Seizing back control: The ILX lol brexit is how we're all gonna die thread.

:D

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D7PyIqIUwAIECJV.jpg

I doubt Gapes knows how to use a laptop, so he can't get the blame.

Chris Leslie maybe?

the UK's eurovision entry place (= last) belatedly being marked down EVEN FURTHER is good, to me

https://www.politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2019/05/22/the-remain-strategy-region-by-region-voting-guide

This is a decent tactical voting guide. I'm still toying with the idea of a Green vote but I'm on the fence as to whether 'send Labour a message on Brexit' is more important than 'prevent the Brexit Party from claiming victory'.

Obviously there's also the question of who I actually want representing me in Europe but that may be moot before long.

designed by one of its mps on laptop using microsoft word

Whatever happens to Change UK they will live on in the sales presentations of branding agencies as an example of what will happen if you don't hire them

Interesting piece by Ian Cobain on politically orchestrated PR campaigns in response to terrorist attacks/other unrest. Designed to appear spontaneous and grassroots stuff. I remember the I<3 MCR campaign was ready to be immediately rolled out after the riots and I bet all the bee stuff was organised centrally after the arena bomb

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/mind-control-secret-british-government-blueprints-shaping-post-terror-planning

There's something very performative about the way in which people who know none of the victims respond to terrorist attacks and it doesn't surprise me to learn they're shaped by this. In theory steering people towards grief and away from anger is a good thing but it still feels creepy. Also wouldn't people react that way anyway?

Yeah this definitely feels creepy. But the aftermath of these attacks as played out on social media is pretty weird and creepy anyway, and yeah, very performative in all sorts of ways. I find it hard to think of the net effect of social media as any good, in this or anything else.

Those of us who have lost a friend or relative to terrorists are well placed to offer solidarity to those in mourning - and to stand up to racists in the aftermath. That’s the way I personally express myself whenever there’s an event.

anything involving performative crowd behaviour/mass manipulation is creepy as fuck. Even if current intentions behind it are apparently quite benign, if people get good at it then hologram Goebbels will be saying you're doing it all wrong, fools. Or what if when far right groups start using the same techniques, and their spontaneous memes beat off the Gov ones. I feel I'm almost arguing for Xi's great fire-wall here!

I often wonder the extent to which countries are trialling all this stuff. A friend of mine is a professor of international politics, specifically japan/china, and I met him after some conference he attended on modern digital government in london, and he said it's generally accepted that every country is using bots on social media as part of their 'nudge' type work. maybe i was naive to believe otherwise, i hadn't really thought about it. i guess it's a short step from nudging to creating fake accounts etc.

if councils are able to game the discourse the mind boggles at what institutions with funding might be up to

i think it's a big jump from "they're doing this all over the place" (which i think is likely true and has been for some time) to "they'r doing this to -- for their purposes -- well controlled and well understood effect" (which requires quite a lot of unproveable assumptions, not least abt the accurate information-gathering abilities of a "they" that's a lot more unified than it really actually is)

yeah i mean i know how digitally incompetent government are, and how poorly conceived their goals are. the idea that they can or ever (a) have clear outcomes and (b) a plan for digital actions to deliver them is giving them a lot of credit, but even the fact they might be making fake social media accounts seems a sort of watershed, if true.

precision is def unlikely and mb not even desirable; the chaos and deniability that come w/ having things more dispersed can be useful in itself

from what i gather reading the twitter threads of ppl who cover internal chinese affairs professionally, it's been the case there ever since a chinese internet was established -- though the lines between private and state official are of course very differently drawn in that context (where everyone e.g. assumes the mods are state employees), and a sincerely patriotic citizen might be p much indistinguishable from a nark.

i haven't yet read yasha levine's "surveillance valley" -- but his argument is also very much that the wilder tech-piratical zones of the freedom-of-information freedom-from-interference infosphere, viz the EFF and Tor and so on, is and always has been stiff with government agency and government presence. you find and establish and run an unlicensed zone in order to place yourselves among the people who are likely to want to use such a thing blah blah blah.

and even here on our own dear ilx there's *insert unlikely username to hilarious surprise effect*

"yeah i mean i know how digitally incompetent government are, and how poorly conceived their goals are.."

