Virality Project and Stanford Cyber Policy Center

by dan, Sunday, March 19, 2023, 15:58 (403 days ago) @ dan

There's a lot in those above links to digest.

What's clear is that it was a program designed purely for the purpose of censorship. And they weren't just targeting the obviously batshit crazy theories (i.e., microchips in vaccines) but also truths (i.e., vaccine relationships to myocarditis). Their purpose is to silence any resistance to the push to have everyone vaccinated.

Why?

If someone wants to believe that a vaccine has a microchip in it, so what? People believe in God, and we think that's OK. Microchips have been proven to exist at least.

But here's what really bugs me. Why are they choosing censorship above education? Rather than trying to silence every dissenting voice, why not promote the ability to read and think critically? Why not push for in-depth, open debate so people have more to go on than sound bites?

The problem is not that somebody believes there's a microchip in a vaccine, it's that they're too damn uneducated to think critically and analyze information, so why not try to fix that problem?

But they're doing more than that. They're trying to silence all critical, informed debate, silence any tweet or blog post that discusses anything that doesn't toe the line.

Virality Project and Stanford Cyber Policy Center

by dulan drift ⌂, Monday, March 20, 2023, 10:32 (402 days ago) @ dan

They're trying to silence all critical, informed debate, silence any tweet or blog post that discusses anything that doesn't toe the line.

This is one of the most disturbing things to come out of Covid - establishment power-Orgs granting themselves a license to lie/censor in order to manufacture a fake reality.

In true Orwellian (or Danian Refuser) style, the bodies created to do that often bear names that are the exact opposite of what their actual function is. The Fa(c)t Check sites are one good example - basically set up to suppress information relating to the Origin of Covid or adverse effects of the vaccines. Biden tried to set up The Disinformation Governance Board to crack down on inconvenient Covid info, but i think that was laughed out of existence (under that name at least) as The Ministry of Truth.

The thing is, the people involved in these orgs, many will go to their graves thinking they were doing the right thing, believing themselves to be on a mission guided by a secret higher truth - or to protect the common-good - or maintain societal stability.

In fact, it's a secret lower truth. There's no reason for higher truth to be a secret - plenty of brilliant philosophers have searched for/found higher-truths - none of them ever thought that it should be kept secret.

The lower-truth, exemplified by the Covid-cover-up, is that our governing orgs have become corrupt, but that's just how it is in the real-world - & exposing that would undermine the whole established order of our expert-ruled system. On a global-scale. Can't have that - then what would happen? The whole world would collapse! (it wouldn't, but that's the rationalization)

As such, the thinking is: we need to lie/ban stuff in order to maintain order. It's all about imaging/messaging - what's true doesn't really come into it.

Virality Project and Stanford Cyber Policy Center

by dan, Monday, March 20, 2023, 12:26 (402 days ago) @ dulan drift

The thing is, the people involved in these orgs, many will go to their graves thinking they were doing the right thing, believing themselves to be on a mission guided by a secret higher truth - or to protect the common-good - or maintain societal stability.

I agree, and this is an important point. Take this paper for example:

Generative Language Models and Automated Influence Operations: Emerging Threats and Potential Mitigations

It's a fascinating topic and one worthy of research, in fact I'd say understanding how AI can generate propaganda is essential knowledge in these times.

But a central question that the paper doesn't seem to address (I've only skimmed and scanned), is who gets to decide what qualifies as propaganda?

The people doing this research probably think they are saving the world from evil forces, but the science they are doing will certainly not be applied objectively. It will be used to serve somebody's purposes.

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