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LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media
Two defense experts explore the collision of war, politics, and social media, where the most important battles are now only a click away.
Through the weaponization of social media, the Internet is changing war and politics, just as war and politics are changing the Internet. Terrorists livestream their attacks, “Twitter wars” produce real world casualties, and viral misinformation alters not just the result of battles, but the very fate of nations. The result is that war, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battlespace that plays out on our smartphones.
P. W. Singer and Emerson Brooking tackle the mind bending questions that arise when war goes online and the online world goes to war. They explore how ISIS copies the Instagram tactics of Taylor Swift, a former World of Warcraft addict foils war crimes thousands of miles away, Internet trolls shape elections, and China uses a smartphone app to police the thoughts of 1.4 billion citizens. What can be kept secret in a world of networks? Does social media expose the truth or bury it? And what role do ordinary people now play in international conflicts?
Delving into the web’s darkest corners, we meet the unexpected warriors of social media, such as the rapper turned jihadist PR czar and the Russian hipsters who wage unceasing infowars against the West. Finally, looking to the crucial years ahead, LikeWar outlines a radical new paradigm for understanding and defending against the unprecedented threats of our networked world.
Unknown Binding
First published October 2, 2018
About the author
P.W. Singer
14 books658 followersPeter Warren Singer is Strategist and Senior Fellow at the New America Foundation. He previously was Director of the Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence at the Brookings Institution and the youngest scholar named Senior Fellow in Brookings's 101-year history. Described in the Wall Street Journal as “the premier futurist in the national- security environment," has been named by the Smithsonian as one of the nation’s 100 leading innovators, by Defense News as one of the 100 most influential people in defense issues, by Foreign Policy to their Top 100 Global Thinkers List, and as an official “Mad Scientist” for the U.S. Army’s Training and Doctrine Command. He has consulted for the US Military, Defense Intelligence Agency, and FBI, as well as advised a range of entertainment programs, including for Warner Brothers, Dreamworks, Universal, HBO, Discovery, History Channel, and the video game series Call of Duty, the best-selling entertainment project in history. Peter’s award winning books have been endorsed by people who range from the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs to the co-inventor of the Internet to the writer of HBO Game of Thrones.
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December 21, 2019
Nothing could, in an economic or real war, be more attractive than to be able to influence the population of all countries with internet and social media after years of infiltrating the social networks both by manipulating trends and creating undetectable armies of millions of fake or, and that´s an unsolvable problem, real profiles or just bots and AIs. Those are already so advanced that it´s very hard to differentiate between real humans and bot armies controlled by algorithms and it will soon be impossible to detect them.
Just take AlphaGo, AlphaStar, deep fake, quantum computing, etc. and the secret AIs that may already exist, they are all unbeatable, ever faster-evolving entities and just imagine what the Indian, US and Chinese military may have in their secret cyber weapon programs. Nobody will know if the video, it´s likers, commentators, links, references, etc. are real or not and how should someone confronted with a perfect deep fake video that has been combined with social engineering, a honey trap, compromising situations (all rejected by the victim) seem credible when real photos and videos are arranged around a real situation with many witnesses?
In the past it was much easier to keep one's citizens heads clean from nasty foreign propaganda and annoying alternative political models because all one had to do was to control all printed and broadcasted media and bingo, all people's minds just filled with the right thoughts. That went well until not even 2 decades ago when those social networks started their rise to ultimate power over information and the state lost control about what the people should think and do. Now filter bubbles and echo chambers are a logical result of the business model of search engines and social networks, because clicks, views, etc. are used to sell advertisements and so the manipulation is pretty easy.
That social media thing certainly has it´s good options too, cat pictures, foodp***, etc, but because this should be a pessimistic review about a frightening topic, I will just focus on the horrible stuff and ignore the happy go lucky elements.
So the cyberwar command of a fictive country, a huge conglomerate or a multinational megacorporation starts using all those tools and the power to manipulate the headlines, discussions, hyped topics, videos, news articles, etc. by pushing just the content they want to see. But that´s just the beginning, it´s not just about spreading some bad blood or doing a little harm by manipulations that could cost a few billion or ruin the one or other company, but a new dimension of "Divide and rule" everywhere, anytime and with just one click.
What comes better than manipulating democratic elections with troll armies, haters, fake news and massive amounts of cash to push each content on all social media platforms and google searches. Anything should escalate as quickly as possible and the red lines, differences and hate between all different groups possible should grow. Democrats vs. Republicans, black people vs. white people, refugees vs. homelanders (watch The Boyzs, great series), left vs. right, conservative vs. progressive, etc. the more poisonous and hate-filled the debates, the more divided and weakened the country and its inner stability, the better. It functions great since millennia.
All that together weakens the state from inside, making it sure that the government and secret services have to stay alarmed and focused on the inner problems, on the real option of state of emergency until civil war in the case of a war or natural disaster.
That might seem exaggerated and improbable, but who has read a bit about military mind and war games, think tanks and war tactics in general knows that everything can be weaponized and nothing seems so sexy to a four-star general as just to click the button, avoiding to accidentally drop the nuke, but he sh**storm instead, probably combined with a cool quote like "Unleash the trolls!"
A small version of this total media control is the individual manipulation of search results, update feeds, trending topics, hiding certain topics and comments, make one buy buy buy stuff, hiding comments one made or the comments or answers of friends to change the context, what all together accumulates to the large scale and the mentioned bigger problems. Although sending subconscious purchase incentives, voting proposals, etc. is, of course, the hottest dream of each Orwellian agitator or PR expert.
A bit larger topic ist the misuse of social media by all kinds of extremist groups, but what ist that compared to the capabilities of superpowers. Of course the media focus is always on those 2 groups of problems, live ISIS decapitation videos, individual filter bubbles and murderers using the internet to recruit new suicide bombers to distract the public from the real cyberwar scenarios between large states, corporations and conglomerates. Even politicians and parties and all the lies are just the tip of the iceberg, because the social transformations in the background are the real deal.
A combination of cyber attacks with conventional war is a logical step, destabilizing the country to attack before a real physical invasion and to prepare the world public for a quick, easy and justified war. The preparation for the legitimization of attacks may begin months or even years before the first real battle, so that millions of likes, shares and comments may strengthen the righteousness. Clickbaiting #patrioticwar share and like
It is a problem of human nature that lies and hate tend, sexy as they are, to spread better, faster and wider than the complicated truth that may be combined with critical, objective analysis nobody who truly believes in something very very much wants to do because it could show nasty cognitive dissonances, what leads to an overrepresentation of harmful, hate-filled content and news. The ultimate goal is to, by repeating mantras as often as possible, make sure that people believe in nothing, except the contagious, poisonous web feeds, and deem everything fake news and evil propaganda that doesn´t conform the doctrine and agenda of the puppet masters.
How can any private or public supervisory body differentiate between parody, art, protest, provocation, free speech, debate, propaganda, etc. by real people or fake accounts? It is very complicated to deal with those problems, because it involves freedom of speech and free internet and each attempt to avoid infiltration and demagogic speech would destroy civil rights at the same moment so the only way might be to make all people educated and wise. Just joking, there is certainly no solution, we are doomed and the world has been transformed to a William Gibson novel. Great author, by the way, he writes nonfiction about present age topics.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critici...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberte...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compute...
Just take AlphaGo, AlphaStar, deep fake, quantum computing, etc. and the secret AIs that may already exist, they are all unbeatable, ever faster-evolving entities and just imagine what the Indian, US and Chinese military may have in their secret cyber weapon programs. Nobody will know if the video, it´s likers, commentators, links, references, etc. are real or not and how should someone confronted with a perfect deep fake video that has been combined with social engineering, a honey trap, compromising situations (all rejected by the victim) seem credible when real photos and videos are arranged around a real situation with many witnesses?
In the past it was much easier to keep one's citizens heads clean from nasty foreign propaganda and annoying alternative political models because all one had to do was to control all printed and broadcasted media and bingo, all people's minds just filled with the right thoughts. That went well until not even 2 decades ago when those social networks started their rise to ultimate power over information and the state lost control about what the people should think and do. Now filter bubbles and echo chambers are a logical result of the business model of search engines and social networks, because clicks, views, etc. are used to sell advertisements and so the manipulation is pretty easy.
That social media thing certainly has it´s good options too, cat pictures, foodp***, etc, but because this should be a pessimistic review about a frightening topic, I will just focus on the horrible stuff and ignore the happy go lucky elements.
So the cyberwar command of a fictive country, a huge conglomerate or a multinational megacorporation starts using all those tools and the power to manipulate the headlines, discussions, hyped topics, videos, news articles, etc. by pushing just the content they want to see. But that´s just the beginning, it´s not just about spreading some bad blood or doing a little harm by manipulations that could cost a few billion or ruin the one or other company, but a new dimension of "Divide and rule" everywhere, anytime and with just one click.
What comes better than manipulating democratic elections with troll armies, haters, fake news and massive amounts of cash to push each content on all social media platforms and google searches. Anything should escalate as quickly as possible and the red lines, differences and hate between all different groups possible should grow. Democrats vs. Republicans, black people vs. white people, refugees vs. homelanders (watch The Boyzs, great series), left vs. right, conservative vs. progressive, etc. the more poisonous and hate-filled the debates, the more divided and weakened the country and its inner stability, the better. It functions great since millennia.
All that together weakens the state from inside, making it sure that the government and secret services have to stay alarmed and focused on the inner problems, on the real option of state of emergency until civil war in the case of a war or natural disaster.
That might seem exaggerated and improbable, but who has read a bit about military mind and war games, think tanks and war tactics in general knows that everything can be weaponized and nothing seems so sexy to a four-star general as just to click the button, avoiding to accidentally drop the nuke, but he sh**storm instead, probably combined with a cool quote like "Unleash the trolls!"
A small version of this total media control is the individual manipulation of search results, update feeds, trending topics, hiding certain topics and comments, make one buy buy buy stuff, hiding comments one made or the comments or answers of friends to change the context, what all together accumulates to the large scale and the mentioned bigger problems. Although sending subconscious purchase incentives, voting proposals, etc. is, of course, the hottest dream of each Orwellian agitator or PR expert.
