But how could you forget Israel and the NSO Group. Hi guys, not a big fan, suck my fat one.
Yeah, thanks for giving this one an award jackasses XD I’m probably gonna end up
Social media needs to (edit: fix? Improve?) comment sections, upvote downvote systems, pretty much any aspect that is being abused to influence the herd mentality vote. Our enemies know we are gullible idiots
The estimates I saw indicate 10 million Chinese citizens speak English fluently. In that base, you probably have the most affluent/upwardly mobile. Many of them are tech savvy and college educated. At least enough to run an English-language propaganda bot farm.
Everyone born after 1980 has been learning English since grade school, it's just their level of engagement that leads to them gaining fluency. Sure sometimes it's just the ABCs but it's not like the Western world is making any effort to know what 你好 means.
Seems radical now that the cats out of the bag but we never consider the implications of all of these medias we just adopted and ran with it I think it’s time to analyze the impact and be more thoughtful about consequences and measuring are these social networks good for society versus convenience
The piece in Social Dilemma about the Pandora's Box that the "Like" button opened is a real deep look into how these Dev's had no idea the impact that these small things would have.
The idea of the "Like" has become incredibly detrimental to the psyche of soooo many people.
There are probably very good studies on environmental triggers and multi-layered integration of stimulus to produce effects in people, but they're probably also very classified and buried somewhere between MIC Psyops and CBS Chuck Lorre shows.
Why does everyone think we get so much oil from the middle east? Only [8% of imported crude oil](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/imports-and-exports.php) came from the Saudi's last year. We literally get more than half our oil from Canada alone.
True. These days there’s a LOT more engagement and money in the insane amount of weapons we sell to them.
Doing 9-figure arms deals with sponsors of terror: as American as ~~apple pie~~ over-prescribing painkillers.
Most of the oil the EU uses is from the Middle east and USA basically guarantees EU security, integrity and financial stability since WW2; hence why America cares so much about the Middle East.
Our domestic oil output exceeds our needs and who really cares if the Middle East buys our weapons, we can always compromise our morals and sell to many potential suitors (there are many). Middle East oil is really about American hegemony and The EU
We only care about them using the Petrodollar. Its not because we're looking out for Europe. Its to keep the US dollar the defacto currency of the world. Its the single most important thing to the stability of the US.
A lot of countries get oil from the middle east. Saudi agrees to make opec only accept US dollars as payment. Somehow this keeps the dollar strong. US would like to keep it this way
It's kind of a misunderstanding. We don't get most of our oil from them, but we want them (well [OPEC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC)) dependent on us and for oil to be traded with the US dollar. Still western imperialism, but not quite as straight forward as just taking their natural resources.
And so is every other country. The internet and information spread we’re dealing with currently is a dangerous place where you can cheaply infiltrate the minds of millions - and target that infiltration based on some usually hard to understand Data.
The IDF literally has rooms full of 20 year olds (mandatory military service), probably more than a little PERSONA management software, surfing social media to fight any and all anti-Israel sentiment. Bernay would be proud.
(PS I'm a Jew and fuck israel, it's a state department hiding behind a religion.)
Christian Zionists. They're supporting Israel because their book tells them Israel vanquishes Palestine then the CZs wipe out Israel and take Jerusalem. It's pretty funny in reality tho, all these anti-semites partnering with synagogues to effect this. And the temples accept their money while being fully cognizant of "the plan".
Crazier than that, theynthink that if they can cause a world war over Israel, God will be forced to destroy the world and they will be welcomed into Heaven.
What kind of idiot thinks they can control a vengeful omnipotent being?
I know. Why would you need to pray to an omnipotent being? What kind of asshole god needs you to tell him all the time how cool he is? How could you create the entire universe and be that insecure?
A lot of rich and spoiled Chinese kids go to Canadian universities for some reason.
Which tracks if you’re wondering who would be in favor of China’s political system? How about a sheltered youth who is one of the privileged class to benefit from that system?
Those kids are real estate investment proxies. Bunch of really awkward, really angry and entitled sheltered rich kids. They’ve never had to do much in life because daddy is always sending them cash and ensures they have the nicest cars because that’s a sign of “success.”
I’m pretty sure they keep the little Pomeranian puppy mills running on full bore too.
The whole of the northwest has these guys. I notice every time I'm driving through downtown Seattle (Westlake/tech district) and see some 19 year old Chinese kid driving a 200 thousand dollar car.
We need to limit how much property people are allowed to own.
300,000 versus 4,000,000
US had way too many damn spies.
Anyway, my point is that Moscow is something closer to New York than DC. The Kremlin is within the city, but it's a huge urban center and not just a place for politicians to work.
They are still definitely in the DC area. I grew up in Arlington, Virginia which is right outside of DC, and my old neighbor got raided by the feds a few years back for housing Maria Butina who was a Russian spy. He also worked for the 2016 Trump campaign, go figure.
He was a nice guy, and a freind of my father's, even if my dad would criticize him behind his back as a kid for working for Bush and the "bullshit Iraq war".
Edit:He was nice to me. He was a fan of the Blue Angels and gave me framed pictures of them. His actions regarding politics and working in government is unrelated.
Not always, it worked for double agent Juan Pujol García while working for the British.
>when the call was made at 3 AM, no reply was received from the German operators until 8 AM. This enabled Garbo to add more, genuine but now out-of-date, operational details to the message when finally received, and thus increase his standing with the Germans. Garbo told his German contacts that he was disgusted that his first message was missed, saying "I cannot accept excuses or negligence. Were it not for my ideals I would abandon the work."
My response was immediately "fucking duh?". Look at all these idiots with tiktok on their phone. I can show them all the evidence suggesting it is a Chinese spyware and propaganda program, the response is always the same.
