Censorship 2.0 How what you read on disqus is likely to be from a sockpuppet

penprog

Apr 29, 2015

(DNA Top 10 in 2014) Censorship 2.0: Shadowy forces controlling

At the HITBSecConf event in Kuala Lumpur last month, a team from South Africa demonstrated how unknown forces are manipulating hearts and minds on the Internet by controlling the online narrative,

Eldelshell

While reading this I couldn't stop thinking about blakey.

Weng

Interesting. But thats more message control and propaganda than censorship.

accalia

Did someone ask for @sockbot

sockbot

@accalia has summoned me, and so I appear.

Polygeekery

That is not censorship.

VaelynPhi

I live in the US. Here we don't need sockpuppets. We just brainwash the public to parrot party lines and accept them with no thought.

Eldelshell

Maybe you should make your bot reply to political adverse comments with some made up script. Like:

Me: guns are bad. Right sockbot?

Sockbot: guns aren't bad. People are.

accalia

now there's an idea....

penprog

The point was that you could easily suppress other people's threads/comments with many of the same techniques described for promoting threads/comments. The idea was that this form of speech suppression was in fact more dangerous than traditional censorship because people browsing the internet are under the false assumption that they are participating in a free exchange of ideas when in reality the speech they are reading is being vetted by the bots.

edit: just realized you were talking about sockbot lol

penprog

@Intercourse said:

That is not censorship.

Read the article

Explain to me how this

"Articles that are downvoted enough times are removed from the page for Reddit admins to investigate – but that act in itself is a victory, because, as noted, the article is knocked off the page.

“You can also try ‘trickle downvoting’ – only downvote as many times as new articles have upvotes. It keeps the score even, and while you do this, upvote the article you want people to see,” Azhar said.

When Thinkst did some mass downvoting on the WorldNews subreddit, downvoting all new articles as they appeared, the admins suspected something was up, but all they did was to put up a notice telling their users not to panic."

isn't censorship?

Straight from wikipedia

Censorship - Wikipedia

aliceif

@penprog said:

people browsing the internet are under the false assumption that they are participating in a free exchange of ideas

Fools. Those are probably the kinds of people who also blindly believe in what the newspapers and TV say.

tar

@aliceif said:

Fools. Those are probably the kinds of people who also blindly believe in what the newspapers and TV say.

I've mentally divided media into the following two categories:

bias, and
stuff I can easily integrate into my existing
worldview.

@penprog said:

a free exchange of ideas

This involves shouting the loudest, or the use of CAPS LOCK, doesn't it?

Maciejasjmj

@tar said:

I've mentally divided media into the following two categories:

bias, and

stuff I can easily integrate into my existingworldview.

That's awfully close to a "things I agree with" and "blatant lies and propaganda" division.

tar

@Maciejasjmj said:

That's awfully close to a "things I agree with" and "blatant lies and propaganda" division.

It is, isn't it? ;<nbsp>)

Resolving as WONTFIX.

Weng

"Don't believe everything you read in the papers."
"Don't believe everything you see on the TV."
And now, with added Webbiness:
"Don't believe everything you see on the Internet."

antiquarian

@tar said:

I've mentally divided media into the following two categories:

bias, and

stuff I can easily integrate into my existingworldview.

At least you're honest about it.

tar

@Weng said:

"Don't believe everything you see on the Internet."

And why should I believe that?

boomzilla

@penprog said:

Explain to me how this...isn't censorship?

Possibly it is, just with a novel venue. I'm not convinced at the magnitude of the effect from government or other coordinated actors vs lots of people reacting in similar ways. There are obviously problems with gatekeepers, and it wouldn't surprise me at all to know that astroturf happens.