A bit larger topic ist the misuse of social media by all kinds of extremist groups, but what ist that compared to the capabilities of superpowers. Of course the media focus is always on those 2 groups of problems, live ISIS decapitation videos, individual filter bubbles and murderers using the internet to recruit new suicide bombers to distract the public from the real cyberwar scenarios between large states, corporations and conglomerates. Even politicians and parties and all the lies are just the tip of the iceberg, because the social transformations in the background are the real deal.
A combination of cyber attacks with conventional war is a logical step, destabilizing the country to attack before a real physical invasion and to prepare the world public for a quick, easy and justified war. The preparation for the legitimization of attacks may begin months or even years before the first real battle, so that millions of likes, shares and comments may strengthen the righteousness. Clickbaiting #patrioticwar share and like
It is a problem of human nature that lies and hate tend, sexy as they are, to spread better, faster and wider than the complicated truth that may be combined with critical, objective analysis nobody who truly believes in something very very much wants to do because it could show nasty cognitive dissonances, what leads to an overrepresentation of harmful, hate-filled content and news. The ultimate goal is to, by repeating mantras as often as possible, make sure that people believe in nothing, except the contagious, poisonous web feeds, and deem everything fake news and evil propaganda that doesn´t conform the doctrine and agenda of the puppet masters.
How can any private or public supervisory body differentiate between parody, art, protest, provocation, free speech, debate, propaganda, etc. by real people or fake accounts? It is very complicated to deal with those problems, because it involves freedom of speech and free internet and each attempt to avoid infiltration and demagogic speech would destroy civil rights at the same moment so the only way might be to make all people educated and wise. Just joking, there is certainly no solution, we are doomed and the world has been transformed to a William Gibson novel. Great author, by the way, he writes nonfiction about present age topics.
A wiki walk can be as refreshing to the mind as a walk through nature in this completely overrated real life outside books:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_m...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critici...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filter_...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fake_news
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberwa...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberat...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyberte...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compute...
Read
May 22, 2022صدرت عن دار آفاق ترجمتي لكتاب "شِبْه حرب" في 560 صفحة من التحليلات المميزة لما يحدث في عالمنا في السنوات الأخيرة بعد صعود نجم وسائل التواصل وسيطرتها على حياتنا
الكتاب يتطرق إلى موضوعات عدة مهمة تتماس مع أحداث كبرى تقع في العالم الآن
كحرب روسيا وأوكرانيا التي تؤرق الناس في جميع أنحاء العالم
يتطرق الكتاب إلى نشأة وسائل التواصل منذ التلغراف ووصولا إلى الإنترنت ووسائل التواصل الإجتماعي
ويربط الأحداث السياسية في السنوات الأخيرة بما يحدث على هذه الساحة الرقمية الافتراضية
وكيف تؤثر على نشوء وحركة كل حدث من هذه الأحداث
سنتعرف على كيفية نشأة فيس بوك ونتوغل في عقل مارك بطريقة أعتبرها استشرافية تنبأت بالعديد مما يحدث الآن من مهازل تحت ستار معايير المجتمع
وكذا السبب الهزلي الذي كان وراء ظهور يوتيوب
وغير ذلك الكثير
سنمر على حكومة الصين وعجائب الرقابة فيها
وسنتعرف على "دمى الجوارب" الروسية ومثيلاتها في أنحاء مختلفة من العالم
وسندخل عالم داعش الرقمي كما لم نره من قبل
الكتاب مميز وشرفت بترجمته وأرجو أن ينال إعجاب القارئ
January 8, 2019
Singer and Brookings provide an overview of how propaganda/advertising has become exponentially more powerful via social media. ISIS effectively used social media to attract new adherents and amazingly, used it to intimidate the Iraqi army such that they relinquished territory without a fight. Anyone following current news coverage knows that the Russians were ‘everywhere’ in the 2016 election—hiring an army of full-time disinformation artists to flood Facebook, Instagram and Twitter in order to increase fear between groups—whether it was immigrants, racial groups or political parties. The goal was to ensure the election of the weakest President possible; in 2016, that proved to be Trump.
Singer and Brooking note that online warfare includes the 4Ds—“dismiss the critic, distort the facts, distract from the main issue, and dismay the audience. Unfortunately when these tactics ‘go viral’ and garner thousands and thousands of ‘likes/shares’, the current system allows the perpetrator to make money. Plus, the algorithms used by social media use those ‘likes/shares’ to tailor everything from the ads you see to the web-searches you conduct. The result is an echo chamber. It really causes one to pause before ‘liking or sharing’ anything ever again.
Then there is China. They are using social media to oversee what their citizens say and do. Every person in China with a smartphone is required to download a particular government ap, and the police can confront them anywhere to see if they have the ap on their phone. If they don’t, they can be arrested. Talk about ‘Big Brother’!
It is a whole new world out there and only constant questioning and investigation will help to counter the tidal wave of online warfare. Highly recommend.
Singer and Brooking note that online warfare includes the 4Ds—“dismiss the critic, distort the facts, distract from the main issue, and dismay the audience. Unfortunately when these tactics ‘go viral’ and garner thousands and thousands of ‘likes/shares’, the current system allows the perpetrator to make money. Plus, the algorithms used by social media use those ‘likes/shares’ to tailor everything from the ads you see to the web-searches you conduct. The result is an echo chamber. It really causes one to pause before ‘liking or sharing’ anything ever again.
Then there is China. They are using social media to oversee what their citizens say and do. Every person in China with a smartphone is required to download a particular government ap, and the police can confront them anywhere to see if they have the ap on their phone. If they don’t, they can be arrested. Talk about ‘Big Brother’!
It is a whole new world out there and only constant questioning and investigation will help to counter the tidal wave of online warfare. Highly recommend.
October 19, 2018
"There is a war... for your Mind!"
That's the slogan of InfoWars, the incendiary conspiracy news network and nutritional supplement marketing firm. And while Alex Jones is wrong about almost everything, he's right about that. In LikeWar Singer and Brooking ably synthesize a sophisticated picture of information warfare in 2018, drawing from sources as diverse as Taylor Swift, Donald Trump, and ISIS, to argue that the internet has lead to a blurring of lines between consumer, citizen, journalist, activist, and warrior which threatens the foundations of liberal democracy. The tech companies which built these platforms and profited from them must grapple with the politics of their technologies, before we all reap the whirlwind.
Computer networks and smart phones connect billions of people, allowing ideas to flow faster than ever before in history. Sometimes, the results can be impressive. The Chiapas Zapatista movement in 1994 was a dial-up and fax version of a network insurgency that managed to bring enough international opprobrium on Mexico that the government blinked, and reached some kind of political accord (Chiapas is complicated). More recently, Eliot Higgins and a team of open source analysts at Bellingcat managed to track down the exact BUK missile system and Russian soldiers responsible for shooting down MH 17 in 2014.
But there are a lot of dark sides. When people connect, the emotion that spreads most rapidly is anger. Lies spread five times faster than truth. Musicians can use social networks to directly connect with their fans, and ISIS uses it to connect with alienated Muslim youths worldwide. Social networks sort diverse citizens into filter bubbles of people who think alike. Eliot Higgin's careful open source intelligence has a paranoid fun-house mirror version in the QAnon conspiracy, where Qultist decoders find hidden messages from an alleged 'senior white house source'.
And then there is the matter of information war, an area that even now, after years of offensive cyber operations, liberal democracies still don't understand. Hostile propaganda slips into Western news networks and major platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram are infested with bots. LikeWar can even take a personal toll. Over the course of writing this book, General Michael Flynn went from forward looking full-spectrum commander to head Trumpist conspiracy cheerleader to indicted and plead out felon. Flynn's fall is complex, but it can't be separated from the internet. If the trolls got him, what chance does your idiot cousin stand? The counters, 'citizen truth teams' and senior emissaries to groups vulnerable to recruitment, seem like thin reeds against the coming maelstrom of noise.
LikeWar starts with Clausewitz's dictum that war is a continuation of politics by other means, and there are clear links between cyberspace and physical space. Intensity of hashtags impacted the subsequent intensity of Israeli airstrikes during attacks on the Gaza strip. ISIS used propaganda to create an aura of invincibility that outflanked the defenders of Mosul, while Russia denied that its 'little green men' were even in Ukraine. But the difference is that cyberspace is constructed space rather than natural space. The networks are built, maintained, and owned by real corporations and real people. The internet grew from an anarchic specialized scientific network to a major engine of commerce and communicate with little deliberate government oversight. Section 230 absolved American companies of responsibility for policing content, with major carve outs for copyrighted IP and pornography. Yet as concerns over cyberbullying and counter-terrorism rose, major networks adopted digital constitutions that were permissive towards speech and censorious towards erotica. Policing content is and was possible, but always took a back seat to growth and engagement, the guide stars of Silicon Valley.
The future is if anything, darker. Advances in machine learning and AI allow ever more realistic bots, computer generated DeepFakes where a politician can be programmed to say anything, and personalized targeting of people with exactly the propaganda they'll believe. There are defensive counters, but if I might draw military analogies, what we saw in 2016 was armored warfare circa 1918: clearly the future, but not yet a mature system. Given the pace of technology, we only have a few years before digital blitzkrieg.
I'm extremely online, and I've been following this space for years. I've presented at multiple conferences on this topic, including Governance of Emerging Technologies and Association of Internet Researchers. LikeWar is the book I wish I'd written. Cognizant, forward looking, and deeply researched, it is vital reading for anyone interested in technology or politics.
My only reservation is that I wish the sources were better linked in the text, instead of being buried in static endnotes. Maybe the next edition will push an update.
July 17, 2019
Um dos livros mais importantes que li em 2018. Uma discussão bem importante sobre o que mudou quando mídias mudaram, como quando o rádio surgiu, e como o campo político está sendo transformado pelas mídias socais.
Alguns pontos que mais me marcaram: a ocupação militar do ISIS na fronteira do Iraque em 2014 aconteceu via mídias sociais (incluindo bots no Twitter e coordenação por WhatsApp), para ganhar apoiadores, causar medo e conseguir atenção; assim que o rádio se tornou popular, virou instrumento político, o tipo de discurso teve que mudar e ficar mais dinâmico e quem soube explorar essa nova mídia deixou a política anterior para trás; e ao invés de censurar, é mais eficiente soterrar a verdade com desinformação. Vale a estratégia dos "4 Ds" da KGB ainda usada em redes sociais: desqualificar os críticos, distorcer os fatos, destrair do problema principal e desanimar (cansar) a audiência.