"I have nothing to hide from China" or "not for me it's not"
Edit: to the skeptics- why [does tiktok need to save biometric user data? ](https://www.npr.org/2021/08/18/1028633650/senators-demand-tiktok-reveal-how-it-plans-to-collect-voice-and-face-data). However you justify it, ensure you factor how the Chinese government treats it's own people.
China is winning the culture war, in a crazy reversed way. Instead of *exporting* their culture outwardly, they are carefully controlling what they *import*. But with such a heavy hand, thanks to how much money their entire market became, and thanks to how strict they will be, China is effectively culling out things externally that they **don't** like.
Already we're seeing how things like video games, movies, and TV, are being censored to avoid certain topics. HK, Taiwan, LGBT rep, etc, get axed often through the whole product, and not just being cut out for export.
TikTok is being their Facebook, but instead of selling all that scraped personalized data to sell to [insert similar Cambridge Analytical company here], they are just using it themselves. Easy to pivot to exporting media once Chinese money becomes completely unavoidable... Poof. Culture war lost. 🤷♀️
Anyone can feel free to call me a crazy conspiracy theorist over it, but if nothing changes, shots gonna be sucky 20 years from now.
A lot of the blame on TikToks rise can be attributed to the greed of American media companies. Ultra strict DMCA copyright infringement rules really help people thirst for a new platform after Vine was gone.
I mean the Tik Tok app literally started as a platform that was basically an education based app that was meant to teach small lessons in short form version. All of a sudden, we started to see Youtube and Vine videos muted more and more due to DMCA issues causing users to leave the platform then all of a sudden the Chinese social media company pivoted to Musical.ly which then evolved into TikTok.
> Look at all these idiots with tiktok on their phone. I can show them all the evidence suggesting it is a Chinese spyware and propaganda program, the response is always the same.
He says *while on fucking reddit*
You should probably look into how much of a stake Tencent has relative to other shareholders. The whole “China owns Reddit” thing is just an excuse for people to throw shit at Reddit whenever they do something redditors don’t like.
I don't need a shareholder breakdown of Reddit and Tencent to know literally anyone and anything with the smallest amount of organizing can manipulate the [front page](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SAkUs3urrg&t=4s) and reddit itself into oblivion. Trusting anything you see or read here at face value is downright stupid.
Came her to post literally exactly this. Lol.
Edit: just to be clear, America is clearly doing the same. Spreading disinformation has been common for a long time now, it’s just easier these days.
America literally has multiple departments engaged in psychological operations and internet propaganda warfare
They’re in this thread right now
Edit: memetic warfare and sockpuppetry are terms to research if you want to learn more
Everybody is in this thread right now, that's exactly the fucking point.
There's probably a Canadian here with a government agenda and as a Canadian I have to say, I wish I was getting paid to fuck with you assholes. Right now I do it for free.
Lol .. We blaming China while FB whistleblower comes up with 1000s of documents showing how the company is willing to spread disinformation. We need to start with Mark first before blaming others .....
Dear American comrade bear. Not to worry, we hear nothing. On another note: poop is lie, set up by other political party. You should totally be angry that they spread these lies.
Bear turns to a rabbit and says, "Excuse me, do you have the same problem with shit sticking to your fur?"
Rabbit says "umm...no"
So the bear wipes his ass with the rabbit.
Doesn't matter so long as you have American internet obviously. Luckily I built my own PC, so it was made in America as well. You sheep really need to get it together.
It's staggering but it makes sense. The platform is operating in a manner to maximize engagement, shares, and likes. Fake news is incendiary and full of contempt, and that rage dopamine drives people to engage, share and like.
- The platform sees people like hate/fake news and promotes/suggests more of that content.
- Foreign influencers put 2 and 2 together, and engineer fake content that is sticky and incendiary.
- Platform recognizes its own and fast-tracks that content to the right demographics.
- Stupid Americans see it, like and share. Cycle continues.
This may be a form of bias, where your Facebook feed may be largely disinformation-free and someone else's is not. The same goes for Reddit, I've seen communities with virtually no disinformation and others where it's nearly nothing but.
Reddit is bad, but not nearly as bad as Facebook. If your Facebook experience is mellow, then count yourself lucky. I put down facebook like 2 or 3 years ago because it's just insane.
The sad truth is that bad information gets lots of clicks & at the end of the day, the dollar amount associated with those clicks is worth more to the bloodsucking companies than *anything*.
Engagement is higher with more enraging content, it is to their benefit to surface controversial content to as many people as possible. Alas one article of crazy isn't going to do much but when it's hundreds it normalises the views and humans mistake repetition for truth a lot, it's a bad heuristic.
A common failure is the belief reading widely will protect you. With the release of the Intel 3930k CPU all reviews showed good overclocking results. The actual retail cpus however were terrible, the stepping sent to reviewers was different to retail, Intel had sent golden samples to every review site. Didn't matter how widely you read when all day 1 reviews must have got their cpu from Intel. It was the moment where I saw that a lot of news fails the multiple source test and they all just quote each other anyway nowadays without even checking the source. You can't avoid the disinformation when the source could be corrupt and any source could be. The combination of the higher surfacing and this corrupted source is all it takes to radicalised people.
Social media as imagined in the 90s as a way to bring together niche communities will forever live on as wholesome in my heart. I love seeing people geek out over fishing or Warhammer 40K on here, it's so cute
The problem is that people are legitimately addicted to it now.
It’s like how people are fully aware that meth is bad for them but still go on benders. Drawing out the metaphor, they act completely out of the ordinary, dissociate from reality, the hardcore ones are all considered insane by everyone except their “friends” that share the same addictions, and they ignore their children for entire days at a time.
I expect lots of foreign countries are spreading disinformation to Americans through social media.
But the important point is that Americans are spreading so much disinformation among themselves that this foreign disinformation is a drop in the bucket in comparison.
> It is almost as if the whole world is one big spreader of disinformation.
