Damn, seeing all those AI generated images being taken at face value just makes me lose my faith in humanity.
These pictures remind me of YouTube thumbnails with fhe style of over emphasized visuals and it makes me wonder if people got accustomed to that style and that makes it easier to pass the BS test.
Given that Facebook’s primary userbase at this point is made up of middle-aged/elderly folk, it isn’t all that surprising to see so much of this slop taken at face value tbh. Still disheartening, though.
The one thing I’m holding out hope for is that things like this won’t lead a significant number new people into getting duped.
There’s a certain portion of the population that seems to question nothing and got duped long ago by all of those “every immigrant is a rapist and murder”-type Facebook posts with links to totallyrealnews.com. That segment of idiots remains unchanged. They will believe any wild claim and never fact check as long as the misinformation fits their world view.
The question is, how many people who aren’t already lost see these low-effort AI posts and take them at face value?
Disclaimer: I say this knowing full well that well that better quality and more subtle misinformation is also possible with AI, but this ain’t it.
Elon ruined Twitter when it was pretty alright. I doubt theres anything he can do for a nation except leach tax payer dollars like he already does.
I never tweeted myself but I liked to follow a couple of local news outlets and out local government agencies for public notices and emergencies. I gave up when stuff from Elon and a bunch of right wing stuff populated my feed. I rarely saw anything of interest. I started using Facebook for that. At least the local stuff pops up in addition to the crazy stuff.
Well at least using Facebook (for now) doesnt come with a side of NASA defunding.
Megaviral… sounds like idiocracy…
I have a question about this and I hope I’m able to ask it correctly the way it’s sitting in my head.
I know throughout history there have been strongmen who come to power, promise the world, and don’t deliver.
I also know about propaganda and its role in the above scenario.
My question is - if these images are seen by enough people who truly believe what they say - and they’re poor, maybe older, not in a great place overall, etc, and they voted Trump because they believe this…shit….what happens when they don’t deliver?
If they’re expecting homes and help and a magic, simple solution to all of their problems that never delivers, what happens not only to them psychologically, but also what bigger impact will their reactions have on the country as a whole?
In the US, I’m not so optimistic we’ll have that moment given the past 8 or so years. There will never be a realization that the Emperor has no clothes but the help will still never arrive. How long can that be sustained, and what happens when it can’t?
I hope that made sense and I apologize if it doesn’t.
We are in uncharted territory here. There is no crystal ball for what comes next.
That being said, this is not sustainable. Society is a contract. The contract goes away when parties to that contract begin to disagree on what that contract says, and that is inevitable when people are fed garbage without results. Most empires have collapsed under their own weight. I suspect this will happen to the US as well, which has always been the purpose of all this disinformation: not to consolidate power into a dictator, but instead to sow division, and rip apart the social contract. The fact that Americans are so polarized is proof of that division. You ask if people will ever wake up. Clearly half the the US has.
The only question is how that collapse will happen, and how peacefully it might be.
Preferably we will have a break up like the eastern bloc, though I suspect we will have a Yugoslavia style break up.
This makes a lot of sense and helps me to make sense of it all. Thank you.
Can’t wait for him to try and bully some of the big suppliers. What … you want how much money for a prototype… That will work wonders for the quality.
Maybe defense corporations will start selling devices with paywalled options or subscription.
Somehow the ai made his face more uncomfortable to look at
