[HN Gopher] Microtargeting as Information Warfare [pdf]
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Microtargeting as Information Warfare [pdf]
Author : donohoe
Score : 48 points
Date : 2022-01-11 20:00 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (cyberdefensereview.army.mil)
(TXT) w3m dump (cyberdefensereview.army.mil)
| amriksohata wrote:
| I found I was being targetted with a lot of pro Pakistani
| propoganda on tiktok. I am Indian and the Pakistan is friendly
| with a big neighbour.
| the_optimist wrote:
| Turns out the military is solidly 20-25 years behind the
| cypherpunks and the EFF, and the failure to set the stage at a
| higher level has lead to ready exploits.
| kraemate wrote:
| So, are people who work for microtargeting platforms (FB etc) war
| criminals?
| [deleted]
| philprx wrote:
| I think the intelligence work referred here is not within the
| scope of war as defined in war criminal.
|
| But it could be collaborator to foreign intelligence, or agent
| for foreign intelligence, which already is punishable. Now the
| knowingly or unknowingly factor is important usually is
| qualifying these crimes.
| troelsSteegin wrote:
| "The Department of Defense must place greater emphasis on
| defending servicemembers' digital privacy as a national security
| risk."
|
| What stood out for me was: "The objective of surveillance
| capitalism-enabled advertising and information warfare is the
| same: to influence an individual's behavior change in support of
| someone else's goals."
| JacobThreeThree wrote:
| uniqueuid wrote:
| Sure, microtargeting could be potent.
|
| But its effectiveness depends so much on the message, we could be
| calling anything information warfare.
|
| I feel that the automated, microtargeting part is often over-
| estimated. We are routinely exposed to a huge range of content
| and are pretty resilient, the delivery doesn't radically change
| that [1].
|
| [1] An exception are new media such as radio and TV in their
| infancy and perhaps Facebook for elderly people today - see the
| paper from Andy Guess, Josh Tucker etc.:
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aau4586
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > We are routinely exposed to a huge range of content and are
| pretty resilient, the delivery doesn't radically change that
|
| Microtargenting has never happened before; that's an enormous
| change. Regarding our resiliancy, the results in our society
| seem opposite your optimistic prediction.
| didericis wrote:
| Agreed. And the dangers of over regulating information exposure
| are pretty severe. The whole point of free and open society is
| to avoid over reliance on a central authority and allow for
| emergent authority. Having a DoD regulatory program determining
| what is and isn't information warfare seems infinitely worse
| than targeted advertising.
|
| One little talked about counter strategy is just giving those
| same people targeted ads with better information. If you need
| to prevent certain messages from reaching certain people
| entirely and can't counter them maybe that means they have some
| validity that needs to be addressed to make counter messaging
| viable. Jumping straight to regulation rather than a change in
| counter messaging is a huge red flag that reflects poorly on
| the level of humility and need for introspection I think is
| needed to prevent these kinds of problems without making things
| worse.
| jchrisa wrote:
| I ran this game on the local political establishment in 2015,
| and it was scary effective. I assume they are more resilient
| today, but at the time entry-level social media advertising
| techniques were able to have a massive influence on
| politician's perceptions of their constituents's concerns. I
| wasn't surprised at all by the impact social advertising ended
| up having in the 2016 election.
| pohl wrote:
| _But its effectiveness depends so much on the message_
|
| I think it's best to think of this as _messages_ (plural) when
| talking about microtargeting. Everybody could get a different
| message but, in aggregate, the set of (Target, Message) tuples
| could add up to moving the needle towards some desired outcome
| (for elections, in particular: activating some voters,
| discouraging others).
|
| For example, we might look at the infamous pre-election 2016
| meme that cited the fake "Crime Statistics Bureau - San
| Francisco" and think it's not an effective message because it's
| so easily disproven. But the real question is whether or not
| it's an effective message for the subset at which it was aimed.
|
| A better phrasing might be "its effectiveness depends so much
| on the messages in aggregate," maybe.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| If it is as you say, how come Trump became president?
| harrybr wrote:
| Also see Christopher Wylie's book "Mindfuck".
|
| 2018 interview with the author here:
| https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistl...
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