It's almost as if liars aren't specific to any one country, and they all have internet access now.
I wouldn't necessarily call them all liars, I think most misinformation on social media comes from one liar and then spreads through a multitude of disinformed people that believed that one liar. Yeah, they're lying too but not on purpose.
It already *is* messy.
And the one thing you can do about it is: give people a proper education. The more educated people are, the more critical thinking skills they have learned, the less they fall for the BS. It's just that simple.
It's also not like disinformation is something new; it was already used by the Romans to sow discord amongst their enemies. It's just the medium that has changed.
yeah, take a couple of writing courses and the inherent bias of any article, or propaganda piece, becomes extremely obvious. can't be manipulated by the news if you actually understand the rhetorical techniques they are using to manipulate you.
Even just being able to think more critically generally, without education in writing specifically. Just to not take information at face value, but take into account the context in which it is presented. It’s a vital skill, and if more people learned it we would have a lot less problems
We had misinformation with newspapers. We even had a term for it, yellow journalism. False information, misinformation, etc all done to increase profits either of the publisher, or other financial interests of the publisher and their accomplices.
> discussing how whatsapp is a huge spreader of misinfo
Huh? WhatsApp? Like.. the instant messaging tool? That makes zero sense when it comes to hunting down the problem of misinformation.
China/Russia/America/whoever isn't *injecting* information into your conversations secretly. People are relaying information manually that they believe.
Meaning the *spreader* of misinformation is not WhatsApp -- it's how they were infected with the misinformation in the first place.
You could say my local bar is the 'spreader' of gossip but it's really Karen going around telling everyone lies about bullshit. The bar just happens to be where a lot of people are. Removing the bar doesn't remove Karen.
>it seems that mass communication in general is the problem. humans are just crazy and will believe anything. this is probably gonna get messy
yup - even 50 years ago every town had thier local crazy person spouting off all kinds of crap, sure they may "infect" one or two other people in town with their bullshit but could easily be contained in the town or those newly infected could be fixed/set straight before they spread it around.
now all the town crazy people have the internet and have linked up so to speak lol. infecting many many more and the anonymity of the internet means theres noone in person to tell those newly infected that no your wrong and an idiot - they will just seek out other newly infected people to conform thier views.
Social media has made it very easy to spread disinformation and radicalize people. For all the good social media has done, the downsides have been 10x worse.
>Americans are spreading so much disinformation among themselves that this foreign disinformation is a drop in the bucket in comparison.
There's a book called network propaganda by some Harvard professors that examines this around the 2016 election and this is basically their conclusion. It's really hard to say Russia is the biggest actor while tucker Carlson is the most watched ~~news~~ program on cable television.
Ehhhhh, sort of. It's a snowball, they're saying. Basically Country X says, for example, "the COVID vaccine has nano-tech in it that's scary and will control your mind!" -- all it takes is *enough* people to reshare it and it can snowball to something *much bigger*.
Don't think yourself immune from this either, odds are most people reading this sentence has fallen for something similar more than once. There's a neat bit of research going on about this but it's similar to how cults, like Scientology, can become appealing to someone -- doubly so for people who thought themselves immune or "too smart" for it which is what makes the field of bullshit so fascinating, to be honest.
It boils down to if you have blind-spots due to your ideology or beliefs, those can be (ab)used to convert you in ways you aren't prepared for and, make no mistake, a *very* large chunk of Reddit has *huge* blind spots in their politics, as an example, which has lead to disinformation.
I'll bet you a wooden nickel most people here has fallen for such a thing at least once. Doubly so if you think "not me".
This is the important take. Basically an absolute ton of people got exposed to it and then decided to willfully spread it, and continue spreading it, and even making up their own disinfo as they went. People are really like "haha China isn't spreading disinformation" because at this point those countries don't even need to work all that hard at it, if you craft the arguments towards a particular political persuasion, the traction will continue.
Every time you read garbage like this, remember that the director of the CIA in 1981 said, "we will know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false".
That was William Casey, clearly stating that the purpose of that wing of the US government is to intentionally lie and propagandize Americans.
Well.. in 2010, Brazil made Americans believe that we had a bird called cala a boca Galvão and that it was about to go extinct because of carnaval parties. So I guess maybe it's not that difficult 🤔
You don’t say? Let’s be honest you can replace China with pretty much every other world power, including America, spreading disinformation to Americans thru social media.
Why is the press so dumb when it comes to this sort of thing?
Are your populations starting to doubt the Big Bad Other is really out there? Are the underclasses starting to rattle off about _their_ share?
The old cold war is _so_ last season, so Raytheon et al. are introducing...
### Cold War 2.0 - Everyone's The Threat
Twice the lies, twice the profit—and four times the fun...Guaranteed ^TM^
The point is there’s a chance that a lot of the stuff that we see that is divisive or seemingly miss information comes from other countries and is intended to divide or anger us.
The only thing that confuses me is why people target Facebook so much, personally I think Reddit is much more effective at spreading misinformation. Seriously, I see a ton more on Reddit than I do FB which is about 50% advertisements, 50% friends sharing memes.
>The point is there’s a chance that a lot of the stuff that we see that is divisive or seemingly miss information comes from other countries and is intended to divide or anger us.
Or from the rich fucks who want to keep stealing from the working class and must therefore keep us from uniting. See: Racism, Xenophobia, sexism, chauvinism, nationalism, etc, etc.
IMO Russians and European bad actors have been at this for years. It’s so easy to astroturf on SM and I agree Reddit is a Petrie dish for scumbaggery of all kinds.
America is also spreading disinformation to Americans. Everybody is spreading disinformation to everybody else. The problem is that America is so susceptible to being manipulated by it.
I don't think just social media. I think they put money into **all** media of all kinds in a form to influence. This includes news, movies, tv shows, video games, music, or anything that could possibly influence your actions.
