The War for Our Minds, Part 8: the influence attempts are real

Social Media, Big Tech and their influence campaigns

Patience is a virtue.

Wait long enough, watchfully, and you will notice good things.

Almost 4 months ago, I wrote the following in an article on my Substack:

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On a side note on Cognitive Warfare, Robert Epstein, senior research psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology in California, made some incredible claims.

In an interview with the Epoch Times, he described the very powerful manipulation we are under.

His starting point was the ranking in search results, and how important it was to be on that first page, for a company.

“Well, if people are so trusting of high ranking search results, could search results be used to change people’s opinions?” “Could they even be used maybe to change their votes, their voting preferences?”

So Dr. Epstein did a series of randomized, controlled, counterbalanced, double blind experiments, adhering to the very highest standards of scientific research. In one such experiment, he thought he could sway votes between his 2 groups by a few percent, but the result showed a shift in voter preference of more than 40%, in another experiment with more than 60%.

What is it about?

“They’re brief experiences that we have online. In fact, most of the experiences we have online are ephemeral that affect us, like a newsfeed is flashed before our eyes, or some search results or some search suggestions, or all kinds of things. A sequence of YouTube videos, a suggestion for which video to watch next, they affect us, they disappear, they’re stored nowhere and they’re gone.

It’s the ideal form of manipulation. People have no idea they’re being manipulated, number one, and number two, authorities can’t go back in time to see what people were being shown. In other words, how they were being manipulated, so as it happens, the experiments I’ve been doing for a very long time, now almost a decade, that’s what they’re all about.”

The results, he states, are the largest in a 100  years of studies in behavioral science.

“These are among the largest effects ever discovered in the behavioral and social sciences in more than a hundred years that, in fact, people in my field have been looking for new kinds of influence. These are crazy big effects. So that’s one thing that makes them scary, but that’s not all, they’re scary because people are generally unaware that they’re being influenced.”

And he concludes:

“And most of all, they’re scary because they’re controlled almost exclusively by four American tech companies. Now put that all together, now you’ve got something that’s frightening, because you have sources of influence controlled by really a handful of executives who are not accountable to any public, not the American public, not any public anywhere, they’re only accountable to their shareholders.”

This has gone mostly unnoticed, but it is absolutely important. (Read the full interview on the link I provided, it is full of other incredible facts).

What Dr. Epstein describes, is fully in line with what I wrote about Cognitive Warfare, but from a different angle: specifically the influence of news stories and how they shape perception.

Why do you think the fight about Twitter is so important, and why it is so hard fought, with such bitter passion? Because of the incredible power of control it provides! Given the place of google in all this, as a still very central player, I would expect sooner rather than later to see some action about their position in influencing in elections and such to surface, either to expose what is happening, or to curb their near monopoly on news and search data.

If such ‘algorithmic influence’ is not on purpose, but simply a side effect of their AI doing what it was designed, namely picking one site over another, based on a determination which is ‘best’.

Interestingly, he finds that the scariest possibility:

“The reason why, to me, that’s the scariest possibility is because that means that a computer program is picking the winners of elections, or is picking what dog food we buy or is picking what we should think. That’s very scary, because computer programs are really, really, really stupid.”

The other option, of course, is willed influencing, a group, outside of any oversight and democratic authority, decides who should win or lose elections…

But he offers this solution:

“This is the solution, which is permanent, large-scale monitoring, 24 hours a day in all 50 states, doing to them what they do to us and our kids. If we do it to them, if we monitor, we capture, we archive, and we expose, then they will stay out of our lives. They’ll still make a fortune, they’ll still make a lot of money, but they will give us back our free and fair election.”

Sounds familiar? It is what our recourse is when it comes to the actual voting, as well, as 2000 mules indicates. But how do you spread the news about Google manipulating the whole world? Even elections? Google won’t place those articles and news flashes on their first page, if at all… Nor will any of the other big tech companies…

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And what do we see today?

People posting things like this:

I double-checked, did the same search, and got this result, fully in line with the above example:

In the first article of my series “The War for Our Minds” I chronicled shortly several instances of torture and murder of Russian POWs at the hands of Ukrainian troops.

“And now (after the many videos parading Russian POW’s, which in and of itself was already in violation of the Geneva Convention), we have videos circulating of Russian POW’s being tortured, shot in the legs, and denied medical aid and treatment. Being forced to admit the Russians were wrong and ask forgiveness. And videos of Russian special forces soldiers being burned alive by Neo-Nazi militia members.

For the recent video of the POW’s, click here (warning, graphic!).

For a video on a prisoner burned alive, click here (Warning, graphic!).

