Other issues that the US faces when it wants to curtail Russian or Chinese disinformation is the First Amendment to the Constitution. We can disagree with the propaganda, but they have a right to spew it. Our legal system is designed such that it's better to allow the guilty to go free than to punish the innocent and, it works slowly building up evidence before seeking an indictment. Then, there are the many motions and appeals that slow everything down. We now also have one of our two political parties, Republicans, who no longer view Russia as the opposition, or who don't want to publicly speak out against Russia. They're much more interested in getting elected and re-elected than in protecting the country. In the "old days" people got their information in printed form and when watching news programming twice a day at designated hours. There weren't a lot of scandals about disinformation. With the Vietnam War, reporters went to Vietnam and reported from the field, showing us what war was really like. Then came the Internet and everything changed, and with the advent of AI, many people can no longer distinguish facts from disinformation and they're bombarded with it all 24/7 from so many different sources. It used to be that people who helped Russia were doing it mostly because of ideological reasons. Today, the reasons appear to be power and money. I think we need to do a much better job educating everyone on facts vs fiction and how to tell the difference, and our laws need to be updated to better reflect today's reality. I'm not in favor of changing the 1st Amendment, but I am in favor of transparent, full-disclosure laws so people know where your funding is coming from.
Very insightful. I would like to point out, I think, that “the” previous generation of the left idealizing Russia or the USSR must be thinking of the left of the 50s and earlier. The left of the 80s had no idealized vision, although questioned the aggressive approach that Reagan took toward that global rivalry. History shows the left was probably wrong about that. But we weren’t confused about who and what the USSR was
Learn who Americans are with these examples of Trump voters herein.
America urgently needs to upgrade their education system, it's been down shifting and making Americans too susceptible to propaganda. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oYv9Bx1RzI
This all goes back to the initial design of the internet communications and the allowing for anonymous logins and untraceable actions using bitcoin.
Anonymity may be seen as a necessary part of social media, but before the law we own what we say, so why should we not also own what we post in social media?
i recall one trial of person who uttered death threats against politicians in California, and was successfully prosecuted. There is some switch in people’s brains that turns them from loving, compassionate, law-abiding citizens into a Q’Anon junkie, willing to commit acts of violence in the name of I dont know what.
There is an old system that would have helped if it had been implemented by governments call ‘Public Key Infrastructure’. We used to use it to encrypt and sign email messages. If our digital identities on social media were linked back to a public-private key encryption system, we would not have the black holes created by the ability to anonymously post hate speech with out owning those words.
There are other issues that arise from such a PKI system, but it would help to break the power of people working from the shadows who are helping to destroy the Western World’s democracies.
Another fundamental component of American right-wing ideology is defunding the government: making it small and weak enough to drown in a bathtub. At first, the antigovernment antipathy was mainly confined to what Republican conservatives like Ronald Reagan termed the "welfare state," the social safety net originating in the Roosevelt era following the Great Depression. At the same time, however, the Reaganite movement conservatives were strong defense hawks, who continued to view Russia as a dangerous foe.
Over time, currents from both the far right and far left of the political spectrum have commingled to undermine support for funding safety-net programs, on the one hand, and national defense, on the other. What we are now seeing are serious unintended consequences of the reflexive, simplistic defund-the-government ideology we are left with today: It has left us vulnerable to our enemies.
Other issues that the US faces when it wants to curtail Russian or Chinese disinformation is the First Amendment to the Constitution. We can disagree with the propaganda, but they have a right to spew it. Our legal system is designed such that it's better to allow the guilty to go free than to punish the innocent and, it works slowly building up evidence before seeking an indictment. Then, there are the many motions and appeals that slow everything down. We now also have one of our two political parties, Republicans, who no longer view Russia as the opposition, or who don't want to publicly speak out against Russia. They're much more interested in getting elected and re-elected than in protecting the country. In the "old days" people got their information in printed form and when watching news programming twice a day at designated hours. There weren't a lot of scandals about disinformation. With the Vietnam War, reporters went to Vietnam and reported from the field, showing us what war was really like. Then came the Internet and everything changed, and with the advent of AI, many people can no longer distinguish facts from disinformation and they're bombarded with it all 24/7 from so many different sources. It used to be that people who helped Russia were doing it mostly because of ideological reasons. Today, the reasons appear to be power and money. I think we need to do a much better job educating everyone on facts vs fiction and how to tell the difference, and our laws need to be updated to better reflect today's reality. I'm not in favor of changing the 1st Amendment, but I am in favor of transparent, full-disclosure laws so people know where your funding is coming from.
Yes, but paying for it should not be possible hidden.
49.9% Americans voted it.
Learn who Americans are with these examples of Trump voters herein.
America urgently needs to upgrade their education system, it's been down shifting and making Americans too susceptible to propaganda.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oYv9Bx1RzI
Very insightful. I would like to point out, I think, that “the” previous generation of the left idealizing Russia or the USSR must be thinking of the left of the 50s and earlier. The left of the 80s had no idealized vision, although questioned the aggressive approach that Reagan took toward that global rivalry. History shows the left was probably wrong about that. But we weren’t confused about who and what the USSR was
49.9% Americans voted it.
Learn who Americans are with these examples of Trump voters herein.
America urgently needs to upgrade their education system, it's been down shifting and making Americans too susceptible to propaganda. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9oYv9Bx1RzI
This all goes back to the initial design of the internet communications and the allowing for anonymous logins and untraceable actions using bitcoin.
Anonymity may be seen as a necessary part of social media, but before the law we own what we say, so why should we not also own what we post in social media?
i recall one trial of person who uttered death threats against politicians in California, and was successfully prosecuted. There is some switch in people’s brains that turns them from loving, compassionate, law-abiding citizens into a Q’Anon junkie, willing to commit acts of violence in the name of I dont know what.
There is an old system that would have helped if it had been implemented by governments call ‘Public Key Infrastructure’. We used to use it to encrypt and sign email messages. If our digital identities on social media were linked back to a public-private key encryption system, we would not have the black holes created by the ability to anonymously post hate speech with out owning those words.
There are other issues that arise from such a PKI system, but it would help to break the power of people working from the shadows who are helping to destroy the Western World’s democracies.
Another fundamental component of American right-wing ideology is defunding the government: making it small and weak enough to drown in a bathtub. At first, the antigovernment antipathy was mainly confined to what Republican conservatives like Ronald Reagan termed the "welfare state," the social safety net originating in the Roosevelt era following the Great Depression. At the same time, however, the Reaganite movement conservatives were strong defense hawks, who continued to view Russia as a dangerous foe.
Over time, currents from both the far right and far left of the political spectrum have commingled to undermine support for funding safety-net programs, on the one hand, and national defense, on the other. What we are now seeing are serious unintended consequences of the reflexive, simplistic defund-the-government ideology we are left with today: It has left us vulnerable to our enemies.