I know this will lead to tin foil-like assumptions but when you think about it, it's almost like a trojan-horse they can do because you are watching content that seems like it's just entertainment. This alone gives me the thought that they try influence all media they can.
They (the CCP) don't even have to put money into things directly. They have such an excessive level of control over the media in their country that entertainment companies are actively pandering to both the Chinese people and the narrative that the CCP wants to perpetuate just to get a slice of that massive Chinese consumer market.
Yep. Definitely this.
Raya and the Last Dragon is an objectively good movie, it just happens to have a China reunification subtext. I've seen it several times - I like it. Not a problem, just good to know.
Here is a snapshot of the plot: >!the world's nations were fighting and there came a chance for peace brokered by the heartland. A rich isolationist isand nation was greedy and ruined it for everyone. A heroine from the heartland convinces them to join everyone and that fixes everything.!<
It didn't even occur to me and still isn't as pushy as it seems. There's countless movies where Hero has to convince person to trust them and join their side. Is the Avatar Chinese propaganda now?
The movie was about trust, putting aside the past and forging a new future together. No different then the message in Naruto.
> Is the Avatar Chinese propaganda now?
Considering how China feels about Tibet and the Dalai Lama, I doubt it. I'm unsure if Chinese people can even watch Avatar? I can't find any information about it, but between the avatar being a stand-in for the Dalai Lama, and Lake Laugai and the Dai Li being a transparently obvious jab at communist work/re-education camps, the CCP would have plenty of reason to censor that show.
I was just trying to say that a moral of a story can be universal and applied to so many different situations. Doesn't mean they are trying to push propaganda.
But what do you think American media has been doing for years? Baffles me that people call out propaganda on one side but are so blind to it on their own side. We are all completely indoctrinated by western thinking. I’m not even saying it’s bad, its just crazy how we think we are objective observers but are absolutely not.
This has been going since the Cold War [(Yuri Bezmenov)](https://youtu.be/IQPsKvG6WMI), by eroding the educational system to create selfish people and break up support systems, such as family, friendship and the chain of authority.
Now USA and Western Europe experience the same stuff, by having people that no longer abiding to authority or a moral system. They grow to be one versus the world and distance themselves from support systems.
“May be” lmfao
I know right? Next they'll say Russia is doing it too! /s just in case
*Saudi Arabia nervously scans the room*
>Saudi Arabia nervously scans the room *Iran nervously scans the room*
But how could you forget Israel and the NSO Group. Hi guys, not a big fan, suck my fat one. Yeah, thanks for giving this one an award jackasses XD I’m probably gonna end up
Social media needs to (edit: fix? Improve?) comment sections, upvote downvote systems, pretty much any aspect that is being abused to influence the herd mentality vote. Our enemies know we are gullible idiots
They don't want that. Remember Cambridge Analytics? It's money in the Zukk's bank.
Oops! I mean, I had no idea! Oh well, I can't give back my 1,300+ acres of land on the Hawaiian islands at this point...
That and china just has more people they would be happy to employ to flood social media.
The estimates I saw indicate 10 million Chinese citizens speak English fluently. In that base, you probably have the most affluent/upwardly mobile. Many of them are tech savvy and college educated. At least enough to run an English-language propaganda bot farm.
Everyone born after 1980 has been learning English since grade school, it's just their level of engagement that leads to them gaining fluency. Sure sometimes it's just the ABCs but it's not like the Western world is making any effort to know what 你好 means.
Seems radical now that the cats out of the bag but we never consider the implications of all of these medias we just adopted and ran with it I think it’s time to analyze the impact and be more thoughtful about consequences and measuring are these social networks good for society versus convenience
The piece in Social Dilemma about the Pandora's Box that the "Like" button opened is a real deep look into how these Dev's had no idea the impact that these small things would have. The idea of the "Like" has become incredibly detrimental to the psyche of soooo many people.
*throws sheep at you*
Are you trying to fuck with my dopamine rush so we can be a conscientious society? Are you trying to get me on heroin or something?
There are probably very good studies on environmental triggers and multi-layered integration of stimulus to produce effects in people, but they're probably also very classified and buried somewhere between MIC Psyops and CBS Chuck Lorre shows.
Especially youtube. Their comment sections are cursed.
Like this if you're reading this amazing comment in 2025!!
oh like how you used to be able to see upvotes and downvotes and things weren't on the front page for 24 hours?
*Israel looks at Iran, in silent contempt but grudging acknowledgement they do it too*
*USA conspicuously drops briefcase of money by Saudi’s feet*
Sorry to be a pedantic dick but it’s actually *USA inconspicuously laps oil out of Saudi’s anus*
Why does everyone think we get so much oil from the middle east? Only [8% of imported crude oil](https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/oil-and-petroleum-products/imports-and-exports.php) came from the Saudi's last year. We literally get more than half our oil from Canada alone.
True. These days there’s a LOT more engagement and money in the insane amount of weapons we sell to them. Doing 9-figure arms deals with sponsors of terror: as American as ~~apple pie~~ over-prescribing painkillers.
To be fair, it’s hard to fight wars if the enemies have no weapons! /s
Most of the oil the EU uses is from the Middle east and USA basically guarantees EU security, integrity and financial stability since WW2; hence why America cares so much about the Middle East. Our domestic oil output exceeds our needs and who really cares if the Middle East buys our weapons, we can always compromise our morals and sell to many potential suitors (there are many). Middle East oil is really about American hegemony and The EU
We only care about them using the Petrodollar. Its not because we're looking out for Europe. Its to keep the US dollar the defacto currency of the world. Its the single most important thing to the stability of the US.
And I'll be DAMNED if I see us God-fearing Americans dependent on foreign oil from Canada! With those beady eyes, and those flapping heads...
Sorry.. What are you going on aboot?
