
At Least 70 Countries Have Had Disinformation Campaigns, Study Finds - johnny313
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/26/technology/government-disinformation-cyber-troops.html
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leftyted
I recommend Hannah Arendt's essay Lying in Politics. Summary:

1\. Lying has always been considered a valid political tool. It isn't really
clear how a government can operate without lying.

2\. Lying is deeply related to the human ability to act. Acting involves
imagining the world as it does not exist and trying to bring it into
existence. Imagining the world as it does not exist is very close to lying (if
only to yourself).

3\. Lies are often more plausible than reality because the liar knows what his
audience wants to hear.

4\. History is not composed of facts; it is about collective memory and
consensus. Facts exist but history always contains a buried political
philosophy that constrains the facts.

5\. A significant amount of lying involves fitting reality into overly
simplified models.

6\. Almost all liars start with self-deception. They often don't know they're
lying.

7\. Ironically, the people with the most access to information are often in
the worst place to determine the truth. Overclassification leads to a
situation where cleared officials have far too much information to wade
through. The president selects officials who filter information though their
own overly simplified models before it reaches him.

8\. Lying in order to hide the truth implies a truth, which means that the
truth can often be deduced from the lie.

9\. We should be extremely wary of highly educated technocrats who attempt to
impose a "scientific" viewpoint on political events, always fail, and yet
remain utterly convinced by their oversimplified models.

~~~
dandare
> 1\. Lying has always been considered a valid political tool. It isn't really
> clear how a government can operate without lying. Could you expand on this?
> Why could the government not operate without lying, except for extreme
> situations like war?

~~~
leftyted
It's been a while since I read the essay and I don't exactly remember the
distinctions drawn. I'll venture my own opinions:

Lying is necessary when trying to move through the world. Governments lie for
the same reason people lie. Governments restrict information just like people
have internal opinions and thoughts we keep hidden.

Governments need to act, which involves imagining the world as it doesn't
exist and spreading that imaginary world in order to create a consensus. This
is very similar to lying and the boundaries aren't obvious.

People don't want a government that tells the truth and will not vote for a
candidate who tells the truth. See McGovern vs. Nixon.

~~~
coldtea
> _Governments need to act, which involves imagining the world as it doesn 't
> exist and spreading that imaginary world in order to create a consensus.
> This is very similar to lying and the boundaries aren't obvious._

I think that's a very stretched analogy.

Governments lie in much more obvious, and less noble, ways than "imagining a
future world and spreading it"...

~~~
Bartweiss
I think the reconciliation here might be that "imagining a future world and
spreading it" isn't necessarily noble or different from blatant lying.

An example: the UK government has been playing chicken with the EU over a
Brexit deal. As Johnson tells it, the goal is to prepare for and commit to a
successful no-deal Brexit in order to gain leverage for a better deal.
(There's some debate about whether a deal is actually being pursued, but let's
assume it is.) The UK government, then, is imagining a world where it can pass
and succeed at no-deal Brexit, and is consequently able to negotiate a good
deal. If the real state of affairs is "it'll be a disaster and so our MPs
won't let us"... well, spreading that imaginary world would require lying in a
very mundane, "knowingly making false statements" manner. A move like
releasing the Operation Yellowhammer documents would interfere with that
consensus-building.

Of course, that's far from the _only_ reason governments lie. Continuing the
example, the Brexit process has been absolutely full of lying that was not
even slightly in the public interest. But the point is that governments lie
for selfish reasons by invoking the arguments and mechanisms they justify with
public-interest lying. It's fundamentally the same problem as government
secrecy: the intent of the system is compromised by scrutiny, so it becomes an
obvious channel for abuses of power.

It's possible, I suppose, that a government could solve this by simply _not
ever lying_. A crisis like Brexit was self-inflicted by committing to the
outcome before doing the planning, and you can just _not_ do that. But it
becomes a much stickier issue with questions like "should we lie about our
military readiness, or admit what we're unable to resist to our hostile
neighbors?" (And saying "only lie about military stuff" still leaves you with
politicians lying about war to get elected, pass kickbacks, and so on.) At the
very least, it seems like you'd need military security and relative economic
stability _before_ you could try to demand total honesty.

(None of this is an endorsement of governments lying, though. To me it's
mostly a justification for extremely constrained state power to minimize the
threat of those lies.)

------
pharke
At least 70 dogs have engaged in barking. Jury still out on if water is wet.

Seriously though, who doesn't expect that their government will attempt to
cast itself in the best light and smear its enemies? Propaganda has been
around since before the dawn of mass media. There is always a cultural myth of
our group being the chosen people and having the correct answers to how life
should be lived and resources allocated. This isn't necessarily a bad thing,
it inspires people and creates stronger bonds between otherwise unrelated
individuals. We just need to reign in the negative shit-talking is all. Focus
on the positive aspects. Healthy competition between countries as with people
is generally positive.

~~~
justaguyhere
_Propaganda has been around since before the dawn of mass media_

True, but what is different this time is the cost and reach of propaganda. It
is a lot cheaper, easier and faster to send emails, post on FB/Twitter, throw
a website up... etc compared to 40-50 years (or even 30) ago when you had to
use newspapers and television. What is even more horrific is you can _tailor_
these message down to a individual person

~~~
raxxorrax
In my opinion this is one of the best developments of recent decades. People
with formerly no voice are at least able to exchange themselves with others
and find like-minded individuals.

