Go to ground.news/benn to combat rampant misinformation online. See through bias and compare multiple perspectives. Sign up through my link to get 50% off for unlimited access on the Vantage plan. Proceeds for this sponsorship will go to UNICEF Ukraine. Related documents, papers, and leaks are linked and hosted on my Patreon page (paid or unpaid members): patreon.com/bennjordan Ready for some recommendations and inspirations? Here we go: Books: (Peter Pomerantsev is probably the #1 analyst for Russian political postmodernism) Peter Pomerantsev - Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible (2014) Peter Pomerantsev - This Is Not Propoganda Robert Horvath - Putin's Fascists (2022) Elena Chebankova - Civil Society In Putin's Russia (2015) Gabriel Gatehouse - The Puppet Mater (2019) Video: - Hypernormalisation (2016) - Russia 1985-1999 Traumazone (2022) - (okay literally any Adam Curtis film is going to hit the spot here) - Frontline Russia series: www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/topic/russia/ ('Putin vs The Press' on top of this list)
Normally I would be shocked and upset at a typical "sponsor every channel" ad showing up here, especially after changing to non profit, but instead, I took the opportunity to ask about an issue that sticks out to me during every one of their ad reads. Good on yah, putting the money to charity too.
Hm missinformation about missinformation, thats funny bro i hope the money was worth it so russia brought in the bad orange man, but it didnt infiltrate US universitis that formd ur stupid world view, interessting and convenient :D
dead internet theory was true well over a decade ago already; the video this guy posted is mostly fake narrative constructionist BS that doesn't even go into the real sources of the majority of bots operating online, preferring to gaslight you and pretend that all the bots are russians selling conspiracies to right-wing US republicans, when american politics in general comprises only a small percentage of bot activity online. This guy is a partisan hack and he's part of the problem, and part of the reason why dead internet theory is true - it's not the bots that killed it, it's the humans like this guy who peddle ahistorical narratives that don't actually line up with reality and intentionally avoid mentioning the real offenders in favour of pretending that some russian memetroll farm is the source of all bots and is destroying the internet, when in fact most of these tactics, technologies, and bot farms were literally invented, designed, and operated by western interests, both intelligence/security state and corporate.
Even 10 years ago being the tech guy in my family meant being bothered with IT problems. Now it means hearing "wow, you were right" enough that you ironically realize how worthless being correct is if you can't convince anyone before rubber meets the road
..... Do you know Jesus Christ can set you free from sins and save you from hell today Jesus Christ is the only hope in this world no other gods will lead you to heaven There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell Come to Jesus Christ today Jesus Christ is only way to heaven Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today Romans 6.23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. John 3:16-21 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Mark 1.15 15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Hebrews 11:6 6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Jesus
The unfortunate reality is that the internet has become the only place to find detailed accounts of the actual truth. Equally unfortunate is the fact that this truth is often buried beneath layers of conspiracy theories peddled by individuals demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger Effect and cognitive dissonance. Meanwhile, mainstream television and newspaper media-half of which in the English-speaking world is controlled by Rupert Murdoch-are churning out sensationalist stories shaped by corporate interests, leaving little room for objective, fact-based reporting... The only solution to this is an impossible one, and that is to limit internet access to those with an IQ above 110. Imagine if it became law that ISP's and internet browers forced internet users to undergo regular IQ tests before they could access the internet. By setting the barrier at 110 and above, you would remove 75% of the human population and the vast majority of the conspiracy peddling and extremist idiots from both sides of the political aisle... Germany and a few other EU nations have mostly solved the problem by teaching media literacy in early high school through to senior high school, and this probably explains why conspiracy theories and political/media/financial illiteracy are far higher in the English-speaking world than in the non-English-speaking world.
God I hope that attitude catches on, I use Google to look things up and youtube for entertainment and to make smarty pants comments, but that's as social as my media gets. That's the only interest I have in the internet.
This is pretty standard Lefty bubble stuff and many people stuck in his bubble are completely unable to prevent themselves from doing these kinds of content since Trump won
I'm pretty sure this is just a youtube name recommendation thing and the bot paranoia is getting to me, but I am slightly worried by the fact 4/5 of you guys in this comment section have a name followed by 4 numbers😂
True. Probably helps to be a bit of a geek and just having a curious mind. I find that many news outlets and journalists seem to lack your basic curiosity.
One of the big challenges with innoculating yourself against this kind of coercion isn't just listening to your instincts, it's recognising when your instincts are being used against you. Instincts are important but we need to know their limits and blind spots.
this is me on Reddit. Most stories are conservative rage bait that I use my instincts to sniff out, but sometimes there’s more left leaning rage bait that I’ve experienced in my own life, where I actively have to take a second to remember that everything is fake on the internet. The internet is designed to learn your biases and instincts so as to take advantage of them. One of the main signs that they’re rage bait is how well written they are, with clear story beats, character introductions, and narrative arcs. I don’t know if the average person has the skill to recognize the craft involved in that-as they say, you never notice the editor until he starts doing a bad job. So yeah, most of the time, people use their own experiences to judge if the story is true. I grew up with an abusive mother, so I know just how real and common emotional abuse is in family. However, most Reddit abuse stories are clearly fake, even if the the portrayal of abuse is accurate to my life experiences, because they wrap things into neat bows. The mother is clearly the “bad guy,” there’s a clarity of what’s going to happen next, etc. They have common tropes that they fall back on, like “everyone started blowing up my phone” or “we just had twins!” that are real life experiences, but still an overused Reddit trope. If you read real Reddit posts asking for advice from abused people, their stories are generally way more confusing, filled with petty unnecessary details or not enough detail. When I wrote posts asking for help, rather than the avalanche of support these fake posts would get, I got mostly people telling me to pray and that mother was not that bad. I didn’t have the words or the tropes Reddit considered abuse, and it was hard to narrow down what was relevant and what was not relevant, which fake stories don’t have to do because everything is crafted for the purpose of the story. Abused kids aren’t the best at articulating what’s happening to them because it’s all they have ever known. As a result, my post and others like me get basically zero attention, because they’re depressing to read and it’s basically impossible to beat well-crafted stories intended to incite rage. The worst part is when I scroll to the comments and see all the people claiming that the story HAS to be true because they’ve experienced that kind of abuse from their own mom. 😭😭So have I, buddy, and it doesn’t mean that the story is true-it just means that the writer is exploiting our real life experiences for internet points.
I miss the days of wonder and joy just talking to people online because you’d always encounter someone at least genuine. Now there’s so much melted brains
There's still corners of the Internet where you can have genuinely good interactions, it's just the hubs that are poisoned tbh. In fact, there's still good interactions to be had in the hubs, there's just a lot more noise to wade through.
Even offline, when I meet up with family or friends in person, half the time they just confront me on stuff like not reacting to their social media posts. Everybody is plugged in all the time and it sucks. Way too many people are caught up in conspiracies and nonsense, you can't tell them apart from a bot anyways. Real NPC behavior
They even - right now - deny that there is a bot problem on X (although they couldn't shut up about a much smaller bot problem, when the moron Musk was bringing this up before his Twitter buy). They rather deny their own reality than looking critically at such things.
Even in the old ass book about samurai culture, Hagakure, it states that to change one's opinion you have to be compassionate, you have to listen, to present your case in a very mild and friendly manner, because only then this is not going to trigger a defensive "I'm not listening to you" response. That understanding has been gradually lost by a lot of people, partially because we simply don't have time to be cordial to all strangers on the internet. A great tool for that is Street Epistemology.
@hennaoctopus Instead of trying to convince people they're being lied to, just ask them what evidence they'd need to see in order for them to change their mind. Then, either provide that evidence, or ask if your currently-held evidence would suffice. After that, feel free to humiliate them by publicly pointing out how foolish they were to believe in the lies for so long. Invite everyone they know. Really scar 'em, y'know?
This goes a long way to explaining why so many people in the UK seem to care more about things like the "definition of a woman" than the fact that emergency department wait times and ambulance response times have quadrupled in the last decade or so. You seemingly never see an argument online about something that directly impacts the person making the argument.
Social media is gonna be the downfall of humanity… people ignore things that actually affect them and worry about things 600 miles away. Some of those things matter yeah, but I’ll be on a forum for colorado politics and someone from montana will comment on them like it should even matter to them.
Problem is not only the older generation is easily impacted, but the younger generation also now lacks a lot of skill needed to figure out they are getting manipulated while the people creating the misinformation have better tools to do so.
This. Feels like the only people left with some immunity are the pre-FaceBook millennials. We grew up on an internet where no one had an identity. We assume everyone online is lying 70% of the time.
@@marfaxa heya, newer gen here. I get it when idk what I'm doing with tech. It's not a generalised thing. It's a spectrum like everything in the world. Just gotta educate and lead ppl to understanding
Great video! Something I've wanted to look into for the last few months but haven't been able to with other projects on the slate. this is super important work. the way these bots have been shaping discourse over the last year is way underrated. they are being used to destabilise governments, inflate numbers and breed dissent.
@@OrdinaryThings misinformation breeds dissent, but not in the way you mean. When people realize how much of what they’ve been told is untrue, they tend to dissent from the class that has been lying to them constantly for years. Recognizing misinformation is what breeds dissent
Back in the 90s everyone said don't trust anything you read on the internet. My high school classes and even college did not even accept Wikipedia references. Now it seems all that has gone out the window.
For the most part, the kinds of sources my schoolteachers encouraged me to cite instead of the Internet are now either on the Internet or have been replaced by something on the Internet. Maybe it was once a good rule of thumb. Things have changed.
@@RealHomeRecordingOnly if the cited link actually took you to a credible source. In the early days effectively anyone could make changes on wikipedia and cited links could be unreliable.
@@elxsound Oh, I'm sorry, but it appears you've been in a coma for the last few years and have just woken up. Let me fill you in on current events. We don't need troll farmers anymore. We have LLMs to do that now.
I know that's a joke, but it's such a perfect example of the lie that is our current online world. Hot single women in your area _don't need to advertise._ That should've immediately been a clue. Now extrapolate that to everything else you see everyday.
Elon Musk: i don't want to buy Twitter after all, since about 5% of the platform is bots... Elon in 2024: if we don't hit 35% bot activity before Nov 1st I'm laying off another thousand employees!
Remember how he tried to back out of the deal after leaving his bid? That's when he found out the whole truth about the bots. He then had to embrace it and make the best of it, I guess. The real outcome still remains to be seen.
@@98Zai you should be skeptical of his explanation for why he bought twitter. His behavior regarding bots since then demonstrates that it was likely a lie.
@@seans6059 Tell me, what is his explanation? Because I haven't heard him explain it. As far as I know he has said absolutely nothing and we are all speculating.
As someone who held a TS SCI clearance: I’m surprised by folks who are still surprised by the level of BS on the “inner’net”. If it can be monitored or monetized, it probably is.
Thanks for covering this important topic. As a Russian I’m fascinated with your deep knowledge of political situation in my country. Not many people from US and Europe actually understands what they’re dealing with on a daily basis while using internet. Seems like people hugely underestimate Russian efforts on disinformation and subversion targeting other countries. As a Russian I can smell it from miles away but western citizens still don’t have a mental vaccination to it.