And another one, where the tattoos on the victim show he is a Russian soldier, here (warning, very graphic).

Very hard to watch, unspeakably evil. But the DIRECT result of the messaging and propaganda that is being used in Ukraine, with very willing echo-chambers in the EU and US fortifying and supporting it.”

Since, other such stories have surfaced, as well, so why is Google not sharing ANY of those? But instead is turning the search query upside down showing us stories of the OPPOSITE? Notice also how most of the results are referring to the ‘castrated Ukrainian soldier’, which was a hoax, as well. To cut a long story short: the soldier doing the torturing was wearing sneakers in blue and yellow, a limited series that the Ukrainian army had given to their troops. No Russian soldier would be caught wearing the colors of Ukraine! There are other elements, too, in the small details of the footage, but everything points at this being another hoax by Ukraine. The news itself is spread far and wide, such as with Bucha, but the debunking and correction is very hard to find. Meanwhile, the search pages use EXACTLY the same tactic that Robert Epstein warned about.

But notice ALSO that we see his solution being put into practice, slowly but surely:

“This is the solution, which is permanent, large-scale monitoring, 24 hours a day in all 50 states, doing to them what they do to us and our kids. If we do it to them, if we monitor, we capture, we archive, and we expose, then they will stay out of our lives.”

People started to take notice, and are saving the screenshots, spreading them. They are exposing this abuse, attempting to influence the American people to believe falsehoods. This is a very subtle but very pernicious strategy, based on social behavioral studies.

And for the first time, we see it captured. STAY AWARE. STAY AHEAD. CAPTURE IT, AND SPREAD IT. CALL THEM OUT.

But that is not all.

We see OTHER things surface, fully in line with the above.

Here is the most interesting one, shared by Nick Moseder on Telegram (in a slightly different version, I could not upload his video, contained in this one, on Substack):

Absolutely fascinating. The Asch conformity experiments, dating back to the 1950s! (Watch it, it is only 5 minutes, and will help understand the rest of this article better, as well as what is going on in our country!)

We see how people are influenced by their peers, and even chose pertinently false answers, they KNOW to be untrue, just because ‘all the others’ picked the wrong answer. Why do you think the big Tech companies flood their services with articles, links and posts that all spout the same party line and talking points? Exactly this: to create this impression of unanimity, to force all the rest to conform, even to the point of denying their own eyes and mind, what they know to be true, in order NOT to sound different. (I’ll touch upon more on this later)

But here is something very important to note: the moment that even 1 other person in the group gave the right answer, the test subject would be much more assertive in saying the right thing, despite still being a minority view. He’d create a bond with the other person, as that video showed: he glanced over, and nodded his head, as if to say ‘way to go, we got it right! Heard those idiots giving the wrong answer?’

Here is why this is important to note: THE NEW MEDIA AND CITIZEN BLOGGERS/JOURNALISTS ARE THAT OTHER PERSON. WE ALLOW THE OTHER PEOPLE TO STICK TO THEIR GUNS, and to say the RIGHT thing they KNOW to be true, even in face of a plurality stating otherwise!

This is why the elites were so upset about the Musk take-over of Twitter: even a single voice was enough to break the spell, and, even more importantly, create a strong backlash against those who peddled the lies and falsehoods! This could not be allowed to happen! This is why they hate the new media! This is why they censor so pervasively, in a lost attempt to stifle that other voice, that would give the people the courage to stand up against their own brainwashing attempts!

THIS IS HUGE!

And it should stem us hopeful, that the tide indeed has turned.

It doesn’t stop there.

We hear news about Zuckerberg trying to use his own platform, FaceBook, to double down on his past influence ops. But we’re on to them, this time.
Check out this article by Western Journal.

“Facebook is rolling out its rules for the midterm elections in a post from Meta about how it plans to throw its weight around in the weeks leading up to the November midterm elections.

According to a post published last week from Nick Clegg, Meta’s president of global affairs, 40 teams will be monitoring the elections.

The post cites one side of the forces allegedly trying to disrupt an election by noting that Meta has “banned more than 270 white supremacist organizations, and removed 2.5 million pieces of content tied to organized hate globally on Facebook in the first quarter of 2022.””

And

“For the midterms, Clegg’s post said the company will employ “advanced security operations to fight foreign interference and domestic influence campaigns, our network of independent fact-checking partners, our industry-leading transparency measures around political advertising and pages, as well as new measures to help keep poll workers safe.”

“As we did in 2020, we have a dedicated team in place to combat election and voter interference while also helping people get reliable information about when and how to vote,” the post stated.”

