The Great Fuck Checking
I’m not a big fan of swearing, but for this article I just had to make an exception. Not because swearing is good for you — but given the propaganda overload over the past three years, by which many people got conned, it’s high time to call out what it is.
Every time someone said to me “I trust the science”, I also heard “I don’t want to think for myself”. It’s nothing less than the death of the age of reason. The whole idea behind a scientific method used to be that you didn’t have to take anybody’s word for it — you could always verify it for yourself.
It almost feels that with religion receding as a priority from certain societies over the past decades, “believing science” is becoming a replacement for “believing in God”. “Scientism” might have just filled a gap due to which many people — yet again — prefer to be told what to believe and what is good and not good, giving rise to the fuck checker profession at large.
Information as Warfare
First, it’s critical to understand that information has become one of the most important pieces of modern warfare and geopolitical influence.
In fact, official propaganda centers, fully mandated by global power interests, exist all around the world, just take a look at this example:
— or check out:
Sources of Information
It also turns out, that the very companies finding, organizing, storing and supplying us with information weren’t created objectively, but with specific purposes and controls in place:
“Google fundamentally started as a CIA project” — Alan MacLeod (journalist and author of Propaganda in the Information Age).
Facebook’s military origins cannot be completely ignored either, even if “Fuck Checkers” try to paint it in the best possible light. I’d rather believe this Quora reply from an actual CIA employee — way more balanced and less manipulative than a typical fuck checkers “satire conclusion”.
And if anyone still has doubts about the structure and well coordinated use of massive tech companies in public opinion making and censorship, just go over the Twitter Files:
See also:
Google — blocks news content in Canada as part of test to be ready in case internet censorship bill passes.
Disinformation as Propaganda
The secret world of disinformation is actually for hire. It’s being actively used for meddling in elections and to sway public opinion. Ideology may do the talk, but money does the walk — with real science nowhere to be seen.
Examples:
The UK’s "Project Fear”
Fuck Checkers
This ultimately gave rise to the now famous Fuck Checkers who by self defined merit think they’ve identified facts, but by then spinning them until there is no more facts to be found, simply turned their hard earned work into brainless activism.
Stavroula Pabst beautifully analyzes and summarizes these “experts” and offers a philosophical perspective warning us of “The Role of the Expert”.
What about the leading international news agencies then? Reuters for instance has a big and serious fact checking department and whilst I personally had no bad interactions with them, I did wonder about Steve Kirsch’s post below and whether even the best could have fallen victim to their own principles.
More on these “experts”:
The International Fact-Checking Network a.k.a “IFCN” provides a “certification” used by some of the highest ranked press agencies out there, such as the German dpa.
The Power of Mass Media…
The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) is the counterpart to the American Council on Foreign Relations.
In a study titled "The United West Separated From The Rest: World Public Opinion One Year After Russia's War on Ukraine" it (probably unintentionally) reveals the power of the media over public opinion.
…and the Role of Artificial Intelligence
Now imagine this power combined with the unique capabilities of AI. Theoretically AI could be the beacon of light to fight fake fuck checkers, but in reality nothing “programmed” is ever truly “unbiased”.
It’s clear that AI follows this human trend imitating its makers and will (if nothing else) further accelerate information warfare and opinion making at a massive (yet highly individualized!) level — something which wasn’t possible thus far.
In particular “Conversational” AI will truly know how to push your buttons and even learn how to manipulate you.
Described as the AI Manipulation Problem, the risk is that AI systems will soon engage us in 𝘢𝘨𝘦𝘯𝘥𝘢-𝘥𝘳𝘪𝘷𝘦𝘯 𝘤𝘰𝘯𝘷𝘦𝘳𝘴𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘥𝘪𝘢𝘭𝘰𝘨 that convinces us to buy things we don't need, believe things that are untrue, even support extreme ideas we'd normally not consider. — Louis Rosenberg
The latest victim is Podcasting. Having attracted the attention of censorship proponents, AI is now used to detect “misinformation” in podcasts, even urging tech companies and regulators “to rise to the challenge”. I wonder where this will lead us, given that the principles of censorship are imposed on AI by the creators themselves.
On a lighter note and more in-line with the article’s humble f-word beginnings, imagine a world where anybody can be anyone yet nothing means anything — welcome DeepFake AI — to which the German government was just exposed to:
Putting together the technology advancements over the past decades with a possible decline in human cognitive function and combining that in a binary society controlled by power hungry individuals, it’s clear that we’re quite exposed to the deeply troubling nature of AI powered manipulated information.
Who are the organizations advocating misinformation and actively promoting censorship in those globally architectured propaganda campaigns? Well, you might be surpris…
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Modern Times and Opportunities to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.