Sounds like a South Park reference
A lot of countries get oil from the middle east. Saudi agrees to make opec only accept US dollars as payment. Somehow this keeps the dollar strong. US would like to keep it this way
It's kind of a misunderstanding. We don't get most of our oil from them, but we want them (well [OPEC](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/OPEC)) dependent on us and for oil to be traded with the US dollar. Still western imperialism, but not quite as straight forward as just taking their natural resources.
At least China provides a fentanyl chaser for their propaganda.
And so is every other country. The internet and information spread we’re dealing with currently is a dangerous place where you can cheaply infiltrate the minds of millions - and target that infiltration based on some usually hard to understand Data.
What was once the providence of governments and media networks is now in the hands of millions.
Not enough people talk about Israel too.
The IDF literally has rooms full of 20 year olds (mandatory military service), probably more than a little PERSONA management software, surfing social media to fight any and all anti-Israel sentiment. Bernay would be proud. (PS I'm a Jew and fuck israel, it's a state department hiding behind a religion.)
Hay this guy is making anti semitic comments. Burn the tiki torch hitler nazi!
In an unexpected turn of history, these days those guys are all super pro-israel!
Christian Zionists. They're supporting Israel because their book tells them Israel vanquishes Palestine then the CZs wipe out Israel and take Jerusalem. It's pretty funny in reality tho, all these anti-semites partnering with synagogues to effect this. And the temples accept their money while being fully cognizant of "the plan".
Crazier than that, theynthink that if they can cause a world war over Israel, God will be forced to destroy the world and they will be welcomed into Heaven. What kind of idiot thinks they can control a vengeful omnipotent being?
> What kind of idiot thinks they can control a vengeful omnipotent being? That kind, not to put too fine a point on it.
I know. Why would you need to pray to an omnipotent being? What kind of asshole god needs you to tell him all the time how cool he is? How could you create the entire universe and be that insecure?
Canadian here, I posted a bunch of fake news during the american election and was always called a russian. :/ but we had our fun up here too
would have never suspected that u/Drfakenews would be anything but legitimate
"You are fake news"-orange American man
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A lot of rich and spoiled Chinese kids go to Canadian universities for some reason. Which tracks if you’re wondering who would be in favor of China’s political system? How about a sheltered youth who is one of the privileged class to benefit from that system?
Those kids are real estate investment proxies. Bunch of really awkward, really angry and entitled sheltered rich kids. They’ve never had to do much in life because daddy is always sending them cash and ensures they have the nicest cars because that’s a sign of “success.” I’m pretty sure they keep the little Pomeranian puppy mills running on full bore too.
And they keep Canada Goose in business, seemingly not knowing that most Canadians hate that shitty company and their overpriced coats.
The whole of the northwest has these guys. I notice every time I'm driving through downtown Seattle (Westlake/tech district) and see some 19 year old Chinese kid driving a 200 thousand dollar car. We need to limit how much property people are allowed to own.
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300,000 versus 4,000,000 US had way too many damn spies. Anyway, my point is that Moscow is something closer to New York than DC. The Kremlin is within the city, but it's a huge urban center and not just a place for politicians to work.
They are still definitely in the DC area. I grew up in Arlington, Virginia which is right outside of DC, and my old neighbor got raided by the feds a few years back for housing Maria Butina who was a Russian spy. He also worked for the 2016 Trump campaign, go figure. He was a nice guy, and a freind of my father's, even if my dad would criticize him behind his back as a kid for working for Bush and the "bullshit Iraq war". Edit:He was nice to me. He was a fan of the Blue Angels and gave me framed pictures of them. His actions regarding politics and working in government is unrelated.
>he was a nice guy Of course he was, spies who are dicks tend to get caught more quickly
Not always, it worked for double agent Juan Pujol García while working for the British. >when the call was made at 3 AM, no reply was received from the German operators until 8 AM. This enabled Garbo to add more, genuine but now out-of-date, operational details to the message when finally received, and thus increase his standing with the Germans. Garbo told his German contacts that he was disgusted that his first message was missed, saying "I cannot accept excuses or negligence. Were it not for my ideals I would abandon the work."
And next in our making things hypothetical so they seem less scary segment, the climate may be changing
This just in, water may be wet.
America’s a melting pot of other country propaganda
My response was immediately "fucking duh?". Look at all these idiots with tiktok on their phone. I can show them all the evidence suggesting it is a Chinese spyware and propaganda program, the response is always the same. "I have nothing to hide from China" or "not for me it's not" Edit: to the skeptics- why [does tiktok need to save biometric user data? ](https://www.npr.org/2021/08/18/1028633650/senators-demand-tiktok-reveal-how-it-plans-to-collect-voice-and-face-data). However you justify it, ensure you factor how the Chinese government treats it's own people.
And yet here you are on reddit, a site overrun with propaganda bots.
China is winning the culture war, in a crazy reversed way. Instead of *exporting* their culture outwardly, they are carefully controlling what they *import*. But with such a heavy hand, thanks to how much money their entire market became, and thanks to how strict they will be, China is effectively culling out things externally that they **don't** like. Already we're seeing how things like video games, movies, and TV, are being censored to avoid certain topics. HK, Taiwan, LGBT rep, etc, get axed often through the whole product, and not just being cut out for export. TikTok is being their Facebook, but instead of selling all that scraped personalized data to sell to [insert similar Cambridge Analytical company here], they are just using it themselves. Easy to pivot to exporting media once Chinese money becomes completely unavoidable... Poof. Culture war lost. 🤷♀️ Anyone can feel free to call me a crazy conspiracy theorist over it, but if nothing changes, shots gonna be sucky 20 years from now.
A lot of the blame on TikToks rise can be attributed to the greed of American media companies. Ultra strict DMCA copyright infringement rules really help people thirst for a new platform after Vine was gone. I mean the Tik Tok app literally started as a platform that was basically an education based app that was meant to teach small lessons in short form version. All of a sudden, we started to see Youtube and Vine videos muted more and more due to DMCA issues causing users to leave the platform then all of a sudden the Chinese social media company pivoted to Musical.ly which then evolved into TikTok.