Alguns pontos que mais me marcaram: a ocupação militar do ISIS na fronteira do Iraque em 2014 aconteceu via mídias sociais (incluindo bots no Twitter e coordenação por WhatsApp), para ganhar apoiadores, causar medo e conseguir atenção; assim que o rádio se tornou popular, virou instrumento político, o tipo de discurso teve que mudar e ficar mais dinâmico e quem soube explorar essa nova mídia deixou a política anterior para trás; e ao invés de censurar, é mais eficiente soterrar a verdade com desinformação. Vale a estratégia dos "4 Ds" da KGB ainda usada em redes sociais: desqualificar os críticos, distorcer os fatos, destrair do problema principal e desanimar (cansar) a audiência.
February 17, 2020
Читаю «Війну лайків» і мені відлунює, що там є так багато про нас.
Це книжка про сучасні інформаційні війни, в які зараз втягнутий весь світ. Американські дослідники Пітер Сінґер та Емерсон Брукінґ зібрали разом і гарно пояснили все те, з чим ми маємо справу щодня, але фрагментарно, а тут об‘ємна цілісна картина. У світі книжка вийшла 2018-го, і в нас на диво швидко видали - торік. Як і чому Трамп став президентом, як влаштовані російські фабрики тролів і що вони роблять, як використовують інтернет терористичні організації, революціонери та тиранії.
Як легко Росія маніпулює нашими емоціями, культувуючи весь цей довколишній хейт. Чи важко нас довести до сказу — легесенько: почитайте новини (як сьогодні про цей сумнівної якості телепродукт).
Про безпардонні фейки як журналістський жанр Russia Today. Про падіння Боїнґа та розслідування Bellingcat. Про Кіберхаліфат. Про те, як ізраїльська армія має окремий спецпідрозділ, що створює іпоширює меми. (Колеги). Про нові форми дипломатії, тиранії та шпигунства. І взагалі про те, куди цей світ котиться
Це книжка про сучасні інформаційні війни, в які зараз втягнутий весь світ. Американські дослідники Пітер Сінґер та Емерсон Брукінґ зібрали разом і гарно пояснили все те, з чим ми маємо справу щодня, але фрагментарно, а тут об‘ємна цілісна картина. У світі книжка вийшла 2018-го, і в нас на диво швидко видали - торік. Як і чому Трамп став президентом, як влаштовані російські фабрики тролів і що вони роблять, як використовують інтернет терористичні організації, революціонери та тиранії.
Як легко Росія маніпулює нашими емоціями, культувуючи весь цей довколишній хейт. Чи важко нас довести до сказу — легесенько: почитайте новини (як сьогодні про цей сумнівної якості телепродукт).
Про безпардонні фейки як журналістський жанр Russia Today. Про падіння Боїнґа та розслідування Bellingcat. Про Кіберхаліфат. Про те, як ізраїльська армія має окремий спецпідрозділ, що створює іпоширює меми. (Колеги). Про нові форми дипломатії, тиранії та шпигунства. І взагалі про те, куди цей світ котиться
January 20, 2021
I have really mixed feelings about this book. I loved parts of it and I hated others. I loved the volume of information and I hated the obvious bias and manipulation. In general though I will say that I liked the book.
It really offers a lot of information on how social media has been used to manipulate people. How it is used in China to control people. How it has been used in war and politics. The stories about ISIS using it were fascinating. I didn't know much about how it has been used in the Israel/Palestine conflict although I of course saw some of it online. There are a lot of examples that show us how even regular people managed to make a lot of impact in war conflicts. I also liked reading about social media in the Ukraine war which is a topic that is interesting for me.
What I disliked though was the obvious bias when it comes to American politics. The author tells us about homophily and confirmation bias, he doesn't deny that it affects everyone. Yet when talking in more detail we somehow never hear of how social media used it to manipulate the left side. Everything is about evil Trump. His twitter, how he won because of lies on Facebook, the Russians of course. But it looks like democrats have done nothing wrong. How could they, they are always right. We learn that the uninformed ones are more likely fall for lies. But apparently those are only conservatives. The left are too smart. Yet their politicians seem not to be smart enough to use social media for their manipulation. Or maybe they are but they are too decent for it. Give me a break. All past 4 years (at least) were a massive left wing manipulation by the media including social media. Even if the author kept on showing his bias and yet would at least bring some examples of this being done from his own political side the book would be better.
The conclusion is something I absolutely disagree with. It talks about censorship that is needed online. The way it sounds to me that he wants it to be what China has, all for "harmony". It first seems nice to get rid of all the nazis and racists etc. but then one should remember that the left call anyone to the right of them a racist even if the topic has nothing to do with race. We already see the attack on the conservatives in the past month. Keep on shutting people up, they will come back. Also, it is said how in the beginning social media platforms were neutral because they saw it as a business and didn't want to turn anyone away. Well, this is what happens right now as well not some "moral awakening". The pressure from one political side that took over most business got to sites like Facebook who now obey the ones who will bring them money.
So in summary, this book is really enjoyable for the information and gives one a lot to think about our modern society and the role social media has in it. How fast some information or misinformation can be spread, how it can be manipulative when using the right techniques and targets, how even small people like us can end up go viral and do a lot of change or damage, how hard it may be to see difference between truth and lie because of the massive amount of information coming at us with some very skillful liars and especially how politicians have been adjusting to it and using it for their benefit. But anyone who will not have confirmation bias in this case will easily see how one sided it is. Still doesn't delete the good parts of the book and stops one from enjoying it but one should keep it in mind.
It really offers a lot of information on how social media has been used to manipulate people. How it is used in China to control people. How it has been used in war and politics. The stories about ISIS using it were fascinating. I didn't know much about how it has been used in the Israel/Palestine conflict although I of course saw some of it online. There are a lot of examples that show us how even regular people managed to make a lot of impact in war conflicts. I also liked reading about social media in the Ukraine war which is a topic that is interesting for me.
What I disliked though was the obvious bias when it comes to American politics. The author tells us about homophily and confirmation bias, he doesn't deny that it affects everyone. Yet when talking in more detail we somehow never hear of how social media used it to manipulate the left side. Everything is about evil Trump. His twitter, how he won because of lies on Facebook, the Russians of course. But it looks like democrats have done nothing wrong. How could they, they are always right. We learn that the uninformed ones are more likely fall for lies. But apparently those are only conservatives. The left are too smart. Yet their politicians seem not to be smart enough to use social media for their manipulation. Or maybe they are but they are too decent for it. Give me a break. All past 4 years (at least) were a massive left wing manipulation by the media including social media. Even if the author kept on showing his bias and yet would at least bring some examples of this being done from his own political side the book would be better.
The conclusion is something I absolutely disagree with. It talks about censorship that is needed online. The way it sounds to me that he wants it to be what China has, all for "harmony". It first seems nice to get rid of all the nazis and racists etc. but then one should remember that the left call anyone to the right of them a racist even if the topic has nothing to do with race. We already see the attack on the conservatives in the past month. Keep on shutting people up, they will come back. Also, it is said how in the beginning social media platforms were neutral because they saw it as a business and didn't want to turn anyone away. Well, this is what happens right now as well not some "moral awakening". The pressure from one political side that took over most business got to sites like Facebook who now obey the ones who will bring them money.
So in summary, this book is really enjoyable for the information and gives one a lot to think about our modern society and the role social media has in it. How fast some information or misinformation can be spread, how it can be manipulative when using the right techniques and targets, how even small people like us can end up go viral and do a lot of change or damage, how hard it may be to see difference between truth and lie because of the massive amount of information coming at us with some very skillful liars and especially how politicians have been adjusting to it and using it for their benefit. But anyone who will not have confirmation bias in this case will easily see how one sided it is. Still doesn't delete the good parts of the book and stops one from enjoying it but one should keep it in mind.
August 25, 2019
Every new technology is disruptive and many of those in the past bear an uncanny resemblance in their effects to those of today. Each has been heralded as providing the means for everlasting peace. Moveable type democratized book production making reading almost a required skill yet contributed to religious upheaval. The telegraph and then the telephone made communication virtually instantaneous and while they brought people closer together provided the means for generals to control their troops from afar. Radio gave FDR the means to go around the newspapers who had pushed back against his third and fourth terms. His fireside chats reduced his message to just short bursts of ten-minute talks (tweets of the day, if you will) while Goebbels noted that the rise of Nazism would never have been possible without radio. Television forced politicians to change their habits and locked in the public to news as entertainment. It ended the Vietnam War by bringing battle scenes into living rooms. The Internet, still in its infancy really, is equally disruptive by changing the way we link to one another.
Twitter, live streaming, and blogging have become essential parts of the distribution of information, both real and fake. Virtually everyone has a smart-phone which even radically alters the battlefield. The Russians used the geo-location transmissions of Ukrainian soldiers cellphones to zero in their artillery on those troops during that brief war.
Cyber warfare includes more than just hacking a network. It's possible to cause damage by hacking information as well. Singer and Brooking cite the seesaw battle for Mosul in Iraq as just one example. ISIS used Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook to manipulate likes and the streams to promote their own POV. By manipulating images, followers, and hashtags they were successful in winning converts and battles. The U.S. and Iraqi armies were totally unprepared for this propaganda warfare, but they learned fast, and the #freemosul tag soon appeared countering the ISIS streams with those more favorable to U.S. actions. Just as Amazon has disrupted commerce, so had social media disrupted warfare and politics.
Terrorists now show their work online. They use Twitter routinely. Russia tries to destabilize democracies by fomenting distrust of civil institutions with fake material. The result is that war, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battleground that plays out on our smartphones. Singer and Brooking, using a combination of stories and research, lay out the problems facing us with new ways of conducting warfare. But it works both ways. Those Russian soldiers who shot down MH17 were identified through painstaking crowd sourcing work online by tracking soldier's emails, tire treads, registration numbers, all sorts of clues that were found online. Their work for the Dutch Investigation team was hacked by Russian hackers attempting to hide the Russian involvement.
Propaganda can now go viral. Fake stories are re-tweeted by confederates whose followers often unwittingly re-tweet the false information and soon millions have received precisely the message intended by the original poster who may be a governmental entity seeking to destabilize an adversary. The audience is huge as is the volume. Around 3.4 billion people have access to the Internet -- about half the world's population. Roughly 500 million tweets are sent each day and nearly seven hours of footage is uploaded on YouTube every second in 76 languages.
