You can't be indiferent to Mass Media[1] and Propaganda[2]



1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_media

2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda


We're at the beginning of an industry, and this could all turn into television again. It could be controlled by a small number of companies who decide what we see and hear. And there's a lot of precedent for that.

-*A 1998 warning by Jamie Zawinski[3] in Code Rush[4] on the potential future of the web*

3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamie_Zawinski

4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code_Rush


You can't ignore mass media because it directly influences and shapes society, and you can't ignore society, even if you try[5] really[6] hard[7].


5: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecaba6542ea8.64417889

6: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecabd9c93b95.95413916

7: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecb439dfd630.43321244



The class-dominant theory[8] argues that the media reflects and projects the view of a minority elite, which controls it.


8: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecb41ec18e51.84415749


Manufacturing Consent[9] is a 1988 book[10] by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky that elaborates further on this idea[11]. See below some videos relating that work:


9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_Consent

10: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecb393abe274.24381746

11: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecb33e228817.55541375



12: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=hWi0d-Ika3w

13: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=EuwmWnphqII

14: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=tTBWfkE7BXU

15: https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=CWFpnpxXEFU

16: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Requiem_for_the_American_Dream


Edward Snowden[17], Julian Assange[18] or Aaron Swartz[19] are contemporary examples of not exactly the flack machine[20] (the fourth filter as described in the first video), but of the consecuences you need to risk by oposing the powerful in the 'democratic' XXI century. One is hidden in Russia, other half dead in a prision while locked in a legal process of extradition accused of sexual harassement and other non-sense stories, and the latter was found dead at the age 26. All of them are heros and revolutionaries, giving everything for the only goal of a better society.


17: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Snowden

18: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_Assange

19: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aaron_Swartz

20: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecb16379ca95.88396160


The world is moving fast. They say that it moves in an almost exponential pace, as the Moore's law[21] does. Technology keeps using scientific discoveries and improving existing stack to amaze us more[22] and more[23] each time. Smartphones, interactive maps that calculate and show us all kind of routes and transport timetables, personal assistant bots... We have new magic waiting for us on each corner. But, what is the price? Did all that mass-media machinery described in 1988 get deprecated in this new pinky amazing new world? I don't think so. The rules did not change. We are still consumers. The class-dominant problem is only worsening with time, as science and technology unfield new tools that the wealthier keep applying without ethics to allow for deeper control and manipulation over the society in order to keep accumulating power. As the authors explain in a more recent interview[24]: 'The Propaganda Model will also increasingly apply to the internet, where the ‘old media’ have a growing place and advertising has become steadily more important in the newer internet-based media institutions.'


21: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law

22: https://www.caprice-community.net/viral-app-faceapp-now-owns-access-to-more-than-150-million-peoples-faces-and-names/

23: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPT-3

24: https://www.westminsterpapers.org/article/id/127/


The Age of Surveillance Capitalism: The Fight for a Human Future at the New Frontier of Power[25] is a 2019 non-fiction book by Professor Shoshana Zuboff[26].


25: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Age_of_Surveillance_Capitalism

26: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoshana_Zuboff


Surveillance capitalism unilaterally claims human experience as free raw material for translation into behavioural data. Although some of these data are applied to service improvement, the rest are declared as a proprietary behavioural surplus, fed into advanced manufacturing processes known as ‘machine intelligence’, and fabricated into prediction products that anticipate what you will do now, soon, and later. Finally, these prediction products are traded in a new kind of marketplace that I call behavioural futures markets. Surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, for many companies are willing to lay bets on our future behaviour.”


I highly recommend this interview[27] with Shoshana where she elaborates a bit more about this idea.


27: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecb1da9f29a8.31272748


The Social Dilemma[28] is a documentary that examines the effect that a handful of tech companies have on the public, explaining how a bunch of developers are working in a product used by millions, and how small decisions on that product have drastic global effects on the population. It exposes some of the big threats of the industry, as how the search of profits as first goal pushes platforms' designs to simulate gambling machines whose main purpose is to increase the usage time and to keep the user addicted, to wide population experiments that play with the user's emotions to see his reactions and change his behaviours without considering any lateral consequences. Big tech [and any other IT service] collect information from the users that is later sold and moves and grows with time. This data is very valuable: scientific experiments are done with data for a reason: data, given the right tools and procedures, allows you to extract information from it, and information is power. With all this data user profiles are constructed using loads of automation and classification. People with these powers are able to see and analyse trends from society, bring down those generalizations to single users, and come out with observations about individuals than the individuals themselves would never be able to realise.


28: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Social_Dilemma


That is a single explanation of the meme: 'Google knows more about you than you do yourself'. Wouldn't you know much more about yourself if you'd be keeping a track of all your phisical positions over your lifetime?[29] If you would be keeping a track of all your communications with other human beings?[30], if you were, indeed, keeping a log of your life?[31] You definitely would be able to grasp a lot more detail and insights about it. Imagine now that you did not only have all that, but also similar data of other millions of people you can use to contrast yours against, to analyse and extract all kind of relationships. Imagine also that you have the tools, knowledge and resources to do so. Can you see how critical this is? Well... this is not only about 'knowing'. When someone knows so much about you, without you even imagine that possible, when they also have the ability of subtle manipulation so they can use this information with other tools in order to seed opinions and behaviours in yourself without you even seen what is happening, this is when the magic becomes actually scary.


29: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecb0e3e859a5.08914103

30: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecaf3d408696.27702400

31: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecb13494ac55.13557428


Privacy is a fundamental right, and now more than ever, we need to protect it... or otherwise we will become just puppets without any sort of freedom... most importantly, without the freedom to think.


The internet seemed like ours: open and full of possibilities. Was it ever like that? Will it ever become something like that? We may remember that internet was born as a militar project. Will we use the internet as a tool, or will the internet be just another tool to use us (to keep fabricating consumers)?


Is society ill[32]? We are in a mouse wheel: we behave in a certain manner because that is what we have learnt to do: we growed with the wheel moving and now we need to keep pushing so it does not stop. We want to keep all our powers at any cost, and specially we will not cease while there is some competition, as stoping then will mean losing... and man, competition is and has been the name of the game for too long... perhaps this time not losing means just the end of our society[33].


32: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecae909b0015.92008982

33: https://share.nogafam.es/share/60ecb1855603b1.73207200


Shall we keep going that way? What can we do to fight against this?



/mass-media/