this post was submitted on 19 Mar 2025
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Losing the Cold War. America wasn't beaten militarily, but brought down via foreign propaganda. (It also hit the UK, with Brexit, and other countries with similar harmful things going on domestically to them.)
Livejournal was one of the earliest "modern" social media sites (for those who didn't experience it, it was like a longer-form tumblr--longer text posts, fewer images), and it was sold to a company in Russia in the early 00s. I remember scratching my head as a 20-something about why the servers kept going down, then I learned that intellectuals in Russia had taken it up as THEIR social media and due to politics "on the Russian" side it was getting DDoS'd.
I was still too young to connect the dots then, or understand what all that really meant (hindsight is always much better, isn't it?) but basically they perfected control via social media first on their own people, probably trawled through all the content of the original LiveJournal users posting in English, then perfected using what they learned there on later social media sites.
And because Americans A) thought the Cold War was over, and B) have a bit of a head-scratcher conundrum when it comes to free speech because it's valued so highly and nobody likes censorshiop, nobody did anything or even realized anything was happening until the harm was already done.
Personally, again with hindsight, I think company-designed social media algorithms that just suggest content to you as "trending" or whatever should be illegal (and block buttons should be mandatory). Users should have to be forced to follow, one by one, the content they want to subscribe to.
Having "trending" algorithms that have no transparency in what they show or boost allows malignant actors to game the algorithm.
If you force people to follow others based on word of mouth or reblogs from their actual friends, and give people a way to solidly block someone that's easy to find and instant to use, it will cut a lot of the bullshit down. People will be somewhat less inclined to fall down wells of stupidity. It won't completely stop it, but people are lazy and if you don't dangle shit in front of their nose many will go off and do something else instead of putting in the effort to find something horrible.
It’s interesting that you mention LiveJournal, because a lot of early internet feminists were there.
I’ve been wondering if part of the strategy has also been infiltrating feminist communities, and if they would have started learning there.
“Trans exclusionary radical feminists” always existed, but they were very much on the fringe. The only time the “men are invading lesbian spaces!” crowd would speak up was around Michfest (“womyn’s” festival or when Mary Daly (prominent 70’s academic TERF) died.
So it was a pain point that could be targeted. They use essentially the same propaganda now that they do on the right - that trans women are all sexual predators and perverts trying to get access to women. The “feminist” innovation is that they can be somewhat empathetic to “self hating gays” = straight trans women or “poor little girls deceived into mutilating their bodies by the patriarchy” = trans men. But it is supposed to be conversion therapy for us all.
Now, they dominate a lot of feminist discussion spaces. We have self identified “progressive feminists” who spend all day seething at random blogs which keep a Google alert on “transgender + rape.” Same sources that right wing nutjobs share on Facebook.
Sometimes I wonder if it’s also a response to the effectiveness of #metoo. Trolls will pretend to both be trans people and TERFs (to post creepy goony shit or send sexual/death threats). There are bad actors in the conversation, whether they are Russian trolls or American basement dwelling weirdos.
Well stated, thisis the conclusion i have come to as well. We lost an information war we did not know we were fighting.
We only didn't know because this type of authoritarianism requires an ignorant, sedentary, and fearful populace and so we're not taught the crucial skills it would take to resist as we waste away and treat each other and ourselves like shit, because what we are taught is a zero-sum, individualistic, hierarchical way of life that teaches us the system is perfect and we're not doing it right if we don't get the results we want, and fools us into perpetuating harm in a self sustaining, cyclical manner. It's very sad but all the more reason to try something new. It seeps into everything, it's quite literally a death cult.
This is solid analysis. Aside from your proposal about banning opaque algorithms, we also don’t really appreciate how powerful it is for any one human to be able to talk to millions of other humans at the same time is (as social creatures). It pathetically shrinks our world view so that it feels like we’re constantly talking about the same 10 people, when there’s so much more of your life that involves the people you work with, the people in your community, your local politics (like who’s deciding the new garbage truck schedule type stuff) that is completely absent from our online discourse.
I’d also say that the marketing and advertising industry has accelerated misinformation, distrust and overconsumption. I see about as few ads as I can figure out how (I know this because whenever I look at someone else’s experience of the same apps and services I use I can’t believe what I’m seeing), and yet I still manage to buy things, hear about things I’m interested in, and research and find out about new products. I spend money in the economy. We literally do not need this industry.
I have also seen friends " youtube feeds" and they are full of videos that I have seen for years and recognized as absolute garbage instantly and never watched, loaded with advertising in the form of "shorts" or a 15 minute commercial for electric scooters (most likely made by amazon, id be curious to know who funds these so called "content creators") cloaked as a "review of the top 10 best e scooters of 2025" ... And rage bait bull shit.
I have tried to explain to these same people how advertising works and that they may be falling victim to the scam.
They immediately get very defensive (I may be a little abrasive in my approach but I should be grabbing their shoulders and shaking the shit out of them while backhanding them across the face.) and they say something like " well you watch youtube videos blah blah". I explain that while I do watch them I am searching for the video and rarely watch anything that I am not actively searching for to gain knowledge about a project in the real world ; that I am hip to how these apps are designed to keep suckers engaged and even change the way a person thinks.
I remember as a kid being fascinated by some advertising, the color schemes , music etc and realizing how powerful they were. That stupid double mint gum commercial is to this day seared into my brain , it will probably blip across the screen when my power gets pulled.
Advertising is a game of minute, magical calcuculations that when done right are imperceptible and like 3 card Monty or the shell game are very good at separating a dummy from their bread.
An overwhelming portion of the public are just receivers awaiting their next mission and they do not want to know any better and get angry when you point it out. Thinking or having curiosity about anything is just not their bag anymore. Advertising is truly evil because if it did not exist the natural tendency wouldn't be blind consumption.
This is very well-stated, and what I was driving at.