"No matter how outlandish these theories sound, they served their purpose successfully. 'The disinformation campaign [around the flight] shows how initially successful propaganda can be. . . . Obviously the ...lies were eventually debunked, but by then their narrative had been fixed in many people's minds.' That is the overarching goal of information hackers: 'The more doubt you can sow in people's minds about all information, the more you will weaken their propensity to recognize the truth.'"
Trump was one of the first to recognize the power of Twitter. Following his massive bankruptcy and declining interest in the Apprentice TV show, Trump began to tweet thousands of messages, bombarding the twitter-sphere with provocative, false, and often incendiary tweets. Soon his financial peccadilloes were forgotten, obliterated by his Twitter-storm. His infamy rose, but he didn't care as he valued the attention more than anything. It's a lesson he has never forgotten. As Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, said, "it matters less that what you say is true, only that it be believed."
The recent video of Nancy Pelosi appearing to be drunk and the Trump's attempt to doctor the CNN video showing that Acosta had inappropriately touched a white House intern are just a couple examples of internal use of social media to influence popular thought.
Lifewire.com, a technology website based in New York, defines an internet troll as a modern version of the same mythical character. They hide behind their computer screens and go out of their way to cause trouble on the Internet. Like its mythical predecessor, an internet troll is both angry and disruptive - often for no real reason. The effects can be completely out of proportion to their size.
The question remains what should governments do, if anything, to shut down trolls. In some cases they are freedom fighters trying to rally against a corrupt government. Would it be better to simply keep the Internet as open as possible? Satire, parody, misleading content, imposter content, fabricated content and manipulated content all need to be seen separately from each other and dealt with accordingly. How is that to be accomplished? Who will control it?
The "Like" phenomenon is an important part of the campaign. The more "likes" a piece of news or comment gets on a news or social site, the more likely it is to be believed. People are more likely to believe a headline if they have seen a similar one before. “It didn’t even matter if the story was preceded by a warning that it might be fake,” the authors write. “What counted most was familiarity. The more often you hear a claim, the less likely you are to assess it critically.” That's what irritates me about the media's obsession with Trump's Tweets. By repeating them incessantly and parsing them repeatedly, they are validated. That, to some extent, was the genius of the Russian interference in the last election. You don't need sophisticated hackers to implement it either, just a bunch of people promoting a certain meme or thought until it becomes a tsunami overwhelming any other rational discussion; it becomes "the truth." Slick videos, click bait, and viral memes become the new weapons in undermining democracy effectively grounding billion dollar fighter jets which then become obsolete as the war has already been lost.
As an aside, I remember listening to a commentator who suggested that the Phil Donahue show started the descent into irrationality. He was the first to invite callers on the show live to express their opinion. Soon all the shows were doing it. Callers became the experts and soon everyone was his own expert bypassing the value of people who had actually studied an issue. A bit simplistic perhaps, but there may be a grain of truth there.
Fascinating book.
Twitter, live streaming, and blogging have become essential parts of the distribution of information, both real and fake. Virtually everyone has a smart-phone which even radically alters the battlefield. The Russians used the geo-location transmissions of Ukrainian soldiers cellphones to zero in their artillery on those troops during that brief war.
Cyber warfare includes more than just hacking a network. It's possible to cause damage by hacking information as well. Singer and Brooking cite the seesaw battle for Mosul in Iraq as just one example. ISIS used Twitter, Youtube, and Facebook to manipulate likes and the streams to promote their own POV. By manipulating images, followers, and hashtags they were successful in winning converts and battles. The U.S. and Iraqi armies were totally unprepared for this propaganda warfare, but they learned fast, and the #freemosul tag soon appeared countering the ISIS streams with those more favorable to U.S. actions. Just as Amazon has disrupted commerce, so had social media disrupted warfare and politics.
Terrorists now show their work online. They use Twitter routinely. Russia tries to destabilize democracies by fomenting distrust of civil institutions with fake material. The result is that war, tech, and politics have blurred into a new kind of battleground that plays out on our smartphones. Singer and Brooking, using a combination of stories and research, lay out the problems facing us with new ways of conducting warfare. But it works both ways. Those Russian soldiers who shot down MH17 were identified through painstaking crowd sourcing work online by tracking soldier's emails, tire treads, registration numbers, all sorts of clues that were found online. Their work for the Dutch Investigation team was hacked by Russian hackers attempting to hide the Russian involvement.
Propaganda can now go viral. Fake stories are re-tweeted by confederates whose followers often unwittingly re-tweet the false information and soon millions have received precisely the message intended by the original poster who may be a governmental entity seeking to destabilize an adversary. The audience is huge as is the volume. Around 3.4 billion people have access to the Internet -- about half the world's population. Roughly 500 million tweets are sent each day and nearly seven hours of footage is uploaded on YouTube every second in 76 languages.
"No matter how outlandish these theories sound, they served their purpose successfully. 'The disinformation campaign [around the flight] shows how initially successful propaganda can be. . . . Obviously the ...lies were eventually debunked, but by then their narrative had been fixed in many people's minds.' That is the overarching goal of information hackers: 'The more doubt you can sow in people's minds about all information, the more you will weaken their propensity to recognize the truth.'"
Trump was one of the first to recognize the power of Twitter. Following his massive bankruptcy and declining interest in the Apprentice TV show, Trump began to tweet thousands of messages, bombarding the twitter-sphere with provocative, false, and often incendiary tweets. Soon his financial peccadilloes were forgotten, obliterated by his Twitter-storm. His infamy rose, but he didn't care as he valued the attention more than anything. It's a lesson he has never forgotten. As Alexander Nix, CEO of Cambridge Analytica, said, "it matters less that what you say is true, only that it be believed."
The recent video of Nancy Pelosi appearing to be drunk and the Trump's attempt to doctor the CNN video showing that Acosta had inappropriately touched a white House intern are just a couple examples of internal use of social media to influence popular thought.
Lifewire.com, a technology website based in New York, defines an internet troll as a modern version of the same mythical character. They hide behind their computer screens and go out of their way to cause trouble on the Internet. Like its mythical predecessor, an internet troll is both angry and disruptive - often for no real reason. The effects can be completely out of proportion to their size.
The question remains what should governments do, if anything, to shut down trolls. In some cases they are freedom fighters trying to rally against a corrupt government. Would it be better to simply keep the Internet as open as possible? Satire, parody, misleading content, imposter content, fabricated content and manipulated content all need to be seen separately from each other and dealt with accordingly. How is that to be accomplished? Who will control it?
The "Like" phenomenon is an important part of the campaign. The more "likes" a piece of news or comment gets on a news or social site, the more likely it is to be believed. People are more likely to believe a headline if they have seen a similar one before. “It didn’t even matter if the story was preceded by a warning that it might be fake,” the authors write. “What counted most was familiarity. The more often you hear a claim, the less likely you are to assess it critically.” That's what irritates me about the media's obsession with Trump's Tweets. By repeating them incessantly and parsing them repeatedly, they are validated. That, to some extent, was the genius of the Russian interference in the last election. You don't need sophisticated hackers to implement it either, just a bunch of people promoting a certain meme or thought until it becomes a tsunami overwhelming any other rational discussion; it becomes "the truth." Slick videos, click bait, and viral memes become the new weapons in undermining democracy effectively grounding billion dollar fighter jets which then become obsolete as the war has already been lost.
As an aside, I remember listening to a commentator who suggested that the Phil Donahue show started the descent into irrationality. He was the first to invite callers on the show live to express their opinion. Soon all the shows were doing it. Callers became the experts and soon everyone was his own expert bypassing the value of people who had actually studied an issue. A bit simplistic perhaps, but there may be a grain of truth there.
Fascinating book.
January 9, 2019
This is an extremely interesting --but frightening-- look at how social media has become weaponized. Highly recommend; we all need to be informed. Unfortunately, I'm just not "feeling" a more in-depth review at the moment.
Want to Read
October 31, 2018This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality - interview with the author in which he reminds us of Trump's comment that "I would never have become President if it was not for social media".
I Thought the Web Would Stop Hate, Not Spread It - article in the NYT on the same topic.
PS goodreads is an exception of course
I Thought the Web Would Stop Hate, Not Spread It - article in the NYT on the same topic.
Let me say it again: Social media platforms — and Facebook and Twitter are as guilty of this as Gab is — are designed so that the awful travels twice as fast as the good. And they are operating with sloppy disregard of the consequences of that awful speech, leading to disasters that they then have to clean up after.And another one - The Internet Will Be the Death of Us - the NYT is on a roll today.
And they are doing a very bad job of that, too, because they are unwilling to pay the price to make needed fixes. Why? because draining the cesspool would mean losing users, and that would hurt the bottom line. Consider this: On Monday, New York Times reporters easily found almost 12,000 anti-Semitic messages that had been uploaded to Instagram in the wake of the synagogue attack.
This was a week ago — before Sayoc’s arrest, before Bowers’s rampage, before Jair Bolsonaro, a far-right populist, won Brazil’s presidential election. As The Times reported, pro-Bolsonaro forces apparently tried to hurt his opponents and help him by flooding WhatsApp, the messaging application owned by Facebook, “with a deluge of political content that gave wrong information on voting locations and times.”The hatred, ignorance and division fostered by social media has been greatly underestimated and its malign impacts are only just becoming apparent. This looks essential reading.
PS goodreads is an exception of course
March 9, 2024
Fabulous book for adults on how the internet and specifically social media is a weapon, not figuratively but literally, used in warfare since its invention for online conflicts as deadly if not more deadly than the traditional ways of war it's linked to.
Only downside, and the main content warning I have, is that this has some 18+ topics covered, especially towards the later second half when sections are dedicated to sensitive, adult topics of the internet. Now, this was nothing shocking to me that there would be some stuff like this in a book about social media and the web – anyone who's been around at all, online or not, logically knows that unfortunately the reality is the history of social media, which is extensively discussed here, is seeped in these PG-13 events, words, and topics. In fact, Singer and Brooking probably held back and definitely didn't cover everything in the included chapters/potential chapters. But nonetheless, even if they never inject their own depraved words or anything necessarily directly from them, you can imagine that a historical book such as this with quotes from the depths of Twitter trolling and social media is, throughout the book, not for all audiences.