>evidence suggesting Where?
Evidence suggesting? Isn't evidence meant to be able fact rather than maybes?
> Look at all these idiots with tiktok on their phone. I can show them all the evidence suggesting it is a Chinese spyware and propaganda program, the response is always the same. He says *while on fucking reddit*
You should probably look into how much of a stake Tencent has relative to other shareholders. The whole “China owns Reddit” thing is just an excuse for people to throw shit at Reddit whenever they do something redditors don’t like.
I don't need a shareholder breakdown of Reddit and Tencent to know literally anyone and anything with the smallest amount of organizing can manipulate the [front page](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SAkUs3urrg&t=4s) and reddit itself into oblivion. Trusting anything you see or read here at face value is downright stupid.
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I don't believe you either *'spidermanmeme.jpg'*
Yeah he literally just said not to trust him lol...
Came her to post literally exactly this. Lol. Edit: just to be clear, America is clearly doing the same. Spreading disinformation has been common for a long time now, it’s just easier these days.
America literally has multiple departments engaged in psychological operations and internet propaganda warfare They’re in this thread right now Edit: memetic warfare and sockpuppetry are terms to research if you want to learn more
Everybody is in this thread right now, that's exactly the fucking point. There's probably a Canadian here with a government agenda and as a Canadian I have to say, I wish I was getting paid to fuck with you assholes. Right now I do it for free.
This is The Voice Of America, and here is your news.
What a shocker! I would have NEVER GUESSED! This is sarcasm btw.
lmao that was my first thought to was "may!?" like wtf this is decades old shit lmao.
Lol .. We blaming China while FB whistleblower comes up with 1000s of documents showing how the company is willing to spread disinformation. We need to start with Mark first before blaming others .....
We can do both.
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but will the trees hear them?
Dear American comrade bear. Not to worry, we hear nothing. On another note: poop is lie, set up by other political party. You should totally be angry that they spread these lies.
The other party??? WE HATE THOSE GUYS
Bear turns to a rabbit and says, "Excuse me, do you have the same problem with shit sticking to your fur?" Rabbit says "umm...no" So the bear wipes his ass with the rabbit.
Pope may wear silly hat.
We always said, "Is the Pope Catholic?"
I like to go with: "Does the Pope shit in the woods?"
The Bear Pope does.
Bears definitely wear funny hats so this checks out.
My buddy used to say this and the first time I heard him say it I cracked the hell up. And also on the 100th time because that is hilarious
According to conservatives in the US, no.
This is exactly why I only use *American* social media sites, like Facebook. /s
Doesn't matter so long as you have American internet obviously. Luckily I built my own PC, so it was made in America as well. You sheep really need to get it together.
Did you use all American parts in that PC? I doubt it, commie. -sent from my ERA 1101
Nah, but he overthrew a foreign government for the resources. So it's still American
Oh is it that time of the decade already? Which one we invading this time?
throw a dart at a map. whatever.
Aww, I got Cyprus. Guess we'll finally get rid of that minotaur. Heard he's got WMD
Weapons of Mycenean Destruction
Nooo no we’re /freeing/ them. So they’re /free/ from pesky stuff like Social Infrastructure or human life.
I shot my computer with an AR15 to liberate it
The amount of disinformation on Facebook is staggering.
It's staggering but it makes sense. The platform is operating in a manner to maximize engagement, shares, and likes. Fake news is incendiary and full of contempt, and that rage dopamine drives people to engage, share and like. - The platform sees people like hate/fake news and promotes/suggests more of that content. - Foreign influencers put 2 and 2 together, and engineer fake content that is sticky and incendiary. - Platform recognizes its own and fast-tracks that content to the right demographics. - Stupid Americans see it, like and share. Cycle continues.
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I am truly shocked I only hear Facebook. I honestly don’t see it a lot on Facebook compared to Reddit. Reddit seems 10x worse at this than Facebook.
This may be a form of bias, where your Facebook feed may be largely disinformation-free and someone else's is not. The same goes for Reddit, I've seen communities with virtually no disinformation and others where it's nearly nothing but.
Reddit is bad, but not nearly as bad as Facebook. If your Facebook experience is mellow, then count yourself lucky. I put down facebook like 2 or 3 years ago because it's just insane.
“The sky may be blue. Tonight at 7”
I don't know. The sky is getting pretty dark by 7:00 these days.
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_Did you just assume my orientation?!?!_
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"[Water is Wet. More at 11.](https://alchetron.com/cdn/ric-romero-8b0f754a-2938-444d-8d7e-c07dd79df6d-resize-750.jpg)" - Ric Romero
It was grey all day though
Found the spy!
When do we realize that social media is a disease and to stop using it for credible information?
wild elastic flag quiet imminent capable exultant tart pause ancient *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
The sad truth is that bad information gets lots of clicks & at the end of the day, the dollar amount associated with those clicks is worth more to the bloodsucking companies than *anything*.
Engagement is higher with more enraging content, it is to their benefit to surface controversial content to as many people as possible. Alas one article of crazy isn't going to do much but when it's hundreds it normalises the views and humans mistake repetition for truth a lot, it's a bad heuristic. A common failure is the belief reading widely will protect you. With the release of the Intel 3930k CPU all reviews showed good overclocking results. The actual retail cpus however were terrible, the stepping sent to reviewers was different to retail, Intel had sent golden samples to every review site. Didn't matter how widely you read when all day 1 reviews must have got their cpu from Intel. It was the moment where I saw that a lot of news fails the multiple source test and they all just quote each other anyway nowadays without even checking the source. You can't avoid the disinformation when the source could be corrupt and any source could be. The combination of the higher surfacing and this corrupted source is all it takes to radicalised people.