That Facebook is doubling down, even with partners that are now under fire for breaking actual election laws, for example the National Association of State Elections Directors, which is headed by Meagan Wolfe, Wisconsin’s Election Commission administrator. As you remember, she is part of the group that Racine County Sheriff Christopher Schmaling accused of “committing felonies by telling election clerks to mail absentee ballots to nursing homes instead of visiting them in person during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

But against their attempts to control the narrative, we can now posit a well-established network of the New Media, Substack, Truth Social, Telegram, and many other websites and news aggregators and writers that independently work to bring people actual news and truth, effectively undermining the monopoly of the Big Tech sites and services.

It is amazing to see them go to such lengths to stand up against ‘hate’ and ‘extremism’, yet when it comes to actual crimes and violence, such as child abuse and sexual exploitation of children, women and other vulnerable people, the people need extreme tools and expensive law suits to try to force those same big tech companies to pay attention:

But this is finally happening. With all their talk against ‘safeguarding democracy and elections’, and bragging how many people and groups they have banned and harmful posts they have removed, they have ZERO excuse left about why they did not turn those same powers to control, flag and STOP porn, abuse materials, and so on. ZERO EXCUSE. They detailed their ability, when it comes to their political goals, and have shown their resistance to apply that to protect actual victims…

After several amicus briefs were filed to this case, one of the lawyers of the children in question remarked:
 “These amicus briefs persuasively argue that these two courageous survivors should have the opportunity to seek justice for Twitter’s role in their exploitation," said Peter Gentala, senior legal counsel for National Center on Sexual Exploitation Law Center, which represents the plaintiffs. "The briefs also demonstrate how much tech platforms can be doing to prevent child sexual abuse material but are refusing to do at the expense of children."

Still, more has come out, confirming what we already knew.

Jill Schrider wrote an excellent journalistic research article, titled EXCLUSIVE: MASSIVE Democrat ‘Bot Farms’ Revealed Influencing Elections, War, And Racial Tension — 51,343,790,000 Social Media Impressions Since 2019 — They’re Gearing Up for November & 2024 #BlueCrew #DemCast - This is the Democrat Hive Mind.

As dramatic as that title sounds, the content of the article is even more explosive.

From that article:

“Their employees are a mix of ex-White House staffers, Democrat operatives, journalists, and social activists.

One of their co-content creators, Mindy Schwartz, worked at the White House for the National Security Council. Another one of their employees, Joanne Marie Oyer, works for the Obama Foundation.

Their website ‘Our Plan‘ page describes their operation in four simple bullet points:

• Curate content from messaging experts, creators, and news sources.

• Package that content into succinct strategic messages.

• Recruit, train & equip an army of social media users across social platforms to relay messaging through their accounts.

• Identify and disseminate strategic opportunities for volunteerism & donating, to support critical grassroots groups & candidates.

In an unlisted YouTube video posted to DemCast’s YouTube channel, co-founder and director of DemCast strategy, Lori Coleman, details a major function of DemCast’s strategy — using thousands of private chatrooms to artificially amplify messaging on the platform, garnering millions of impressions, artificially amplifying content to sway public opinion.”

It shows detailed screenshots, supporting their findings of automated bot farms, with automatic followers that are attracted and activated by the hashtag #BlueCrew or any of the other DemCast hastags.

Not surprisingly, Jill Schrider referenced the Ash experiments, as well:

“As researched in the Asch Conformity Experiments, “nearly 75% of the participants in the [Asch] conformity experiments went along with the rest of the group at least one time.

“After combining the trials, the results indicated that participants conformed to the incorrect group answer approximately one-third of the time.“

“The experiments also looked at the effect that the number of people present in the group had on conformity. When just one confederate was present, there was virtually no impact on participants’ answers. The presence of two confederates had only a tiny effect. The level of conformity seen with three or more confederates was far more significant.“

Individuals will act against their better judgment approximately one-third of the time when present in a group of 5 or more.

Now, apply these studies to social media operations such as DemCast’s where it would appear that hundreds of thousands of individuals are moving in one particular direction — it is almost impossible for an individual to comprehend speaking against such group cohesion.

Now, apply this concept to sociopolitical issues and you have one of the most successful brainwashing operations in human history.”

She goes on to detail how the tactics and methods used by DemCast are in actual breach of the Twitter rules and user agreements, so one has to wonder why Twitter hasn’t stepped up yet to end such practices, of which they doubtlessly are aware?

We’ve all seen them in action: the screenshots of hundreds of posts with an IDENTICAL message, flooding Twitter? That’s DemCast.

