When Virality Is the Message: The New Age of AI Propaganda

Seeing what White House Twitter account is posting is bizarre, and a bit scary. This is a government entity, a superpower, posting extreme and unserious content to the world. It's so ridiculous that I can't barely comprehend it. I don't understand how leaders in other countries can take the current US administration seriously.

Looking at the US from outside, I am starting to wonder how close they are to a societal collapse. Things seem to have gotten so extreme over there the last decade. Or maybe its not like that in reality, and its just the internet siphoning content that gets reactions.

The modern world is like Jean Baudrillard's vision of hell. Back in 1991 he wrote "The Gulf War did not take place", commenting on what was at the time a new development of 24/7 live media coverage of the war. Media saturation created a hyperreality where images about the war replaced the thing itself. How far we have come. We are so complacent here that war exists only as stream of symbols and sounds streaming out of our screen. I think many do not truly believe it is real.

Didn’t even mention the AI videos from China’s state media mocking Trump. This is the normal I guess.

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3347626/wh... https://files.catbox.moe/jv7tdp.mp4

I don't know if I would call this the new age of AI propaganda as much as I would call this "unserious, unprofessional, unqualified, authoritarian leaders would rather deceive their support base than offer serious policy solutions to societal problems."

We can notice in this article the conspicuous absence of the mature adults in the room using these tactics. We don't see a whole lot of party-sponsored AI memes trying to sell universal healthcare, enhanced public services and education, ending poverty and homelessness, addressing cost of living crisis, ending gasoline dependency, etc.

It's the age of AI propaganda for people with no good ideas, because AI is a substitute for good ideas.

Maybe the volume of AI content will finally get people to advocate for media awareness training, rather than the current strat of trying to scold platforms into only showing the manipulative content they side with.

> the most compelling content wins the most reach regardless of its origin or intent.

“Winning” means you have successfully manipulated a person who has so little capacity for reasoning that they will react to and make decisions from propaganda

If the plurality of humans have no ability or desire to actively resist manipulation then they are living in the world they are satisfied with

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