But otherwise, such a fascinating deep dive into something that you need to know "if you use social media in any capacity" as The Verge put it in a review for this book. From trusted authors too, who know the subject more than any other, as professionals in this field of study.
Despite the heavy content occasionally, I'm glad my Social Media Marketing professor had this assigned to us, as I don't know if I would have ever read this otherwise and learned all that I do now (probably wouldn't have ever encountered the book). Had me up till 3 am most nights I read it, and that's rare for a NON-fiction book.
Read my book report on this book, a summary and analytical review HERE.
July 29, 2024
"There is a war... for your Mind!"
The slogan of InfoWars, an incendiary right-wing conspiracy news network and nutritional supplement marketing firm. Alex Jones does wrong, and he's right about that.
Peter W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking’s book LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media with a helpful summary of the origins of the internet and the development of social media. How modern warfare is just as much through social-representation online as it can be in reality.
It explains the concept of weaponizing information, and illustrates key terms, such as memes, trolls and troll farms, bots, sock-puppets and neural networks. Showing case-studies on how
information is weaponized are familiar, including the 2016 US election, the
online recruitment methods of the Islamic State, and China’s social credit system.
Geared towards the public, the authors lay out the foundations of knowledge needed in a quick-moving and largely entertaining fashion. The authors lay out five core principles on how social media is being weaponized:
1. the internet is maturing and growing. : it is global and instantaneous, embedded in the economic, social and political fabric of societies, but only half of the world is online. (America has been fighting in low-tech areas, implying this war-front has escaped their purview for some-time.)
2. The Internet has become a battlefield: as much as it is used by businesses and individuals, it is also indispensable to militaries, governments and armed groups, who use it to further their interests against their adversaries. (This is vividly true to me, having been in Minneapolis during George Floyd, seeing the different factions fighting and coordinating first-hand.)
3. The Internet connectivity to social media: consider how these mediums are changing the ways in which conflicts are fought. All warfare is based on deception, and lower rates of secrecy and an uptake in the virality of information; the age of WikiLeaks, there is a diminishing capacity to stay secret, and once a secret is dispersed, it is disseminated widely and wide-reaching in consequence. To say nothing how its use in instilling doubt and distraction, dismissing, distorting,
dismaying and/or dividing an opponent.
4.This changes what war means, blurring the distinction between actions taken in the digital and physical realms. ISIS was able to turn rudimentary fights into great victories using the right spin, using APPS to share videos of their atrocities ("like and subscribe" to defending garrisons, causing them to flee before their soldiers even arrived.
5. The fifth principle contends that everyone is part of this new reality/new war: “If you are online, your attention is like a piece of contested territory.”
As the authors point out that you need to "anchor" propaganda by making it relatable, then virality of information seems to supersede its veracity. The more you saturate a statement, the less people think of it critically, add outrage- against someone or something they value?
The social media algorithms will work for you. They work for drawing attention to content and trends on their networks, even (especially) when people are outraged by it. This trifecta of virality, familiarity, and outrage is the new online recipe for offline violence.
This line of thinking feels a fantastic claim, but there is hard evidence behind it.
Take the current Israel-Palestine conflict, extrapolating from the work of Thomas Zeitzoff, they pointed how social media trends are being used to at least partially determine the patterns of
armed conflict. As they note:
"In the case of Israel, a sudden spike of online sympathy for Hamas more than halved the pace of Israeli strikes and resulted in a similarly sized leap in Israel’s own propaganda efforts. If you charted the sentiment (pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian) of these tweets on a timeline, not only could you infer what was happening on the ground, but you could also predict what Israel would do
next."
Such an ability to read, predict and influence your adversary is a significant advantage multiple countries are already developing better and better capabilities in this information sphere.
So, does this mean every flamboyant online post is made by political extremists or government sockpuppets? Singer and Brooking also provide examples of how individual actors, motivated purely by economic incentives, can, in an uncoordinated way, complement and extend the operational information of one set of actors to or against another.
A vivid example is the Macedonian teenagers who became millionaires by generating viral fake content for the United States around the 2016 elections, similar to what Russian operations seemed to be doing during the pandemic, but motivated only by profit (anyone who had an older relative go slightly unhinged during the pandemic was likely a target of theirs at some-point. The fact that english-speaking online anti-vax content dropped by around 80-90% after the invasion of Ukraine is a smoking gun. Intelligence recourses being diverted to the immediate situation at hand).
The key takeaway is that this is already part of our day-to-day life and will become more so. States and non-State actors have a significant operational incentive to improve their capacity to utilize information in conflict. The trend of weaponizing information is only going to become more pervasive.
I would argue that any humanitarians, soldiers, sociologists, or people who care about the truth should read the book, it sheds light on how social media and information is shaping conflicts today. It provides some necessary background knowledge that will help us better read between the lines on how these the issues are impacting the world are really being shifted.
5/5 terrific and alarming. Recommended as a blueprint to anyone who wants to avoid becoming part of the internet of idiots.
The slogan of InfoWars, an incendiary right-wing conspiracy news network and nutritional supplement marketing firm. Alex Jones does wrong, and he's right about that.
Peter W. Singer and Emerson T. Brooking’s book LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media with a helpful summary of the origins of the internet and the development of social media. How modern warfare is just as much through social-representation online as it can be in reality.
It explains the concept of weaponizing information, and illustrates key terms, such as memes, trolls and troll farms, bots, sock-puppets and neural networks. Showing case-studies on how
information is weaponized are familiar, including the 2016 US election, the
online recruitment methods of the Islamic State, and China’s social credit system.
Geared towards the public, the authors lay out the foundations of knowledge needed in a quick-moving and largely entertaining fashion. The authors lay out five core principles on how social media is being weaponized:
1. the internet is maturing and growing. : it is global and instantaneous, embedded in the economic, social and political fabric of societies, but only half of the world is online. (America has been fighting in low-tech areas, implying this war-front has escaped their purview for some-time.)
2. The Internet has become a battlefield: as much as it is used by businesses and individuals, it is also indispensable to militaries, governments and armed groups, who use it to further their interests against their adversaries. (This is vividly true to me, having been in Minneapolis during George Floyd, seeing the different factions fighting and coordinating first-hand.)
3. The Internet connectivity to social media: consider how these mediums are changing the ways in which conflicts are fought. All warfare is based on deception, and lower rates of secrecy and an uptake in the virality of information; the age of WikiLeaks, there is a diminishing capacity to stay secret, and once a secret is dispersed, it is disseminated widely and wide-reaching in consequence. To say nothing how its use in instilling doubt and distraction, dismissing, distorting,
dismaying and/or dividing an opponent.
4.This changes what war means, blurring the distinction between actions taken in the digital and physical realms. ISIS was able to turn rudimentary fights into great victories using the right spin, using APPS to share videos of their atrocities ("like and subscribe" to defending garrisons, causing them to flee before their soldiers even arrived.
5. The fifth principle contends that everyone is part of this new reality/new war: “If you are online, your attention is like a piece of contested territory.”
As the authors point out that you need to "anchor" propaganda by making it relatable, then virality of information seems to supersede its veracity. The more you saturate a statement, the less people think of it critically, add outrage- against someone or something they value?
The social media algorithms will work for you. They work for drawing attention to content and trends on their networks, even (especially) when people are outraged by it. This trifecta of virality, familiarity, and outrage is the new online recipe for offline violence.
This line of thinking feels a fantastic claim, but there is hard evidence behind it.
Take the current Israel-Palestine conflict, extrapolating from the work of Thomas Zeitzoff, they pointed how social media trends are being used to at least partially determine the patterns of
armed conflict. As they note:
"In the case of Israel, a sudden spike of online sympathy for Hamas more than halved the pace of Israeli strikes and resulted in a similarly sized leap in Israel’s own propaganda efforts. If you charted the sentiment (pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian) of these tweets on a timeline, not only could you infer what was happening on the ground, but you could also predict what Israel would do
next."
Such an ability to read, predict and influence your adversary is a significant advantage multiple countries are already developing better and better capabilities in this information sphere.
So, does this mean every flamboyant online post is made by political extremists or government sockpuppets? Singer and Brooking also provide examples of how individual actors, motivated purely by economic incentives, can, in an uncoordinated way, complement and extend the operational information of one set of actors to or against another.
A vivid example is the Macedonian teenagers who became millionaires by generating viral fake content for the United States around the 2016 elections, similar to what Russian operations seemed to be doing during the pandemic, but motivated only by profit (anyone who had an older relative go slightly unhinged during the pandemic was likely a target of theirs at some-point. The fact that english-speaking online anti-vax content dropped by around 80-90% after the invasion of Ukraine is a smoking gun. Intelligence recourses being diverted to the immediate situation at hand).
The key takeaway is that this is already part of our day-to-day life and will become more so. States and non-State actors have a significant operational incentive to improve their capacity to utilize information in conflict. The trend of weaponizing information is only going to become more pervasive.
I would argue that any humanitarians, soldiers, sociologists, or people who care about the truth should read the book, it sheds light on how social media and information is shaping conflicts today. It provides some necessary background knowledge that will help us better read between the lines on how these the issues are impacting the world are really being shifted.
5/5 terrific and alarming. Recommended as a blueprint to anyone who wants to avoid becoming part of the internet of idiots.
December 28, 2018
Massively overhypes the relevance of social media in real world conflicts and conflates every online interaction with "war". A shallow mass of anecdotes with no bigger picture or real desire to quantify the problems of social media manipulation. Occasional insights and a comparably competent overview of the current counter measures that Facebook, Google, etc. employ, keep it from being a total waste of time.
December 20, 2020
A real eye-opener.
December 6, 2018
I beg everyone to get regularly get your news from at least one source that you disagree with. We are headed for dystopia if we do not fix this fundamental social problem.
NYT readers and WSJ readers need to start reading both.
Fake news readers and proliferators need to cut it out.
Do your duty.
Amen.
NYT readers and WSJ readers need to start reading both.
Fake news readers and proliferators need to cut it out.
Do your duty.
Amen.
March 12, 2021
This book should be required reading for anyone that uses the Internet. As the subtitle states, this book discusses the “weaponization” of social media. As social media has grown to become an integral component of daily life for most people, it shouldn’t be that surprising that its use would expand beyond business and relationships into the world of political and military conflict. However, people are remarkably innovative and the ways in which it has been used are frequently surprising.