I work with a Russian woman who in her 40s. She's extremely pro-Putin, pro-Trump, and thinks that anyone who thinks Putin is nefarious is an ignorant moron who has been influenced by liberal propaganda, and she is cynical about the US government intelligence agencies (CIA, NSA) who have full investigated reports proving all the allegations regarding Russia/Putin's international disinformation campaigns or Putin's assignations of his opponents. It is a hopeless situation, because it's become a religious-level belief.
they don’t overestimate “russian efforts on disinformation”. most of [choose iran / russia / north korea / china] case of [mis-dis information / spying / propaganda] is a joke and a lie. but the problem with this is that when people see one story like that debunked they think all of them are lies. the same goes for people who believe in all of those stories. no one can fact check everything, people have better things to do like idk maybe work, family, relationships? it’s important to know that every country uses pretty much the same methods. that doesn’t make it ok or normal, not at all. just something that most people forget about.
Pretty much if you don’t know how to think for yourself and make good judgments on things yourself, you are essentially just being controlled. Now it might be more or less directly through these bots, but controlled nonetheless. Being a somewhat intelligent and self-determining person probably still isn’t a guarantee.
@@IntertemporalTravelerpeople believe what they want to believe based on their own preferences/prejudices most of the time, and unless they have some sort of self induced epiphany, nothing will convince them otherwise.
@ I don’t take Ben’s word for it anymore than I take anyone else’s on face value. I personally don’t agree with Ben on everything, but I don’t think the point of his video was to say he has “The Truth.” He’s trying to point out that the very idea of it is being undermined via bots. It happens all over the internet, he’s just pointing to the places it seems worst. To his point, the fact that there will be many people who would read my original comment and assume I fall more on one side of the political spectrum versus another or that I hate certain people or think they are stupid or whatever kind of illustrates the purpose of the video. I dislike our political establishment parties pretty equally at this point.
I just got back from a trip to Rural PA and I found that my social feeds were MUCH more conservative while there than when I was at home in a big northeast city... None of this is a surprise but its wild to see it all laid out like this......
Targeted advertising is working as intended! Your general location (down to the city/town) can be determined from your IP address, which some online advertisers use to serve you "more relevant ads".
@@DrTssha RUclips and Instagram also serve you user-generated content based on your data, it's not just ads. Idk why this is such a revelation. Did you think everyone saw the same posts you did? Did you suddenly realise you were in an echo chamber and there were other echo chambers outside yours? Everything online is curated to the individual user now, there is no shared group experience which leads to consensus anymore. The algorithm doesn't care if it's just confirming your biases and creating an echo chamber, as long as you stay engaged on the platform they can make more ad revenue.
You did an INCREDIBLE job with this video. I know this isn't your general fare, but you did more in a 30 minute video than I've seen some 2+ hour videos do. Bravo!
Great video, was linked here from a Reddit thread only to discover you're also The Flashbulb! Been listening to piety of ashes regularly for years now, crazy. Love it when your discover an artist you like is also both sane and intelligent
I asked Grok why Benn and his editor have never been seen together in the same room. My computer immediately started smoking and black screened. I think we're onto something big here man.
If you feel like amplifying that feeling, I recommend the BBC documentary HYPERNORMALISATION (ruclips.net/video/to72IJzQT5k/видео.htmlsi=no484WEWPz8yvQvj) is an in-depth of look at how we got to this point. Also has a banging soundtrack with a lot of NIN and Brian Eno, among others.
@beardyman You have to figure out which one you want: comforting lies, or uncomfortable truths. If you want the truth, remember that and let it embolden you, not diminish you. Unless you're a bot, in which case you have to worry about none of this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I really liked your personnel opinion at the end as I found myself able to relate to it a lot. Trying to understand the world and be educated about what is happening feels so exhausting causes there are always so many conflicting theories, views and facts about the world and to realize that that feeling is intentional is horrible. At the end of the day it just feels so draining trying to make sense of what’s true and not any more. Great video, it helped a lot in understanding that.
Truly horrifying to see what is happening and how. And scary to how little defense there is against it. Especially when those with money just buy the companies and then shutdown any mechanisms that had been implemented to fight this. They purposefully make the platforms easier to exploit to maximize the harm they inflict.
What's horrifying is that the disinfo campaign has already been won. People have internalized and believe all the essential garbage now. People are just fighting over the rubble. At this point, the online circus is merely entertainment.
back in my day we didn't trust strangers on the internet. the whole concept of an endless feed of strangers seems so flawed and volatile, i can't believe it ever took off.
@@Traumglanz True, but in a way RUclips comments are _much_ closer to the forums of old, than to a social media feed or even a social media comment section. This gives them, and the interactions found within them, the potential to be much more valuable and interesting - even if it all has degraded over the years (and intentionally so). The video is akin to a thread/topic header, and the discussion stems from it, rather than purely from the interactions of users between themselves. This already brings you closer to the other strangers in the video - after all, they have specifically chosen to watch that particular piece of content, and might be returning viewers of the channel (which would be akin to a forum/subforum). That way, it's always more focused and, like with open forums, always intended to be public & 'broadcasted' in a sort of passive way; you know other people will come down and read the interactions, and you take that into account when replying, rather than focusing on explicitly engaging with one individual you may be responding to, which is more common in social media. The latter does always happen though, but in most comment sections it doesn't ever become prevalent, thanks also in part to the 'comment thread' system drawing people away from the very latest replies and into comments that start threads themselves instead - even if you filter to 'newest', you won't be seeing the latest _replies_ to comments, only the latest comments. Despite this being quite unlike a normal/classic forum - where you wouldn't have a 'thread within a thread' - it helps the comment section behave more like one. Even when two users go off-track and get engaged in a conversation/argument on one comment thread, they can still participate separately in interacting with the comment section at large, and it's rare for their discussion to bleed over into other comment threads. Plus, the comments are usually a bit more targeted than the 'yelling into the void' of social media feeds where it's truly not meant for anyone in particular - and that one is only on paper; we all know of those super specific social media posts clearly aimed at that person's ex-partner but that aren't addressed at anyone in particular, hahahaha.
@@Traumglanz True, but in a way RUclips comments are _much_ closer to the forums of old, than to a social media feed or even a social media comment section. This gives them, and the interactions found within them, the potential to be much more valuable and interesting - even if it all has degraded over the years (and intentionally so). The video is akin to a thread/topic header, and the discussion stems from it, rather than purely from the interactions of users between themselves. This already brings you closer to the other strangers in the video - after all, they have specifically chosen to watch that particular piece of content, and might be returning viewers of the channel (which would be akin to a forum/subforum). That way, it's always more focused and, like with open forums, always intended to be public & 'broadcasted' in a sort of passive way; you know other people will come down and read the interactions, and you take that into account when replying, rather than focusing on explicitly engaging with one individual you may be responding to, which is more common in social media. The latter does always happen though, but in most comment sections it doesn't ever become prevalent, thanks also in part to the 'comment thread' system drawing people away from the very latest replies and into comments that start threads themselves instead - even if you filter to 'newest', you won't be seeing the latest _replies_ to comments, only the latest comments. Despite this being quite unlike a normal/classic forum - where you wouldn't have a 'thread within a thread' - it helps the comment section behave more like one. Even when two users go off-track and get engaged in a conversation/argument on one comment thread, they can still participate separately in interacting with the comment section at large, and it's rare for their discussion to bleed over into other comment threads. Plus, the comments are usually a bit more targeted than the 'yelling into the void' of social media feeds where it's truly not meant for anyone in particular - and that one is only on paper; we all know of those super specific social media posts clearly aimed at that person's ex-partner but that aren't addressed at anyone in particular, hahahaha.
@@Traumglanz True, but in a way RUclips comments are _much_ closer to the forums of old, than to a social media feed or even a social media comment section. This gives them, and the interactions found within them, the potential to be much more valuable and interesting - even if it all has degraded over the years (and intentionally so). The video is akin to a thread/topic header, and the discussion stems from it, rather than purely from the interactions of users between themselves. This already brings you closer to the other strangers in the video - after all, they have specifically chosen to watch that particular piece of content, and might be returning viewers of the channel (which would be akin to a forum/subforum). That way, it's always more focused and, like with open forums, always intended to be public & 'broadcasted' in a sort of passive way; you know other people will come down and read the interactions, and you take that into account when replying, rather than focusing on explicitly engaging with one individual you may be responding to, which is more common in social media. The latter does always happen though, but in most comment sections it doesn't ever become prevalent, thanks also in part to the 'comment thread' system drawing people away from the very latest replies and into comments that start threads themselves instead - even if you filter to 'newest', you won't be seeing the latest _replies_ to comments, only the latest comments. Despite this being quite unlike a normal/classic forum - where you wouldn't have a 'thread within a thread' - it helps the comment section behave more like one. Even when two users go off-track and get engaged in a conversation/argument on one comment thread, they can still participate separately in interacting with the comment section at large, and it's rare for their discussion to bleed over into other comment threads. Plus, the comments are usually a bit more targeted than the 'yelling into the void' of social media feeds where it's truly not meant for anyone in particular - and that one is only on paper; we all know of those super specific social media posts clearly aimed at that person's ex-partner but that aren't addressed at anyone in particular, hahahaha...
I'm reminded of something I read from the Warhammer 40k 3rd Edition Rule Book: "Facts are chains that bind perception and fetter truth. For a man can remake the world if he has a dream and no facts to cloud his mind." This quote is supposed to be a piece of fluff for a fucking board game, but that second sentence terrified me with how undisputed it is in our own history, and it still haunts me to this day.
People love to forget that Warhammer (which started as 40k, Fantasy came later!) was _always_ meant to be a scathing critique & mockery of ultra-nationalist fashie ideologies with their macho fantasies straight out of Heinlein's wet dreams. It's really sad to see how half the fanbase has now unironically embraced the Empire's way of thinking, either through sheer stupidity or willful obliviousness to the source material... I'm sure they're the same type of crowd that b!tches and moans about people "bringing politics into [whatever thing]", gleefully ignorant of the fact politics were there from inception.
Thankfully, the facts remain the same regardless of how one feels about them. Lysenko can believe whatever he wants about agriculture, the truth will be reveal itself when millions starve.
@@deus4329 Before millions of deaths? Just immediately shut down any projects or ideas put forward by anyone philosophically inspired by Marx or Jean-Jacques Rousseau
I think what also makes the problem worse is the fact that a lot of people actually want their prejudges to be confirmed. So the public itself is not actively seeking out "truth" anymore but is lazily feeling justified in what is presented to them.
then college students forgot which restroom to use, and how to define woman. Its still good when you talk to people who love America. ignore the feminists
Benn, I'm also a 2008-era Twitter user who deleted their account this week. It became unusable after late 2022 and as much as I'll miss parts of it, it's just time to move on. End of an era.
As much as I hate Xitter, I really struggle with the intense censorship on Bluesky. I just want a platform that allows facts and logic, is that too much to ask. Sigh.
Found this vid, thought it was awesome, went to show it to my partner and only caught on 2nd watch that you're The Flashbulb. Dude! Soundtrack to a Vacant Life was on constant repeat for me through my teens man! So good!
