My great hope in the early 2000s was that all you had to do was provide a route for information and the effect of propaganda would crumble once people had access to the truth. And, the internet did provide the route that did not exist before it just didnt matter.
Truth is that people largely place trust in institutions and people they are used to and identify with, often for irrational reasons. People are prone to FUD. Theyre lazy and passive.
This means that, for example, Rupert Murdoch has a disproportionate level of political influence in the UK because he dominates media through which people watch and read about sports.
And Tiktok is an effective propaganda delivery channel because it already feeds kids videos of dances they like.
Sadly, programming people on a mass scale is just as effective as it ever was because it turned out how trust is acquired mattered way more than mere access to information.
> Truth is that people largely place trust in institutions and people they are used to and identify with, often for irrational reasons. People are prone to FUD. Theyre lazy and passive.
I think to a degree, this is a misunderstanding. The Russian approach to disinformation in particular does not sell the message "trust us!" - at least, not in the West. Instead, they push the message "trust nobody!" In fact, RT's slogan is "question everything". While that sounds enlightened, in fact, total lack of trust makes you cognitively disabled. You can't believe anything or any expert. All too often, you then "do your own research" and, as a gullible amateur, are sucked into conspiracy theories.
The problem isn't the sheeple, it's the wake-up-sheeple people.
You're effectively saying the same thing as me...?
Russian FUD propaganda resonates in the west because of the lack of trust in western media. That's them successfully exploiting a hole our media dug for themselves.
The fact that we've responded by banning RT highlights that that hole goes deep enough that we're responding by, as a matter of imminent practicality, violating a core value of our civilization. That both hurts and deepens the hole.
Unfortunately we cant go back in time and reinstate the fairness doctrine and render RT a pathetic waste of time. The cat is out of the bag now we deliberately eroded trust in our own institutions and autocratic regimes have been exploiting it for years.
Speaking of antivaxxers, the same thing happened in reverse. I have friends in Russia who absolutely refused to take sputnik because why the fuck would you inject something into your arm because Putin told you to?
> them successfully exploiting a hole our media dug for themselves
You're arguing that RT exploits a hole the West dug itself into. The comment you're responding to argues the hole is besides the point. The exploit would work with or without it. (The fact that all media is lumped into a single category, a fallacy, seems to prove the point.)
Youre victim blaming, no? The problem is the lack of ethics of the people in the know, who are creating the propaganda, and tools and disinformation on behalf of the Robert Murdoch's in exchange for money. All this stuff is done by people like us.
> Truth is that people largely place trust in institutions and people they are used to and identify with, often for irrational reasons.
Is it really so irrational? How many people have the technical know-how and access to equipment to personally verify that COVID vaccines are safe for human consumption? (Can you even verify that on your short of running mass human trials?) And yet, by and large, most of us are not conspiracy theorists who wonder if the vaccine will secretly kill us or render us infertile.
There are often good reasons to trust the official narrative. There are often good reasons to distrust it too, but placing trust in people and institutions is often not so irrational.
This is basically how science works in practice too. If you want to publish a paper and make an impact, better make sure you publish in one of the important journals/conferences. And if you’re trying to figure out if a source is trustworthy, it probably make sense to see if it was published in a reputable journal.
Anyone can publish a paper nowadays, technology has made that very easy. But trust is still something that needs to be earned, and that takes time. It makes sense to have trustworthy institutions, I don’t think it’s something we can easily replace with technology.
Humans will always accept some axiom as truth without really verifying it. It's impossible to do so. Can any single person truly know how everything in their computer works? Or how the machines that made the semiconducter work? Nope. All we can do is try to determine the truth by proxy, which means the truth can and will always be manipulated.
It is completely irrational to have no skepticism, though. On any subject, including ones in which we trust the authorities (e.g., scientists). Because both the authorities and the rest have some agenda, and it isn't necessarily mine.
I'd argue it's deeply unhealthy to have any trust at all in governments that have shown themselves to be authoritarian or oppressive.
>placing trust in people and institutions is often not so irrational.
The question is which institutions and people do we place trust in? When they contradict each other whom do you believe? Should we believe them sometimes but not others?
That's where people get irrational and antivaxxers are just one example of that.
Yes, it's blindingly self evident that you cant run your own vaccine trials.
Truth is that people largely place trust in institutions and people they are used to and identify with, often for irrational reasons. People are prone to FUD. Theyre lazy and passive.
This means that, for example, Rupert Murdoch has a disproportionate level of political influence in the UK because he dominates media through which people watch and read about sports.
And Tiktok is an effective propaganda delivery channel because it already feeds kids videos of dances they like.
Sadly, programming people on a mass scale is just as effective as it ever was because it turned out how trust is acquired mattered way more than mere access to information.