So why 4 stars when I say it is a must-read? First, the author can be a bit hyperbolic at times (going for the shock factor). Second, there are some lengthy sections of history that really just weren’t necessary (I don’t need to read about the creation and history of the Internet to understand the modern issues). And third, the author is a well-known D.C. think tank guy. The bias that comes with living in one of the most left-leaning cities in the country comes through in his writing which means half the population (that I think really need to read and understand these issues) are going to be turned off and just throw this onto the heap of liberal propaganda. That’s sad because the issues are real and it is in our national interest for people to educate themselves on the subject (I’ve just spent a year in a U.S. military War College studying many of these issues and what our geopolitical rivals are doing in this space and can assure you that this isn’t make believe).
My recommendation to my fellow conservatives is to swallow your pride and read the book, even if it annoys you at times because it is full of lots of good information on how politicians, foreign countries, and big business are trying to manipulate you through social media for their own purposes. 4 stars.
What follows are some of my notes on the book:
ISIS heavily utilized social media to help capture large swaths of Syria and Iraq. Even though they had inferior forces, they played up their strengths and in some cases encouraged superior forces to abandon territory without a fight just by stoking fear in their adversaries.
The author covers in really good detail Russia’s troll farms and influence campaigns (their high point being the 2016 U.S. lection interference). Just consider one example, a Russian controlled fake GOP social media site for the state of Tennessee had 10x more US members following it than the real Tennessee GOP site. That is extraordinary. I think most people are familiar with the election interference narrative (even if they disagree with it), but another point I found really interesting was how our adversaries were able to build psychological profiles on our political leaders based off their social media use and consumption. Every country does this type of work (on friend and foe alike), but how much easier is it to do that when you have decades of social media use, likes, angry reactions, etc!!
Intelligence has historically been a classified business where only the select few had access to the data to make educated decisions. Social media has turned the Intelligence world upside down. The author gives a couple really good case studies to demonstrate his point:
- When Syria shot down a commercial airliner over Damascus, the intelligence to prove what actually happened was largely gathered through crowd-sourced methods by civilians, not government intelligence organizations.
- Bad guys also used social media to help execute their 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. By following trending Twitter comments, they were able to prolong the attacks and avoid police forces because civilians were sharing their location info with the public via Twitter.
In conventional conflict, Israel learned that their operations in Gaza and Lebanon meant that overwhelming military victories on the ground could be spun differently on social media which had profound effects on the government and international support. In the US war against ISIS, both sides were quick to publicize victories on social media in attempts to influence local populations. Besides interfering in elections, Russia has utilized social media to prep the battlefield for other offence actions, most notably the seizure of Crimea.
The author goes into great detail on how Trump was the first U.S. politician to truly grasp the power of this new media (like Roosevelt did with the radio and Kennedy did with television). Social media attention is short lived….even huge protests can be easily derailed by a false message going viral (the example he uses was a fake protester holding a “#rapeMelania” sign that immediately went viral. Nobody remembered why that specific group was protesting and instead focused on the debate over this scandal. The author gives numerous examples with Trump but there are an equally large number of examples on the political left as well. His point is that in this era, it doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what goes viral.
The author covers the challenges social media companies face in this environment. Many of these enterprises were invented by college kids who were unprepared to handle the challenges of moderating millions (billions) of users. In many cases, their business decisions have huge international consequences. Consequently they are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) and neural networks to help predict and flag content that violates their user agreements (scarily, these same programs can predict voting patterns and suicidal ideations). 90% of content that is flagged is done without human intervention.
Unfortunately AI can also be manipulated and abused. AI and algorithms are used to show you content you are likely to click on…even if they are fabrications or entirely false. We live in an era where everything is documented….however an event only carries power if people believe it actually occurred. In a couple studies the author quotes, fake news articles actually spread anywhere from 6-20 times faster than true news stories!!! Read that last sentence again…it should blow your mind. In other words, a manufactured event can have real power while a demonstrably true event can be disregarded. What determines the outcome is not a mastery of the facts but the psychological and algorithmic manipulation of the data. Everything is now transparent but the truth can be easily obscured.
It is a terrifyingly interesting time in which we live. Stories and headlines are intentionally designed to trigger emotional responses and capitalize on your rage. Use your brains when you consume content. Not everything you read is real (if anything, if what you reads upsets you, you should ASSUME it is fake until actually corroborated). So please, think twice before mindlessly sharing news on social media.
So why 4 stars when I say it is a must-read? First, the author can be a bit hyperbolic at times (going for the shock factor). Second, there are some lengthy sections of history that really just weren’t necessary (I don’t need to read about the creation and history of the Internet to understand the modern issues). And third, the author is a well-known D.C. think tank guy. The bias that comes with living in one of the most left-leaning cities in the country comes through in his writing which means half the population (that I think really need to read and understand these issues) are going to be turned off and just throw this onto the heap of liberal propaganda. That’s sad because the issues are real and it is in our national interest for people to educate themselves on the subject (I’ve just spent a year in a U.S. military War College studying many of these issues and what our geopolitical rivals are doing in this space and can assure you that this isn’t make believe).
My recommendation to my fellow conservatives is to swallow your pride and read the book, even if it annoys you at times because it is full of lots of good information on how politicians, foreign countries, and big business are trying to manipulate you through social media for their own purposes. 4 stars.
What follows are some of my notes on the book:
ISIS heavily utilized social media to help capture large swaths of Syria and Iraq. Even though they had inferior forces, they played up their strengths and in some cases encouraged superior forces to abandon territory without a fight just by stoking fear in their adversaries.
The author covers in really good detail Russia’s troll farms and influence campaigns (their high point being the 2016 U.S. lection interference). Just consider one example, a Russian controlled fake GOP social media site for the state of Tennessee had 10x more US members following it than the real Tennessee GOP site. That is extraordinary. I think most people are familiar with the election interference narrative (even if they disagree with it), but another point I found really interesting was how our adversaries were able to build psychological profiles on our political leaders based off their social media use and consumption. Every country does this type of work (on friend and foe alike), but how much easier is it to do that when you have decades of social media use, likes, angry reactions, etc!!
Intelligence has historically been a classified business where only the select few had access to the data to make educated decisions. Social media has turned the Intelligence world upside down. The author gives a couple really good case studies to demonstrate his point:
- When Syria shot down a commercial airliner over Damascus, the intelligence to prove what actually happened was largely gathered through crowd-sourced methods by civilians, not government intelligence organizations.
- Bad guys also used social media to help execute their 2008 Mumbai terror attacks. By following trending Twitter comments, they were able to prolong the attacks and avoid police forces because civilians were sharing their location info with the public via Twitter.
In conventional conflict, Israel learned that their operations in Gaza and Lebanon meant that overwhelming military victories on the ground could be spun differently on social media which had profound effects on the government and international support. In the US war against ISIS, both sides were quick to publicize victories on social media in attempts to influence local populations. Besides interfering in elections, Russia has utilized social media to prep the battlefield for other offence actions, most notably the seizure of Crimea.
The author goes into great detail on how Trump was the first U.S. politician to truly grasp the power of this new media (like Roosevelt did with the radio and Kennedy did with television). Social media attention is short lived….even huge protests can be easily derailed by a false message going viral (the example he uses was a fake protester holding a “#rapeMelania” sign that immediately went viral. Nobody remembered why that specific group was protesting and instead focused on the debate over this scandal. The author gives numerous examples with Trump but there are an equally large number of examples on the political left as well. His point is that in this era, it doesn’t matter what is true, it only matters what goes viral.
The author covers the challenges social media companies face in this environment. Many of these enterprises were invented by college kids who were unprepared to handle the challenges of moderating millions (billions) of users. In many cases, their business decisions have huge international consequences. Consequently they are turning to artificial intelligence (AI) and neural networks to help predict and flag content that violates their user agreements (scarily, these same programs can predict voting patterns and suicidal ideations). 90% of content that is flagged is done without human intervention.
Unfortunately AI can also be manipulated and abused. AI and algorithms are used to show you content you are likely to click on…even if they are fabrications or entirely false. We live in an era where everything is documented….however an event only carries power if people believe it actually occurred. In a couple studies the author quotes, fake news articles actually spread anywhere from 6-20 times faster than true news stories!!! Read that last sentence again…it should blow your mind. In other words, a manufactured event can have real power while a demonstrably true event can be disregarded. What determines the outcome is not a mastery of the facts but the psychological and algorithmic manipulation of the data. Everything is now transparent but the truth can be easily obscured.
It is a terrifyingly interesting time in which we live. Stories and headlines are intentionally designed to trigger emotional responses and capitalize on your rage. Use your brains when you consume content. Not everything you read is real (if anything, if what you reads upsets you, you should ASSUME it is fake until actually corroborated). So please, think twice before mindlessly sharing news on social media.
September 28, 2018
What an extraordinary book this is! I am currently engaged in a love-hate relationship with social media. I love the ability to keep track of what is going on in the lives of the people I care about; I hate that this keeping track seems to be replacing actual human contact. I love the ease of knowing what's going on in people's lives; I hate the ease with which miscellaneous people I don't want to know every detail somehow manage to glean it from things I put up to share with those I care about. I love that it's harder to hide wrongdoing in an era in which everyone has a camera and a platform; I hate that it's harder to define "wrongdoing" as a result because everything is now a-contextual and a glimpse is presented as "reality" and that I never know what is real and what is fake/manufactured for public viewing anymore.
I could go on and on, but won't - chances are you know what I mean, and if you don't, I won't be able to convince you. That's something else social media has taught me...
In a very thorough and detailed manner, Singer and Brooking examine the history of social media and its increasing influence on everything along the personal-public, social-political spectrum. It's not only social bullying/warfare we need to worry about anymore; now it's actual, martial bullying/warfare too - to an extent I wasn't aware of, but now am with brutal clarity. This is a great and engaging read that pictures a horrifying yet excessively necessary picture of what the world is literally coming to these days. I think it should be required reading for everyone, since the authors make it clear that it is increasingly the case that everyone is affected by the insidious nature of this media-as-message.
I could go on and on, but won't - chances are you know what I mean, and if you don't, I won't be able to convince you. That's something else social media has taught me...