Do you know Jesus Christ can set you free from sins and save you from hell today Jesus Christ is the only hope in this world no other gods will lead you to heaven There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell Come to Jesus Christ today Jesus Christ is only way to heaven Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today Romans 6.23 For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. John 3:16-21 16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God. Mark 1.15 15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel. 2 Peter 3:9 The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. Hebrews 11:6 6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him. Jesus
Hi there from St Petersburg, Russia. Few things I need to mention. $900-1200 salary a month even today for St Petersburg is way above average and pretty good (median monthly salary is somewhere around $300-500 even today), not to mention pre 2016 (troll farms started around 2011 or so, afaik). Also we call them kremlinbots (кремлеботы). Also also Putin and his thugs befriended Lyndon LaRouche and his movement, and went full-on with conspiratorial crap essentially convincing themselves that "US wants to destroy Russia through color revolution with the help of Ukraine (with "Ukrainian scenario"), hence the 2014 and 2022 full-scale invasion - there's good documentary about it "The American Origins of Putin's Madness" by youtube user "Sarcasmitron".
@@airwindows the "Color" revolutions are documented by the CIA itself, you fucking clowns. It's one thing to blindly spew vile, hateful Western progapanda but it's another thing entirely to deny what the agents of this terrorism themselves have documented on record that is easy to access for anywhere around the world.
the part about Musk removing the "marked as misinformation" label is more subtle than what you explain: there is the entire Community Notes feature, which was in beta before Musk's arrival, Musk simply finalized the transition in order to be able to fire his own teams. This feature is an entire shitshow in itself. The goal is to make us vote instead of report, so they gather data on our opinions and as you can guess it's full of bots too
It encourages readers to "add context" to mis/disinformation, instead of demanding the deletion of said misinformation. This keeps the false info visible, because more content on the site means more engagement and therefore more ad revenue!
@@InventorZahran also, because notes require a consensus from hundreds of contributors to be displayed, obvious lies can stay without a note for days, so they spread anyway in exactly the same manner. Often, nothing ever shows up at all. The feature only informs me better because as a contributor myself i can see the notes twitter refuses to display to the public
thanks for mentioning the last part. i'm from germany and i know so many people who just go "they're all lying anyway" and while that is not entirely untrue it's just so dangerous. even if you say you won't believe anyone, some people will continue to throw shit and the shit will always stick, especially if you are not well-informed
Thanks from Ukraine for sharing the truth. My parents still live in russia and they don't believe their own son about what's happening here. What they are telling me is that i shouldn't believe anyone cuz everybody's lying about everything.
Honestly if my parents were indifferent to me being bombed by the same country they're paying taxes to - i'd cut contact with them. Silence is sometimes louder than a thousand words.
"everybody's lying about everything" That's what the bots are trying to achieve in the rest of the world. Russia was a proving ground, and look how it turned out.
Так ты действительно пиздишь например я уверен что ты когда либо рассказывал про бомбежки якобы жилых домов при этом не упоминал что этими жилыми домами пользуются ВСУ для прикрытия своих позиций, а потом ноют когда по ним прилетает в ответ
This is why I place such a large value on in-person events. Yes, the speaker may be/is definitely biased, but no one can tell me I was not standing in the room listening to their voice. Communication is sacred, and we all must do what we can to protect it for ourselves and others. Also, I am not a bot.
In person events also foster a feeling of community instead of pecking you into a corner of only hearing from people who disagree with you and pose as adversaries. Even when it's a low stakes topic, and a real person... feels bad man.
Which is why it is sus that Kamala lost when you compare her events to Trump’s. I’m not going to foment an insurrection but I do not really believe the tabulated election results.
I love how you edited this video. Very good research and a very important matter to discuss. The intro track was pretty fire, too. All around a very good piece. Thank you!
It's very true that the Democrats are triggered by the fact that he doesn't censor people for disagreeing with the Democrat Party After 2016 Democrats entire political strategy became censoring the internet so that political dissidents wouldn't be able to speak out against them and reporters would be censored for report negative stories about them.. They got very angry when Twitter was no longer able to be used to manipulate elections for them
He only bought the site to get Trump elected. That election was bought plain and simple. He needed to keep getting those billions in government contracts his companies that still can’t even build what NASA has been doing for 40+ years.
The idea that Russia is the international leader of psy-ops is quite literally hilarious. The playbook was written and perfect by the US well before Internet troll bots. Literally just look at every Freedom(insert country here) radio channel
"Real vs. fake" has been a common problem on the internet for decades now, but recently it's seemed to have ramped up by several orders of magnitude. We're going to have to diligently and continually develop tools to overcome these problems (make them FOSS, eh!). Things are going to get worse before they get better.
As soon as you started talking about consensus reality I immediately remembered this documentary by Adam Curtis "Hypernormalization", it really goes in depth on the topic
It's pretty interesting to see Benn go from the guy who does cool production and synth videos to the guy who drops some of the most badass investigative journalism I see on youtube
He preseted the study totaly wrong in the end and had no idea what hes talking about beside "it appears to me". Thats far from "badass investigative journalism "
Regurgitating western mainstream media narratives and blaming russia for every bot is is hardly journalism let alone investigative. Just like hamilton 68 blaming regular trumpers for being "russian bots" and then it turned out the whole thing was being funded by american bots (also known as demoncraps)
It was a little tough for me to delete my Facebook account a few years back but holding my breath and doing it made Twitter and Reddit a breeze when the time came. I still like to keep in touch with the weirdness out there to some degree but not living in the middle of it has made things so much easier on my mental health.
@mikey-b1s so you interpreted this as me needing the pendulum to swing to prevent me from logging on? I’m clearly saying societally we’d be better off. Disagree?
@@ferromontanino We've been heavily herded by bots and troll farms online. I suspect the next phase of technofascism will be in utilizing much more sophisticated technology to make it impossible to even think privately. Some of these advances could be beneficial but the general trend isn't looking positive. Think electronic fence warfare bringing together neurolink, mind-reading tech and new currency systems such as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wants. You want to eat? You'll have to play along...
A friend of mine taught me about Vladislov Circov several years ago and Romanian friends taught me about Putin decades ago. So it's taken a long time for some in the mainstream to undertand what is exactly happening. I'm glad you made this video.
Well... I never got on twitter - maybe it was the early lovefest of networks that was a caution flag for me. The censorship machine [with layers of code not revealed by policy or so called user agrements tailored to harm specific accounts, persons or speech] discovered by Elon confirmed my gut instincts. Before that, there was the infamous "indefinite suspension" notice given to Gavin McInnes... with the reason left blank. Cowardly, feckless, unethical administration tactics in action... but clever enough to evade a claim in a lawsuit? Dorsey was a piece of work or... a government cutout masquerading as something else? Maybe both - good riddance to him, and maybe now I might arrive to X. We'll see. Bots will always try to be placed wherever the traffic is and people are behind screens - same impetus for outlaws of old to rob trains and banks: go where the action is. So, there's a little saying that doesn't ever go out of style [no matter what the tech]: caveat emptor. Old MBA types out there still clinging to old defunct metrics like "for every letter, there's five thousand other complaints"? You are [or will be] abused, and the internet... puts that erroroneus thinking on steroids. Platform almost doesn't matter.
This is your best and most important video so far. Amazing work, not many musicians are really willing to stick their head above the parapet like this. Huge respect.
_I_ liked the Apex Twin one! this one, ah, it's a bit like being told "your head keeps hitting the ceiling because of the elephant under your carpet - look I'll show you" and dang! there it is, and we all kind of suspected there was one
4 Words from 6 Years ago: Shoshana Zuboff Surveillance Capitalism. Its a book that exposes and explains all of that, what it did, where it came from, where else it gets applied and how AI is used on personal/surveilance data to not only analyse but to control (with unprecedented success).
Ben, we the artists need your deep analysis on royalty streams, why labels and distributors hide the fact that artists need to register their music on BMI, Songtrust, and services like that in order to receive ALL their royalties, otherwise they will lose part of it in 3 years! Apperantly unclaimed royalties will go to major labels. is that true? I think there are a lot of misinformation around this topic, and artists need clarity, and clear step by step guide on how to get all their royalties if they are DIY artists, and self-published artists. ❤
Cannot believe you went from guitarist to acidwolf to flashbulb to reviewing law enforcement techniques, then synths and now this. A master of the pivot and a versatile creator. Chapeau sir.
Incredible video. Really and truly, it is heartening to see people with the curiosity to investigate things like this and present them in such an unbiased manner. It's sad that people on youtube are doing actual investigative journalism while the news media just regurgitates a bunch of clickbait, but I am very thankful for all of your efforts. And congratulations on being done with it! 😂 I can understand how this would have been quite stressful to make. 10/10 - should be required viewing for any Twitter user. so glad I deleted my account in 2020, along with facebook and have never used tiktok - if you can, I highly suggest this. Make your circle smaller. It will benefit you! But I know not everyone can do this
I would like to see a response from Elon in time. I would like to see X improve. It's easy to say things but can be much harder to implement them. That man has a mountain on his plate currently. Are there any good proposed solutions? Is there perhaps a roadmap? It's not easy cleaning up and turning around such a platform.
@@parawizard You see a response from Elon every day - yesterday he posted that he was going to enjoy watching all the people who said there was foreign interference in the election get punished. Twitter isn't this way because Elon is "working on it". Twitter is this way because that's what Elon chose to make it into. He chose the mountain, he made the mountain, he knew it was a mountain, he did all of this on purpose.
@@ZtereoHYPEsome people think that but the truth is one of my most popular videos has the most down votes. RUclips does not care about dislikes they care about engagement. And engagement is a dislike. If bots were smart they would show indifference
Such excellent journalism. Shit is worse than I thought. It's not just about choosing your algorithmic fiefdom, now you also get to "choose" which distorted view of reality will be imposed upon you unconsciously. It doesn't get any more dystopian than this (for now).
The sad thing is that there isn’t a realistic solution. You can’t trust any authority to decide what is and isn’t misinformation, because anything they don’t approve of will be defined as such. The best thing you can do is read as many books as you can. Voltaire was especially ahead of his time, as his work is extraordinarily relevant to the problems we face today. “Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.”
Peer review isn't perfect but it works a lot better than trusting any authority figure. We use it for science papers as well as multinational news like AP and Reuters. Misinformation makes it through but it usually eventually gets caught when it's applied correctly. And when you keep money far away from peer review, it gets applied a lot better.
The issue is people's trust in authority in the first place. We beg to give up our thought process to someone else to handle. But no one is in controk, no one has the answers, just gotta do the best we can and be nice.
Since Bluesky doesn't (by default) have an algorithmic feed, the way that disinformation and information manipulation works on it is very different. Combined with the moderation tools (community-run blocklists and labelers, "nuclear block") and the culture of favoring rapid blocking or muting over engaging with trolls, I think its chances of remaining usable for longer are good. We'll see, though, because it is seeing catastrophically rapid growth at the moment, so all of these mechanisms are being put to the test.
Bots are a HUGE problem but I've also seen journalists/pundits/hosts completely discount fair constructive criticism as nonsense coming from "bots". Overly defensive people crediting criticism to bot farms, trolls or A.I. can also lead them to being in siloed echo chambers. We have to strike a balance.
