Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done With Facebook

Psychological warfare, or propaganda, essentially conflicts with liberal democratic values. Totalitarian states and terrorist organizations don’t spend time conceptualizing: They just do it.

Click to expand...

propaganda is the management of the masses by means of manipulation and symbols. More simply put: to understand who you’re dealing with and what means you want to use in order to influence them. It’s actually a type of marketing.

Click to expand...

All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history.

The greatest propaganda machine in history.

Think about it. Facebook, YouTube and Google, Twitter and others – they reach billions of people. The algorithms these platforms depend on deliberately amplify the type of content that keeps users engaged – stories that appeal to our baser instincts and that trigger outrage and fear. It’s why YouTube recommended videos by the conspiracist Alex Jones billions of times. It’s why fake news outperforms real news, because studies show that lies spread faster than truth. And it’s no surprise that the greatest propaganda machine in history has spread the oldest conspiracy theory in history – the lie that Jews are somehow dangerous. As one headline put it, “Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done with Facebook.”

On the internet, everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart resembles the BBC. The fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion look as valid as an ADL report. And the rantings of a lunatic seem as credible as the findings of a Nobel prize winner. We have lost, it seems, a shared sense of the basic facts upon which democracy depends.

Click to expand...

swing_voter said:

Sachia Baron Cohen is a comedian. He makes me laugh. I don't take him seriously.

Click to expand...

NWRatCon said:

I didn't come to this topic directly, and I didn't know exactly where to put it, but the headline is intriguing: Just Think What Goebbels Could Have Done With Facebook (Haaretz). I have to give Sachia Baron Cohen credit for identifying it for me. Read Sacha Baron Cohen's scathing attack on Facebook in full: 'greatest propaganda machine in history' (The Guardian). I highly recommend it. If nothing else, watch the 3-4 minute video.

It struck a nerve. We live in an open society, and that is being used against us. How do we defend ourselves? I think it starts with the truth. As Ayelett Shani, via Haaretz, notes: What are we fighting? And that is really Baron Cohen's point: It is far more dangerous than we have been led to believe.

Click to expand...

NWRatCon said:

Exactly the way I feel about your posts.

Click to expand...

ModerationNow! said:

I don't want to get into an insult-fest, but if you are insulting someone else because that person doesn't blindly swallow Sacha Cohen's hypocritical, misinformed and disingenuous political diatribe, then you should open your eyes and take off the blinders. Sacha purports to be "concerned with hate speech and potentially dishonest political propaganda being spread on social media, because it's hurtful to democracy". This is the guy who became RICH by posing as a hardcore antisemite, and encouraging people to "throw the Jew down the well".


So, it's ^that guy who is now BEGGING the partisan, ultra-wealthy corporate CEO's of social media companies to CENSOR FREE SPEECH! He is calling for modern day, partisan book burning! He pushing for a small number of devoted leftists to work hand in hand with leftist politicians and their allies in the mainstream media to ensure that ONLY pro-left wing, Marxist propaganda is spread to the masses, and to OUTLAW dissent against those powerful, and increasingly unaccountable political elites!!

Now, explain to me how mass censorship of free speech, and having 1 side control all propaganda, is "good for democracy"??

Click to expand...