In a very thorough and detailed manner, Singer and Brooking examine the history of social media and its increasing influence on everything along the personal-public, social-political spectrum. It's not only social bullying/warfare we need to worry about anymore; now it's actual, martial bullying/warfare too - to an extent I wasn't aware of, but now am with brutal clarity. This is a great and engaging read that pictures a horrifying yet excessively necessary picture of what the world is literally coming to these days. I think it should be required reading for everyone, since the authors make it clear that it is increasingly the case that everyone is affected by the insidious nature of this media-as-message.
November 17, 2022
LikeWar is a highly topical book written by two intelligence specialists and deals with the modern day use of the internet and social media as a weapon for war.
The book actually covers the whole history of information warfare starting from its earliest forms, going through the Soviet disinformation campaigns of the Cold War and then reaching modern day when the battles have now moved online. This is a world where technology and innovation meets geopolitics and the results can be deadly. From ISIS terrorists, to Mexican revolutionaries, from Russian trolls to Macedonian fake news outlets this book covers it all.
The book ends with some predictions for the future and a critique of the way the battles are being fought and how democracies can protect themselves. Overall, an excellent read and quite thought provoking.
The book actually covers the whole history of information warfare starting from its earliest forms, going through the Soviet disinformation campaigns of the Cold War and then reaching modern day when the battles have now moved online. This is a world where technology and innovation meets geopolitics and the results can be deadly. From ISIS terrorists, to Mexican revolutionaries, from Russian trolls to Macedonian fake news outlets this book covers it all.
The book ends with some predictions for the future and a critique of the way the battles are being fought and how democracies can protect themselves. Overall, an excellent read and quite thought provoking.
January 5, 2019
This book is both fascinating and terrifying. I could not put it down. A perfect book to be my first read of 2019.
Bottom line: if you use or are affected by social media, you NEED to read this book, and soon.
Makes for a good audiobook listen as well.
Bottom line: if you use or are affected by social media, you NEED to read this book, and soon.
Makes for a good audiobook listen as well.
September 9, 2025
Fantastic Work.
March 10, 2019
I'd like to think that since the 60's, governments can't get as many people to fight in wars, so there are fewer of them. I don't know if the facts would bear that out, but I don't think many people in Western countries would cheer for war the way the crowds did for World War One. (See pic below.) Actually, one of the historical tidbits in this book is that both the Kaiser and the Czar were afraid not to declare war then because they feared the people's reaction. But I don't think people see war as glorious anymore. Then again, I lived through 9/11 and the Iraq War, so I have seen people get whipped up for the cause of revenge.
The corollary to people's lessened glorification of war is that the power-hungry leaders who benefit from it then have to find other ways to amass power that don't sacrifice as much human life. Why commit murder when you can just commit theft? That's what the current global crime syndicate under Putin, Trump, and who knows who else is all about. Brexit was orchestrated by people who shorted the British pound and stand to gain a fortune. Meanwhile, the average British citizen will suffer, but he won't die.
And then there's cyberwar, which is the topic of this book. If you can fight for control of people's minds and votes, you don't have to kill or sacrifice anyone to achieve your goal. It's insidious and evil, but it still beats war. It's Likewar.
Those were my assumptions going into this book, but guess what? I was wrong. War is not outmoded, at least not according to this book, and the authors are probably right. The cyberwar and disinformation explained here are often a precursor to violence, terrorism, and war.
If you've been paying attention to any news other than Fox, the greater themes of this book won't be new to you. You already know about Russian sockpuppets and bots. You might not know some of the smaller details in the book, though. For example, General Michael Flynn is eerily similar to Benedict Arnold in the way he sold out our country. He had a bruised ego and a taste for wealth. Similarly, you might already know that Twitter played a big role in the Arab Spring, but did you also know that use of social media was central in the Mumbai massacre? I didn't. Those little tidbits made the book interesting, and the overall theme is important enough that it can stand frequent repetition anyway.
This book will make you want to reduce your use of social media. It also acknowledges that we're all a bunch of addicts who can't stop ourselves. So just like the answer to hate speech is reasoned speech, the answer to social media is thoughtful social media. And that's why I stay here on Goodreads. Hardly any flame wars or manipulated outrage. Just smart people saying intelligent things about good, old-fashioned books.
The corollary to people's lessened glorification of war is that the power-hungry leaders who benefit from it then have to find other ways to amass power that don't sacrifice as much human life. Why commit murder when you can just commit theft? That's what the current global crime syndicate under Putin, Trump, and who knows who else is all about. Brexit was orchestrated by people who shorted the British pound and stand to gain a fortune. Meanwhile, the average British citizen will suffer, but he won't die.
And then there's cyberwar, which is the topic of this book. If you can fight for control of people's minds and votes, you don't have to kill or sacrifice anyone to achieve your goal. It's insidious and evil, but it still beats war. It's Likewar.
Those were my assumptions going into this book, but guess what? I was wrong. War is not outmoded, at least not according to this book, and the authors are probably right. The cyberwar and disinformation explained here are often a precursor to violence, terrorism, and war.
If you've been paying attention to any news other than Fox, the greater themes of this book won't be new to you. You already know about Russian sockpuppets and bots. You might not know some of the smaller details in the book, though. For example, General Michael Flynn is eerily similar to Benedict Arnold in the way he sold out our country. He had a bruised ego and a taste for wealth. Similarly, you might already know that Twitter played a big role in the Arab Spring, but did you also know that use of social media was central in the Mumbai massacre? I didn't. Those little tidbits made the book interesting, and the overall theme is important enough that it can stand frequent repetition anyway.
This book will make you want to reduce your use of social media. It also acknowledges that we're all a bunch of addicts who can't stop ourselves. So just like the answer to hate speech is reasoned speech, the answer to social media is thoughtful social media. And that's why I stay here on Goodreads. Hardly any flame wars or manipulated outrage. Just smart people saying intelligent things about good, old-fashioned books.
January 17, 2020
When it first launched, Facebook and other social media was seen as a cool, if benign, piece of technology that the internet had made possible. After the the 2016 election, the public was made aware of how social media could be used as a tool to manipulate an election, a very unsettling development. However, as the authors of this jaw-dropping book make clear, social media is not just some tool to keep in touch with friends any more. Social media is a new battlefront in both cyber warfare and traditional warfare. What happens online cannot only sway elections, it can also get people killed.
Starting with an introduction noting the different and unique ways social media has been used in recent years, such as ISIS's use of it as they were invading Mosul and Donald Trump's use of Twitter before and during his presidency, the authors show how social media has become a new battlefield. And what happens online can have deadly consequences in real life. One of the more shocking stories they relate is how gangs in America have been "cyber tagging" people's online profiles and then killing those people in real life. Online beefs are leading to bodies in the street in America and elsewhere. There are many more stories they relate about the dangers of this new battlefield, but I do not want to spoil this book any more than I have.
The book is not all bleak though. The authors note how cyber activists and the military have been using social media to combat terrorism and gather intelligence. One uplifting story is about how cyber activists combed social media to determine that it was Russian forces that shot down MH17 over Ukraine in 2014. So, for the old internet enthusiasts, there is hope that the internet can still be used for more than nefarious purposes.
But the authors never want the readers to forget that the internet and social media have left their adolescence and it is up to us and our elected leaders to determine what the internet will be moving forward. Will it continue to be the free-wheeling wild west sphere it has been, or will regulation become necessary? That's what the debate is at this point. For anyone who is concerned about the power of social media and its misuse by bad actors and authoritarian regimes, this is the first book you should read.
Starting with an introduction noting the different and unique ways social media has been used in recent years, such as ISIS's use of it as they were invading Mosul and Donald Trump's use of Twitter before and during his presidency, the authors show how social media has become a new battlefield. And what happens online can have deadly consequences in real life. One of the more shocking stories they relate is how gangs in America have been "cyber tagging" people's online profiles and then killing those people in real life. Online beefs are leading to bodies in the street in America and elsewhere. There are many more stories they relate about the dangers of this new battlefield, but I do not want to spoil this book any more than I have.
The book is not all bleak though. The authors note how cyber activists and the military have been using social media to combat terrorism and gather intelligence. One uplifting story is about how cyber activists combed social media to determine that it was Russian forces that shot down MH17 over Ukraine in 2014. So, for the old internet enthusiasts, there is hope that the internet can still be used for more than nefarious purposes.
But the authors never want the readers to forget that the internet and social media have left their adolescence and it is up to us and our elected leaders to determine what the internet will be moving forward. Will it continue to be the free-wheeling wild west sphere it has been, or will regulation become necessary? That's what the debate is at this point. For anyone who is concerned about the power of social media and its misuse by bad actors and authoritarian regimes, this is the first book you should read.
May 18, 2020
The premise is good, but the book lacks in scope and execution. Chapters are set up with a central theme and multiple supporting examples from recent history. However, the chapters and examples are fairly indistinguishable, almost any example would match any theme. The chapters bounce around without much direction; the editing could be much stronger.
If you've read major news outlets in the past few years, many of the examples also won't be new to you. The final chapter is the only one that has a "what do we do about it", and it functions more or less like a bullet point list for an outline, not the detailed look that's deserved.
You also suffer from Trump fatigue in the book as the authors mention him breathlessly throughout. The 2016 election offers many important lessons for a topic like LikeWar, but here the treatment is cursory and reads more like a CNN.com update. A broader set of examples of LikeWar is necessary. For example, in the section on social media bots, the authors briefly mention that they are widely employed by politicians, famous people, and companies of all stripes. But the only two detailed examples are ISIS and the Trump campaign. It would have been fascinating to explore other actors in this space and the way they shift public opinion.
Thankfully, it's a short book. Much of it is citations. That's the only place that the authors excel - I appreciate the very thorough documentation of all the examples given.
I must say, I expected more from P. W. Singer, especially the future focus and where we go from here.
If you've read major news outlets in the past few years, many of the examples also won't be new to you. The final chapter is the only one that has a "what do we do about it", and it functions more or less like a bullet point list for an outline, not the detailed look that's deserved.
You also suffer from Trump fatigue in the book as the authors mention him breathlessly throughout. The 2016 election offers many important lessons for a topic like LikeWar, but here the treatment is cursory and reads more like a CNN.com update. A broader set of examples of LikeWar is necessary. For example, in the section on social media bots, the authors briefly mention that they are widely employed by politicians, famous people, and companies of all stripes. But the only two detailed examples are ISIS and the Trump campaign. It would have been fascinating to explore other actors in this space and the way they shift public opinion.
