The article makes it very clear what the motivation for this is:
> In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government.
As the people running the US government - particularly the democratically unaccountable set - become increasingly divorced in their values and beliefs from a a large segment of the population, they become increasingly obsessed with control of the Other, which by its very nature appears subversive.
This doesn't end well for any of us.
It's interesting to see people see the exact same arguments people have made for centuries, always in service of the existing status structure. "Misinformation" and "disinformation" aren't new. Twitter didn't radically change the world. If anything, we have returned to the pre-20th century environment, where rumors and conspiracies led to mobs, riots, and all kinds of civil unrest. It was a major concern of people in the Constitutional Convention that "designing men" would use misinformation to rile up the people to take over the government.
> In Massts. it had been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men.
Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
What's "different" now in the so-called Information Age is that the brief era of a small class of people having near total control over what is published has ended. And they really, really don't like it.
Not just that: the playing field is flatter, but the reach of every player has greatly extended.
There's no particular guarantee that the past can be used to predict the present here. Lies go around the world before truth gets its boots on, and now everybody can spread a lie with cross-continental reach.
“Cross-continental” reach but the world is a smaller place. Rumors and lies spreading like wildfire through the populace have caused major countrywide social unrest and even revolts in the past.
They spread just as far, just more slowly, because you couldn’t get it all directly from the same person instantly. The government reaction also therefore took longer. But this factor for obvious reasons made “misinformation” worse!
So no, this is still not substantively different. The primary difference is still that we are returning to the way things were before broadcast media controlled by a small number of people. Unless they can stop it.
I have relatives on the East Coast horrified at things that happened in Seattle, Washington. They believe that most cities are like that. They have no ability to discern stories from three time zones over from stories happening in their backyard; it's all coming in over the same internet.
So no, I don't think we're returning to the past. I think we're entering a new future, one with uncharted territory. The past gives us no particular guarantees that people are capable of handling this level of noise, let alone focused culture jamming and intentional exploitation of the new speed and reach of communication.
The exact same things happened with people on different sides of the Roman Empire.
Again, the reach is not new! Nor is the speed - it’s just before only the Right People could do it, excepting maybe AM radio.
Before that, the reach was still as far as people spoke your language - it just took longer and people relied more on hearing what you said from someone else, until the invention of the printing press. Information still spread rapidly and if anything, people were more likely to take action due to the greater level of social cohesion in most times.
People have always had a burning desire for “news”, and the primary source for millennia was rumor.
I think we're using completely different definitions of "rapidly" if you're talking about the Roman empire and I'm talking about nearlight from one side of a continent to another.
People organized a nationwide attack on the US Capitol in 2021. It was a tiny fraction of the population that wanted to participate (much less participated), but they organized and came in from everywhere. What would that organization have looked like in Roman times?
>>concern of people in the Constitutional Convention that "designing men" would use misinformation to rile up the people to take over the government.
Which is why our government selection is spread both over time and geography to prevent that.
Unfortunately there are people that want to move the federal government closer to direct democracy that would tear down both the time (2, 4 and 6 year term cycles) and geographic (Electoral College)
When in reality we need to be expanding these checks on power, not removing them
> In a March meeting, Laura Dehmlow, an FBI official, warned that the threat of subversive information on social media could undermine support for the U.S. government.
As the people running the US government - particularly the democratically unaccountable set - become increasingly divorced in their values and beliefs from a a large segment of the population, they become increasingly obsessed with control of the Other, which by its very nature appears subversive.
This doesn't end well for any of us.
It's interesting to see people see the exact same arguments people have made for centuries, always in service of the existing status structure. "Misinformation" and "disinformation" aren't new. Twitter didn't radically change the world. If anything, we have returned to the pre-20th century environment, where rumors and conspiracies led to mobs, riots, and all kinds of civil unrest. It was a major concern of people in the Constitutional Convention that "designing men" would use misinformation to rile up the people to take over the government.
> In Massts. it had been fully confirmed by experience that they are daily misled into the most baneful measures and opinions by the false reports circulated by designing men.
Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
What's "different" now in the so-called Information Age is that the brief era of a small class of people having near total control over what is published has ended. And they really, really don't like it.