{"id":81824,"date":"2022-04-29T10:40:04","date_gmt":"2022-04-29T15:40:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=81824"},"modified":"2022-04-29T10:52:02","modified_gmt":"2022-04-29T15:52:02","slug":"ignorance-is-strength","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=81824","title":{"rendered":"Ignorance is Strength"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past.
…
Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police.

-1984, George Orwell<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday at a budget hearing before the Committee on Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security, DHS Secretary Mayorkas made some news in revealing a new Disinformation Governance Board. (His written testimony<\/a> made no mention of it.) This came in an exchange with Rep. Lauren Underwood (D-Ohio). Video of the hearing is here<\/a>, the exchange starts at about the 1:39:54 mark.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Underwood: Another huge threat to our homeland is mis- and disinformation. You noted that it’s a concern of yours at the border with human smuggling organizations peddling information to exploint vulnerable migrants for profit.<\/p>

One of my main concerns about disinformation is that foreign adversaries attempt to destabilize our elections by targeting people of color with disinformation campaigns. After it became clear that there was more meddling in our 2016 election, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence authored a report on the disinformation tactics used by Russia’s Internet Research Agency, the IRA, to interfere in the election. The report found that “no single group of Americans was targeted by the IRA information operatives more than African Americans.”<\/p>

A newer trend that we saw in the 2020 election and already in the 2022 midterms is that disinformation is being heavily targeted at Spanish speaking voters, sparking and fueling conspiracy theories. DHS and its components play a big role in addressing mis- and disinformation in Spanish and other languages. Can you share what steps you’ve taken and what future plans you have to address Spanish language mis- and disinformation throug department-wide approach?<\/p>

Mayorkas: Our Under-Secretary for Policy, Rob Silvers, is co-chair with our principal deputy general counsel, Jennifer Daskal, in leading a just recently constituted Disinformation Governance Board. The goal is to bring the resources of the department together to address this threat. I just read a very interesting study that underscores the importance of the point that you make, the spread of mis- and disinformation in minority communities specifically, and we are focused on that in the context of our CP3 and other efforts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

When asked about it<\/a>, the odious Jen Psaki let the mask slip and mentioned COVID as a topic where the heavy hand of the government may be needed to keep the peasants in line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We know there has been a range of [disinformation] out there about a range of topics, I mean, including COVID for example, and also elections and eligibility,” Psaki said, adding that she would check for additional information on what the board plans to do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

The American Experiment also points ou<\/a>t that SitD’s own Senator Klobuchar is in on the act, tackling “health misinformation.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At a recent conference hosted by the University of Chicago\u2019s Institute of Politics, Senator Amy Klobuchar failed to answer a reporter\u2019s direct question about the nature of her proposed bill, the \u201cHealth Misinformation Act,\u201d leaving open the possibility of government and bureaucratic control over what constitutes internet misinformation and who has the power to make that decision.<\/p>

Sitting on a panel at the \u201cDisinformation and the Erosion of Democracy\u201d conference on April 8, Klobuchar was asked a direct question about her proposed bill by Chicago Thinker co-founder and Managing Editor Evita Duffy: \u201cIf I were to say there are only two sexes \u2014 male and female \u2014 would that be considered misinformation that you think should be banned speech on social media platforms?\u201d Klobuchar proceeded to give a light chuckle and insisted it pertained to vaccine misinformation during a \u201cpublic health crisis.\u201d She refused to define misinformation and the parameters under which the proposed bill\u2019s carveout would go into effect.<\/p>

Klobuchar\u2019s bill seeks to amend Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which gives internet platforms protection from civil liability for published content. The amendment creates a carveout that would strike immunity from those platforms that use algorithms promoting content and permit the Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), \u201cin consultation with the heads of other relevant Federal agencies and outside experts determined appropriate by the Secretary, shall issue guidance regarding what constitutes health misinformation\u2026\u201d<\/p>

Klobuchar\u2019s evasive \u201canswer\u201d is not surprising considering the actual language of the bill has zero mention of vaccines and fails to define \u201cmisinformation.\u201d But this lack of specific language and purpose in the bill \u2014 despite what Klobuchar may say at a conference \u2014 is very troubling. It leaves the door open for politicians and unelected bureaucrats in public health to determine what can and cannot be promoted on sites such as YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, harnessing the power of the federal government to punish platforms disseminating speech it deems \u201cmisinformation.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

As Scott Johnson pointed out at Powerline<\/a>, there is clearly a coordinated effort going on that has led to the creation of this board. In early April, at a conference entitled Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy<\/a>, at which Rep. Underwood was a featured speaker by the way, Barack Obama gave a lengthy address<\/a> entitled “Disinformation Is a Threat to Our Democracy”. He said:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All right. With that as my starting point, I believe we have to address not just the supply of toxic information, but also the demand for it. On the supply side, tech platforms need to accept that the play a unique role in how we, as a people and people around the world, are consuming information and that their decisions have an impact on every aspect of society. With that power comes accountability, and in democracies like ours, at least, the need for some democratic oversight.<\/p>

For years, social media companies have resisted that kind of accountability. They\u2019re not unique in that regard. Every private corporation wants to do anything it wants. So, the social media platforms called themselves neutral platforms with no editorial role in what their users saw. They insisted that the content people see on social media has no impact on their beliefs or behavior \u2014 (laughter) \u2014 even though their business models and their profits are based on telling advertisers the exact opposite.
\u2026
We do expect these companies to affirm the importance of our democratic institutions, not dismiss them, and to work to find the right combination of regulation and industry standards that will make democracy stronger. And because companies recognize the often dangerous relationship between social media, nationalism, domestic hate groups, they do need to engage with vulnerable populations about how to put better safeguards in place to protect minority populations, ethnic populations, religious minorities, wherever they operate.<\/p>

For example, in the United States, they should be working with, not always contrary to, those groups that are trying to prevent voter suppression and specifically has targeted black and brown communities. In other words, these companies need to have some other North Star other than just making money and increasing market share. Fix the problem that, in part, they helped create, but also to stand for something bigger.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

This announcement naturally gave rise to accusations that this board would be a new Ministry of Truth. I don’t think that is the right analogy, though. In Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of Truth was the propaganda factory. It was responsible for spreading Newspeak and rewriting history.

I think a better analogy from Orwell would be the Thought Police. This organization was responsible for enforcing not only what people could say, but what they could think. It’s why the Thought Police needed to be the only effective organization. If the people are controlled, and there’s no outlet to inspire other people to action, all else falls into place.

Orwell’s insight about the Thought Police was that they knew the truth, they knew the past. They had to in order to know how to change it. Someone knew the lies, and spread them anyway.

There was no mention from Rep. Underwood about efforts to declare the Hunter Biden laptop story as disinformation, and how people and organizations have been thrown off of public platforms for mentioning it and other “unapproved” thoughts.

The threat from boards like this and where they can go isn’t that government official truly believe things such as the Biden laptop story was Russian disinformation, or that Trump colluded with the Russians, or that men can be women, or that America is a systematically racist country. It’s that they know these to be lies yet spread them anyway, and worse, work to suppress your opportunities to say otherwise.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Inefficient nations were always conquered sooner or later, and the struggle for efficiency was inimical to illusions. Moreover, to be efficient it was necessary to be able to learn from the past, which meant having a fairly accurate idea of what had happened in the past.…Nothing is efficient in Oceania except the Thought Police. -1984, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":273926,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[321],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81824","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-left"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81824","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/273926"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=81824"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81824\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81868,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81824\/revisions\/81868"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=81824"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=81824"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=81824"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}