• firadin@lemmy.world
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    19 hours ago

    Bad take. We’re in the modern world of information warfare: expecting every citizen to be immune to psychological trickery from a nation spending tens of billions to research and test ways to trick them is unrealistic and unreasonable. There’s people with PhDs in human psychology spending their entire time and untold amounts of compute power trying to stoke the flames of division and push misinformation and you think we should allow it?

      • firadin@lemmy.world
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        17 hours ago

        The US government isn’t in charge of one of the largest social media platforms in the world. US corporations are absolutely doing this as well, but that’s an argument for more regulation not to grant China free reign

        • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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          2 hours ago

          US corporations are absolutely doing this as well, but that’s an argument for more regulation not to grant China free reign

          Exactly this. This is their only argument against it, and it’s trash. Yeah, no shit, we know they are all doing it. Yes, we all agree that they should be dealt with as well.

        • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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          12 hours ago

          The US government isn’t in charge of one of the largest social media platforms in the world. US corporations are absolutely doing this as well, but that’s an argument for more regulation not to grant China free reign

          US-run social media apps are pretty much now just arms of the US surveillance state, functioning both as pro-US propaganda machines, and tools to spy on the communications of the entire world.

          For example, the most popular social media app in India for example, is facebook. The US controls the main method of news and communication for a country much larger than its own.

          • prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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            2 hours ago

            Yeah, and…? Does that mean we ignore the one under CCP control because… why? It’s not fair?

            Also, I’m not questioning the data as it’s clearly about when they began collecting data, but that chart looks a little… sketchy. Like you pulled it from your Great Aunt’s Facebook feed in 2014. Where is the data from? That does not appear to be any kind of valid source I’m aware of in the corner. When was this made, and how much has changed since then?

            • Dessalines@lemmy.ml
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              1 hour ago

              Like you pulled it from your Great Aunt’s Facebook feed in 2014. Where is the data from? That does not appear to be any kind of valid source I’m aware of in the corner.

              They’re slides of internal US prism program documents from the 2010 US global surveillance disclosures that Snowden and Assange exposed: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM#The_slides

              When was this made, and how much has changed since then?

              There’s no reason to think the US government has stopped any of these programs. If anything, given the massive DoD budgets, they’ve increased.

            • ubergeek@lemmy.today
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              2 hours ago

              US Government doesn’t own AT&T, and yet, they have their fiber splice in AT&T’s building, in order to spy on all international communications.

            • peppers_ghost@lemmy.ml
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              2 hours ago

              He didn’t say the government owned Facebook. Even so, it doesn’t need to own it to control the flow of information.

        • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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          12 hours ago

          The US intelligence & propaganda machines dwarf those of all other states, just as the US military dwarfs those of all other states. And they don’t only direct it at other countries, they direct it inward, too. “Russiagate” was a domestic psyop directed at its own people, to manufacture our consent to censorship. Hamilton 68: How former intelligence officials and Democratic operatives conspired to manufacture ‘Russiagate’