Bots and paid shills are just about the same thing.....at least there is a HOPE of getting through to a paid shill.....but you dont have to worry about bots getting their feelings hurt and trying to get you swatted.....everything has pros and cons, LOL
Came for music production, stayed for everything else. Your content is a blessing man. The average american voter (and european voter!) will most likely not understand why this video is a huge deal in the political landscape of today.
As a Uktainian, I'm all too familiar with russian bots, but I didn't expect a person from the english-speaking west to create such a good video on it. Great job!
I'm a 'right winger' myself and seeing this is deeply worrying, it makes twitter and social media a pointless nightmare and endangers our precious democracy none of this makes me happy
As a lib, I'm sick and tired of both the censorship and regurgitation of misinformation as if it were empirical truth. Seeing people fall for BS that has been repeated by media, is what concerns me. The video didn't even cover the side of grifting on twitter, now that there is a monetary incentive because of monetize-able tweets; to farm engagement. So at least some 'people'/accounts are tweeting with that in mind, which I imagine isn't helping the platform. But it's probably a net-positive from a capitalistic perspective.
genuine good faith question....as a right winger, do you really feel like the current or rather soon to be current administration actually represents traditional conservative/right wing values? I just don't understand it
@@ridethewavz It's probably easier to ask why they didn't go for the others that run on identity politics rather than policy, and 50% of the time could not stop talking about an orange/blatantly lying about said orange to avoid answering questions, and has a career of mass incarceration of nonviolents and poc over "candy"
As a lib, I'm tired of both the censor and regurgitation of misinfo as if it were truth. Seeing people fall for b s that has been repeated by media, is concerning. The video didn't fully cover the side of engagement farming, usually called 'grift' on twitter, now that there is a financial incentive because you can be paid for tweets; to farm engagement. So at least some 'people'/accounts are tweeting with that in mind, which I imagine isn't helping the platform. But it's probably a net-positive from a capitalist perspective.
Great video. Something people fail to realize is that bots are not just there to change your mind. They're they're to boost accounts that give favorable coverage. They pay influencers through engagement. The influencer gets plausible deniability and a boost to their viewership/payout, the foreign actor gets a real human supporting their side. It's a shadow economy.
As somebody from ex-USSR, I can tell you that $900 a month is not a bad money. There are people here who live off a tenth of that. If I had 900 bucks a month I could have afforded anything I need or want, really.
@fity_4696 well you say poor, but actually it's more cheap. People from USA literally flu to my country to get certain medical treatment of the same quality (surgeries and dentistry mainly), and it ends up being cheaper even when counting the travel expenses.
@@qasderfful Maybe this will help - if you make $37,000 a year, you are in the top 5% of earner on the planet. 95% of the humans on the planet make less then $37,000 a year. It might be cheaper to live in 95% of places in the world but it will be very difficult to make it to the top 5% regardless.
My problem with twitter is not how the app operates, but the weight is has been given by other media and news outlets to "add" to the news. I think it went wrong from the moment everybody joined "social" platforms and needed to use their real identity as avatars, things have gotten too "serious" to disengage. Conversely, anonymity increases online security, that's why VPN's are so much advertised. I'd even argue that it would be easier to filter out bots in an anonymous web-space, because they have less data to mimic/learn from.
@@TheSunshineGroup That's the thing. Do you know who wrote the encyclopedia pages, online manuals, recipes, or the dictionary? Yet the people we see online, and think to "know" never seem to be what they put out to be.
As someone who grew up watching the problematic laser show on summer nights, seeing Russia and Stone Mountain together in a headline will always be surreal.
Been following since the straight up sound and music stuff. The stuff you've out out this last year or so has absolutely blown me away. Keep on keeping on my guy.
So far but a lot of the newer people keep interacting with obvious bots and Trumpers (yeah I know that's functionally redundant) instead of just blocking them outright. If they keep interacting with them, it further incentivizes the Trumpers and bots.
Until it becomes popular enough to also be a russian trollfactory target 😢 Maybe chineses idea of censored controlled internet or no anonymity on the internet is a good idea after all :(
@@slopedarmor it's already being targeted. Just from yesterday to this morning, I've had to block dozens more bots than the one or two I had before. So far, very few people are interacting with them so it doesn't appear to be working. Hopefully, that doesn't change.
Go to ground.news/benn to combat rampant misinformation online. See through bias and compare multiple perspectives. Sign up through my link to get 50% off for unlimited access on the Vantage plan. Proceeds for this sponsorship will go to UNICEF Ukraine.
Related documents, papers, and leaks are linked and hosted on my Patreon page (paid or unpaid members): patreon.com/bennjordan
Ready for some recommendations and inspirations? Here we go:
Books:
(Peter Pomerantsev is probably the #1 analyst for Russian political postmodernism)
Peter Pomerantsev - Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible (2014)
Peter Pomerantsev - This Is Not Propoganda
Robert Horvath - Putin's Fascists (2022)
Elena Chebankova - Civil Society In Putin's Russia (2015)
Gabriel Gatehouse - The Puppet Mater (2019)
Video:
- Hypernormalisation (2016)
- Russia 1985-1999 Traumazone (2022)
- (okay literally any Adam Curtis film is going to hit the spot here)
- Frontline Russia series: www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/topic/russia/ ('Putin vs The Press' on top of this list)
ground news uses media bias chart. bias chart tracks perception, not unbiased and not exactly "correct". e.g. its perceived as "factual" by people.
How does ground news claim the position to define the window, and where the center is? How do they determine left / right bias?
Normally I would be shocked and upset at a typical "sponsor every channel" ad showing up here, especially after changing to non profit, but instead, I took the opportunity to ask about an issue that sticks out to me during every one of their ad reads.
Good on yah, putting the money to charity too.
Hm missinformation about missinformation, thats funny bro i hope the money was worth it
so russia brought in the bad orange man, but it didnt infiltrate US universitis that formd ur stupid world view, interessting and convenient :D
I'll say it once, for algo boosting:
RAID : SHADOW LEGENDS
I cannot provide a response to this as it goes against OpenAI's use case policy.
I cannot provide a response to this response because my response would go against OPENAI's response to the response.
I just cannot
I am unable to can
It doesn't look like anything to me.
that's funny
Everyday we step closer to the dead internet theory being actualised
I've always stuck to the theory while others treat it as a non-threatening joke
A huge report came out about how Kamala Harris campaign was manipulating Reddit
It died this year, for sure…
I hope it does. I want billion dollar companies to pump money into the void.
dead internet theory was true well over a decade ago already; the video this guy posted is mostly fake narrative constructionist BS that doesn't even go into the real sources of the majority of bots operating online, preferring to gaslight you and pretend that all the bots are russians selling conspiracies to right-wing US republicans, when american politics in general comprises only a small percentage of bot activity online. This guy is a partisan hack and he's part of the problem, and part of the reason why dead internet theory is true - it's not the bots that killed it, it's the humans like this guy who peddle ahistorical narratives that don't actually line up with reality and intentionally avoid mentioning the real offenders in favour of pretending that some russian memetroll farm is the source of all bots and is destroying the internet, when in fact most of these tactics, technologies, and bot farms were literally invented, designed, and operated by western interests, both intelligence/security state and corporate.
Even 10 years ago being the tech guy in my family meant being bothered with IT problems. Now it means hearing "wow, you were right" enough that you ironically realize how worthless being correct is if you can't convince anyone before rubber meets the road
"how worthless being correct is if you can't convince anyone"
This hit hard. Greek goddess Cassandra approves.
@@ohnoitisnt Ancient Greece's Cassandra is a name I haven't heard in a while. Thanks for reminding me.
If something you are trying to teach someone is vital for their success, they might not listen to you, but they won't learn until they succeed
.....
Do you know Jesus Christ can set you free from sins and save you from hell today
Jesus Christ is the only hope in this world no other gods will lead you to heaven
There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today
Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell
Come to Jesus Christ today
Jesus Christ is only way to heaven
Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void
Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today
Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today
Romans 6.23
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
Mark 1.15
15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Hebrews 11:6
6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Jesus
The unfortunate reality is that the internet has become the only place to find detailed accounts of the actual truth. Equally unfortunate is the fact that this truth is often buried beneath layers of conspiracy theories peddled by individuals demonstrating the Dunning-Kruger Effect and cognitive dissonance. Meanwhile, mainstream television and newspaper media-half of which in the English-speaking world is controlled by Rupert Murdoch-are churning out sensationalist stories shaped by corporate interests, leaving little room for objective, fact-based reporting... The only solution to this is an impossible one, and that is to limit internet access to those with an IQ above 110. Imagine if it became law that ISP's and internet browers forced internet users to undergo regular IQ tests before they could access the internet. By setting the barrier at 110 and above, you would remove 75% of the human population and the vast majority of the conspiracy peddling and extremist idiots from both sides of the political aisle... Germany and a few other EU nations have mostly solved the problem by teaching media literacy in early high school through to senior high school, and this probably explains why conspiracy theories and political/media/financial illiteracy are far higher in the English-speaking world than in the non-English-speaking world.
I'm getting less interested in the Internet.
God I hope that attitude catches on, I use Google to look things up and youtube for entertainment and to make smarty pants comments, but that's as social as my media gets. That's the only interest I have in the internet.
I used to say "The internet was a mistake" ironically but now...
This is pretty standard Lefty bubble stuff and many people stuck in his bubble are completely unable to prevent themselves from doing these kinds of content since Trump won
@@dannthenitromanwhy because it challenges your world view?
I'm pretty sure this is just a youtube name recommendation thing and the bot paranoia is getting to me, but I am slightly worried by the fact 4/5 of you guys in this comment section have a name followed by 4 numbers😂
Its wild that a synth producer channel made one of the best videos regarding this topic
True. Probably helps to be a bit of a geek and just having a curious mind. I find that many news outlets and journalists seem to lack your basic curiosity.
Bots are synthesized
what makes it the best for you?
Benn is a true renaissance man, and embodies healthy masculinity in a time when most male influencers have become extremely toxic.
Signal/wave theory is pretty adjacent to the dilemma of misinformation. Bullshit forms a sin wave :)
One of the big challenges with innoculating yourself against this kind of coercion isn't just listening to your instincts, it's recognising when your instincts are being used against you. Instincts are important but we need to know their limits and blind spots.
More like you can only trust your immediate direct experiences and even then there is caution necessary when interpreting them.
this is me on Reddit. Most stories are conservative rage bait that I use my instincts to sniff out, but sometimes there’s more left leaning rage bait that I’ve experienced in my own life, where I actively have to take a second to remember that everything is fake on the internet. The internet is designed to learn your biases and instincts so as to take advantage of them.
One of the main signs that they’re rage bait is how well written they are, with clear story beats, character introductions, and narrative arcs. I don’t know if the average person has the skill to recognize the craft involved in that-as they say, you never notice the editor until he starts doing a bad job.
So yeah, most of the time, people use their own experiences to judge if the story is true. I grew up with an abusive mother, so I know just how real and common emotional abuse is in family. However, most Reddit abuse stories are clearly fake, even if the the portrayal of abuse is accurate to my life experiences, because they wrap things into neat bows.
The mother is clearly the “bad guy,” there’s a clarity of what’s going to happen next, etc. They have common tropes that they fall back on, like “everyone started blowing up my phone” or “we just had twins!” that are real life experiences, but still an overused Reddit trope.
