45th President of the United States, Donald Trump (Vol. 12)
Discussion
Thanks to PH staff for thinking and re-thinking this, glad to see the outcome,
It must have been some very quiet and lonesome days , as I recall the sin bin is not occupied often these days,
hope he found some magazines to read where the pages were not locked solid,
and was not hounded by ghost of C2´s cleaner wearing an arm belt and making "schmick" noises.
It must have been some very quiet and lonesome days , as I recall the sin bin is not occupied often these days,
hope he found some magazines to read where the pages were not locked solid,
and was not hounded by ghost of C2´s cleaner wearing an arm belt and making "schmick" noises.
The Guardian said:
In the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump advocated shipping Americans who contracted Covid-19 abroad to Guantánamo Bay.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jun/21/tr...Washington post (paywalled)
https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2021/06/21/a...
Peter Pomerantsev - This Is Not Propaganda (Adventures in the war against reality) https://www.waterstones.com/book/this-is-not-propa...
While we're doing drama in our little corner of the internet it's worth zooming out to the wider context of how information warfare has changed since the cold war and how this may be relevant to this thread and PH in general. The above link is a fantastic primer on the subject.
We're all familiar with the situation where someone on the internet is accused of being a bot, troll, shill or similar insult, however there's an assumption here that the person doing the trolling is in the direct pay or employ of someone who is controlling the message. Historically this is a reasonable assumption because in the past this is how disinformation campaigns worked, however the modern architecture of disinformation does not work this way.
Imagine for a moment that you work for a despotic regime. You have been given a staff of 250 people and your mission is to undermine democracy. It would be a waste of your resources to have all 250 staff making comments on facebook pages and news websites so how do you amplify your staff so they sound like thousands or even millions of voices?
An obvious answer would be bots but that's still old school thinking, the real answer is far more subtle and in some ways far older. We're talking pyramids.
If each of your 250 staff can take control of a smaller community of a thousand people (approx NP&E sized) then you do not have 250 people spreading your message but 250,000 people effectively working for you even if they don't know they're working for you. This is how you leverage your office of 250 people to sound like an upwelling of grass roots ideas.
There are however some problems here, for a start people tend to get upset when you take over their forum but one or two experienced personnel working the report buttons plus a few enthusiastic fellow travellers who have no idea they're being played and you'd be surprised how quickly you can change the nature of a community.
If you think about how an individual employee can leverage their worth from a basic bot poster to a valued asset then you can see how mid sized forums like PH are prime real estate for anyone from China, Iran, Russia, etc to get those roubles in the bank.
That PH is subject to the predations of people who earn their pay by undermining democracy is not even a question my mind, not because I think PH is under attack from a hostile state but because PH is under attack from small to mid size actors who can sell their services to a superior, be that government or otherwise.
Someone like Byker is a problem for these people so is clearly going to come under a high level of attack.
The problem is simple naivety among people, we don't recognise that that our methods of free communication are not big players like facebook, twitter, MSN, BBC or Fox.
We come together in smaller groups of like minded individuals and then collectively form opinions based on shared experience. It is these smaller groups which are taken over by proxies who exist at multiple levels of arms length which form the backbone of modern disinformation.
While we're doing drama in our little corner of the internet it's worth zooming out to the wider context of how information warfare has changed since the cold war and how this may be relevant to this thread and PH in general. The above link is a fantastic primer on the subject.
We're all familiar with the situation where someone on the internet is accused of being a bot, troll, shill or similar insult, however there's an assumption here that the person doing the trolling is in the direct pay or employ of someone who is controlling the message. Historically this is a reasonable assumption because in the past this is how disinformation campaigns worked, however the modern architecture of disinformation does not work this way.
Imagine for a moment that you work for a despotic regime. You have been given a staff of 250 people and your mission is to undermine democracy. It would be a waste of your resources to have all 250 staff making comments on facebook pages and news websites so how do you amplify your staff so they sound like thousands or even millions of voices?
An obvious answer would be bots but that's still old school thinking, the real answer is far more subtle and in some ways far older. We're talking pyramids.
If each of your 250 staff can take control of a smaller community of a thousand people (approx NP&E sized) then you do not have 250 people spreading your message but 250,000 people effectively working for you even if they don't know they're working for you. This is how you leverage your office of 250 people to sound like an upwelling of grass roots ideas.
There are however some problems here, for a start people tend to get upset when you take over their forum but one or two experienced personnel working the report buttons plus a few enthusiastic fellow travellers who have no idea they're being played and you'd be surprised how quickly you can change the nature of a community.
If you think about how an individual employee can leverage their worth from a basic bot poster to a valued asset then you can see how mid sized forums like PH are prime real estate for anyone from China, Iran, Russia, etc to get those roubles in the bank.
That PH is subject to the predations of people who earn their pay by undermining democracy is not even a question my mind, not because I think PH is under attack from a hostile state but because PH is under attack from small to mid size actors who can sell their services to a superior, be that government or otherwise.
Someone like Byker is a problem for these people so is clearly going to come under a high level of attack.
The problem is simple naivety among people, we don't recognise that that our methods of free communication are not big players like facebook, twitter, MSN, BBC or Fox.
We come together in smaller groups of like minded individuals and then collectively form opinions based on shared experience. It is these smaller groups which are taken over by proxies who exist at multiple levels of arms length which form the backbone of modern disinformation.
Edited by Tartan Pixie on Tuesday 22 June 02:34
Tartan Pixie said:
We come together in smaller groups of like minded individuals and then collectively form opinions based on shared experience. It is these smaller groups which are taken over by proxies who exist at multiple levels of arms length which form the backbone of modern disinformation.
Interesting post, it feels like the PH culture has lurched significantly more right and downmarket/populist. It's always been a bit 'rough and ready', but the sheer volume of divisive threads focusing on race/immigration/muslim issues is startling. How much of this is a managed campaign of influence and how much is down to useful idiots is hard to know.More recently, alongside the obvious banned returnee trolls, I'm also seeing plenty of dormant accounts suddenly springing into life and nudging threads along. I'm loathe to put on a tin foil hat, but I don't think a regular troll would bother to secure a dormant account, they can easily create a fresh one for free, therefore I think it's more likely that these accounts have been resurrected by organised groups.
As you state, Byker is a threat to these people as someone posting regularly with supporting research/references cannot be just drowned out with opinion and alternative facts. The reason why the pro-trumpism narrative never really took hold on PH is because there was always a reference (or ten) ready to disprove the nonsense.
Unfortunately most other threads do not have a resident Byker providing a backbone of information and therefore are at the whims of the most prolific posters, nudged along by those invisible hands.
tangerine_sedge said:
Interesting post, it feels like the PH culture has lurched significantly more right and downmarket/populist. It's always been a bit 'rough and ready', but the sheer volume of divisive threads focusing on race/immigration/muslim issues is startling. How much of this is a managed campaign of influence and how much is down to useful idiots is hard to know.
More recently, alongside the obvious banned returnee trolls, I'm also seeing plenty of dormant accounts suddenly springing into life and nudging threads along. I'm loathe to put on a tin foil hat, but I don't think a regular troll would bother to secure a dormant account, they can easily create a fresh one for free, therefore I think it's more likely that these accounts have been resurrected by organised groups.
As you state, Byker is a threat to these people as someone posting regularly with supporting research/references cannot be just drowned out with opinion and alternative facts. The reason why the pro-trumpism narrative never really took hold on PH is because there was always a reference (or ten) ready to disprove the nonsense.
Unfortunately most other threads do not have a resident Byker providing a backbone of information and therefore are at the whims of the most prolific posters, nudged along by those invisible hands.
Byker Looked like someone regurgitating others bile about trump , More recently, alongside the obvious banned returnee trolls, I'm also seeing plenty of dormant accounts suddenly springing into life and nudging threads along. I'm loathe to put on a tin foil hat, but I don't think a regular troll would bother to secure a dormant account, they can easily create a fresh one for free, therefore I think it's more likely that these accounts have been resurrected by organised groups.
As you state, Byker is a threat to these people as someone posting regularly with supporting research/references cannot be just drowned out with opinion and alternative facts. The reason why the pro-trumpism narrative never really took hold on PH is because there was always a reference (or ten) ready to disprove the nonsense.
Unfortunately most other threads do not have a resident Byker providing a backbone of information and therefore are at the whims of the most prolific posters, nudged along by those invisible hands.
I don’t know what all the fuss about trump is ,
He is gone and there is little chance of his retuning now Biden is president and America is recovering from the economic and political damage caused by a badly led republican administration .
Ivan stewart said:
Byker Looked like someone regurgitating others bile about trump ,
I don’t know what all the fuss about trump is ,
He is gone and there is little chance of his retuning now Biden is president and America is recovering from the economic and political damage caused by a badly led republican administration .
It's not 'bile', it's serious stuff in most cases. If you don't understand the fuss about trump, with respect, you've not appreciated the situation at all. trump is still actively dangerous and seeing to damage the USA further, and the USA is at a crossroads that will determine the direction of its future.I don’t know what all the fuss about trump is ,
He is gone and there is little chance of his retuning now Biden is president and America is recovering from the economic and political damage caused by a badly led republican administration .
In simple terms, the stakes could not be higher.
Ivan stewart said:
Byker Looked like someone regurgitating others bile about trump ,
I don’t know what all the fuss about trump is ,
He is gone and there is little chance of his retuning now Biden is president and America is recovering from the economic and political damage caused by a badly led republican administration .
privyet! Comrade I don’t know what all the fuss about trump is ,
He is gone and there is little chance of his retuning now Biden is president and America is recovering from the economic and political damage caused by a badly led republican administration .
Ivan stewart said:
Byker Looked like someone regurgitating others bile about trump ,
I don’t know what all the fuss about trump is ,
He is gone and there is little chance of his retuning now Biden is president and America is recovering from the economic and political damage caused by a badly led republican administration .
Posted from a new member I don’t know what all the fuss about trump is ,
He is gone and there is little chance of his retuning now Biden is president and America is recovering from the economic and political damage caused by a badly led republican administration .
Ivan stewart said:
Byker Looked like someone regurgitating others bile about trump ,
I don’t know what all the fuss about trump is ,
He is gone and there is little chance of his retuning now Biden is president and America is recovering from the economic and political damage caused by a badly led republican administration .
херняI don’t know what all the fuss about trump is ,
He is gone and there is little chance of his retuning now Biden is president and America is recovering from the economic and political damage caused by a badly led republican administration .
Tartan Pixie said:
Adding my voice to say that banning Byker with no warning and no opportunity to amend errant behaviour was a terrible piece of moderation.
PH need to decide whether being a hub for anti-vaxers, conspiracy theorists and loons is a good look for their business.
This PH need to decide whether being a hub for anti-vaxers, conspiracy theorists and loons is a good look for their business.
Add in the "I'm not racist but" crowd and the casual misogyny and it's not a pretty place. From an advertiser's perspective, a look at the threads is not going to tick the boxes.
paulguitar said:
It's not 'bile', it's serious stuff in most cases. If you don't understand the fuss about trump, with respect, you've not appreciated the situation at all. trump is still actively dangerous and seeing to damage the USA further, and the USA is at a crossroads that will determine the direction of its future.
In simple terms, the stakes could not be higher.
I guess most Americans see trump for what he is, like we see Blair!! neither will be returning as leader , In simple terms, the stakes could not be higher.
Why are we giving either of them the oxygen of publicity?
If anyone was depending on PH to provide "the oxygen of publicity", they would have suffocated long ago.
Trump is dangerous, even out of office, not because he is Trump, but because of what he represents and because he provides a focus of attention for people like him. He gave people who agree with his views the confidence to come out of the woodwork and to crawl out from under the rocks where they had been largely hiding for the past 50 plus years.
Trump is dangerous, even out of office, not because he is Trump, but because of what he represents and because he provides a focus of attention for people like him. He gave people who agree with his views the confidence to come out of the woodwork and to crawl out from under the rocks where they had been largely hiding for the past 50 plus years.
Ivan stewart said:
I guess most Americans see trump for what he is, like we see Blair neither will be returning as leader ,
Why are we giving either of them the oxygen of publicity?
Because we want to and because we can. There are many other threads you can read if it's of no interest to you.Why are we giving either of them the oxygen of publicity?
Ivan stewart said:
I guess most Americans see trump for what he is, like we see Blair!! neither will be returning as leader ,
Why are we giving either of them the oxygen of publicity?
Well in trump's case, things are far from over. He might well be planning to run again, and in the meantime, it's essential for the USA that he's brought to justice for his crimes, which include trying to steal a lost election and encouraging an attack on his own country that resulted in multiple deaths, before we even get into the white-collar financial stuff that the SDNY is handling.Why are we giving either of them the oxygen of publicity?
It's true that it's a minority of Americans gullible enough to have been taken in by him, but they are very loyal, and very easily led.
Ivan stewart said:
paulguitar said:
It's not 'bile', it's serious stuff in most cases. If you don't understand the fuss about trump, with respect, you've not appreciated the situation at all. trump is still actively dangerous and seeing to damage the USA further, and the USA is at a crossroads that will determine the direction of its future.
In simple terms, the stakes could not be higher.
I guess most Americans see trump for what he is, like we see Blair!! neither will be returning as leader , In simple terms, the stakes could not be higher.
Why are we giving either of them the oxygen of publicity?
Trump may be gone but Trumpism hasn’t.
His influence and legacy extends long after he left office and besides, he hasn’t ruled himself out of running again.
Add in the impending court cases, his family, his influence with the Republicans and the unwillingness of some of his crackpot supporters to accept the result means that this thread is far from over.
Besides, you don’t have to read it if you don’t think that it’s worth your time…
His influence and legacy extends long after he left office and besides, he hasn’t ruled himself out of running again.
Add in the impending court cases, his family, his influence with the Republicans and the unwillingness of some of his crackpot supporters to accept the result means that this thread is far from over.
Besides, you don’t have to read it if you don’t think that it’s worth your time…
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