Just crazy what is happening
It’s scary that apparently russia can significantly alter european elections by running tiktok campaigns
No, what’s actually scary is that we can see brain-washing on social media in realtime for years and you -like a lot of people- are still surprised because you are totally oblivious to what’s happening right before your eyes.
That seems like an unnecessarily rude way to put it. A major nation using the full force of its intelligence/military apparatus to manipulate the average person minding their own business using ever evolving forms of propaganda isn’t something I really feel a citizen should need to deal with on a personal level. I don’t believe most people feel or should feel they are the target of another nation, especially one they are not in a hot war with. Our governments are failing us by allowing it to happen because enough of them don’t have the desire to stop it.
It is people that look like you, talk like you, live where you do, having the support of people and organizations you trust spreading disinformation. It gets rehashed and passed along by people you see and know in your real life. There is a basic level of personal responsibility, but when no one teaches you how to spot it, when it appears in legitimate media vetted by professionals whose job it is to spot this and they all fail you, crapping on an individual just trying to live their life isn’t right.
It gets rehashed and passed along by people you see and know in your real life.
No, it usually gets rehashed by media that gives a fuck about facts or reality anymore because all that matters is clicks. And clicks are generated by creating outrage and encouraging doom scrolling, not by informing people. Because they have to compete with an even darker pit of ragebait and engagement farming that is social media. Which for a lot of people even replaced other media.
You are right in regards to singular people not being suddenly responsible for falling for a well organised propaganda campaign. Nonetheless nothing of this shitshow fell from the skly suddenly or was quickly created by one bad actor throwing money at it. We are watching the pile of crap that is persistent media failure for many, mnay years now. Without giving a shit about it.
Should governments protect us better? Sure, in a perfect world. But we, not some government, killed the media when we refused to pay for information anymore. And when we happily started shoving bullshit created on social media by algorithms with the sole intent of keeping us engaged into our brains, instead of trying to actually be informed about the world.
This. If the people genuinely believed in the current system, there’s no way this shit would work.
I also think there are bigger issues with the current system, but that’s an incredibly naive way of looking at it.
Brainwashing is much easier than you think, and social media has made it so much easier to run such psyops campaigns. There will always be some issue you can get people riled up about.
The west is just completely unprepared to deal with military-level budgets being used to push destabilization their societies though social media.
Why can’t the US do the same to Russia’s social media sites? Let them have some political upheaval for a change.
Because Russia controls these sites and wouldn’t let any sensible opposition in. Putin is trying to be a dictator for life with illusions of democracy (you need to give ambitious people the illusion that they could do something).
good that democracies start to protect itself from Russia interference… I prefer to have to vote 10 times if needed than having the power in my country in control of Putin
I agree, elections should be held fairly or should be held again. I’m not sure what to say to naysayers claiming the establishment controls the results. I also wonder how we can ensure this doesn’t get misused.
It would be great to have broad discussions around the topic and apply these measures when things get out of hand.
I think we must stop personalised automated (selection of) content towards end-users for anything that might be political (and possibly just anything). There could be a place for such systems if the biases and tracking can easily be controlled by end-users such that they could easily apply other points of view.
No? Check this out
Wow, didn’t expect that. Let’s see how this turns out. It’s crazy how vulnerable our democracies are towards Russia.
A top Romanian court has annulled the first round of the country’s presidential election, days after declassified intelligence alleged Russia ran a coordinated online campaign to promote the far-right outsider who won the first round.
The constitutional court’s decision – which is final – came on Friday after President Klaus Iohannis declassified intelligence two days earlier that alleged Russia ran a sprawling campaign comprising thousands of social media accounts to promote Calin Georgescu across platforms like TikTok and Telegram.
Despite being a huge outsider who declared zero campaign spending, Georgescu emerged as the frontrunner on 24 November. He was due to face the reformist Elena Lasconi, of the Save Romania Union party, in a runoff on Sunday.
More details soon …
- Associated Press, via The Guardian
So now that a cout has ruled that there was foreign interference to such a degree that a presidential election has to be redone: At what point does this get treated as an attack by NATO or the EU?
I haven’t read enough about this, but if this was 1000 accounts convincing a million people to vote for a guy, how is that different from anyone else campaigning? Except if it violates public campaign financing law and you had an unfair advantage from a foreign adversary in what should otherwise be a transparent level playing field…and even then things are never completely level and transparent.
Because a foreign power influencing an election is fundamentally different than a domestic campaign. The foreign power has their own interests, which are potentially at odds with the interests of the electorate.
Ostensibly, if you campaign in country A and are a citizen of country A, then you’re “in the same boat” as the electorate. Of course, with economic stratification this becomes increasingly less true (fast food worker may live in same country as $$$ donor, but they are effectively living under different policies).
I understand, but you have to be extremely specific about how you frame foreign/domestic distinction, because these guys are prying from every angle to turn an open society’s vulnerabilities and contradictions against itself. We need a broad-spectrum solution to this (one is cognitive vaccination through education, but it is too late for adults) and until we do, democracies are going to be on their back foot against the global oligarchy, because offense is much more effective than defense against this.
The specific case you seem to be making is if state actors deliberately aim a campaign at your voters. But what if it is only their multinationals, oligarchs, corruption and dirty money, what if it is interest groups, or what if it is “NGOs”, or “the markets” and hedge funds, or cultural products, or what if it is simply large groups of netizens of a friendly state who talk up a specific candidate?
Maybe it is clear when russia does it, but they fumbled it this time with Romania, because they were so effective that it became obvious. In most cases it will not be this obvious and they will use multiple of the methods described above. All I am saying is that once they get inside voters’ heads, it’s hard to go and say that it is illegitimate because the people were influenced by effective propaganda.
PS: I still am not sure what happened here, there seem to also have been cyberattacks and leaking of credentials to make the election insecure, but the messaging is mixed because in the middle of this there are references to tiktok. I assume it is something similar to voter register data being leaked, which helps laser-target disinformation. I just hope this doesn’t turn against us when we want to vote out someone and can’t because foreign interference made the voters do it.
That’s very difficult, because there was no violence involved in the interference.
It’s an attack nonetheless, just on our way of life instead of an actual physical target and there have been plenty of those too.
I’m getting so fucking tired of Western democracy just eating shit and shrugging in the name of not escalating.
We keep shrugging and we’re all gonna be living in Russian aligned autocracy in the next fifty years.
