[ExI] How gaming Google changes public opinion

[BillK]

Big read, but important. Google manipulation is now on such a large
scale that it changes the way people see the world.

<https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2017/06/how-the-trump-russia-data-machine-games-google-to.html>

How the Trump-Russia Data Machine Games Google to Fool Americans
By Roger Sollenberger  |  June 1, 2017

Quotes:

First: Why this is important. Why this is a war.

Google, whether you’re aware of it or not, is a total slaughterhouse.
Trump’s data team (he’s reportedly set up a “war room” to combat the
Russia story) has weaponized information, and for about a year now has
been slaying American brains: Trump supporters’ brains. It started
with the election, then died down, but now it’s coming back, vengeful
and desperate.

As a result, we’re at a pivotal point not just in the life of our
democracy, but in how we think, read, and make choices. Selective
information is being presented to us in a way that encourages
selective reading and offers psychological and social rewards for, to
put it bluntly, being stupid and submissive and spreading stupid to
submit others.
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The Google algorithm orders its search results, among other ways, by
popular keywords used, publish date, and how many other links point to
your site. You can do things to max out your keyword SEO, like I did
in my last job, but the results we’re seeing here, their consistency,
the thoroughness of their victory, and the standardization of the
messaging all requires a well-funded, well-coordinated effort. Ask any
digital marketing expert: This is an organization of writers and data
geeks who are paid handsomely to spend all day churning out content,
pointing readers from one site to another, and using social media bots
as vectors to beam this misinformation out to micro-targeted
demographics.

It’s a truly amazing operation. Time Magazine did an outstanding piece
of reporting on this quite recently. So did The Guardian, here. Those
pieces will scare the shit out of you. If they don’t, I’m afraid
you’re an unwitting casualty of this war.

<http://time.com/4783932/inside-russia-social-media-war-america/>

<https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy>

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I want to remind you, at the end of this technical stuff, that we’re
talking about something critical: How our brains work determines how
our tribes are formed and behave, which determines how our society
functions, or doesn’t.

Because check this out: Who do these weapons target? These sites are
havens for people who already support Trump or who already hate the
left. The psychological weapon of misinformation is therefore perhaps
unique in that it’s intended primarily for use against your “allies,”
to further entrench or indoctrinate them in your camp.

The result? The American psyche is being transformed. Truthfully, it
already has been. We’ve entered a new political, philosophical,
social, and cultural era. People don’t seem to understand yet, or
aren’t willing to face it, but reality is completely malleable. Even
in America.

After all, the only things that can be true to you (that is, capital-T
“True”) is what you choose to believe about the world around you. You
get to make that choice yourself. For some of us it’s a freedom.
Others a burden. Trump’s crew and the right wing elite have understood
this for years. Hell, the Russian people have lived with this for
decades. We’re no match. We’re soft targets. All a propagandist has to
do is link our identity to our beliefs. Once that’s accomplished, your
identity anchors your beliefs. But then you start to see there’s this
huge web of believers out there, and a common identity begins to shape
up. A tribe emerges. Never mind that half of them are robots: You’re
not giving up who you are. And so if your beliefs define who you are,
as a person and as a member of a tribe, there’s nothing in the world
short of an existential cataclysm that will ever, ever get you to
change your mind.

If you don’t want to.

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BillK