bonifartius 𒂼𒄄 @bonifartius@social.cleverlibre.org

@velartrill not much time right now, but i think there just is no alternative to everyone making up his own opinion. everything else has the same dangers (leadership going mad), while if people can decide for themselves there at least is the possibility of not being fucked with.

@ParadeGrotesque

@ParadeGrotesque

we all are manipulated all the time. the "russian disinformation"-idea is, in a sense, manipulation too.

i think my way to deal with this is to ignore anything claiming to be for a "good cause". experience shows that there always is an ulterior motive. be it covid, diversity, trump, brexit, middle east. everyone who is trying to sell me on the "right" thing to do probably also has another hidden reason to do so.

i just try to be not an asshole and scale down my consumption, both of which work surprisingly well.

@william_doyle 🧚‍♀️ @lain

@ParadeGrotesque
while it's clear that russia does this, it should also be clear that the western governments also do this. everyone tries to fuck with the minds of the populace. this isn't even a new development, it's just new methods. every government has it's minitrue.

i too think that trump & brexit were a close call, it's the result of people being pissed about politics for a long time. the algorithmic campaigns were just the tiny thing required to have the opinion swing in those directions.

a point which is unsettling for me about the "russian disinformation is to blame" idea is that it disputes that common people can reason and decide for themselves. if you turn it the other way round it means that they are too dumb anyway and should just trust our narrative. this isn't the view on humans i like to have.

i know that the spooks designing those operations are very good with psychology, but this can't be the reason to declare large swaths of the own population as dumb people who must be saved.

"disinformation" (i really hate that word, btw) is only powerful as people are dissatisfied already. if hyper-capitalism wouldn't have destroyed large paths of psychological & financial security already, those campaigns wouldn't work.

@thor the real question is, what would you do in that world?

@Zergling_man must have slipped on the keyboard, thanks! ;)
@thor

@thor the problem is that there are kids in the linux world now who think replacing classic packaging systems with something like flatpack/snap/whatever container shit is a good idea :^) that's why i recommended that you look at another distribution than mint. most mainstream is certainly not the best in the linux world imho.

@Zergling_man