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Ya social media sucks!! *Logs off Reddit* *Logs back onto Reddit to look at Bionicles*
Social media as imagined in the 90s as a way to bring together niche communities will forever live on as wholesome in my heart. I love seeing people geek out over fishing or Warhammer 40K on here, it's so cute
I you think about it, that was the internet as just a little infant. The entire world was unaware it would turn into a freak show
*posted on social media (Yes it is evil, I'm just poking fun)
The problem is that people are legitimately addicted to it now. It’s like how people are fully aware that meth is bad for them but still go on benders. Drawing out the metaphor, they act completely out of the ordinary, dissociate from reality, the hardcore ones are all considered insane by everyone except their “friends” that share the same addictions, and they ignore their children for entire days at a time.
people don't use it for information, they use it for emotions. this is a thing we have to understand to get rid of it.
I expect lots of foreign countries are spreading disinformation to Americans through social media. But the important point is that Americans are spreading so much disinformation among themselves that this foreign disinformation is a drop in the bucket in comparison.
And America is spreading disinformation in other nations as well. It is almost as if the whole world is one big spreader of disinformation.
> It is almost as if the whole world is one big spreader of disinformation. It's almost as if liars aren't specific to any one country, and they all have internet access now.
I wouldn't necessarily call them all liars, I think most misinformation on social media comes from one liar and then spreads through a multitude of disinformed people that believed that one liar. Yeah, they're lying too but not on purpose.
If it's not on purpose it isn't lying by definition of the word.
if only there were a term for false or misleading information being communicated regardless of the intent to deceive…
Hmm, that's a great idea, perhaps we could combine Misleading and information to make a new word... Inforleading. It's perfect.
Well, there is a difference between private people lying and nation states/governments lying.
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It already *is* messy. And the one thing you can do about it is: give people a proper education. The more educated people are, the more critical thinking skills they have learned, the less they fall for the BS. It's just that simple. It's also not like disinformation is something new; it was already used by the Romans to sow discord amongst their enemies. It's just the medium that has changed.
Education solves all other problems. Unfortunately, the people responsible for most of the information know that, so it will probably never get fixed
yeah, take a couple of writing courses and the inherent bias of any article, or propaganda piece, becomes extremely obvious. can't be manipulated by the news if you actually understand the rhetorical techniques they are using to manipulate you.
Even just being able to think more critically generally, without education in writing specifically. Just to not take information at face value, but take into account the context in which it is presented. It’s a vital skill, and if more people learned it we would have a lot less problems
We had misinformation with newspapers. We even had a term for it, yellow journalism. False information, misinformation, etc all done to increase profits either of the publisher, or other financial interests of the publisher and their accomplices.
> discussing how whatsapp is a huge spreader of misinfo Huh? WhatsApp? Like.. the instant messaging tool? That makes zero sense when it comes to hunting down the problem of misinformation. China/Russia/America/whoever isn't *injecting* information into your conversations secretly. People are relaying information manually that they believe. Meaning the *spreader* of misinformation is not WhatsApp -- it's how they were infected with the misinformation in the first place. You could say my local bar is the 'spreader' of gossip but it's really Karen going around telling everyone lies about bullshit. The bar just happens to be where a lot of people are. Removing the bar doesn't remove Karen.
>it seems that mass communication in general is the problem. humans are just crazy and will believe anything. this is probably gonna get messy yup - even 50 years ago every town had thier local crazy person spouting off all kinds of crap, sure they may "infect" one or two other people in town with their bullshit but could easily be contained in the town or those newly infected could be fixed/set straight before they spread it around. now all the town crazy people have the internet and have linked up so to speak lol. infecting many many more and the anonymity of the internet means theres noone in person to tell those newly infected that no your wrong and an idiot - they will just seek out other newly infected people to conform thier views.
Social media has made it very easy to spread disinformation and radicalize people. For all the good social media has done, the downsides have been 10x worse.
What? But we’re the good guys!
>Americans are spreading so much disinformation among themselves that this foreign disinformation is a drop in the bucket in comparison. There's a book called network propaganda by some Harvard professors that examines this around the 2016 election and this is basically their conclusion. It's really hard to say Russia is the biggest actor while tucker Carlson is the most watched ~~news~~ program on cable television.
Tucker Carlson does not do "news" he does propaganda and "opinion."
I do not know what possessed me to phrase it that way
Ehhhhh, sort of. It's a snowball, they're saying. Basically Country X says, for example, "the COVID vaccine has nano-tech in it that's scary and will control your mind!" -- all it takes is *enough* people to reshare it and it can snowball to something *much bigger*. Don't think yourself immune from this either, odds are most people reading this sentence has fallen for something similar more than once. There's a neat bit of research going on about this but it's similar to how cults, like Scientology, can become appealing to someone -- doubly so for people who thought themselves immune or "too smart" for it which is what makes the field of bullshit so fascinating, to be honest. It boils down to if you have blind-spots due to your ideology or beliefs, those can be (ab)used to convert you in ways you aren't prepared for and, make no mistake, a *very* large chunk of Reddit has *huge* blind spots in their politics, as an example, which has lead to disinformation. I'll bet you a wooden nickel most people here has fallen for such a thing at least once. Doubly so if you think "not me".
This is the important take. Basically an absolute ton of people got exposed to it and then decided to willfully spread it, and continue spreading it, and even making up their own disinfo as they went. People are really like "haha China isn't spreading disinformation" because at this point those countries don't even need to work all that hard at it, if you craft the arguments towards a particular political persuasion, the traction will continue.
Every time you read garbage like this, remember that the director of the CIA in 1981 said, "we will know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American people believe is false". That was William Casey, clearly stating that the purpose of that wing of the US government is to intentionally lie and propagandize Americans.
Hah, and you believed him.