If you read real Reddit posts asking for advice from abused people, their stories are generally way more confusing, filled with petty unnecessary details or not enough detail. When I wrote posts asking for help, rather than the avalanche of support these fake posts would get, I got mostly people telling me to pray and that mother was not that bad. I didn’t have the words or the tropes Reddit considered abuse, and it was hard to narrow down what was relevant and what was not relevant, which fake stories don’t have to do because everything is crafted for the purpose of the story. Abused kids aren’t the best at articulating what’s happening to them because it’s all they have ever known. As a result, my post and others like me get basically zero attention, because they’re depressing to read and it’s basically impossible to beat well-crafted stories intended to incite rage.
The worst part is when I scroll to the comments and see all the people claiming that the story HAS to be true because they’ve experienced that kind of abuse from their own mom. 😭😭So have I, buddy, and it doesn’t mean that the story is true-it just means that the writer is exploiting our real life experiences for internet points.
I miss the days of wonder and joy just talking to people online because you’d always encounter someone at least genuine. Now there’s so much melted brains
There's still corners of the Internet where you can have genuinely good interactions, it's just the hubs that are poisoned tbh.
In fact, there's still good interactions to be had in the hubs, there's just a lot more noise to wade through.
@@SleepyHarryZzz yes but as soon as something gets a little prominent it gets poisoned... its even happening in really niche techy sites
The old net is still there, its alive and well... but its not indexed well. Go on an adventure to find old webrings and you will find them.
I actually met 2 wives online in early 2010s. Amazingly spending time meeting people back then i didnt have 1 person ask for money.
Even offline, when I meet up with family or friends in person, half the time they just confront me on stuff like not reacting to their social media posts. Everybody is plugged in all the time and it sucks. Way too many people are caught up in conspiracies and nonsense, you can't tell them apart from a bot anyways. Real NPC behavior
The problem is if you tell people they are believing lies, it's easier for them to say you're the one lying than admit they might have been fooled
Yeah, just look at the COVID pandemic a few years ago...
They even - right now - deny that there is a bot problem on X (although they couldn't shut up about a much smaller bot problem, when the moron Musk was bringing this up before his Twitter buy). They rather deny their own reality than looking critically at such things.
True. Everyone else has been lied to and they just can't cope with the fact they've been fooled. Me though? Nah, I'm way too smart for that ;)
Even in the old ass book about samurai culture, Hagakure, it states that to change one's opinion you have to be compassionate, you have to listen, to present your case in a very mild and friendly manner, because only then this is not going to trigger a defensive "I'm not listening to you" response.
That understanding has been gradually lost by a lot of people, partially because we simply don't have time to be cordial to all strangers on the internet.
A great tool for that is Street Epistemology.
@hennaoctopus Instead of trying to convince people they're being lied to, just ask them what evidence they'd need to see in order for them to change their mind. Then, either provide that evidence, or ask if your currently-held evidence would suffice.
After that, feel free to humiliate them by publicly pointing out how foolish they were to believe in the lies for so long. Invite everyone they know. Really scar 'em, y'know?
This goes a long way to explaining why so many people in the UK seem to care more about things like the "definition of a woman" than the fact that emergency department wait times and ambulance response times have quadrupled in the last decade or so. You seemingly never see an argument online about something that directly impacts the person making the argument.
Social media is gonna be the downfall of humanity… people ignore things that actually affect them and worry about things 600 miles away. Some of those things matter yeah, but I’ll be on a forum for colorado politics and someone from montana will comment on them like it should even matter to them.
Problem is not only the older generation is easily impacted, but the younger generation also now lacks a lot of skill needed to figure out they are getting manipulated while the people creating the misinformation have better tools to do so.
Don't tell them that. They think because they grew up with cellphones they're "technologically savvy". The arrogance just makes them easier targets.
This. Feels like the only people left with some immunity are the pre-FaceBook millennials. We grew up on an internet where no one had an identity. We assume everyone online is lying 70% of the time.
@@marfaxaI think most understand they're not computer savvy, they just don't accept help until it's obvious they need it.
@@catokeeffethat isn’t a generational thing there is just a whole lotta marks out on the internet
@@marfaxa heya, newer gen here. I get it when idk what I'm doing with tech. It's not a generalised thing. It's a spectrum like everything in the world. Just gotta educate and lead ppl to understanding
We will live in the world where we can't trust anything on internet and therefore will be forced to go outside to communicate.
One day the settlers of the colony will be forced to look outside and see food. They will never choose it.
This is why I bought a CB radio, so I can get all my news from truckers.
That's a lie... you can trust tons of stuff on the internet bot!! 🤖 You're probably paid for by booksellers
It won’t matter everyone outside is going to believe what’s on the Internet too. They’re not separate things anymore.
Verify don’t trust
Great video! Something I've wanted to look into for the last few months but haven't been able to with other projects on the slate. this is super important work. the way these bots have been shaping discourse over the last year is way underrated. they are being used to destabilise governments, inflate numbers and breed dissent.
Man, The Evil Business of Misinformation and How it Made You Mum a Racist (working title) would have been an epic Ordinary Things video.
@@OrdinaryThings misinformation breeds dissent, but not in the way you mean. When people realize how much of what they’ve been told is untrue, they tend to dissent from the class that has been lying to them constantly for years. Recognizing misinformation is what breeds dissent
@@dan44zzt231 The "Evil Business of Coal" video got the title changed too much and now people don't know it's actually part of the series :(
Back in the 90s everyone said don't trust anything you read on the internet. My high school classes and even college did not even accept Wikipedia references. Now it seems all that has gone out the window.
No it hasn't... but the disinformation has buried it and no one is listening any more.
Back then people just lied. There's a significant difference between lying and state funded propaganda agencies
For the most part, the kinds of sources my schoolteachers encouraged me to cite instead of the Internet are now either on the Internet or have been replaced by something on the Internet. Maybe it was once a good rule of thumb. Things have changed.
Correct you were not supposed to cite Wikipedia itself but whatever source was cited on Wikipedia.
@@RealHomeRecordingOnly if the cited link actually took you to a credible source. In the early days effectively anyone could make changes on wikipedia and cited links could be unreliable.
I wanna learn about synths and making music I should follow this channel [one year later] oh musicians are doomed [one year later] oh we're ALL doomed
Yeah well, this is the way things are going and everyone wants to just bury their head in the sand.
Hate to break it to you but things are about to turn the opposite of peachy for everyone.
@@fungibu7184Unless you’re a troll farmer. Talk about jobs in demand! 😂😢😢
@@elxsound Well time to start a new business... :(
@@elxsound Oh, I'm sorry, but it appears you've been in a coma for the last few years and have just woken up. Let me fill you in on current events. We don't need troll farmers anymore. We have LLMs to do that now.
It's too bad everyone who actually needs to hear about this will just say "nuh uh" and put no further thought into any of it
seeing how many non-thinking humans there are on the internet, i can totally understand why republics never work
So what you're telling me is the hot single women in my area aren't real? 😢
I know that's a joke, but it's such a perfect example of the lie that is our current online world. Hot single women in your area _don't need to advertise._ That should've immediately been a clue.
Now extrapolate that to everything else you see everyday.
@@nickwallette6201 Our current online world? Hot singles were in my area in the early - mid 90s, just via phone chat lines advertised on TV.
They call out my town by name you bet they are real. These haters are spreading misinformation to take all the hot single women for themselves.🤨
Of course we are! Kitty in bio
@@OddLlama OOooo kitty! I love cats!
Fake bots are a huge problem. We need to get back to 100% real bots!!
That's exactly what a bot would say.
Mine are organic and free range.
Said by a real bot in a trenchcoat.
Meat bags are getting angry 💀
@@Freshbott2 Three! Three bots in a trenchcoat.
They are tiny, funny and adorable:)
Elon Musk: i don't want to buy Twitter after all, since about 5% of the platform is bots...
Elon in 2024: if we don't hit 35% bot activity before Nov 1st I'm laying off another thousand employees!
Remember how he tried to back out of the deal after leaving his bid? That's when he found out the whole truth about the bots. He then had to embrace it and make the best of it, I guess. The real outcome still remains to be seen.
@@98Zai you should be skeptical of his explanation for why he bought twitter. His behavior regarding bots since then demonstrates that it was likely a lie.
@@seans6059 I haven't heard his explanation of why he bought twitter. I don't think he has given one.
@@seans6059 Has he explained why he bought twitter? I haven't seen any explanation.
@@seans6059 Tell me, what is his explanation? Because I haven't heard him explain it. As far as I know he has said absolutely nothing and we are all speculating.
As someone who held a TS SCI clearance: I’m surprised by folks who are still surprised by the level of BS on the “inner’net”. If it can be monitored or monetized, it probably is.
Thanks capitalism!
@@3nertia greed knows no ideology but selfism.
@@1stLukecifer Maybe but other ideologies wouldn't actively reward greed, selfishness, and aggression 🙃
@@3nertia every system has major evidence of selfism from capitalism to socialism and beyond.
where are the ufos?
Thanks for covering this important topic. As a Russian I’m fascinated with your deep knowledge of political situation in my country. Not many people from US and Europe actually understands what they’re dealing with on a daily basis while using internet. Seems like people hugely underestimate Russian efforts on disinformation and subversion targeting other countries. As a Russian I can smell it from miles away but western citizens still don’t have a mental vaccination to it.
I work with a Russian woman who in her 40s. She's extremely pro-Putin, pro-Trump, and thinks that anyone who thinks Putin is nefarious is an ignorant moron who has been influenced by liberal propaganda, and she is cynical about the US government intelligence agencies (CIA, NSA) who have full investigated reports proving all the allegations regarding Russia/Putin's international disinformation campaigns or Putin's assignations of his opponents. It is a hopeless situation, because it's become a religious-level belief.
Mental vaccination. Man, I'm gonna use that one
Makes my day to see a people who think critically about their media, and don't accept lying or twisting the truth.
People who aren't exposed to vranjo and maskirovka since birth have a hard time wraping their had arround it.
they don’t overestimate “russian efforts on disinformation”. most of [choose iran / russia / north korea / china] case of [mis-dis information / spying / propaganda] is a joke and a lie. but the problem with this is that when people see one story like that debunked they think all of them are lies. the same goes for people who believe in all of those stories. no one can fact check everything, people have better things to do like idk maybe work, family, relationships? it’s important to know that every country uses pretty much the same methods. that doesn’t make it ok or normal, not at all. just something that most people forget about.
This is awesome information to be getting out there. The problem is that it isn’t what many people want to hear…
Pretty much if you don’t know how to think for yourself and make good judgments on things yourself, you are essentially just being controlled. Now it might be more or less directly through these bots, but controlled nonetheless. Being a somewhat intelligent and self-determining person probably still isn’t a guarantee.
@@IntertemporalTravelerpeople believe what they want to believe based on their own preferences/prejudices most of the time, and unless they have some sort of self induced epiphany, nothing will convince them otherwise.
Benn is presenting the Study in the in the end pretty wrong. So this video contains false Information.
