

DARPA investing $42 million in "memetrackers" - sethbannon
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/how-the-cia-uses-social-media-to-track-how-people-feel/247923/

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treelovinhippie
Heh, been predicting this for a while. In the short-term a select few
companies will know the intricacies of the functions in social groups, how any
individual responds given certain inputs, who the social influencers are, and
how to spread a message rapidly through any given social network using all
this information.

In the long-term, there is the possibility that a group/company could
manipulate and in-essence, "program", a human being to think and do whatever
they desire. I'm talking here, the ability to dramatically alter an
individual's deepest, strongest beliefs, anonymously and automatically. The
target individual wouldn't have a clue that they were being slowly and
incrementally re-programmed. It could be a global, anonymous
propaganda/conditioning system. Brilliant if it were a decentralized system,
but I think that would rare.

I think I know how to do this, but I'm definitely not in a position to do
anything about it (yet). You'd need huge content distribution channels and
access to huge amounts of user data - Facebook could do it. The other option
would be to develop a recommendation algorithm system where you encourage
companies with existing content platforms to use your algorithms to route
recommended content to individuals (now this one is more accessible, and I'm
gradually working on it).

I posted a vidcast on the possible implications of the DARPA social media
initiative back in September: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrlHVDAjOSU>

~~~
ugh
Media effects research suggests otherwise.

This is a hot sociology research topic and debates about how easily media can
influence people have been raging for nearly the past century (well, basically
ever since mass media arrived). Empirically it has always been hard to find
any media effects at all. Opinions cannot be easily changed by media. Other
effects like agenda setting or framing and priming have much stronger
empirical support.

This suggests to me that it is extremely hard to control people's opinions and
views through media content, especially given the extent to which a single
actor can influence media content.

~~~
treelovinhippie
Well I'm making the assumption that our behaviors, beliefs, values, knowledge,
personality etc (the algorithm that is "you") are directly influenced by all
of our inputs (visual, auditory, sensory etc). Sure there are other inputs
during a 24 hour day, but the Internet, and sitting in front of a computer
screen are pretty damn dominant.

So if you take that assumption, at face value there should be significant
"programming" happening.

Now most of the time, it's yourself that is doing the programming. e.g. you
browse content (articles, videos etc) that you actively search for, or
actively select out of a feed of possible content.

The idea with recommendation engines is that within the next few years, they
will become far more advanced. So now assume that you have algorithms that can
serve you content that you absolutely love with 99% accuracy - 99 out of 100
HN stories you're like "OMFG THIS IS AMAZING".

At that point, you will very rarely search for information any more. You'll
still do so from time-to-time, but ultimately I think people will sit on a
platform and just have content after content delivered to them. And already,
the newsfeed nature of the web has started down this path. Facebook, Twitter,
Reddit, HN - they're all feeds of information, some with primitive filtering
methods. It's in their best interests to serve 100% personalized content as
soon as that technology becomes available.

It also doesn't really matter who produces the content. Content will be
produced for every single niche. To begin to re-program the individual, you
just slowly introduce content that takes the incremental step from their
existing belief/value/behaviour toward the desired one.

Out-there example: you have an individual who is a Christian. You simply tell
the system that you want them to become an Atheist at X point in the future.
The system then subtly, and incrementally introduces catered content designed
to facilitate that transition.

Don't get me wrong, this won't be easy to create such a system. I'm just
saying it's within reach well before this decade is out. And the
concern/fascination is that this _could_ be run globally, and anonymously.

/rant (I love thinking about this stuff) :)

~~~
ugh
People didn't really search for content when there were a handful or just one
TV station or radio station. That's exactly the time when the hypothesis of
strong media effects was very popular (also because of the then current
fascist or communist regimes and their propaganda) yet researchers were again
and again unable to confirm it.

I'm not saying that it's in principle not possible to influence people's
opinions but I think it's very hard and we understand next to nothing about
how one would go about influencing opinions in a systematic fashion.

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mattangriffel
Nicholas Christakis has a great TED talk about this called "How social
networks predict epidemics" here:
[http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_how_social_netw...](http://www.ted.com/talks/nicholas_christakis_how_social_networks_predict_epidemics.html)

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dpezely
There's a conference this week in San Francisco that is to cover these topics:
<http://SentimentSymposium.com>

------
mkramlich
note to DARPA: may I suggest buying Reddit?

~~~
keypusher
Seriously. Reddit has struggled for years under Conde Naste to get adequate
funding, and they have already built the community and technology to do
exactly this. Then DARPA comes in ready to drop $40+ million, I doubt their
project will ever get off the ground, community-wise. Meanwhile Reddit
continues to scrounge up a living off advertising.

~~~
philwelch
I'm pretty sure Reddit's userbase would immediately quit as soon as the site
was sold to DARPA.

~~~
mkramlich
Agreed. I was only half-serious. I do think that what this DARPA project could
do, for much less than $40 million, is write software that scrapes a bunch of
existing websites and newsfeeds, looking for common patterns that could
constitute memes. And that Reddit.com would be one obvious site to have in
their list.

I would gladly write such a system for a mere -- _(pinky in mouth)_ \-- one
million dollars, however.

