Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter gives him direct access to tens of millions of brains. He is making a zealous effort to change and control those brains by flooding them with hate and misinformation.
He's creating an echo chamber that forces everyone to engage the extreme conservative ideas in order to make such ideas seem mainstream. He’s shifting the discourse to favor election deniers, racists and insurrectionists … turning Twitter into a social media version of Fox.
https://georgelakoff.substack.com/p/algorithm-warfare-how-elon-musk-uses
Musk has become Twitter’s dictator, changing the rules to suit his whims, banning accounts he doesn’t like.
He has vast control over what we hear/see on Twitter. He’s a powerful new weapon in the conservative communications arsenal.
But Twitter only has power because we gave it power. How we use this collective power to respond strategically to the ongoing conservative information war — a battle for the control of our brains — will determine the course of the future.
I'm glad to be here with you on Mastodon.Please stay in touch by following me here, and by subscribing to the FrameLab Newsletter on Substack (it's free): https://georgelakoff.substack.com
@georgelakoff Just wait until AR glasses go mainstream and begin feeding your system 1 processing with peripheral vision inputs that distort reality...
@MortenBay @georgelakoff Pretty sure that won't happen, for social reasons. (A) People don't like interacting with others who could be recording them. And (B) look at how popular the incredibly useful Bluetooth earpieces are. Social norms have relegated them to douchebags.
@MortenBay There's a big difference between a private property owner recording their property and a person recording everyone everywhere they go. Both legally and socially.
Especially in two-party states.
@LouisIngenthron Sure! And my academic work is all about ensuring that we regulate this and make people aware.
But as for social norms, we are far past the point where most people care if they are being captured by other people's smartphone cameras in public, even though they know that the footage will hit social media where it will be analyzed by facial recognition software. Also considering the surveillance acquiescence in the UK and China, I doubt people will object to AR glasses, sadly.
@LouisIngenthron Add to this the fact that the user will have to prioritize battery life between screen info and camera use, and will likely want the former rather than the latter and therefore - at least in the beginning - won't be recording everything. The cameras on the glasses will also mostly be used for orientation and 3D scanning. The question is whether it gets stored.
@LouisIngenthron A much bigger problem we need to consider, I think, is what society will look like when everyone has everyone's info available when they meet them for the first time. The privacy issues go far beyond recording. Also, given the push that the industry is making, I doubt that the risk of being recorded is going to keep people from wanting these glasses. And that's when the real problems will begin.
@MortenBay Again, I don't think we'll get there. People won't stand for it. They'll opt out. There are already dystopian movies warning about this and people are already demanding online privacy laws to prevent much more benign forms of online tracking.
@LouisIngenthron I think you will be disappointed, but I hope you are right that people will resist constant recording.
What we know from most surveys and studies is that people will express privacy concerns when asked, but their actual behavior almost always contradicts what they say - no matter what country or culture you are in.
I think you overestimate how rational people are and underestimate the global nature of tech manufacturing, adoption, and power. But we'll see, I guess.
@MortenBay The battery life and storage are temporary problems.
The external assumption that a device capable of recording is recording constantly is just good common sense/opsec.
@MortenBay I disagree with that characterization. Many people are deeply uncomfortable with being recorded in public by strangers, especially folks from marginalized communities.
That it has become accepted in a few places, I believe, is not an indicator of our willingness for widespread acceptance.
And the UK and China have very different cultures than America. It's like saying they banned guns so we can too.
@LouisIngenthron @georgelakoff I disagree. AR glasses will pass for regular glasses on the outside long before what's on the inside becomes truly compelling to mass audiences. They're already very close (see Vuzix Shield). Ansd as much as I hate it, people are being recorded everywhere now and don't object. Google Glass was almost ten years ago and things have changed a lot.
BTW, Bluetooth earpieces are used by almost everyone now, they just turned into true wireless earbuds like AirPods.