I am very skeptical of people that advocate for a more top down approach to
information exchange.

~~~
ddingus
As am I.

Plenty of legitimate voices advocating for public good, let's say as an
example, get swept up in these attempts to better centralize and manage
information.

That's not a good thing.

------
charlchi
I remember Jared Kushner was asked about the Russians ads, he said something
along the lines of "that's what the GOP spends in advertising in 3 hours". I
don't think 99.99% of people understand the scale to which propaganda and
establishment bias penetrates into their lives and daily functioning.

"Hate Speech", defined essentially as any form of discrimination whatsoever,
has been made illegal in Europe following the growth of the anti-immigration
far right. Is this fair towards these parties? Imagine making climate change
speech illegal because it hurts the feelings of people who drive cars or eat
meat. Would green parties not be discriminated against? How about making
speech illegal that suggests increasing taxes on corporations? Where do we
stop?

There is always an ongoing political battle to steer our thinking. The world
is a political place down to the air we breathe, what we eat, what we wear,
how we to talk to each other and increasingly even what people we find in our
community.

~~~
La1n
>"Hate Speech", defined essentially as any form of discrimination whatsoever,
has been made illegal in Europe following the growth of the anti-immigration
far right.

Source? This is not true in my experience.

~~~
Synaesthesia
In many countries “hate speech” is illegal, the US is one of the few with
truly free speech. Pro Nazi and racial incitement speech is illegal in France,
Germany and Austria AFAIK. Here in South Africa too. Even though I’m for free
speech, I feel this is understandable and defendable.

~~~
La1n
I know there are quite a few European countries with laws against hate speech,
I was mostly referring to the following two parts:

>defined essentially as any form of discrimination whatsoever

>has been made illegal in Europe following the growth of the anti-immigration
far right.

------
ekianjo
> Governments are spreading disinformation to discredit political opponents,
> bury opposing views and interfere in foreign affairs.

A funny point of view coming from the NYT. Arent they guilty of doing the
exact same thing? They are hardly a neutral outlet.

~~~
mieseratte
Given their leaked transcripts wherein their editor states their one purpose
was to takedown Trump, they're clearly a propaganda outlet.

It is very much a pot / kettle situation.

~~~
that_jojo
Wow, so I just decided to do some digging because I hadn't heard about this
and I wanted to educate myself.

Literally the only thing I can find that paints that transcript in remotely
the light you're implying is an absolutely garbage Fox News article
referencing a Slate article. That Fox article is 18 sentences long, and is
mostly a bunch of op-ed ranting sprinkled with some absolutely mutilated
quotes.

Ironically, the content of the Slate article paints a picture of the NYT
dealing with its readership complaining that they're _not tough enough_ on the
administration, and their vigilance and ongoing struggle with remaining as
neutral as possible.

------
qazpot
What is being called "Disinformation Campaign" is simply one of the tools of
politics since time immemorial.

~~~
nkozyra
Yes and no. The "tool" here is the internet, effectively the most immediate
form of mass communication we've ever known.

The ease and efficacy of swaying opinion via this tool incites agents to
utilize it more and more often. It has wider reach than, say, propaganda in
film or distributed leaflets.

~~~
luckylion
> the internet, effectively the most immediate form of mass communication
> we've ever known

It's a multi-to-multi communication tool though, where a unidirectional medium
like radio or TV allowed you to get the message out (while controlling that no
other message went out), the internet is messy, there are competing messages
and they aren't easily censored, you can't be sure to reach the intended
recipient (back in the TV days, most people watched TV and there were only a
limited amount of channels; even if you had the power to make the big media
companies broadcast your message on the web, tons of people will not visit any
of their sites in any given day), and you compete with cat pictures.

It's communication by masses, not to masses. Traditionally, "mass
communication" meant one-way-media usage to communicate _to_ large parts of
the audience.

------
jessaustin
"Reply All" had an episode that touched on an interesting variation of this:

[https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl36/112-the-
proph...](https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/j4hl36/112-the-prophet)

------
Synaesthesia
From The NY Times. The newspaper which has cheerleaded every single US war

~~~
0xcafecafe
So does this mean it is self aware now?

~~~
jessaustin
TFA doesn't seem to include a _mea culpa_...

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sremani
In the age of information - disinformation is a potent weapon. I would be
remiss if powerful entities including states and corporations did not use it.

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SCdF
Apparently New Zealand is so pure they don't even bother to draw it in on
their corruption map[1].

[1] [https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-
content/uploads/sites/93/201...](https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/wp-
content/uploads/sites/93/2019/09/CyberTroop-Report19.pdf)

~~~
ByThyGrace
Excluding NZ from world maps is a rather frequent mishap, and it has even
become a meme. See
[https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/](https://www.reddit.com/r/MapsWithoutNZ/)

~~~
turtlecloud
It’s because they want to hide it for when there all the elites escape their
during global nuclear war/ pandemic / zombie apocalypse

------
exabrial
Only 70? This has been done since since old-testament era politics

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blackflame7000
Idk if the NYT is in a great position to be throwing rocks at other glass
houses given their recent record.

------
PixyMisa
Walter Duranty could not be reached for comment.

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ptah
amazon also does this and i'm sure other corporates too. that is a much bigger
problem imo