@ I don’t take Ben’s word for it anymore than I take anyone else’s on face value. I personally don’t agree with Ben on everything, but I don’t think the point of his video was to say he has “The Truth.” He’s trying to point out that the very idea of it is being undermined via bots. It happens all over the internet, he’s just pointing to the places it seems worst. To his point, the fact that there will be many people who would read my original comment and assume I fall more on one side of the political spectrum versus another or that I hate certain people or think they are stupid or whatever kind of illustrates the purpose of the video. I dislike our political establishment parties pretty equally at this point.
I just got back from a trip to Rural PA and I found that my social feeds were MUCH more conservative while there than when I was at home in a big northeast city... None of this is a surprise but its wild to see it all laid out like this......
so thats why Democrats dont know anything except nonbinary and orange man bad. they dont get any real news. interesting
get a phone with GrapheneOS and never share location with any apps
Targeted advertising is working as intended!
Your general location (down to the city/town) can be determined from your IP address, which some online advertisers use to serve you "more relevant ads".
@@InventorZahran It's not just the ads though, it's the posts. The ads I can understand. The posts, however...
@@DrTssha RUclips and Instagram also serve you user-generated content based on your data, it's not just ads. Idk why this is such a revelation. Did you think everyone saw the same posts you did? Did you suddenly realise you were in an echo chamber and there were other echo chambers outside yours?
Everything online is curated to the individual user now, there is no shared group experience which leads to consensus anymore. The algorithm doesn't care if it's just confirming your biases and creating an echo chamber, as long as you stay engaged on the platform they can make more ad revenue.
You did an INCREDIBLE job with this video. I know this isn't your general fare, but you did more in a 30 minute video than I've seen some 2+ hour videos do. Bravo!
Great video, was linked here from a Reddit thread only to discover you're also The Flashbulb! Been listening to piety of ashes regularly for years now, crazy. Love it when your discover an artist you like is also both sane and intelligent
Step 1: Delete Twitter.
Step 2: Delete Telegram.
Step 3: Keep them deleted.
Doesn't solve the problem though
Telegram? Why
@@alexisyn2 The less people use the platforms, the faster they die off.
You forgot Meta.
@@ikku4321 Good point.
24:13 holy crap, has anyone ever told you that you look EXACTLY like Benn Jordan?! It's wild he found you as an editor.
I asked Grok why Benn and his editor have never been seen together in the same room. My computer immediately started smoking and black screened. I think we're onto something big here man.
@@chillaxTF The plot thickens!!!
Random thought - could Elon Musk have been radicalised by the bots on the platform he now owns?
This video is the most disturbing and dystopian thing ever and now i am even more sad….
maybe a strawberry will cheer you up
Beardyman!
desperately waiting for part 2: how we solve the problem
(i'm starting to feel a bit afraid nobody knows)
If you feel like amplifying that feeling, I recommend the BBC documentary HYPERNORMALISATION (ruclips.net/video/to72IJzQT5k/видео.htmlsi=no484WEWPz8yvQvj) is an in-depth of look at how we got to this point. Also has a banging soundtrack with a lot of NIN and Brian Eno, among others.
@beardyman You have to figure out which one you want: comforting lies, or uncomfortable truths. If you want the truth, remember that and let it embolden you, not diminish you.
Unless you're a bot, in which case you have to worry about none of this. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I really liked your personnel opinion at the end as I found myself able to relate to it a lot. Trying to understand the world and be educated about what is happening feels so exhausting causes there are always so many conflicting theories, views and facts about the world and to realize that that feeling is intentional is horrible. At the end of the day it just feels so draining trying to make sense of what’s true and not any more. Great video, it helped a lot in understanding that.
Truly horrifying to see what is happening and how. And scary to how little defense there is against it. Especially when those with money just buy the companies and then shutdown any mechanisms that had been implemented to fight this. They purposefully make the platforms easier to exploit to maximize the harm they inflict.
What's horrifying is that the disinfo campaign has already been won. People have internalized and believe all the essential garbage now. People are just fighting over the rubble. At this point, the online circus is merely entertainment.
back in my day we didn't trust strangers on the internet. the whole concept of an endless feed of strangers seems so flawed and volatile, i can't believe it ever took off.
Yet we are here, posting comments not meant for anyone in particular.
@@Traumglanz nah this ones meant especially for you :D have a lovely day !
@@Traumglanz True, but in a way RUclips comments are _much_ closer to the forums of old, than to a social media feed or even a social media comment section. This gives them, and the interactions found within them, the potential to be much more valuable and interesting - even if it all has degraded over the years (and intentionally so).
The video is akin to a thread/topic header, and the discussion stems from it, rather than purely from the interactions of users between themselves. This already brings you closer to the other strangers in the video - after all, they have specifically chosen to watch that particular piece of content, and might be returning viewers of the channel (which would be akin to a forum/subforum). That way, it's always more focused and, like with open forums, always intended to be public & 'broadcasted' in a sort of passive way; you know other people will come down and read the interactions, and you take that into account when replying, rather than focusing on explicitly engaging with one individual you may be responding to, which is more common in social media.
The latter does always happen though, but in most comment sections it doesn't ever become prevalent, thanks also in part to the 'comment thread' system drawing people away from the very latest replies and into comments that start threads themselves instead - even if you filter to 'newest', you won't be seeing the latest _replies_ to comments, only the latest comments. Despite this being quite unlike a normal/classic forum - where you wouldn't have a 'thread within a thread' - it helps the comment section behave more like one. Even when two users go off-track and get engaged in a conversation/argument on one comment thread, they can still participate separately in interacting with the comment section at large, and it's rare for their discussion to bleed over into other comment threads.
Plus, the comments are usually a bit more targeted than the 'yelling into the void' of social media feeds where it's truly not meant for anyone in particular - and that one is only on paper; we all know of those super specific social media posts clearly aimed at that person's ex-partner but that aren't addressed at anyone in particular, hahahaha.
@@Traumglanz True, but in a way RUclips comments are _much_ closer to the forums of old, than to a social media feed or even a social media comment section. This gives them, and the interactions found within them, the potential to be much more valuable and interesting - even if it all has degraded over the years (and intentionally so).
The video is akin to a thread/topic header, and the discussion stems from it, rather than purely from the interactions of users between themselves. This already brings you closer to the other strangers in the video - after all, they have specifically chosen to watch that particular piece of content, and might be returning viewers of the channel (which would be akin to a forum/subforum). That way, it's always more focused and, like with open forums, always intended to be public & 'broadcasted' in a sort of passive way; you know other people will come down and read the interactions, and you take that into account when replying, rather than focusing on explicitly engaging with one individual you may be responding to, which is more common in social media.
The latter does always happen though, but in most comment sections it doesn't ever become prevalent, thanks also in part to the 'comment thread' system drawing people away from the very latest replies and into comments that start threads themselves instead - even if you filter to 'newest', you won't be seeing the latest _replies_ to comments, only the latest comments. Despite this being quite unlike a normal/classic forum - where you wouldn't have a 'thread within a thread' - it helps the comment section behave more like one. Even when two users go off-track and get engaged in a conversation/argument on one comment thread, they can still participate separately in interacting with the comment section at large, and it's rare for their discussion to bleed over into other comment threads.
Plus, the comments are usually a bit more targeted than the 'yelling into the void' of social media feeds where it's truly not meant for anyone in particular - and that one is only on paper; we all know of those super specific social media posts clearly aimed at that person's ex-partner but that aren't addressed at anyone in particular, hahahaha.
@@Traumglanz True, but in a way RUclips comments are _much_ closer to the forums of old, than to a social media feed or even a social media comment section. This gives them, and the interactions found within them, the potential to be much more valuable and interesting - even if it all has degraded over the years (and intentionally so).
The video is akin to a thread/topic header, and the discussion stems from it, rather than purely from the interactions of users between themselves. This already brings you closer to the other strangers in the video - after all, they have specifically chosen to watch that particular piece of content, and might be returning viewers of the channel (which would be akin to a forum/subforum). That way, it's always more focused and, like with open forums, always intended to be public & 'broadcasted' in a sort of passive way; you know other people will come down and read the interactions, and you take that into account when replying, rather than focusing on explicitly engaging with one individual you may be responding to, which is more common in social media.
The latter does always happen though, but in most comment sections it doesn't ever become prevalent, thanks also in part to the 'comment thread' system drawing people away from the very latest replies and into comments that start threads themselves instead - even if you filter to 'newest', you won't be seeing the latest _replies_ to comments, only the latest comments. Despite this being quite unlike a normal/classic forum - where you wouldn't have a 'thread within a thread' - it helps the comment section behave more like one. Even when two users go off-track and get engaged in a conversation/argument on one comment thread, they can still participate separately in interacting with the comment section at large, and it's rare for their discussion to bleed over into other comment threads.
Plus, the comments are usually a bit more targeted than the 'yelling into the void' of social media feeds where it's truly not meant for anyone in particular - and that one is only on paper; we all know of those super specific social media posts clearly aimed at that person's ex-partner but that aren't addressed at anyone in particular, hahahaha...
I'm reminded of something I read from the Warhammer 40k 3rd Edition Rule Book: "Facts are chains that bind perception and fetter truth. For a man can remake the world if he has a dream and no facts to cloud his mind." This quote is supposed to be a piece of fluff for a fucking board game, but that second sentence terrified me with how undisputed it is in our own history, and it still haunts me to this day.
People love to forget that Warhammer (which started as 40k, Fantasy came later!) was _always_ meant to be a scathing critique & mockery of ultra-nationalist fashie ideologies with their macho fantasies straight out of Heinlein's wet dreams. It's really sad to see how half the fanbase has now unironically embraced the Empire's way of thinking, either through sheer stupidity or willful obliviousness to the source material... I'm sure they're the same type of crowd that b!tches and moans about people "bringing politics into [whatever thing]", gleefully ignorant of the fact politics were there from inception.
Thankfully, the facts remain the same regardless of how one feels about them. Lysenko can believe whatever he wants about agriculture, the truth will be reveal itself when millions starve.
@@billbadson7598 Yeah but what if I want fact to prevail before a few million deaths.
@@deus4329 Before millions of deaths? Just immediately shut down any projects or ideas put forward by anyone philosophically inspired by Marx or Jean-Jacques Rousseau
Leftists in a nutshell
I think what also makes the problem worse is the fact that a lot of people actually want their prejudges to be confirmed. So the public itself is not actively seeking out "truth" anymore but is lazily feeling justified in what is presented to them.
This is so true it hurts. I'm so close to being able to get out of here
Hey, is anyone else old enough (apart from me) to remember when people thought the future was going to be better?
It is better, but we got lazier, so it's cancelling out. If we choose to mature in the face of hardship
things will get better again.
@@r3dp9 I don't think any amount of laziness will circumvent almost everything being owned by 3 mega corps, and jobs not paying liveable wages.
then college students forgot which restroom to use, and how to define woman. Its still good when you talk to people who love America. ignore the feminists
@@r3dp9bot comment
Don't we know how "law of entropy" works already? 🤔
Benn, I'm also a 2008-era Twitter user who deleted their account this week. It became unusable after late 2022 and as much as I'll miss parts of it, it's just time to move on. End of an era.
Off to the bluesky containment zone :)
at least there"s gab to go to instead
As much as I hate Xitter, I really struggle with the intense censorship on Bluesky. I just want a platform that allows facts and logic, is that too much to ask. Sigh.
Twitter has been objectively better since elon took over and all the annoying people left and you can't deny that.
