"Where the Philippines goes, America follows. Take the weaponization of social media. We were a test case for America." (Maria Ressa)
Unwavering scholar in the global information ecosystem, Ressa predicted the US Jan 6 insurrection. Many rioters planned and coordinated their actions using social media platforms. The select committee investigating the riot is seeking a massive tranche of records from social media companies on whose platforms many rioters charged in the Capitol attack carried out the activities associated with the efforts to overturn the US 2020 election.
How did Ressa get her prediction right?
She interviewed, Rappler reported, the Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Christopher Wylie who revealed that the Philippines was a perfect place to test their techniques and technology due to: questionable rule of law, high social media usage, and corrupt politicians. He explained:
"A lot of time when [Cambridge Analytica] was looking to experiment with techniques, experiment with AI [artificial intelligence], experimenting with ways of – whether it's manipulating voter opinion or disseminating propaganda, what have you... It creates an ideal Petri dish-type situation where you can experiment on tactics and techniques that you wouldn't be able to as easily in the West... and if it doesn't work, it doesn't matter, you won't get caught. And if it does work, then you can then figure
Did Cambridge Analytica help PRRD win?
"It appears that 6 months before the United States presidential elections in 2016, Cambridge Analytica, a British political consulting firm, also had a hand in the Philippine presidential race," Rappler reported.
South China Morning Post reported that Cambridge Analytica helped PRRD.
"Facebook finally blocks Duterte's army of trolls," Asia Times headlined. "Similar to right-wing populists around the world, Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte has been among the greatest beneficiaries of social media platforms, where his propagandists command huge followings at the expense of broadly liberal mainstream media."
PETRI DISH-TYPE
"If it doesn't work, it doesn't matter, you won't get caught." The covert operation sounds benign. But, it's deadly and deceptive because it's almost undetectable to the whole populace. The successful test or experiment looked like a dropped bomb but no one knew about it. In her keynote address upon receiving the 2019 Shorenstein Journalism Award presented by Stanford University, Maria Ressa shed light on the shadowy landscape defaced by the covert implosion, as extracted (and edited for space) below:
If you can make people believe lies are the facts, then you can control them. If you want to rip the heart out of the democracy, you go after
Step 1: You lie all the time.
Step 2: It's your opponents and the journalists who lie.
Step 3. What's Truth? There is no truth.
Step 4. Resistance is impossible. The game is over.
If you have no facts you have no civic engagement. When you say a lie a million times it becomes a fact. It replaces fact.
Global Phenomenon
· "Patriotic Trolling" – State-sponsored online hate & harassment campaigns
·
Flood the market with false news, disinformation
·
Women are a favorite, easy target
3 Steps in the Philippines: A Case Study
1. Attack credibility. Allege corruption. Repeat exponentially.
2. Use sexual violence. Inflame biases. Fuel misogyny. Degrade as a sexual object.
3. Trend #Arrest LeiladeLima; #ArrestMariaRessa as Exhibits A &
Disinformation is like feeding you drugs. Once or twice you take it, not so bad. You can go back to being who you are. But if you take it all the time, it's like a drug, then you'll become an addict. Then you're no longer the same person. Think about our body politics, we're drugged, we're addicted, part of the problem we're having now with our democracy.
We are now seeing Chinese disinformation networks coming into our information ecosystem. We're being fed with poison. There's a virus that's being pumped into our body politics. And we are slowly dying.
Online and offline violence creates fear. People are afraid. Anyone who questions the brutal drug war or supports those who fight for truth is attacked with the full force of the Philippine government. Our law, in addition to social media, is weaponized. I am a cautionary tale.
What do we need to do?
We start with our area of influence. Demand accountability from powers. Stand up against the police. Report the lies. Tell your families and friends. Courage spread. We take care of what is in front of us.
Lies laced with anger and hate spread faster than facts.
Let me leave you, despite this, journalists are holding the line. The baton was passed to me at a really difficult time, and sometimes I wish it wasn't my time right now. But I have no choice.
RESSA'S ORDEAL
Interviewed by New York Times after being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Maria Ressa narrated her ordeal:
"It's horrific. I felt this, and we could see because we monitor – I think that's the other thing that Rappler had. We had a research team. Here's what they found in studying almost half a million social media attacks against me, from 2016. So 60% of the attacks are meant to tear down my credibility. And then, the other 40% are meant to tear down my spirit that includes death threats, that includes trying to find my weakness. I have a mole in my nose. I have eczema. I have dry skin, atopic dermatitis. So one of the memes that they spread is – a weakness, was a vulnerability. But then, when they spread it, they made it strength for me. I don't mind telling you now, I have atopic dermatitis.
"But what they did is they dehumanized me by constantly using me as a meme. I've been called every animal you can think of. The worst part is their nickname for me, which they even did code words for, which is scrotum face. So they took my head and then spliced it onto human genitals. And this would be months where I would wake up and the comments of their echo chambers would be filled with this horrific image. And it takes a while to recover, but I recovered. And I realized that part of every recovery from this sharing it with people. That's when I know that the sting is gone.
"And here's the part our data showed us. Our data showed us that women were attacked at least 10 times more than men. So this connects to that question of changing the culture. So if women are attacked 10 times more than men, what's the end goal of these attacks? There are two. The first is to pound the target to silence. The second is to create a bandwagon effect, manufactured reality, to make anyone else who's not aware of it think that this is true."
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." (George Santayana)
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