If you're a drug addict, the ideal way to kick the habit is self-control, but after a certain time, rehab might be needed. There are downsides to rehab (cost, isolation etc.), just as there are downsides to regulation (compliance costs, unnecessary burden on small and otherwise well-acting companies because of the abuses of others).
There's also the fact that "regulation" is a nebulous term that says nothing of what the actual laws are that manage to get passed/implemented. If history is a lesson, we should all be weary of rules written up by people who do not fully understand the domain they are trying to regulate, and who are often lobbied by the very firms that would be most subject to said regulation.
So, no guarantees in the slightest that regulations will bring about a healthier tech ecosystem.
What if what the foreign actors are saying is the same as domestic? What if someone from the UK or France or wherever has a good strategic idea, are you not allowed to use it?
Pretty sure everyone in the entire world with internet access chimed in at some point on the US's last election. I doubt many people looked into the country of origin of a tweet before deciding on whether or not to be influenced by it.
> What if what the foreign actors are saying is the same as domestic?
Then say it as yourself. Nobody gets mad at Sweden or Israel for holding events, taking out ads or lobbying lawmakers. The issue is Cambridge Analytica lying about who they are. That’s why one is legal and the other is illegal.
Fine, and they should be punished for whatever election laws they broke.
But when it comes to people influencing people, especially over the internet, I doubt very many knew or cared of the country of origin an opinion/idea/piece of "information" came from if it jived with them. Much less whether the identity of the poster was falsified.
Indeed with the anonymity provided by the internet, no nationality whatsoever, foreign or domestic, need be provided.
A lot of people would see it as persuasion by their side, and manipulation by the other. Same with "information" and "propaganda".
As an aside, I kind of appreciate how in the past, mostly before WW2, governments would have agencies such as "Ministry of Propaganda", or "Department of War". Now we use doublespeak terms ("Public Affairs", "Defense") to calm the masses, even though they mean the same thing.
> Psychological manipulation is a type of social influence that aims to change the behavior or perception of others through abusive, deceptive, or underhanded tactics.[1] By advancing the interests of the manipulator, often at another's expense, such methods could be considered exploitative, abusive, devious, and deceptive.
> Social influence is not necessarily negative. For example, doctors can try to persuade patients to change unhealthy habits. Social influence is generally perceived to be harmless when it respects the right of the influenced to accept or reject it, and is not unduly coercive. Depending on the context and motivations, social influence may constitute underhanded manipulation.
I would say that persuasion based on facts is perfectly fine. It’s the deceit that was particularly troublesome last election. And by using targeted social media campaigns derived/aided by private data and possibly behavioural and psychological profiles, people were easily manipulated for the purpose of another nation state. The foreign influence aspect is a real challenge for democracy and sovereignty
> I would say that persuasion based on facts is perfectly fine. It’s the deceit that was particularly troublesome
This is just using different terms to say the same thing. Facts can and often are used to manipulate, by framing and context, and by what is left out. Opinion, supposition, and FUD are also commonly used to persuade. That people usually believe what they are saying does not mean their opinions were not originally based on deceitful or self-serving propaganda.
> last election.
This has been going on since politics existed (ie. civilization).
Foreign influence is another issue. It is however deceitful to suggest that the issues foreigners (Russians) are accused of inflaming were domestically non-issues, non-controversial, or not-inflammatory before their interjection.
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.
Sure, we could trivially make our own star. All we'd need to do is move at least 100 Jupiters worth of mass into close proximity, and voila! Insta-star. That last part is not so trivial though...
The difficulty us mere mortals have with sustained fusion is keeping the reaction from blowing itself apart (as in dissipation, not bomb). Gravity keeps things in check for free, but since gravity is so weak compared to atomic forces, you need an awful lot of it.
Our current containment solutions using electromagnetic forces require a lot of energy to maintain and so far, more than produced from the resulting fusion reaction.
What if we were to combine both methods? Try to put an electromagnetic containment solution into space? Could we possibly find a medium between electromagnetic forces and gravitational forces that would allow us to make it hold together without having to actually have something as massive as a star?
Which is awfully similar to JavaScript's much maligned 'with' statement.
Never understood the FUD and 'considered harmful' screeds against it. Yes I'm aware of the performance/optimization concerns, but honestly, the whole javascript language is a massive performance/optimization concern and we've managed pretty well.
Simple things like changing style properties on DOM elements:
I mean, that style of title exists accoross the political spectrum on YouTube and it's beyond stupid. Whenever I see "X DESTROYS Y" titles I assume the video will be a waste of 3-10 minutes with no particular moment of linguistic destruction on either side and is in fact just two people bickering.
Just clickbait titles is all it is.
Regardless, I don't see how any of that can really count as "extremist" or "conspiratorial" content.
Note that this is already kinda the case for fretless instruments, such as the violin. What you are suggesting to be done by a computer would be done by the player themselves. Obviously deciding exactly what tuning of each note to land on for any part of a song relies on musical intuition which computers are notoriously bad at. But when decided to be appropriate, on the violin perfect 5ths and 4th intervals would be actually (to the limits of the players ability and ear) perfect ratios. The major 3rd itself, which is decidedly enharmonic in equal temperament would sound cleaner and less "beaty".
I've always thought Bach would love the keyboard tools we have today. Simply the ability to switch tunings on the fly, rather than stopping to laboriously change gears on your harpsi/clavichord. I imagine the ability to switch to whatever temperament/tuning you want at the press of a button would have masterfully been taken advantage of by him (to say nothing of arbitrary sound/timbre for each voice/key-range etc. I think he would have loved Switched-On Bach).
Do you figure pro/anti-gun twitter posts from actual users are less likely to result in us being at each others throats? Really seems like pissing in the ocean.
No. It is an asymmetric strategy. One "side" wants chaos more than the other. That other is in fact all those interested basic democratic stability. The construct of "sides" is created artificially by these tactics in order to divide.
Come on....do you really think there are no legitimate sides to contentious political issues like gun control? How about abortion? That "other side" you speak of, presumably actual US citizens, is not interested in "basic democratic stability", they just want their political argument to win out and become (or remain) law. That's where the division comes from, not conjured out of thin air by the Russians.
But the fact remains that whether you are an outside instigator looking to sow discord, a citizen participating in a political flamewar, a politician looking to whip up their base, or the mass media looking for clicks, the tactics are exactly the same. You could wrap a bubble around the United States and cutoff all outside communication and you would not see much difference.
If anything pours gasoline on this fire it is the detachment of social interactions on the internet. And that Twitter is such a hotbed of political "discussion" is a sad testament to the times, considering its very design precludes the possibility of respectful, informed discourse.
I took the topic to be the tactic of intentionally causing chaos in political discussion. Your frame is general polical disagreement. We are talking past each other.
My point was our "general political disagreement" is the chaos. It's not being caused by an outside source. That's just an excuse, and a cudgel used to dismiss one sides ideas. We would not all be holding hands and singing kumbaya if it were not for the Russians. We've been whipping ourselves up into a frenzy for awhile now, and I think we like doing it. The internet helps too.
There's also the fact that "regulation" is a nebulous term that says nothing of what the actual laws are that manage to get passed/implemented. If history is a lesson, we should all be weary of rules written up by people who do not fully understand the domain they are trying to regulate, and who are often lobbied by the very firms that would be most subject to said regulation.
So, no guarantees in the slightest that regulations will bring about a healthier tech ecosystem.