Brian Cates has been hot on their trail, after that article came out, and gave an excellent warning:

Those tactics don’t just aim to influence those who are unaware, but also to tangle up the energy and time of those ware ARE aware. Don’t engage. At most, RECORD AND EXPOSE, but don’t engage. It is not real!

The article ended:

“While DemCast utilizes tens of thousands of Twitter accounts in a coordinated attempt at manipulating public discourse, artificially amplifying left-eing messages/individuals — it is unclear just how many users within their operation are genuinely authentic. […]

DemCast is using tens of thousands of accounts to artificially boost sociopolitical subjects in a coordinated strategy to manipulate public opinion, sway elections, and artificially boost the public profile of hundreds of Democrat influencers and candidates for public office online.

Their tactics are not only unethical, deceptive, and inorganic — they’re subject to multiple violations of Twitter’s Terms of Services, including platform manipulation, inauthentic engagement, coordinated activity artificially influencing conversation, and more.”

As Brian said: read the full article, and think about it…

There IS interaction, and planned attempts to stifle the conversation. Just the other day, I came across this post by Chief Nerd on Telegram:

With the post by Chief Nerd adding: “Commenting on the move, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., CHD chairman and chief legal counsel, said: “Facebook is acting here as a surrogate for the federal government’s crusade to silence all criticism of draconian government policies. Our constitutional framers recognized this peril of government censorship.””

No surprise, since Meta owns both Facebook and Instagram, but it shows the reach between platforms we think of as separate.

This provides also a great opportunity to point out the following infograph.

Notice how Facebook has been focusing her acquisition strategy on cell phone apps, to expand her reach and prominence, including Whatsapp and Instagram.

But notice Google: they are actively and massively investing in artificial intelligence. What ist hat important?

In the last few days/weeks, the following news came out: On the website of the WEF, an article was posted that called for AI and human intelligence to police the internet.

When you click on that link, you will see the following disclaimer by the WEF:

“Readers: Please be aware that this article has been shared on websites that routinely misrepresent content and spread misinformation. We ask you to note the following:

1) The content of this article is the opinion of the author, not the World Economic Forum.
2) Please read the piece for yourself. The Forum is committed to publishing a wide array of voices and misrepresenting content only diminishes open conversations.”

Ok, noted, the WEF is not the author, but it is clear that they support this type of control, from their other writings.

It is in line with everything I’ve touched upon in this article.

It is a culmination, a last ditch effort to regain control. This time, through “Artificial intelligence”, which will be nuanced and checked, of course, by ‘human intelligence’. But while the article makes an appeal to use such to go after ‘child sexual abuse material’, the real aim is made clear: radicalization of extreme opinions, misinformation, hate speech. And we all know from how Twitter and Facebook, to name two that we dealt with in this article, are defining such terms, effectively weaponizing and politicizing them. Their ideas are tolerant, ours are not. It is that simple. And when that is not clear, they will use bot farms to create a false consensus. And when that is not enough, they will ban and remove all nay-sayers and critical sounds. Which will reinforce the appearance of a majority view in support of their tactics.

This is a call for global censorship, and nothing less.

One of the articles that wrote about this proposition on the WEF website, titled ‘Artificial intelligence – the king of global censorship?’, added a very interesting observation:

“Against the background of failures in the use of hybrid intelligence, it seems that they decided not to try to predict the future, but to design it, as Nobel laureate Dennis Gabor taught. That is to do social engineering.”

And it ended:

“One way or another, attempts to introduce global censorship with the help of artificial intelligence have not been marked by practical success. So far, much ado about nothing.”

That might be a bit too optimistic: it need not work 100% for them to still use it, and abuse it. Future development might quickly change this, as well, in whichever hybrid form of a new digital surveillance state.

But just as the existence and popularity of DemCast shows that the current DNC has totally lost the battle of ideas, and has to resort to Astro-turfing to even maintain a shred of credibility and public support, this type of news exploring the use of AI for censorship shows that they are also losing the information battle, having to resort to ever more drastic methods to force their point of view.

They can still inflict a lot of damage, like an animal that is at its most dangerous when cornered (which is in part because they become unpredictable), but we need to see the signs for what they are: desperation and retreat. They are acting, through DemCast, and through proposing AI censorship, from a position of weakness and disadvantage.

Let us remain vigilant, keep recording their tactics, spreading it to raise awareness, and above all, remain active: Go vote! Participate! Share news and articles! Talk with people!

The tide HAS turned. We started to see their tactics, and we’ve actively begun countering them, all over the place.

All is well.

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Small addendum:

In light of all the above, I had to share this little nugget as an extra tool in our tool kit: