Posted on 08/08/2023 6:19:12 AM PDT by MtnClimber
Taxpayer and billionaire-backed researchers admit new techniques could allow Big Tech to minimize “public relations challenges” from direct removal of social posts.
A digital free-speech watchdog is warning that federally funded researchers have captured and examined millions of Twitter posts they deemed to be “misinformation” during the 2020 election and used them to devise new strategies that one day could empower Big Tech to censor or throttle content while keeping the affected users and the public in the dark.
The Foundation for Freedom Online says the work done last year by members of the University of Washington Center for an Informed Public after receiving taxpayer grants devised new strategies like “virality circuit breakers” and “nudges” that could prevent certain users from spreading content without any apparent evidence they were being censored.
The study is a roadmap on “how to censor people using secret methods so that they wouldn't know they're being censored, so that it wouldn't generate an outrage cycle, and so that it'd be more palatable for the tech platforms who wouldn't get blowback because people wouldn't know they're being censored,” Mike Benz, a former State Department diplomat specializing in U.S. foreign policy on international communications and information technology matters told the "Just the News, No Noise" television show Monday night.
Much of the academic research was published in a little-noticed article published last summer in the journal Nature Human Behavior entitled “Combining interventions to reduce the spread of viral misinformation” that identified a cocktail of four tools that the researchers projected could reduce the spread of content deemed misinformation by as much as 63% without direct removal of posts or time-consuming fact checks.
(Excerpt) Read more at justthenews.com ...
The people who try to control others never seem to tire in their search for ways to hide what they are doing. And they are not trying to hide it because they are in the right.
This is a Public Admission that all these Social Media companies are in FACT Publishers and there should be NO section 230 immunity for any of them.
Certainly those fireball GOPers, who work so diligently in DC to protect our very few remaining freedoms, will be all over this kicking asses & taking names,,,
Using federal funds to violate the First Anendment should be made a felony.
Oh, the Biden Doctrine says no Amendment is absolute? Yes, that’s why we can make criminal violation of the First Amendment retroactive to Janauary 2020.
Basically, introduce “friction” into a communications system complex that is designed to move information fast.
“Virality circuit breaker” = selectively degrade the performance of the trending algorithm to slow down the rapid spread of disfavored content. (And, of course, hype the performance of the same algorithm for favored content. That’s not friction, that’s “grease.”)
“Nudge” = issue an undocumented warning about the article to slow down readers giving it a “like” rating and possibly reposting it. Both of those actions feed the trending algorithm.
“Undocumented warning” means implying that the article is undergoing fact-checking without providing a link to a fact checking website or posting what article claims are in dispute. Some thing along the lines of:
“Warning!: This article may contain misleading or factually inaccurate information. It has been submitted for fact-checking, and the results of that action will be posted in an update to this notice.“.
There is no update ever posted because there is no fact-check occurring. Posting a bogus warning will allow implementation of the slow down faster (a key objective), and also save money (always a factor for IT operations). The reader will not know that nor will they be able to checkup on progress and the warning will still come up every time the article is accessed.
This bogus notice has the knock-on effect of creating doubt in the reader’s mind about the author’s integrity: “doubt the story, doubt the source.” The disfavored article remains posted thereby refuting accusations of censorship. But its ability to spread virally is reduced.
The UW research study authors claim the article has had little notice outside academic circles. Sure. Just like those theoretical articles from liberal Ivy League law schools have no effect on the federal judiciary proceedings.
True but false.
I remember the internet in the 80’s, before corporations got online. Free speech reigned.
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