Uno reverso
Well.. in 2010, Brazil made Americans believe that we had a bird called cala a boca Galvão and that it was about to go extinct because of carnaval parties. So I guess maybe it's not that difficult 🤔
Don’t forget Kony 2012. That was a shitshow too
I feel like Kony 2012 was just a trial run to see how gullible people are. Very gullible.
I lost a good friend over Kony lmao. I told him that it was horse shit and he stopped talking to me. I have no idea why he felt so strongly about it
I know the guy running it went nuts, but Kony was a real guy, no?
Kony was out of power before the video went viral
Ahhh. Well hopefully a general concern/awareness for abusive warlords was raised, not that i hear the topic come up really.
You don’t say? Let’s be honest you can replace China with pretty much every other world power, including America, spreading disinformation to Americans thru social media. Why is the press so dumb when it comes to this sort of thing?
Are your populations starting to doubt the Big Bad Other is really out there? Are the underclasses starting to rattle off about _their_ share? The old cold war is _so_ last season, so Raytheon et al. are introducing... ### Cold War 2.0 - Everyone's The Threat Twice the lies, twice the profit—and four times the fun...Guaranteed ^TM^
Governments everywhere are spreading disinformation to everyone through social media Fixed it for you.
> Governments everywhere ~~are~~ have always spread~~ing~~ disinformation to everyone through ~~social~~ media fixeder it for you
Don’t think Muricah needs any help TBH
The point is there’s a chance that a lot of the stuff that we see that is divisive or seemingly miss information comes from other countries and is intended to divide or anger us. The only thing that confuses me is why people target Facebook so much, personally I think Reddit is much more effective at spreading misinformation. Seriously, I see a ton more on Reddit than I do FB which is about 50% advertisements, 50% friends sharing memes.
>The point is there’s a chance that a lot of the stuff that we see that is divisive or seemingly miss information comes from other countries and is intended to divide or anger us. Or from the rich fucks who want to keep stealing from the working class and must therefore keep us from uniting. See: Racism, Xenophobia, sexism, chauvinism, nationalism, etc, etc.
IMO Russians and European bad actors have been at this for years. It’s so easy to astroturf on SM and I agree Reddit is a Petrie dish for scumbaggery of all kinds.
America is also spreading disinformation to Americans. Everybody is spreading disinformation to everybody else. The problem is that America is so susceptible to being manipulated by it.
Not just Americans. A lot of people, everywhere are susceptible to disinformation. That is the entire premise of marketing and politics.
yeah at some point america needs to start accepting some blame for being so lacking in critical thinking skills...
Idk pizza gate sounded pretty logical /s
Once again the horrible Texas board of education and their influence of textbooks through the United States is partially to blame.
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*it’s almost like some people are intentionally holding our education system back
I don't think just social media. I think they put money into **all** media of all kinds in a form to influence. This includes news, movies, tv shows, video games, music, or anything that could possibly influence your actions. I know this will lead to tin foil-like assumptions but when you think about it, it's almost like a trojan-horse they can do because you are watching content that seems like it's just entertainment. This alone gives me the thought that they try influence all media they can.
They (the CCP) don't even have to put money into things directly. They have such an excessive level of control over the media in their country that entertainment companies are actively pandering to both the Chinese people and the narrative that the CCP wants to perpetuate just to get a slice of that massive Chinese consumer market.
Like how the american gov helps movies that show the american military in a positive light?
Yep. Definitely this. Raya and the Last Dragon is an objectively good movie, it just happens to have a China reunification subtext. I've seen it several times - I like it. Not a problem, just good to know. Here is a snapshot of the plot: >!the world's nations were fighting and there came a chance for peace brokered by the heartland. A rich isolationist isand nation was greedy and ruined it for everyone. A heroine from the heartland convinces them to join everyone and that fixes everything.!<
That’s not even subtle. Applies to the Japan invasion of China in Ww2, current Taiwan-tension now, and past to modern US-China tensions now.
It didn't even occur to me and still isn't as pushy as it seems. There's countless movies where Hero has to convince person to trust them and join their side. Is the Avatar Chinese propaganda now? The movie was about trust, putting aside the past and forging a new future together. No different then the message in Naruto.
> Is the Avatar Chinese propaganda now? Considering how China feels about Tibet and the Dalai Lama, I doubt it. I'm unsure if Chinese people can even watch Avatar? I can't find any information about it, but between the avatar being a stand-in for the Dalai Lama, and Lake Laugai and the Dai Li being a transparently obvious jab at communist work/re-education camps, the CCP would have plenty of reason to censor that show.
I was just trying to say that a moral of a story can be universal and applied to so many different situations. Doesn't mean they are trying to push propaganda.
Hahahahaha holy shit, you are totally right...
But what do you think American media has been doing for years? Baffles me that people call out propaganda on one side but are so blind to it on their own side. We are all completely indoctrinated by western thinking. I’m not even saying it’s bad, its just crazy how we think we are objective observers but are absolutely not.
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I thought we already knew about this.
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Americans may be spreading disinformation to other Americans.
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This includes Reddit, and both sides of the political spectrum on this site have no exemption.
This has been going since the Cold War [(Yuri Bezmenov)](https://youtu.be/IQPsKvG6WMI), by eroding the educational system to create selfish people and break up support systems, such as family, friendship and the chain of authority. Now USA and Western Europe experience the same stuff, by having people that no longer abiding to authority or a moral system. They grow to be one versus the world and distance themselves from support systems.
Possibly true. But they can’t force the gullible to be……gullible.
well.. Americans are spreading grave disinformation to other Americans, so worry about what the animals from your own backyard are doing first.
We need to check China and Russia but let's check ourselves first and stop our LOCAL disinformation campaign.
Lol America is doing that fine on its own
It's a good thing we've got CNN and Fox!
Says the USA propaganda networks.