the US has some of the loosest rules around this, because your supreme court ruled that (broadly) money is speech, so unlimited campaign donations to superpacs are allowed (I'm not an expert on US politics I think this is roughly right).

But even in the US there are limitations, eg. no money from foreign entities, the lawyer thing that they're trying to string up for where him paying off the hooker is effectively donation.

So why are people angry - because the thin wall we've tried to create between raw financial power and controlling people through propaganda with no control or limits has been eroded. Because the legislation (and enforcement) is from an old era when newspapers, radio, television were the most important things.

If you're saying that maybe we should just rip down all the regulations and have unlimited political donations across borders then maybe you can have an argument about that, but I don't think I'd agree. I like that it's at least a little difficult for US companies to bribe UK politicians to relax our regulations, and supposed to be near impossible for Russia to lobby us. I think that argument would be some kind of anarcholibertarian which isn't really my bad but might be popular on here.

Thanks for this insight. This is the first time someone gave me arguments that make actual sense, instead of 'wrong information is bad mkey'. I can totally see how this is a issue.

However as I see this we can not fix this 'issue' without breaking the Internet.

But I also see that 'free for all' only leads the to rich getting more influence.

I agree with what I think your perspective is, that the internet is kind of impossible to regulate.

But maybe in this situation it's not so impossible to do something useful, Facebook is so effective at the moment because it's a centralized, surveilling monopolistic social network. This centralisation makes them easy to regulate.

You can imagine decentralised networks which would be impossible to regulate but it feels like they'd then also be harder for advertisers/propagandists to access effectively and use to control people's ideas.

So more regulation is a solution? I mean I see what you are getting at. But this is definitly not the direction we as humanity should go.

Regulation can and will just lead to information bubbles and yet again giving the power in the wrong hands, but in that case a central authority instead of a open market.

It's not authorized or unauthorized. We have laws that say somebody pushing political ads has to have their name associated with it so the target of that ad can decide the trustworthyness. Somebody who is conservative might distrust information paid for by the DNC and vice versa.

When foreign actors are allowed to subvert that rule and are aided by an American company selling access to Americans, that's a problem. No other country would ever allow such a thing - can you imagine if the US started taking out political ads on Baidu against the current Chinese administration?

Americans use propaganda in other countries to enforce their own political agenda. Even if we just look at Hollywood. The thing is everybody knows and expects America doing this, and this is happening for years so it's not a current news spectacle.

Producing movies that clearly list where and by whom they are made is not propaganda. That's just a movie. Most countries produce movies and sell them abroad.

I get what you are trying to say, although I think you hit on what the actual problem is. I don't think the issue is that there is unauthorized propaganda vs. authorized propaganda. I think the issue is just that there is more propaganda out there. Yes, it's "all just additional information", but it's too much information.

I think people in general struggle to objectively weigh the information they are presented with, but they struggle so much worse when they don't have the time or ability to sift through the amount of propaganda being thrown at them.

When social media was first finding its roots, many people, myself included, were excited for the prospect of the empowerment and new voice being given to the masses. But not all voices are created equal. Its the equivalent of going from an auditorium of people watching a panel debate a topic to literally everyone in the auditorium trying to debate by shouting over each other. No one has time to consider, let alone fact check, all of the information being presented to them. Its practically gotten to the point where people pick their own reality, with different sets of "alternative facts". Don't like what someone is saying? No problem, there is a never-ending supply of voices out there backing up whatever opinion you want to believe.

Additionally, perhaps the entities most empowered to push their agenda have been the already empowered. 99% of the public does not have the resources or the expertise to collect and analyse data being generated by social media. The people who do are government agencies, political campaigns, and corporations. They have more information on you, how you live, and how you think than at any other time in history. And they can influence public opinion with that information, along with new vehicles of propaganda like botnets, in a way that no regular person can.

So even if social media was originally supposed to bring people together and give a voice to the masses, the reality is that it has resulted in a more divided, disenfranchised populace than before, in my opinion.

I totally agree but the issue is how even smart people shout for more regulation totally ignoring the disaster we get ourself into when we allow central authorities to filter our information.

IMO the issue is the people who use this information overload to build perceptions.

People could simply not have a opinion if they don't have the time to build it, but that doesn't fit our voting mentality where 'every vote counts' even the most stupid ones.

People also could use traditional media as their main information source instead of biased republished trash sources on Facebook.

Hence our school system should teach kids how to parse information.

The issue for me is that it was personalized propaganda and that there is no record of who was shown what message.

