Social media

Social media  (communication technology)
Interest of	• Bilderberg/2019 • DFR Lab • Carl Miller • Project Iris • Reclaim The Net • Marianna Spring

Social media are websites which allow users to choose friends and exchange information with them.

Concerns

The Integrity Initiative has shown great interest in the use of social media for spreading (dis)information.

"The Weaponisation of Social Media" was on the agenda for the 2019 Bilderberg.

“Social media manipulation was pioneered by Israel in 2009, during its Gaza offensive, not by Russia and China. The UK and the US both have had online "psychological operations" for years. Calling out some actors but giving others a free pass does little to address the problem.”
Clare Daly (10 December 2021) 

Analyzing/influencing society at scale

Sean Parker, Chamath Palihapitiya - Facebook is 'Ripping Apart Society'

American social media companies have become instruments to analyze how social interactions in societies work at large and how information is spread. It stands to reason that when data is generated in large amounts, that beside revenue generation it is also fed into programs like the Sentient World Simulation, with an end goal to steer opinions. Earlier research of Skinner and Asch most certainly played a role; the need to fit with it's own circle of acquaintances may have been of particular interest, how much the need to do and say as the other does prevail.

Vince Ebert (a German cabaretist) says about the research of William von Hippel (a social psychologist) that:

• humans use a large part of their thinking power to find their way in their complicated social world
• Our "social" brain does check facts from time to time. But much more important to it is the question: what are the social consequences if I do or say this or that?
• So we have a mechanism in our heads that, in case of doubt, even prevents us from thinking what is right if, in return, it endangers our social status
• the higher the social and economic status of a person, the more this phenomenon occurs. Educated and/or wealthy people are more concerned about what others might think of their opinions
• the more educated and smarter a person is, the more adept his brain is at selling him the biggest nonsense as a reasonable idea, as long as it elevates his social status
• as a result, the upper educated middle class tends to be more inclined than ordinary people to chase after some intellectual boondoggle

Censorship

"Social media companies are experimenting with Artificial intelligence technology to remove hateful content from their platform."

 

Examples

Page name	Description
4chan	4Chan is a website where anyone can post comments and share images anonymously.
Alt Tech	New social media platforms.
Gab	Gab is a social networking service with a strict free speech approach for which it is criticized in corporate media.
Instagram	A popular photo sharing website. Owned by Facebook.
Locals	Locals is an Alt Tech platform.
Reddit	A large corporate media site of forums in which readers vote stories up/down. As its popularity grew, it was subject to increased trolling and shilling by propagandists.
Telegram	Telegram is a social media service.
TikTok	Like YouTube but videos have a duration from fifteen seconds to three minutes. The company is filled with "former" CIA spooks
Twitch	Twitch is an American video live streaming service; mainly used for video games.
X	Twitter is a social media service.
YouTube	The Internet's most popular video sharing site; owned by Google. Aggressively removing information about Covid-19 while promoting Covid vaccines.

 

