Not that I agree with this but we have a massive problem with trolls, shills, agitators, and foreign intelligence running hog wild because they are anonymous online.
Freedom of speech and anonymity is being weaponized and used against the west.
"Freedom of speech and anonymity is being weaponized" that is always the argument against freedom of speech. There is nothing new there.
I think the trolls, shills and agitators are a symptom of dysfunction rather than the cause. And I think the idea that more authoritarian states are stronger/more stable/better because they don't suffer this is deeply misguided.
In the United States, our political class is deeply and fundamentally unserious. Our legislators seem uninterest in legislating and in general seem to believe that their main job is re-election, and not the work they were elected to do.
>I think the trolls, shills and agitators are a symptom of dysfunction rather than the cause. And I think the idea that more authoritarian states are stronger/more stable/better because they don't suffer this is deeply misguided.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but if 'the west' has a coherent set of moral principles at all they are probably inextricable with the idea that more authoritarian states are more brittle/more stagnant/worse. Even if it's true that free speech is being used against 'the West', turning our back on it in response would mean there's nothing there to defend.
> Our legislators seem uninterest in legislating and in general seem to believe that their main job is re-election, and not the work they were elected to do.
Going to attempt a fix
Our legislators seem uninterest in legislating and in general seem to believe that their main job is re-education, and not the work they were elected to do.
At least in the US we do seem to be electing a lot of folks who appear to be grifters riding on the mob, rather than statesmen with any kind of coherent political philosophy or policy suggestions. It wouldn’t surprise me that this is just the extension of social media into government. It’s getting hard for me to see anything good coming out of social media.
> "Freedom of speech and anonymity is being weaponized" that is always the argument against freedom of speech. There is nothing new there.
Indeed, "Let them eat cake." is the most famous thing Marie Antoinette never said, judging by the various anonymous and pseudonymous pamphlets and other printings that popularised during her time that and many other slanderous or otherwise hurtful remarks.
(( And no, I'm not saying a police state or anarchy would be an appropriate outcome. ))
> "Freedom of speech and anonymity is being weaponized" that is always the argument against freedom of speech. There is nothing new there.
To quote chief Nazi propagandist Goebbels from 1928:
We enter the Reichstag to arm ourselves with democracy’s weapons. If democracy is foolish enough to give us free railway passes and salaries, that is its problem… We are coming neither as friends or neutrals. We come as enemies! As the wolf attacks the sheep, so come we.
The modern-day far right is following exactly the same almost-100-years-old playbook, and there are still people who don't recognize that we are letting history repeat itself. What would your (great-)grandparents have thought if you told them that there would be open marches of swastika flag-bearing people in the US?
> What would your (great-)grandparents have thought if you told them that there would be open marches of swastika flag-bearing people in the US?
That happened to a far greater degree in the 1930s. There is nothing comparable today. Formal, large, organized groups representing literal fascism and communism were present in the US back then. Those great-grandparents were certainly aware of it. The US is a large and diverse nation - formed of the world's peoples in many regards - and you're allowed to follow almost any ideology you choose. That means extreme, violent statist-type elements - socialist, fascist, communist, theocratic, et al. - will never cease to be present.
Is that a real problem? Foreign intelligence services are certainly doing a lot of crap online but it's not clear whether they've actually accomplished anything. Maybe they're just wasting resources?
Humans fundamentally need some out-group to blame all their in-group's problems on. Now that overt racism against another racial group within your own society has mostly fallen out of fashion at least in "the West", foreign intelligence becomes the easiest target to pin blame on.
Seems to me they've accomplished quite a lot. I think you are assuming their idea of a goal matches your idea of an accomplishment (get a law supporting X passed/repealed). It isn't.
Their goal is to make our system dysfunctional by destroying people's trust in the information presented them.
> Foreign intelligence services are certainly doing a lot of crap online but it's not clear whether they've actually accomplished anything.
Isn't this just the ol' "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence" problem? Hundreds of years of ago we couldn't see germs with a microscope doesn't mean they weren't effective in our lives.
> we couldn't see germs with a microscope doesn't mean they weren't effective in our lives.
And because we couldn’t see them we misattributed their effects and treated people with bloodletting.
Confidently declaring your understanding of an unseen enemy and applying seemingly-appropriate countermeasures is likely to be harmful.
> The media multiplier effect can, at times, create disinformation storms with potentially dangerous effects for those Russia perceives as adversaries at the international, national, and local level. In the past, Russia has leveraged this dynamic to shield itself from criticism for its involvement in malign activity. This approach also allows Russia to be opportunistic, such as with COVID-19, where it has used the global pandemic as a hook to push longstanding disinformation and propaganda narratives.
> A key element of Moscow's strategy this election cycle was its use of proxies linked to Russian intelligence to push influence narratives- including misleading or unsubstantiated allegations against president Biden- to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration.
> Throughout the election cycle, Russia's online influence actors sought to affect US public perceptions of the candidates, as well as advance Moscow's long-standing goals of undermining confidence in US election processes and increasing sociopolitical divisions among the American people.
