Analysis: Misinformation has created an alternative world for some Americans
Analysis: Misinformation has created an alternative world for some Americans
As the US approaches the third straight election in which misinformation is expected to play a role, it’s important to understand what’s driving people who don’t believe in US elections.
There’s a tendency in this heated political climate to simply reject people who are saying false things and to write off conspiracy theorists writ large.
But as the US approaches the third straight election in which misinformation — and the fight against it — is expected to play a role, it’s important to understand what’s driving people who don’t believe in US elections.
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I talked to O’Sullivan about the documentary, in which he has some frank and disarming talks with people about what has shaken their belief in the US. But he paints an alarming picture about the rise of fringe movements in the country.
Our conversation, conducted by phone and edited for length, is below:
WOLF: What were you trying to accomplish with this project?
O’SULLIVAN: So much of mainstream American politics now is being infected and affected by what is happening on what was once considered the real fringes — fringe platforms, fringe personalities.
And I think really what we want to do in this show is illustrate how these personalities may be pushing falsehoods, but they’re no longer fringe. This is all happening right now. And it is having a big effect on our democracy.
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it sucks so bad that the internet initially looked like this thing that would enlighten the world and allow for us as a species to make incredible gains in sciences and culture and morality. instead it seemed to do the opposite.
I feel like the Internet has gone through three distinct phases. The first phase was primarily driven by individuals and a small handful of businesses. Content was highly limited, but generally positive. Lots of niche communities formed and most things had a very amateur feel to them, but everything was new and interesting.
The second phase was the rise of big corporations and the almighty ad. This was the first arms race between ad tech and ad blockers and gave us such evils as the pop up and pop under. A lot of the early charm of the internet was lost here. Everything started to become much more polished and commercialized, but we also saw a rapid expansion of content and functionality. This phase was heavily driven by corporations, and most of the early individual content was killed at this time.
The last and current phase is the social media phase. It's kind of a hybrid of the previous two. We have individuals generating most content again, but it's controlled, filtered, channeled, and exploited for commercial gain by the corporations. This has somehow lead to things being worse as corporations discovered that catering to people's worst impulses is the most profitable decision.
You're forgetting the pre-Web internet: 99% students & academics. It was largely awesome. When you did get trolled, it was by someone who could spell and form a cohesive argument.
Yup I was there at the edge of that (about a year before Mosaic released on a Mac).
Aol added usenet in 93 and we got on a lot of college servers, also with FTP, gopher and a little later, Hotline. So much warez and shareware games! I was in 8th grade then, had a 14.4 modem and life was pretty great.
Commander Keen nostalgia intensifies
Many neo-nazis used the BBS system to find each other. The funding model of direct email and such, that is used today, could probably be traced back to the early 1990s BBS forums. Scummy people have a way of finding each other.
The current phase is equivalent to reality tv. Made with people you don’t have to pay much, if all, and run by faceless corporations.
honestly im talking a bit further back pre www when it was basically education institutions.
Gopher!
True story: I made a Gopher implementation that sits on top of Apache. When I first met my wife, this happened to come up in conversation, and they mentioned that being from Minnesota, they used Gopher a lot in school. I thus married the first woman who came along who knew what Gopher was.
I honestly never got the hang of gopher. usually looked for an appropriate alt newsgroup.
Usenet and FTP were how we did it. Then we found Hotline in highschool (we had a Mac and a modem back then), and found some pretty sick servers to grab 3D software and games.
I'm not quite old enough to remember that first phase you are talking about, but I'm well old enough to remember the other two, and frankly, during them I don't think the independent niche communities really ever went anywhere. But they are really dying or dead now, and it was discord that killed them.
Because the 1st wave of people on the internet were nerds and geeks. People driven by hope and optimist to make the world a better place and using the internet to do things they were already inclined to do... learn and share. You had to read, and write and things were generally long form interactions. Chat rooms required that you write sentences and paragraphs. It was also largely hosted by universities and other non-profit interests. The philosophy of Open Source and Freesoftware was rampant in the 2000s, and then declined as the big 5 took over the internet.
Now the internet is driven by corporate greed and the exploitation of the LCD's lazy monkey-brain interactions. EVerything now is a blurb, a meme, a click, a reaction emoji. A 8 min youtube video is 'too hard' now for the average internet user.
youtube
Youtube is horrible in some respects for creating a false reality. Click on one video and down a rabbit hole you go, your stream gets filled very quickly of similar videos, but sketcher in content.
Made the mistake of going down the flat earth rabbit hole a few years back, watched maybe 5 - 10 before I felt my brain melting and couldn't laugh any more, took months for the suggestions to stop
Never signing in and resetting occasionally is the only way I've found to try to keep from getting funneled into whatever bubble they think I fit in
A youtube video is a terrible way to get your political information. Also, many youtube videos are full of garbage.
Only those seeking enlightenment or open to it will find it anywhere. The internet has done more to pierce echo chambers. Than any other invention of the last 200 years.
The problem is. It was dropped onto a largely unprepared populous. That was born into propaganda, misinformation, and confirmation bias. Without the skills to move beyond it by design. They vault over the enlightenment at their feet. Working hard digging through mountains of shit to find things to confirm their biases.
I agree, if you made the Internet right after the invention of manufacturing of consent, it’s gonna be a tool for it.
I was about to say the same thing applies to AI. But AI is fucked right out of the gate. There's not even a brief window of hope for it being used to better society. Anyone with any awareness on the topic knows these AIs are already corrupted and compromised because they've been using the Internet to train all their LLMs.
Well if you go back to the use of algorithms they did have this massive potential but they all to quickly got involved with advertising and social media and yeah. it was yuck already at that point. But like computer vision and such gave it so much promise.
algorithms could help people. they could, for example, help you find relaly cool obscure stuff on netflix/spotify that you might like. They worked like this for awhile and ti was great!
But that doesn't make money. the algorithm that shoves netflix's latest trash content does, so that is why it shows up in every suggestion an takes up so my screen space. the vast majority of my spotify 'feed' is podcast trash i have never or never ever will listen to, and i can no longer use it to find some obscure band playing weird music like I did 8 years ago.
The internet has allowed greater collaboration, and the faster spread of information.
It has also allowed the village idiots to find each other and band together...
allowed the village idiots to find each other and band together,,,
You can exploit them more if they are a mob.
Trash in, trash out
While true, the bigger problem is how many people would rather believe the trash because it gives them someone to be angry at instead of learning empathy for other people.
I was more referring to the unfortunately naive hope that came from the early Internet. I am reminded of this quote by Charles Babbage,
On two occasions I have been asked, — "Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?" In one case a member of the Upper, and in the other a member of the Lower, House put this question. I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.
I was also hopeful, but I now realize how silly that was.
Then we are the garbage bin.
The internet wasn't on the 1%s leash back then. We can't be free, even digitally. To dangerous to allow such feelings in the wage slaves.
Turns out the internet only works like that if you put some effort into your education and maintain a healthy skepticism.
