Propaganda (Blog Note)

Interestingly, I got several propaganda comments on the "Inevitable Putins" post. We've all heard, of course, about foreign agents or bots spreading misinformation on the 'net, but this is the first time I've been aware of being the target of it. I got two; both seemed suspicious (I have pretty good "radar" after vetting 300k comments), but one of the "posters" seemed to have a track record here. (The other one was partially in Russian, which was, um, sort of a tip-off.) Ah, but I was fooled...when I check suspicious comments, the first thing I do is to check the past comments of the commenter to see if he or she is a regular. If they are, then even if the comment is sketchy I'll run it...don't want to be too quick to censor. I assumed that the compositor looked at all the identifiers when compiling the past comment list. But little did I know that it searches the comments only by name. So if the name is "Tom," then every comment from a poster named Tom will come up in the history, even if they're from different email addresses. So, live and learn...now I'll know that when I'm checking a suspicious comment, I need to do a separate search on the email address. I thought the program was already doing that, but no.

TOP, out on the remote fringes of current events...but not immune.

Mike
(Thanks to Matt Haber)

Book o' the Week

Ara Güler's Istanbul, one of the more amazing books in my collection. I'm also amazed it's still in print. Not only does it culminate a longtime habit and a vast body of work for the Turkish photographer of Armenian descent, one of the few world-famous photographers from Turkey—a labor of love—but it's a unique and wonderful example of bookmaking. If you don't buy this, at least see one sometime.

This book link is a portal to Amazon.

Today at B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Benjamin Marks: "Hmmm. I think the broader point is that no corner of the web, no matter how innocuous in its content, is free from being the next battlefield. My assumption, or perhaps simply my fear, is that AI's get more and more sophisticated that this space we have created will become more their domain than ours. I realize this comment has a HAL-9000 ring to it, but my sense has always been that TOPpers are a relatively small community compared to the Bigs, or the 'Net as a whole (also, more good-looking than average). If you are a spam-bot, modest size is no protection from notice and attempted interference, apparently. Welcome to the future."

Dan: "How flattering to be deemed worthy of response by the Puti-bots! Your reach and influence extend to the corners of the world!"

Mike replies: I'm actually pretty happy just to have a small corner shared with all you fine readers.   :-)

Comments

[Margaret R]

You can get browser extensions for Chrome & Firefox from Bot Sentinel which purport to show up such posts as "problematic". I have it running on twitter, which I'm sure is much more of a morass than here, but not on my browser, since it's not supported. (Safari) Might be worth looking at if you use Chrome.

https://botsentinel.com

[Ah, thanks Margaret, but I don't use Chrome. I have other reasons to, because B&H has automatic linking in Chrome, but I've got all my bookmarks and so forth on Firefox. I think it would be a disruption to switch. --Mike]

[David S]

Welcome to the modern world I guess.
On your recommendation I ordered "Eleventyone Portraits" and it arrived in NZ a few weeks ago. What a fascinating book.

[Richard Parkin]

I know nothing of bot sentinel but it appears to be available on Firefox!

[ChrisC]

Whenever there is conflict, people see the opposing view as “propaganda” and consider their own view as fair and balanced. After the end, the winner’s propaganda gets written down as history.

[I see. So you're saying the last election really was stolen from Trump, a mob never stormed the U.S. Capitol, Hillary Clinton really did run a child prostitution ring out of a pizza parlor, and on and on. I get it. Not the deliberate spreading of lies, just an opposing viewpoint. --Mike]

[Rob Campbell]

Mike, the same nonsense gets posted everywhere: anyone capable of using a keyboard creates their own version of the reality they have been conditioned to accept as "truth".

We saw this in Britain regarding the folly of Brexit, where a successful argument was made to dump Britain's largest market, Europe, for the imaginary value of fantasy deals that nobody wants to make with it. Much of Scotland opposed this folly (it was encouraged by Trump) yet, the very same country is home to a dangerous almost-majority attempting to quit membership of Britain for fantasies that were promoted by "Braveheart" and generations of fond faux memory. These lunatics then want to enter the European Union, itself struggling with its own minority separists, expecting those governments to open their arms to a newly independent Scotland, and thus encourage their own crazies... you couldn't make it up, but many think it reasonable belief.

[Zack S]

Speaking of propaganda, Radio Sputnik which is owned by the Russian government news agency Rossiya Segodnya broadcasts on two different AM stations in the USA. But virtually no western news outlets broadcast in Russia now because if they say something Czar Putin does not like the staff can go to jail for up to 15 years.

https://swling.com/blog/2022/03/nab-calls-on-us-am-fm-stations-to-cease-russian-programming/

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/mar/04/bbc-temporarily-suspending-work-all-news-journalists-russia

[Steve Deutsch]

Perhaps just 'alternate facts'

[John Bauscher]

My son gave me How Rome Fell by Adrian Goldsworthy, a fine history of the effects of individuals with armed followers ‘taking their shot’ in recorded history. The resulting civil wars were debilitating for the Roman polity. The economy of the empire kept on by the power of trade in the Mediterranean based on gold. Henri Pirenne’s book Mohammed and Charlemagne follows this development in a concise manner in the early chapters. Both of these books are good reads and spark thought, but as none of us witnessed the Roman saga the truth is but a deduction.