is this coming from GCHQ rather than a gov dept though? They might be shit hot at this type of thing, they used to be i think.*

*apart from the 30's/50's decades of giving the keys to all their top secret files to various posh tankies, who used to often openly say things like "I'm a communist tbh" and start singing drunken renditions of the internationale at embassy parties without rousing suspicion.

yeah that's true actually, at least technically i suppose. i dunno if they are any better at actually functioning and setting goals, or understanding the public, but who knows really.

when I considered that [a certain poster] might be a chaos agent sent here to derail discussion and demotivate ilxors as directed by some oppressive state the veil was truly lifted

you have your answer, calz, they were always v bad at it -- what knowledge there is about the large-scale effects of information massaging is largely based on public assumptions that are already widely known and shared but by no means actually correct

the bad part of access to private data isn't "oh no they can now hoodwink all the dullards with machine-precision", it's that quite bad people have quite good access to all kinds of private information, which they can deploy in quite old-fashioned (= non-mass-media) ways

"widely known … but by no means actually correct" isn't very good usage, i mean "assumed to be known"

next Adam Curtis series already has this sorted.

when I considered that [a certain poster] might be a chaos agent sent here to derail discussion and demotivate ilxors as directed by some oppressive state the veil was truly lifted

― ogmor, Thursday, 23 May 2019 14:39 (seventeen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

fred b, lj or me

I thought he meant turrican

'but these likes, were not actually from people at all' - *burial interlude*

xpost

lol!

dude it's so obviously me

why all this talk of chaos agents? in my view it is time we got back to trashing the government once again, is it not?

everyone on ilx apart from me is a chaos agent iirc

why can't corbyn be young and dynamic like me

It is possible for Mrs May to quit as Conservative leader before Mr Trump's visit, but continue as prime minister on a caretaker basis

stoked 4 dis

https://media.giphy.com/media/GnH8umkZ7Rs5O/giphy.gif

strong look for may tbh

https://proxy.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FcN56PHfAFQA%2Fmaxresdefault.jpg&f=1

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVrMsKlZlcQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SiZ-XgJKAIk

this is a good run of posts

having no exit poll is a bit of dampener. They need to start thinking of how to increase Johnston Paints Trophy attendances, no fun at all is this.

It is possible for Mrs May to quit as Conservative leader before Mr Trump's visit, but continue as prime minister on a caretaker basis

She'll need to get down to Sidcup for her papers first.

luckily for democracy i had to go to the shops cos otherwise i've got a stinking cold and did not want to leave the settee

this is great

"The working class is the working class, regardless of skin colour".

Labour member and activist Guy Matthews on how the right will never represent the working class. pic.twitter.com/cQNrTrfEF6

— Labour Voices (@VoicesLabour) May 22, 2019

That was a good piece & they should do something like that officially!

As explained in today’s ⁦@EveningStandard⁩, the Theresa May premiership is over. Am reliably told she’ll announce tomorrow she’s stepping down on 10 June, after US state visit. https://t.co/djivjHalHx

— George Osborne (@George_Osborne) May 23, 2019

Imagine hanging round just to meet Donald Trump.

maybe she's got a milkshake for him

https://www.anorak.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/david-mellor.jpg

David Mellor says cos of May's lame leadership he's "never felt more embarrassed and humiliated" to be a member of the Conservatives.

good thread on CON electoral difficulties

Everybody seems to have forgotten that the Conservatives *won* a surprise 2015 majority while Nigel Farage had 4 million votes, then lost the majority 2017 with Ukip on 2% & most of those voters for May.

That was the long lost world of 4 years ago but shows not one-dimensional

— Sunder Katwala (@sundersays) May 24, 2019

BREXIT PARTY MILKSHAKE MAN: A SPLATTER ANALYSIS pic.twitter.com/qZKqJDzCzs

— Harvey (@harveyschmacker) May 23, 2019

false flag milkshake attack seems about the level those cunts would stoop to.

Hearty lol at 'CSI: Gammon' in the comments there

Milkshake man is also an ex-Para cleared of shooting an Irishman fleeing in the back, because of fucking course.

Extremely mad that I might miss this alleged resignation today, hang on until the bitter end Theresa!