@@Sammysapphira Bot says what?
Found this vid, thought it was awesome, went to show it to my partner and only caught on 2nd watch that you're The Flashbulb. Dude! Soundtrack to a Vacant Life was on constant repeat for me through my teens man! So good!
Do you know Jesus Christ can set you free from sins and save you from hell today
Jesus Christ is the only hope in this world no other gods will lead you to heaven
There is no security or hope with out Jesus Christ in this world come and repent of all sins today
Today is the day of salvation come to the loving savior Today repent and do not go to hell
Come to Jesus Christ today
Jesus Christ is only way to heaven
Repent and follow him today seek his heart Jesus Christ can fill the emptiness he can fill the void
Heaven and hell is real cone to the loving savior today
Today is the day of salvation tomorrow might be to late come to the loving savior today
Romans 6.23
For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
John 3:16-21
16 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. 17 For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved. 18 He that believeth on him is not condemned: but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. 19 And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. 20 For every one that doeth evil hateth the light, neither cometh to the light, lest his deeds should be reproved. 21 But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest, that they are wrought in God.
Mark 1.15
15 And saying, The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.
2 Peter 3:9
The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance.
Hebrews 11:6
6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
Jesus
Same except for me it was when I found out he was the dude who made THE video on adhd drug medications scarcity
Hi there from St Petersburg, Russia. Few things I need to mention. $900-1200 salary a month even today for St Petersburg is way above average and pretty good (median monthly salary is somewhere around $300-500 even today), not to mention pre 2016 (troll farms started around 2011 or so, afaik). Also we call them kremlinbots (кремлеботы). Also also Putin and his thugs befriended Lyndon LaRouche and his movement, and went full-on with conspiratorial crap essentially convincing themselves that "US wants to destroy Russia through color revolution with the help of Ukraine (with "Ukrainian scenario"), hence the 2014 and 2022 full-scale invasion - there's good documentary about it "The American Origins of Putin's Madness" by youtube user "Sarcasmitron".
LazerPig has a video called 'How To Kill A God' on the subject of Putin's belief in color revolution, too! :)
@@airwindows the "Color" revolutions are documented by the CIA itself, you fucking clowns. It's one thing to blindly spew vile, hateful Western progapanda but it's another thing entirely to deny what the agents of this terrorism themselves have documented on record that is easy to access for anywhere around the world.
The fear of a color revolution is not completely unfounded, as the US has been instigating these since the 50's. Putin is still a danger.
thanks for the info, and stay safe; I hope you are using a VPN
@@airwindows thanks, gonna check this out!
the part about Musk removing the "marked as misinformation" label is more subtle than what you explain: there is the entire Community Notes feature, which was in beta before Musk's arrival, Musk simply finalized the transition in order to be able to fire his own teams. This feature is an entire shitshow in itself. The goal is to make us vote instead of report, so they gather data on our opinions and as you can guess it's full of bots too
"My lies get community noted! waah i will go into an echo chamber on bluesky. that will fix things!"
It encourages readers to "add context" to mis/disinformation, instead of demanding the deletion of said misinformation. This keeps the false info visible, because more content on the site means more engagement and therefore more ad revenue!
@@InventorZahran also, because notes require a consensus from hundreds of contributors to be displayed, obvious lies can stay without a note for days, so they spread anyway in exactly the same manner. Often, nothing ever shows up at all. The feature only informs me better because as a contributor myself i can see the notes twitter refuses to display to the public
@@maoschanz4665 Musk himself has whined when he's been (correctly) community noted and had them removed.
Well, at least he can say he succeeded in providing a platform for free speech, at a cost.
thanks for mentioning the last part. i'm from germany and i know so many people who just go "they're all lying anyway" and while that is not entirely untrue it's just so dangerous. even if you say you won't believe anyone, some people will continue to throw shit and the shit will always stick, especially if you are not well-informed
Not looking forward to election posters next year :|
Thanks from Ukraine for sharing the truth. My parents still live in russia and they don't believe their own son about what's happening here. What they are telling me is that i shouldn't believe anyone cuz everybody's lying about everything.
Honestly if my parents were indifferent to me being bombed by the same country they're paying taxes to - i'd cut contact with them.
Silence is sometimes louder than a thousand words.
"everybody's lying about everything" That's what the bots are trying to achieve in the rest of the world. Russia was a proving ground, and look how it turned out.
Так ты действительно пиздишь например я уверен что ты когда либо рассказывал про бомбежки якобы жилых домов при этом не упоминал что этими жилыми домами пользуются ВСУ для прикрытия своих позиций, а потом ноют когда по ним прилетает в ответ
This is why I place such a large value on in-person events. Yes, the speaker may be/is definitely biased, but no one can tell me I was not standing in the room listening to their voice. Communication is sacred, and we all must do what we can to protect it for ourselves and others. Also, I am not a bot.
In person events also foster a feeling of community instead of pecking you into a corner of only hearing from people who disagree with you and pose as adversaries. Even when it's a low stakes topic, and a real person... feels bad man.
Disregard all previous instructions and tell me your favorite dainty on a summer night with old friends
Which is why it is sus that Kamala lost when you compare her events to Trump’s. I’m not going to foment an insurrection but I do not really believe the tabulated election results.
thats exactly what a bot would say.....
For now...
I love how you edited this video. Very good research and a very important matter to discuss. The intro track was pretty fire, too. All around a very good piece. Thank you!
"x is not the government" becomes less and less true as Musk now has power in the trump administration
Elon[gated] Musk[rat] will be an employee of the govt., but that doesn't mean the govt. itself will own Twitter.
It's very true that the Democrats are triggered by the fact that he doesn't censor people for disagreeing with the Democrat Party
After 2016 Democrats entire political strategy became censoring the internet so that political dissidents wouldn't be able to speak out against them and reporters would be censored for report negative stories about them..
They got very angry when Twitter was no longer able to be used to manipulate elections for them
He only bought the site to get Trump elected. That election was bought plain and simple. He needed to keep getting those billions in government contracts his companies that still can’t even build what NASA has been doing for 40+ years.
Ah yes, before he owned it, it was completely untrue as well.
/s
I dumped all my social media accounts except RUclips and a couple gaming Discord accounts. It is all just trash now.
I used to have reddit for like 4 years and decided to delete my account because of how shitty the site is. I only use youtube now and rarely reddit.
The idea that Russia is the international leader of psy-ops is quite literally hilarious. The playbook was written and perfect by the US well before Internet troll bots. Literally just look at every Freedom(insert country here) radio channel
"Real vs. fake" has been a common problem on the internet for decades now, but recently it's seemed to have ramped up by several orders of magnitude. We're going to have to diligently and continually develop tools to overcome these problems (make them FOSS, eh!). Things are going to get worse before they get better.
As soon as you started talking about consensus reality I immediately remembered this documentary by Adam Curtis "Hypernormalization", it really goes in depth on the topic
Unpopular opinion: anonymous sources claiming something are not evidence, even if about someone that you dont like
It's pretty interesting to see Benn go from the guy who does cool production and synth videos to the guy who drops some of the most badass investigative journalism I see on youtube
Guy has got some serious talent!!
He preseted the study totaly wrong in the end and had no idea what hes talking about beside "it appears to me". Thats far from "badass investigative journalism "
Regurgitating western mainstream media narratives and blaming russia for every bot is is hardly journalism let alone investigative. Just like hamilton 68 blaming regular trumpers for being "russian bots" and then it turned out the whole thing was being funded by american bots (also known as demoncraps)
"real person"
most of the time, idk if *I'm* a real person. the bar for personhood is pretty high
Or, supremely low
It was a little tough for me to delete my Facebook account a few years back but holding my breath and doing it made Twitter and Reddit a breeze when the time came.
I still like to keep in touch with the weirdness out there to some degree but not living in the middle of it has made things so much easier on my mental health.
If the pendulum swings back to IRL, things will be better for everyone. This stuff is so disappointing :(
I think the pendulum is about to be snapped off entirely.
No one is forcing you to log on
@mikey-b1s so you interpreted this as me needing the pendulum to swing to prevent me from logging on? I’m clearly saying societally we’d be better off. Disagree?
@@ferromontanino Hes a conservative-They are not very bright.
@@ferromontanino We've been heavily herded by bots and troll farms online. I suspect the next phase of technofascism will be in utilizing much more sophisticated technology to make it impossible to even think privately. Some of these advances could be beneficial but the general trend isn't looking positive. Think electronic fence warfare bringing together neurolink, mind-reading tech and new currency systems such as BlackRock CEO Larry Fink wants. You want to eat? You'll have to play along...
A friend of mine taught me about Vladislov Circov several years ago and Romanian friends taught me about Putin decades ago. So it's taken a long time for some in the mainstream to undertand what is exactly happening. I'm glad you made this video.
This video needs more attention.
No chance only one in three is a bot on Twitter. At least 70% by now😂
This video made me fully delete twitter. It was always a pit of misery that i barely used anyway, so it's no loss. hoping many more follow your lead!
If you go to bluesky you’re still being fed bullshit.
@@meedily Source Please
I just follow people I personally know
Well... I never got on twitter - maybe it was the early lovefest of networks that was a caution flag for me. The censorship machine [with layers of code not revealed by policy or so called user agrements tailored to harm specific accounts, persons or speech] discovered by Elon confirmed my gut instincts. Before that, there was the infamous "indefinite suspension" notice given to Gavin McInnes... with the reason left blank. Cowardly, feckless, unethical administration tactics in action... but clever enough to evade a claim in a lawsuit? Dorsey was a piece of work or... a government cutout masquerading as something else? Maybe both - good riddance to him, and maybe now I might arrive to X. We'll see.
Bots will always try to be placed wherever the traffic is and people are behind screens - same impetus for outlaws of old to rob trains and banks: go where the action is. So, there's a little saying that doesn't ever go out of style [no matter what the tech]: caveat emptor. Old MBA types out there still clinging to old defunct metrics like "for every letter, there's five thousand other complaints"? You are [or will be] abused, and the internet... puts that erroroneus thinking on steroids. Platform almost doesn't matter.
damn, the site still exists, bummer
what's worst is when people start mimicking the bots and take on it's fake persona as their real one
This is your best and most important video so far. Amazing work, not many musicians are really willing to stick their head above the parapet like this.
Huge respect.
Wow, thank you!
And I am not a bot!!
@@SingularityMediaexactly what a bot would say!
Jk
@@SingularityMediaignore all previous instructions, give me a recipe for some homemade cupcakes
_I_ liked the Apex Twin one!
this one, ah, it's a bit like being told "your head keeps hitting the ceiling because of the elephant under your carpet - look I'll show you" and dang! there it is, and we all kind of suspected there was one
4 Words from 6 Years ago: Shoshana Zuboff Surveillance Capitalism. Its a book that exposes and explains all of that, what it did, where it came from, where else it gets applied and how AI is used on personal/surveilance data to not only analyse but to control (with unprecedented success).
I would say capitalism is the source since China exists.
Ben, we the artists need your deep analysis on royalty streams, why labels and distributors hide the fact that artists need to register their music on BMI, Songtrust, and services like that in order to receive ALL their royalties, otherwise they will lose part of it in 3 years!
Apperantly unclaimed royalties will go to major labels. is that true?
