[liberationtech] Intentional Big Tech Leftist Bias in Social and News Media Corrupts Elections and Defrauds Peoples

[Richard Brooks]

The idea of thoughts and ideas being similar to a biological ecosystem
has been around for a while. I think that Richard Dawkins, William
S. Burroughs, and Robert Anton Wilson all have legitimate claims to
having originated the idea. (It is likely to have roots in
antiquity somewhere.)

The US does have a certain anti-intellectualism deep in its
subconscious and at least one (nameless) political party
has worked hard to delegitimize science (evolution,
economics, climate change, ...).

That this would lead eventually to people being susceptible
to having their innate biases exploited by other actors,
is not surprising.

Social media has exacerbated the process.

One idea that I have been playing with is trying to introduce
somewhere in curricula having students use tools/techniques like
those used by Bellingcat to determine the source and motivation
of online campaigns.

I really am impressed by Bellingcat.

On 12/30/20 2:12 PM, Doug Schuler wrote:
> An article in the recent Science magazine talked about a “syndemic” which 
> 
> "is the intersection of two epidemics—two diseases ravaging a population
> at the same time, exacerbating each other. HIV weakens the immune
> system, for instance, which makes people more likely to develop
> tuberculosis. The world witnessed some- thing similar this year. We live
> in an eco-system that allows viruses to cross from wildlife to humans
> more often and spread farther and faster than ever before—that gave us
> SARS-CoV-2. But the virus emerged in an information ecosystem that helps
> misinformation and lies spread faster than scientific evidence,
> weakening our ability to respond to new threats. That made the pandemic
> far worse."
> 
> https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/370/6523/1395.full.pdf
> 
> Without necessarily buying into the entire metaphor it seems pretty
> useful, bringing up concepts susceptibility, vulnerable populations,
> super spreaders, mode of transmission, and, of course, inoculation. 
> 
> It also fits well into my investigations into civic intelligence which I
> believe is threatened like other natural resources. And if it gets too
> low, our ability to address our problems cooperatively becomes ever more
> helpless.
> 
> I'd love to hear your thoughts on this!
> 
> — Doug
> 
> 
> 
> 
> On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 8:49 AM Richard Brooks <rrb at g.clemson.edu
> <mailto:rrb at g.clemson.edu>> wrote:
> 
>     Interesting.
> 
>     https://www.theverge.com/2020/6/2/21278601/mark-zuckerberg-facebook-trump-posts-employee-call-fact-checking-voter-misinformation
> 
>     https://faculty.lsu.edu/fakenews/elections/thethreatofqanon.php
> 
>     https://www.france24.com/en/20201006-qanon-conspiracies-go-global-in-pandemic-perfect-storm
> 
>     https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1329334?journalCode=rics20
> 
>     https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/06/08/technology/youtube-radical.html
> 
>     On 12/23/20 4:31 AM, grarpamp wrote:
>     > The Invisible Influence of Big Tech on Politics & Elections - Allum
>     > Bokhari #Deleted
>     > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFJfGphZBmQ
>     > #Deleted: Big Tech's battle to erase the trump movement and steal
>     the election
>     > https://deletedbook.com/
>     >
> 
>