What constitutes propaganda? And why does it matter that its personalized?

Accountability. When someone sends false or misleading information through a broadcast medium like TV, they can be called out and corrected (up to and including criminal penalties). When each person receives their own unique messaging, there's no way to find out what lies might be spread and therefore there's no way for anyone to take corrective action.

So you are suggesting that we regulate the Internet and make people who spread 'lies' (or in other words things they might actually believe) liable for their actions?

How about conspiracies that turned out to be true? What about current conspiracies that will turn out to be true.

Should we ban all these 'missinformations' just because people are to stupid to build their own perception?

> So you are suggesting that we regulate

Nope. I'm answering a question about the practical difference between targeted and non-targeted propaganda. I was only pointing out the problem, not suggesting any specific of general solution.

> Should we ban

We don't ban such things on broadcast media, either. As I said above, in broadcast the problem is self-correcting because other parties have a chance to make countering claims (legal solutions are available but that's an extreme that doesn't happen often). The only thing I would consider trying to implement is visibility into targeted-message mediums. I also don't have a detailed proposal for how to do this, it's just wishful thinking.

> just because people are to stupid

We can't lay 100% the blame onto the people being misled if there are significant resources being spent by sophisticated actors trying to mislead them. And regardless, if a voter is misled they are not the only person impacted by that. Their failing is an externality to society as a whole, which justifies the consideration of safeguards.

Slander and libel are only applicable to knowingly false and damaging information. Opinions fall squarely within the first amendment. If CA et al really manipulated the general populace to the degree suggested, I am far more concerned that people went out and voted based on whatever manipulation came across their Facebook, without doing any research or critical thinking.

This really is what media should actually focus on.

But critical thinking is so outdated these days...

I've seen some nasty political TV ads aired between shows, especially for local elections. The issue of critical thinking and not just buying into whatever hitpiece/campaign sign one last saw transcends facebook and social media.

False and especially misleading information is sent through broadcast TV all the time, both through advertisements and aired content. Political content is egregiously bad in this regard. There's no accountability for hit piece TV advertisements routinely aired by and against local politicians; where facts, if they are even present, are twisted and stripped of context and surrounded by scary voice overs and graphics. To say nothing of TV "news" shows liberally salted with opinion, or just general product ads.

It's propaganda all the way down.

Propaganda has nothing to do with accountability. It has to do with the fact that a state wants to influence a populace in a methodical, measurable way. That's it.

It can be full of falsehoods and come from shadowy sources, like most black propaganda, or it can come directly from the US government and be full of truth, like Voice of America.

BBC / CBC kinda blur the edges here since they're arms length and the content creators aren't monitoring the effectiveness of their work via public opinion polling, etc. But in practice they coordinate with a lot of the think tanks that coordinate with the federal governments and there's a bit of a cozy relationship most times that can be exploited and if a relationship / topic is important (like the US Canadian NAFTA talks) you'll see some pretty positive coverage coming out of the CBC.

There is a short 60s book called "Propaganda" that covers all this, and if you read it with a programmers background you'll be able to fully extrapolate to what today looks like.

> additional unauthorised propaganda

not just that, but also that it's personalized so in theory more effective

> changes the outcome of a voting in a negative way

indeed, i don't know that that has been shown to be true.

but keep in mind there are two powerful ways to influence:

1) sway a fence-sitter's opinion 2) get a believer to vote who otherwise wouldn't have voted

How was it more personalised than 'legal' propaganda? Is there any reason to believe they used different methods? Why wouldn't politics make personalised ads as well? (as everybody does when using FB ads anyway)

Both points you mention also are valid for 'legal' propaganda.

> Why wouldn't politics make personalised ads as well?

You don’t see the difference between a politician buying ads for themselves and a foreign company illegally using foreign persons to carry out campaign activities [1] ?

[1] http://www.chicagotribune.com/g00/news/nationworld/ct-cambri...

Not really. Both follow their own agenda and use the same methods to get people buying into it.

I too use the Internet to help spreading ideas I think are important. Those are not always in line with the current political agenda but important to me. Is that a bad thing now that I use my time and money to help change?

Practically speaking, are we calling UK company "foreign" on this topic? What is so foreign about this interference? Hows is propaganda, domestic or foreign a new element in elections?

How about political funding? Does that not qualify as foreign interference in elections when politicians get foreign funds?

>How about political funding? Does that not qualify as foreign interference in elections when politicians get foreign funds?

In most countries this is illegal. Foreigners generally can't make campaign donations.

Or 3) convince the other side's believers to stay home

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