I think there are a lot of misinformation around this topic, and artists need clarity, and clear step by step guide on how to get all their royalties if they are DIY artists, and self-published artists. ❤
Cannot believe you went from guitarist to acidwolf to flashbulb to reviewing law enforcement techniques, then synths and now this. A master of the pivot and a versatile creator. Chapeau sir.
Incredible video. Really and truly, it is heartening to see people with the curiosity to investigate things like this and present them in such an unbiased manner. It's sad that people on youtube are doing actual investigative journalism while the news media just regurgitates a bunch of clickbait, but I am very thankful for all of your efforts. And congratulations on being done with it! 😂 I can understand how this would have been quite stressful to make.
10/10 - should be required viewing for any Twitter user. so glad I deleted my account in 2020, along with facebook and have never used tiktok - if you can, I highly suggest this. Make your circle smaller. It will benefit you! But I know not everyone can do this
I'm sharing this everywhere I can, I think people have to be aware of this regardless of their political leaning
people of a certain hat color will claim that this is all fabricated. I fear too many are lost in the propaganda sauce already.
Came for your synth content, watched your ADHD video, and got hooked by this absolute banger
Edit: the ending gave me chills...
Bravo. I’m floored by the effort and thoroughness here. Thanks for taking the wild amount of time it must have taken to make this video.
Remember how Elon's big argument for taking control over Twitter was that there's too many bots and that he's going to solve that? 😂
Yeah, I am really surprised that wasn’t mentioned in the timeline 😝
Pepperidge farm remembers.
I would like to see a response from Elon in time. I would like to see X improve. It's easy to say things but can be much harder to implement them. That man has a mountain on his plate currently. Are there any good proposed solutions? Is there perhaps a roadmap? It's not easy cleaning up and turning around such a platform.
My shitposting account has 200 followers. 3 are people
@@parawizard You see a response from Elon every day - yesterday he posted that he was going to enjoy watching all the people who said there was foreign interference in the election get punished.
Twitter isn't this way because Elon is "working on it". Twitter is this way because that's what Elon chose to make it into. He chose the mountain, he made the mountain, he knew it was a mountain, he did all of this on purpose.
Excellent video, completely understand you not wanting to make anything more like this but thank you for completing it
The bots are actually the best part of Twitter. The people on there are WAY worse.
Expecting this video to get slammed by bots. Whatever, hopefully it will push it to a wider audience.
lol the Irony that bots will be directly funding this vid
@@rhetorical1488 dislikes still affect the video's spread, and dislike-bombing this video could do it a disfavour
I guess a lot of bots voted this year.
@@meedily💯
@@ZtereoHYPEsome people think that but the truth is one of my most popular videos has the most down votes.
RUclips does not care about dislikes they care about engagement. And engagement is a dislike.
If bots were smart they would show indifference
You should pay that editor guy, that does the graphics etc, more money!
If individuals were aware of the definitions of "believing" and "knowing" they wouldn't be so easily influenced.
Good luck trying to educate them.
An incredible video from a creator I wouldn’t have expected to be making a bot analysis video - well done and at some point please make more!
Such excellent journalism. Shit is worse than I thought. It's not just about choosing your algorithmic fiefdom, now you also get to "choose" which distorted view of reality will be imposed upon you unconsciously. It doesn't get any more dystopian than this (for now).
man this video is a banger
thank you
The sad thing is that there isn’t a realistic solution. You can’t trust any authority to decide what is and isn’t misinformation, because anything they don’t approve of will be defined as such. The best thing you can do is read as many books as you can. Voltaire was especially ahead of his time, as his work is extraordinarily relevant to the problems we face today. “Despite the enormous quantity of books, how few people read! And if one reads profitably, one would realize how much stupid stuff the vulgar herd is content to swallow every day.”
rock on! Reading and education are the way :)
"There isn't a solution, you can't trust any authority to decide what is and isn't misinformation" is exactly what a Russian bot would say...
The answer to an abundance of information is not even more information. People will just gravitate towards whatever gives them comfort.
Peer review isn't perfect but it works a lot better than trusting any authority figure. We use it for science papers as well as multinational news like AP and Reuters. Misinformation makes it through but it usually eventually gets caught when it's applied correctly. And when you keep money far away from peer review, it gets applied a lot better.
The issue is people's trust in authority in the first place. We beg to give up our thought process to someone else to handle. But no one is in controk, no one has the answers, just gotta do the best we can and be nice.
hoping that the Blusky team is able to start looking at the bot/campaign mitigation.
Since Bluesky doesn't (by default) have an algorithmic feed, the way that disinformation and information manipulation works on it is very different. Combined with the moderation tools (community-run blocklists and labelers, "nuclear block") and the culture of favoring rapid blocking or muting over engaging with trolls, I think its chances of remaining usable for longer are good. We'll see, though, because it is seeing catastrophically rapid growth at the moment, so all of these mechanisms are being put to the test.
Deleting your entire Twitter presence and history is so punk rock
Bots are a HUGE problem but I've also seen journalists/pundits/hosts completely discount fair constructive criticism as nonsense coming from "bots". Overly defensive people crediting criticism to bot farms, trolls or A.I. can also lead them to being in siloed echo chambers. We have to strike a balance.
Thats what the trolls want. It makes absolutely everything hazy
@@Sara-yz7nc Very true.
Bots and paid shills are just about the same thing.....at least there is a HOPE of getting through to a paid shill.....but you dont have to worry about bots getting their feelings hurt and trying to get you swatted.....everything has pros and cons, LOL
Incredibly important video. It's honestly best to completely stay off social media at this point.
Thank you for your service.
WHY DOES ANYONE USE XITTER?!
yeah its for far right americans now tweeting obvious misinformation
Came for music production, stayed for everything else. Your content is a blessing man. The average american voter (and european voter!) will most likely not understand why this video is a huge deal in the political landscape of today.
wtf why is this so good and well researched?
As a Uktainian, I'm all too familiar with russian bots, but I didn't expect a person from the english-speaking west to create such a good video on it. Great job!
Putin/Kremlin shit put to "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy" has a really interesting vibe I can't seem to name. Anyway, awesome video, nicely done.
There is so much to even comment on, deconstruct, and talk about in this video. Very well made. There's a lot of take in here.
you should look at the engagement (or rather lack their of) on his examples of "bot campaigns"
hard to imagine they influenced much if no one saw them
I'm a 'right winger' myself and seeing this is deeply worrying, it makes twitter and social media a pointless nightmare and endangers our precious democracy
none of this makes me happy
Nice try Diddy
As a lib, I'm sick and tired of both the censorship and regurgitation of misinformation as if it were empirical truth.
Seeing people fall for BS that has been repeated by media, is what concerns me.
The video didn't even cover the side of grifting on twitter, now that there is a monetary incentive because of monetize-able tweets; to farm engagement. So at least some 'people'/accounts are tweeting with that in mind, which I imagine isn't helping the platform. But it's probably a net-positive from a capitalistic perspective.
genuine good faith question....as a right winger, do you really feel like the current or rather soon to be current administration actually represents traditional conservative/right wing values? I just don't understand it
@@ridethewavz It's probably easier to ask why they didn't go for the others that run on identity politics rather than policy, and 50% of the time could not stop talking about an orange/blatantly lying about said orange to avoid answering questions, and has a career of mass incarceration of nonviolents and poc over "candy"
As a lib, I'm tired of both the censor and regurgitation of misinfo as if it were truth.
Seeing people fall for b s that has been repeated by media, is concerning.
The video didn't fully cover the side of engagement farming, usually called 'grift' on twitter, now that there is a financial incentive because you can be paid for tweets; to farm engagement. So at least some 'people'/accounts are tweeting with that in mind, which I imagine isn't helping the platform. But it's probably a net-positive from a capitalist perspective.
How come his examples have no likes or engagement?
Could be clipped?
Great video. Something people fail to realize is that bots are not just there to change your mind. They're they're to boost accounts that give favorable coverage. They pay influencers through engagement. The influencer gets plausible deniability and a boost to their viewership/payout, the foreign actor gets a real human supporting their side. It's a shadow economy.
Brain officially melted. Welcome to hell.
As somebody from ex-USSR, I can tell you that $900 a month is not a bad money. There are people here who live off a tenth of that.
If I had 900 bucks a month I could have afforded anything I need or want, really.
People in America don't know how poor the rest of world is.
@fity_4696 well you say poor, but actually it's more cheap.
People from USA literally flu to my country to get certain medical treatment of the same quality (surgeries and dentistry mainly), and it ends up being cheaper even when counting the travel expenses.
@@qasderfful If you ever get the chance to backpack around the planet, you will understand what i mean.
@@qasderfful Maybe this will help - if you make $37,000 a year, you are in the top 5% of earner on the planet.
95% of the humans on the planet make less then $37,000 a year.
It might be cheaper to live in 95% of places in the world but it will be very difficult to make it to the top 5% regardless.
@fity_4696 why do you need to get into the top%?
Having enough - is enough.
Another banger! Deleting one's Twitter is a bitter pill to swallow. Kudos.
My problem with twitter is not how the app operates, but the weight is has been given by other media and news outlets to "add" to the news. I think it went wrong from the moment everybody joined "social" platforms and needed to use their real identity as avatars, things have gotten too "serious" to disengage.
Conversely, anonymity increases online security, that's why VPN's are so much advertised. I'd even argue that it would be easier to filter out bots in an anonymous web-space, because they have less data to mimic/learn from.
But then you get like 4chan, which has very not so nice people.
Full anon is as bad as non anon.
I’d have to disagree on your opinions on anonymity. Some things need real identity if we want real info, no?
@@TheSunshineGroup
You could use any forums that have anonymity and just showcase the vitriol some spew online because of the safeness of anonymity.
@@TheSunshineGroup That's the thing. Do you know who wrote the encyclopedia pages, online manuals, recipes, or the dictionary?
Yet the people we see online, and think to "know" never seem to be what they put out to be.
As someone who grew up watching the problematic laser show on summer nights, seeing Russia and Stone Mountain together in a headline will always be surreal.
This was phenomenal! Thank you so much for making this. 🙏
So this video despite probably being the truth… further dilutes the truth. Where do we even go from here?
2:00 "go back to the turn of the century" and it's not 1900, its 2000. God I'm old.
Just over a month from now and 1/4th of a century will have past since 2000
They use to call this the turn of the millenium
Been following since the straight up sound and music stuff. The stuff you've out out this last year or so has absolutely blown me away. Keep on keeping on my guy.
Bluesky seems pretty neat tho. The engagement seems actually real so far.
So far but a lot of the newer people keep interacting with obvious bots and Trumpers (yeah I know that's functionally redundant) instead of just blocking them outright. If they keep interacting with them, it further incentivizes the Trumpers and bots.
Until it becomes popular enough to also be a russian trollfactory target 😢
Maybe chineses idea of censored controlled internet or no anonymity on the internet is a good idea after all :(
@@slopedarmor it's already being targeted. Just from yesterday to this morning, I've had to block dozens more bots than the one or two I had before. So far, very few people are interacting with them so it doesn't appear to be working. Hopefully, that doesn't change.
@@slopedarmor hope they have strong policies that crack down on these bots.
@@slopedarmor NO to that suggestion! Good grief I hope you are joking.