
China is weaponizing online distraction (2018) - peter_d_sherman
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2018/10/01/china-is-weaponizing-online-distraction/
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peter_d_sherman
Disclaimer: The title of this article might be slightly biased against China.
I have no stake or interest, for or against, in what the Chinese Government
does or what the Chinese Government doesn't do. I have Chinese friends. They
are good people.

So, what I'm going to say is not intended to relate to China, Chinese
Government or otherwise, in any way.

I think this article is interesting, because it introduces (to me at least!),
two new terms, "friction", and "flooding", (aka, "Weapons Of Mass Distraction"
(I made that one up myself!)) as relate to Internet Censorship.

To quote the article:

 _" “Friction,” or censorship through inconvenience, uses technology to make
information more difficult to find by throttling or blocking websites,
removing social media posts, or rearranging search results. Similarly, by
“flooding,” or censoring through distraction, governments use armies of people
or bots to overwhelm social media platforms with posts that distract from
current events. The idea behind both friction and flooding is that because
Internet users are for the most part impatient, making certain information
slightly easier to access and others slightly more difficult can have a big
effect on what users read."_

So, "friction" and "flooding".

Two new words for your 2020 thesaurus/lexicon/urban slang dictionary...

