You pretty much summed up my opinions exactly. Weird PR war between two people I couldn't care less about, turned into a weird "men's rights" thing. I know real people actually throwing a party to celebrate and it's just so confusing. Is it bots? Maybe? Probably? I legitimately try to believe that anything outrageously dumb I read online is a paid troll. Might not be true but it does make me feel better.
PR warfare, totally, and I think Depp showed up with a PR military to a PR barfight. I also think it's increasingly unacceptable to have exactly zero transparency on major platforms' algorithms and traffic data. I'm not asking for the code or something, but we already know Big Soc understands better than anyone how terrible it is for society and has been covering up the extent of it (for the uninitiated. The GOP often gives lip service to the idea of anti-trust laws or repealing Section 230, but I'm very much in favor of actual change. Meanwhile, Pelosi calls Schumer from her rotary dial phone to recount the good old days, when .com bubbles simply resolved themselves, somehow. Bots, trolling, all of it, we have no idea. We're not allowed to know much of the mechanics and statistics behind our perceptions of society. Like... evaluating major bases of the collective worldview was already a hella confusing thing to navigate before the internet, and now the path to doing it's being intentionally obfuscated. For profit. Truly, this is some foundational shit. The information ecosystem is being polluted, and often systematically. It affects our ideological cornerstones. Cannot overstress how much we need a re-thinking of our online spaces, or even re-exploring what we intend to accomplish with the internet. Beta testing the latest release is... uh oh. Look, I've radicalized you using social media! Nah, HAHA, I was trolling that whole time. Things are fine.
The same signal in Britain, basically. You'll be able to extrapolate the rest to America just with the first 10-20 minutes or so.
That's not actually true. Thomas Rid spent a good quarter of Active Measures on Wikileaks, Cozy Bear, Guccifer2.0, Cambridge Analytica and the 2016 election and its aftermath. An overview: - Targeting was less effective than made out in the press - Actual Cambridge Analytica campaigns were less viral than organic nonsense - Facebook was utterly flat-footed, are less so now and boy howdy any further shenanigans are not gonna go their way It annoys liberals to bring this up, but Trump lost the popular vote against a deeply unpopular candidate, and then lost the popular vote against a mildly unpopular candidate. When the vote is close (and when the vote isn't equal), disinformation campaigns can tip things one way or another but they are not, in and of themselves, election-winners. it also annoys liberals to bring this up, but the give-a-shit factor can't be ignored. More people voted Trump out of office than any election in history. Cambridge Analytica outraged everyone and did damage to Facebook far beyond damage done by Facebook. by all means, be vigilant. By all means, shout at Silicon Valley. By all means, poke and prod and post Gettr logs. But also recognize that getting mad about things that aren't as bad as they look is the best way to keep them from becoming as bad as they look. Web3IsGoingGreat is a shitshow. It's a dude who hates crypto, who has made a career out of hating crypto. Social media on the blockchain is beyond nascent; right now, a system designed for exchange of value is primarily focused on exchange of value. go figure. Expecting it to replace Facebook right now is ridiculous.Bots, trolling, all of it, we have no idea.