this post was submitted on 23 Jun 2023
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How do you know that there's only one person working the account? When you're a reddit moderator, it's anonymous (same on Wikipedia). For all we know, all the power mods are working at a PR firm somewhere. Spreading misinformation could be their full-time job. Controlling the flow of information on Reddit and Wikipedia could be worth more than Reddit's actual profit.
yeah this has never crossed my mind before. who would be customer of such company? if you have state level resources, it may be easier to straight out buy the entire place and gradually smother it down, like russian govt did with livejournal picking one by one opposition that congregated there. or you can bring it under your own jurisdiction and spread disinfo as mandated by law
There are conspiracy theories on the Internet that Google and Facebook were created to centralize control of the Internet in a few large corporations, who then would be able to control what information people see. You also have to think bigger than government. Who has more influence? The President? Or the CEO of Blackrock and other large hedge funds, who control all the voting shares in pretty much every public corporation?
For example, if you control the mainstream media and big tech, you can make an issue seem like a huge problem by overhyping it everywhere. You can cover up real problems by never mentioning them at all. The CEO of Google is NOT elected. A couple of hedge fund managers get to pick the CEO of Google.
Conspiracy theory it is. What has happened to the internet is much more easily explained by capitalism. This is what capitalism does.
I bet that you don't need to follow that conspiracy theory very far before you find someone spouting the old classical antisemitic bullshit.
On every conspiracy theory forum, there's at least one person posting antisemitic stuff. It's a standard trick to discredit them. I.e., person A posts a true conspiracy theory X. Person B posts the same conspiracy theory and also something antisemtic. Does that automatically mean X is wrong?
that's what capitalism can do, and they do that because it's profitable for them. google seo pollution would run counter to that, right? somebody does that, because while clean access to public information provides no profit for them, putting their own noise there instead - from which they can profit in some way - makes them more money. wouldn't The Powers That Be intervene if that was the grand strategy?
i'm asking you to take a few steps back and look at a bigger picture. conspiracy theories are full of drivel, but their content is not the most important part. the most important thing about them is circlejerk forming property. if you wanted to investigate mysterious forces, then surely scientific method would be the best tool available, right? they aren't using it not because it doesn't work there, it's because actually using scientific method involves taking frequent Ls and grants no points for your very own special ideas. if you cling to your own idea because it's your own idea, and are proven wrong you can either: 1. take the L, see how much wrong you were and why, and adjust accordingly, or 2. happily ignore all contrary evidence and paint all your enemies as part of global conspiracy, or maybe repeat measurement, believing you got something wrong, until you get what you want.
the most important thing about conspiracy theories is that it allows believer to feel Special, because they know something all the plebeian masses don't and that makes them Enlightened, obviously better than anyone else and immune to all criticism. it's highly corrosive to any critical thought and allows that pattern of thinking to spread from one issue to another. here you have this elaborated in detail by Folding Ideas https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JTfhYyTuT44
are you guessing or stating that as a fact, and if the latter, do you have any sources for that
https://www.vice.com/en/article/kwpqmn/is-the-pr-industry-buying-influence-over-wikipedia
They're probably smart enough to not get caught nowadays.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2021/apr/13/facebook-azerbaijan-ilham-aliyev https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-azerbaijan-troll-farm
they are caught, and you have to get out of the way to make it tick, as in, you can't just call someone at facebook and say "hey i have elections coming up, can you censor all of opposition and handle me list of dissenters uwu" and expect them to comply. you have to pay ~~spineless propagandists for hire~~ PR agency to do that job for you
wikipedia edit history is public record, so it's more of an issue of combing through it. being not for profit and much more transparent than fb helps with that https://gizmodo.com/wikipedia-russia-ukraine-propaganda-suspicious-edits-1849673060
Actually, the government did just call up Twitter and tell them to censor things. That's the whole point of the Matt Taibbi Twitter Files stories. But you also have other non-government groups policing the Internet, calling up Twitter/Facebook/Google/etc and demanding censorship.
ah yes, a story that ultimately comes from elon musk and elon musk only. that's obviously true, because when musk has to choose between his own agenda and healthy public discourse, you can trust him to never stir shit in a way he thinks will favour him. we all know that he never proposed hyperloop to quash californian high speed rail, for example. he also obviously is completely neutral and has no agenda. you see, he unbanned all these russian propagandists, nazis and other shitbags just because he is such a free speech absolutist and entirely not because he wanted to