
Big Tech’s Years-Long Manipulation of American Op-Ed Pages - tim_sw
https://bigtechnology.substack.com/p/inside-big-techs-years-long-manipulation
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gwern
As opposed to everyone else's manipulation of op-eds...? 'Manipulation of
opinion by editorial' is kind of the point of 'opinion-editorial' sections. If
we go through the NYT op-ed page for the past 5 years, would we find more
positive or negative mentions of Google and Facebook?

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rjkennedy98
This kind of thing is rampant in Big Pharma also. Fake grassroots
organizations, fake op-Ed’s, constant attacks on anyone who isn’t inline with
them, ghost publishing in “prestigious” journals, reputation laundering
everywhere, and just straight buying people off. Look at the article from the
other day in the bbc about losing someone to cancer conspiracies theories.
Good chance that article is planted. The actual title was just false. People
die most of the time on treatment for cancer anyways (usually with a lot of
pain and side effects of chemo) as people who have lost loved ones know. But
the bbc wants to make sure we crack down on misinformation that MAY be killing
you. Pure BS. On the other hand you never see articles about how breast cancer
screenings in young women actually increase the death rate (proven) or
anything critical of Pharma. Anyone who knows anything about these areas knows
that the level of corruption and sometimes evil is astounding.

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DangitBobby
That breast cancer screening leads to higher mortality is a big claim. Any
evidence? A web search on this topic seems to show that, at worst, screening
has no impact on outcomes.

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rjkennedy98
This article is from a book review about the subject but it has enough in
there. The reasoning is pretty simple. Early intervention doesn’t help that
much because treatments don’t work. And false positives in diagnosis lead to
over treatment which is incredibly dangerous.
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3563917/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3563917/)

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wobbly_bush
Can anyone point me towards more general discussion about the topic - where
Op-Ed pages are used by influential groups to sway opinions. Looking at
individual instances seems like playing whack-a-mole, would be interested in
the more general approach to solve the problem.

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Monroe13
In my experience this is standard practice in the PR industry and isn’t seen
as a problem to solve or viewed as any sort of ethical dilemma.

In the industry these articles would be talked about as a “3rd party op-eds”,
and the general practice of finding “3rd party advocates” is a key element of
any issues advocacy campaign.

The practice doesn’t stop at op-eds. PR firms or in-house corporate
communications teams cultivate a roster of business leaders, academics,
politicians, etc that can be called upon to speak on panels at conferences,
participate in media interviews, be featured in documentaries and show up in
other creative ways.

In the PR world it’s a taken as a given that “your message is most powerful
when it comes from a respected third party” so this practice is pervasive and
impacts every conference you’ve ever attended, op-Ed pages on a daily basis,
and many of the media stories you read.

As for solving it, I’m not aware of any groups dedicated to that cause.
Raising awareness is one step — ham-fisted astroturfing made public is
embarrassing for a company, but 3rd party advocacy is generally more subtle
and not viewed as astroturfing by PR pros.