Most of our own CIA's efforts have resulted in abject failure. They failed to properly predict or influence most of the major world events for decades now (disintegration of the USSR, Balkan wars, 9/11 attacks, increased authoritarianism in China, rise of ISIL, collapse of Afghan government, etc). And yet we keep increasing their funding. Well maybe if we give them another billion they'll eventually get it right?
Government resource allocation is seldom based on a rational cost / benefit analysis.
We're supposed to believe that these tiny FB campaigns are actually outcompeting the tsunami of "buy this junk" ads, and the actual political misinformation campaigns put out by the Uniparty?
> Throughout the election cycle, Russia's online influence actors sought to affect US public perceptions of the candidates, as well as advance Moscow's long-standing goals of undermining confidence in US election processes and increasing sociopolitical divisions among the American people.
The confidence undermining was all a local issue; Russia had nothing to do with it.
This isn't new. The USSR was doing this in various mediums from it's founding in the 1920s to when it became defunct. Returning to the Red Scare and the equivalent of the Hollywood Blacklist for current authoritarian sympathizers/cronies is not the way to battle this issue.
This is getting off topic. Foreign intelligence is just one party. I was also thinking of every fake review on Amazon or products endorsed by shills on reddit. These problems all stem from anonymity.
Amazon already knows, more or less, the real identity of someone leaving the review. They have information such as a postal address, credit card number and IP address. Whether that person goes by the name Bob or Sally or Anonymous really doesn't matter to anyone. Perhaps it really is Bob leaving the review, but he's accepted a "promotional offer" from the seller to be refunded or provided additional product(s) in return for a winknudge honest review?[1] Or perhaps it really is Sally and she works for a competitor and has given it a 1 star review because she weights the colour choice of the product packaging extremely highly, and she hates the colour chosen.
If you were buying a microwave oven via Amazon, you could take a gamble and trust Amazon product reviews by people you don't know or have any real reason to trust. Or you could pay an independent party to review it on your behalf[2][3]. Or you could look for a random reviewer on YouTube that receives free samples from manufacturers and compares multiple models side by side, careful to only highlight positives of each product. In any of these cases, the real identity of the reviewers is largely irrelevant. The YouTube reviewer could be wearing a clown suit and go by the name 'SillyClown123' and the review could be far more trustworthy and helpful than other types of review. What you actually want to know, and may not be able to determine, is the motivations for conducting the review, whether the reviewer has manipulated and narrowed (possibly inadvertently) the field of products compared and whether their criteria and weightings for review align with your own expectations.
Why do you think that stems from anonymity? People are happy to promote pyramid schemes on Facebook under their real name; why do you think any other product endorsement is different?
But you then ignore the problems created by stripping the anonymity away, especially in the political sphere. Just like multitudes of writers/actors/directors had to either hide their political beliefs or just not get hired due to their political beliefs in Hollywood (though, ironically, that is happening now, along different axes.)
The problems you've described are very minor relative to how much more difficult dissent and whistle-blowing become if your statements can be connected to your true identity basically everywhere.
"Better Amazon reviews" and "fewer Reddit shills" aren't worth much.
> I'm not suggesting stripping anonymity or free speech, I'm just pointing out the problem with anonymity online.
In the context of an article about removing anonymity, I don't think it's possible to set "removing anonymity" aside.
I agree; and it's necessary to distinguish anonymity from privacy. Anonymity removes any accountability, and if you add privacy to that then you tend to get the worst of people.
Privacy, however, is something that needs to be strongly enforced, and that means you have complete control of what personal and private information and communication is available to third parties. Anonymity and Privacy are necessary in places (journalists, dissidents, etc), but many people tend to think of anonymity and privacy as one in the same.
Social media with anonymity allows bad actors to masquerade as whomever they want, say anything without recourse or accountability, and social engineer people at large scales. The issue is that we tend to trust people, and if those people are foreign disinformation agents then we end up with the division we have today. Social media should be private - complete ownership of your data and audience - but it should not be anonymous.
I like anonymity and wouldn't trust a platform to identify me. I take the disadvantages that come with that. With a lot of effort you could identify me in person, but I like this effort to stay. Even intelligence service members spied on their girlfriends. A human flaw. Better to keep anonymity to the largest degree possible.
People that call for accountability are modern witch hunters in my opinion. The try to put blame on people that are probably not responsible for perceived ills.
I am pretty aware of the difference between anonymity and privacy and there is a strong correlation in many cases.
>Not that I agree with this but we have a massive problem with trolls, shills, agitators, and foreign intelligence running hog wild because they are anonymous online.
If you are subjected to propaganda, chances are high it is from your own government or companies operating on the domestic market.
The net certainly increased possibilities for foreign actors to reach domestic audiences, but claims of such cases are vastly exaggerated in my opinion.
That said, troll, shills, agitators and propagandists might have a good understanding of peoples fears and desires and will use that against you. More effective the more you know about the target. This is why surveillance is dangerous.
We've been hearing this claim since the 2016 election, and I am pretty sure these people/efforts exist, but it's still unclear to me what they've actually achieved.
Do you have a good source explaining concretely how a handful of people, even sponsored by enemy states, can cause such harm? It's hard to imagine that they would have such influence without the general population being more than receptive to it.
Freedom of speech and anonymity is being weaponized and used against the west.