Related Quotations

Page	Quote	Author	Date
"Disinformation"	“The weirdest thing about the Biden administration tasking itself with the censorship of "disinformation" on social media is that the United States is the hub of a globe-spanning empire that is built upon a foundation of disinformation, maintained by disinformation, and facilitated by disinformation.”	Caitlin Johnstone	July 2021
John Perry Barlow	“The entity I envision would be small, highly networked, and generally visible. It would be open to information from all available sources and would classify only information that arrived classified. It would rely heavily on the Internet, public media, the academic press, and an informal worldwide network of volunteers--a kind of global Neighborhood Watch--that would submit on-the-ground reports. It would use off-the-shelf technology, and use it less for gathering data than for collating and communicating them. Being off-the-shelf, it could deploy tools while they were still state-of-the-art. I imagine this entity staffed initially with librarians, journalists, linguists, scientists, technologists, philosophers, sociologists, cultural historians, theologians, economists, philosophers, and artists-a lot like the original CIA, the OSS, under "Wild Bill" Donovan. Its budget would be under the direct authority of the President, acting through the National Security Adviser. Congressional oversight would reside in the committees on science and technology (and not under the congressional Joint Committee on Intelligence).”	John Perry Barlow	2002
Saagar Enjeti	“@jack was the last of the tech CEOS who at least on a personal level was committed to free speech. His departure is probably going to make Twitter a lot worse for censorship (which is truly saying something)”	Saagar Enjeti	29 November 2021
Euan Grant	“* With the help of the UK financial sector (BBA, ABI, London Stock Exchange) establish relations with EU counterparts and European for liaison with European bourses. Activity: £1.8k Euan Grant? Through links with UK law enforcement and revenue organisations, anti-corruption and development NGO's and journalistic orgs, gain access to their European counterparts. Activity: £9k Euan Grant?”	Euan Grant	30 May 2018
Michael Gunner	“The BS that’s flying around on the internet about the territory is coming from flogs outside the territory – mostly America, Canada and the UK,” Mr Gunner told a media conference on Thursday. People who have nothing better to do than make up lies about us because their own lives are so small and so sad. If anybody thinks we’re going to be distracted by tin foil hat-wearing tossers sitting in their parents’ basement in Florida – then you do not know us Territorians”	Michael Gunner	25 November 2021
Institute for Statecraft/Secrecy	“Social media training. Activity: £5k Chris Hernon and Charlie Hatton – Jacky Sloane to film.”		30 May 2018
Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador	“Yes, social media should not be used to incite violence and all that, but this cannot be used as a pretext to suspend freedom of expression. How can a company act as if it was all powerful, omnipotent, as a sort of Spanish Inquisition on what is expressed?”	Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador	14 January 2021
Joy Reid	“Essentially, she made public her own vaccine deliberation, which according to trusted friends is a better way to describe vaccine hesitancy, which by the way is not the same thing as refusal. By doing, Nicki also used her social media platform and her 22 million Twitter followers to cast doubt on the vaccine to a heavily Black audience”	Joy Reid	14 September 2021
The Twitter Files	“After the 2016 upsets of Brexit and the election of Trump, however, the establishment soured on free speech. Both events were seen as undermining NATO, and both were blamed on foreign influence on social media—specifically Russia. The U.S. and UK governments in particular saw the need to identify and purge Russian influence operations online and set up a government–private apparatus to do so.”	Peter Svab The Epoch Times	17 January 2023
Henry Windsor	“In today’s world, we are so connected like a vast nervous system, whether we are online or not. And much like the virus, there are no borders online. So when vaccine misinformation and disinformation spreads, magnified on social media and in parts of traditional media, it exposes a collective threat to humanity. I believe that misinformation is a global humanitarian crisis, and the crisis is getting worse.”	Henry Windsor

 

Related Documents

Title	Type	Publication date	Author(s)	Description
Document:Pro-Kremlin trolls infiltrating comments on news sites for major influence operation, research says	Article	6 September 2021	Deborah Haynes	A study at Cardiff University shows that "Pro-Kremlin trolls" are influencing opinion in the West by infiltrating the comments sections of news websites. Dissent from the Official Narrative? Must be Russian disinformation.
Document:Simply No Red Lines At All	blog post	11 October 2024	Craig Murray	I am simply unable to begin to understand, on a personal basis, the politicians who can condone, support and in fact participate in what Israel is doing. It is simply beyond me. Every time I worry that public interest is faltering and people have become inured to genocide, the Israelis manage to do soemthing still more outrageous. Thankfully social media makes it very hard to hide this.
Document:Social Media Investigation and Monitoring Proposal - Subject Poisoning of Sergei Skripal	program proposal	15 March 2018	Greg Rowett	Establish the flow across social media of the messaging, and establish key influencers, friendly and anti, to HMG.
Document:Social Media as a vector for propaganda	paper	26 December 2018	Integrity Initiative

 

An official example

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