Thankfully, it's a short book. Much of it is citations. That's the only place that the authors excel - I appreciate the very thorough documentation of all the examples given.
I must say, I expected more from P. W. Singer, especially the future focus and where we go from here.
February 26, 2019
I was pleased with Jaron Lanier's arguments in Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now over deleting social media accounts, but this book gives some pause as to how we should be fighting the weaponization of social media. I don't know if Lanier's ostrich-head in the sand approach flies after reading this impressive recent history of how social media is used to manipulate the populace.
May 23, 2022
I cannot describe this book other than useful, especially in these times. While it does meander at times, for the most part it does a great job at showing just how much today's battles are also waged online. And we are joining the ranks, whether we like it a lot. Especially the information about bots, trolls and sock puppets was very useful and could apply some of it in my dealings with the Russian propaganda machine. The examples are useful and memorable, the lessons to be learned very clear, and the writings easy to go through. Worth checking out, though it might take away some of your faith in humanity. It leaves plenty of room for hope.
July 25, 2022
Потужна річ. Насиченість і актуальність - мої висновки по завершенні. Багато про війни і конфлікти, локальні та глобальні. Про те, як вони починались, існували чи завершувалися завдяки соцмережам. Багато про Україну, Белінгкет, аварію малазійського боїнга, вибори у США 2016, іділ, русняві ботоферми, палестино-ізраільські війни
October 4, 2019
This is another one of the books that’s been on the TBR list for some time. While it’s not related to the overuse of social media, I thought it would be interesting to read about how social media is being used as “weapons”.
LikeWar argues that social media is being used by various groups to advance their cause – from Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency to ISIS. Hence, the notion of a “war” taking place in cyberspace. Although the creators and first adopters of the internet saw it as a place where free speech would flourish and as a tool to take down authoritarian regimes, the book brings up several chilling examples of how this is view is flawed.
One of them is China, with its famous Great Firewall. The book describes the Chinese government as vigorously and successfully pursuing the goal of “control over not just computer networks and human bodies, but the minds of their citizens as well” through “the right balance of infrastructure control and enforcement”. The Chinese government not only suppresses certain terms, they also use commentators (the infamous 50 Cent army) to spread their version of the truth. And now, they’re also using paid social media ads – just look at how they tried to spread their version of events in Hong Kong on Twitter. While there are people trying to get around the censors using various words, it seems like China is largely successful in shaping the Chinese internet in the way it wants to be. A related op-ed points out that a combination of reliance on the same censored internet and a lack of critical thinking classes mean that even the Chinese who emigrate out of China tend not to broaden their thinking.
While China and other countries seeking to emulate it refine their techniques, turning the internet into several large fragments, those in countries with less control over the internet are not experiencing total freedom either. Social networks want to keep us hooked on their websites and to do that, they’ve created an echo-chamber. This has the result of amplifying extreme voices and reducing the amount of contrary opinions that we might otherwise hear.
LikeWar also looks at fake news or junk news as it was originally known. Apart from the unsurprising fact that people are more likely to share shocking and sensation content (which may or may not be factual), the book also takes a look at the people who create fake news, such as the Macedonians who accidentally stumbled across this money-making opportunity, something that I thought was interesting.
There’s also an interesting section on narrative. Stories that go viral tend to be simple, resonate with their target group, and contain something novel. If you can use these traits to control the narrative, you can “dictate to an audience who the heroes and villains are; what is right and what is wrong; what’s real and what’s not.” That is a lot and it made me realise that if a story makes you emotional, it’s a good idea to pause and try to figure out why it’s so – what is the value of me being emotional to the writer, what aims are there? I don’t think that every tear or rage-inducing story is necessary one meant to deceive me, but it’s always a good idea to be aware of when people want to manipulate you.
If you’ve been following and worrying about how social media has been increasingly used to further different narratives, I suspect that a lot of what you read in this book will be familiar to you. Still, having all the different threads – government censorship, fake news, the echo chamber, etc – in one book creates a big impact and makes you realise that the internet now is a far cry from the way it was meant to be. Sadly, short of intervention from other companies or governments, the only things we can do is to be more critical of the things we read and be on the alert for attempts to move us in one direction or the other.
This review was first posted at Eustea Reads
LikeWar argues that social media is being used by various groups to advance their cause – from Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency to ISIS. Hence, the notion of a “war” taking place in cyberspace. Although the creators and first adopters of the internet saw it as a place where free speech would flourish and as a tool to take down authoritarian regimes, the book brings up several chilling examples of how this is view is flawed.
One of them is China, with its famous Great Firewall. The book describes the Chinese government as vigorously and successfully pursuing the goal of “control over not just computer networks and human bodies, but the minds of their citizens as well” through “the right balance of infrastructure control and enforcement”. The Chinese government not only suppresses certain terms, they also use commentators (the infamous 50 Cent army) to spread their version of the truth. And now, they’re also using paid social media ads – just look at how they tried to spread their version of events in Hong Kong on Twitter. While there are people trying to get around the censors using various words, it seems like China is largely successful in shaping the Chinese internet in the way it wants to be. A related op-ed points out that a combination of reliance on the same censored internet and a lack of critical thinking classes mean that even the Chinese who emigrate out of China tend not to broaden their thinking.
While China and other countries seeking to emulate it refine their techniques, turning the internet into several large fragments, those in countries with less control over the internet are not experiencing total freedom either. Social networks want to keep us hooked on their websites and to do that, they’ve created an echo-chamber. This has the result of amplifying extreme voices and reducing the amount of contrary opinions that we might otherwise hear.
LikeWar also looks at fake news or junk news as it was originally known. Apart from the unsurprising fact that people are more likely to share shocking and sensation content (which may or may not be factual), the book also takes a look at the people who create fake news, such as the Macedonians who accidentally stumbled across this money-making opportunity, something that I thought was interesting.
There’s also an interesting section on narrative. Stories that go viral tend to be simple, resonate with their target group, and contain something novel. If you can use these traits to control the narrative, you can “dictate to an audience who the heroes and villains are; what is right and what is wrong; what’s real and what’s not.” That is a lot and it made me realise that if a story makes you emotional, it’s a good idea to pause and try to figure out why it’s so – what is the value of me being emotional to the writer, what aims are there? I don’t think that every tear or rage-inducing story is necessary one meant to deceive me, but it’s always a good idea to be aware of when people want to manipulate you.
If you’ve been following and worrying about how social media has been increasingly used to further different narratives, I suspect that a lot of what you read in this book will be familiar to you. Still, having all the different threads – government censorship, fake news, the echo chamber, etc – in one book creates a big impact and makes you realise that the internet now is a far cry from the way it was meant to be. Sadly, short of intervention from other companies or governments, the only things we can do is to be more critical of the things we read and be on the alert for attempts to move us in one direction or the other.
This review was first posted at Eustea Reads
September 23, 2018
An engaging read. While the subject matter can be depressing, who doesn't look at the current cyber world and cringe?, the authors keep the information quite entertaining. While learning specifics behind personal recreations, planting seeds of doubt in our brains by groups and organizations, and recruiting for actual physical war, the theme is that the internet if far more dangerous than the days of the wild west shoot outs. Like advertising, memes do their job of making people laugh or feel and then wa-lah they become truths and facts. It's frightening to say the least. It's not all bad, the book explores Anonymous and other positive people and groups fighting this international cyberwar.
If you're looking to read this title for school - it's excellent and very well researched and documented. If you're reading out of curiosity or how to protect yourself as much as possible - go for it! The authors are talented and skilled at keeping the pacing fast and the verbiage is amusing, while being informative.
Example: When writing about Tay, a network powered chatbot Microsoft created that adopted the speech and patterns of a teenage girl that was quickly converted by trolls on the internet into a racist, sexist, and Holocaust denier and thus quickly deleted, the writers write "After less than a day, Tay was unceremoniously put to sleep, her fevered artificial brain left to dream of electric frogs." Okay, by itself it's not as funny, but when I read it surrounded by the emotionally exhausting truths of our reality it was quite refreshing.
Overall, this book will appeal to a much broader audience than one would project due to the authors' ability to make the subject matter entertaining. As a mom of teenagers, this will be on their summer reading list so that they can understand the depths of results of social media on society.
If you're looking to read this title for school - it's excellent and very well researched and documented. If you're reading out of curiosity or how to protect yourself as much as possible - go for it! The authors are talented and skilled at keeping the pacing fast and the verbiage is amusing, while being informative.
Example: When writing about Tay, a network powered chatbot Microsoft created that adopted the speech and patterns of a teenage girl that was quickly converted by trolls on the internet into a racist, sexist, and Holocaust denier and thus quickly deleted, the writers write "After less than a day, Tay was unceremoniously put to sleep, her fevered artificial brain left to dream of electric frogs." Okay, by itself it's not as funny, but when I read it surrounded by the emotionally exhausting truths of our reality it was quite refreshing.
Overall, this book will appeal to a much broader audience than one would project due to the authors' ability to make the subject matter entertaining. As a mom of teenagers, this will be on their summer reading list so that they can understand the depths of results of social media on society.
February 10, 2019
Extremely disappointed. I thought Ghost Fleet was insightful and well-worth reading. I still plan to read Singer's other book on cyber war. This, however, was a partisan tome that a reader will only find engaging if they share the authors' partisan leanings. I highlighted 67 passages in the book - mainly where I felt like the authors were engaging in the techniques of "the enemy".
Lots of grand statements for the purpose of virtue signalling, but not much insightful content. After explaining the difficulties and failures of tech firms' current attempts to rein in violent content, in their conclusion, they say we must hold tech firms accountable for censoring such content. How? They are trying and failing. So what do you want them to do?
I think a lot of the issue really lies with why are people influenced or susceptible to crappy, deceitful, hateful content - which the authors don't address at all. Russ Roberts, @econtalker, has a great podcast monologue that touches on such issues- http://www.econtalk.org/russ-roberts-....
I thought they missed a golden opportunity to expound on the young American girl who almost joined ISIS after being ostracized. As Russ Roberts discusses in his podcast, or societal safety net is failing. People who are marginalized are being left out and left behind.
Anyway, if you share the authors' political leanings, you'll love this book. If you wish they could have at least tried to present a balanced history of the use of social media for political ends, you'll be disappointed.
Lots of grand statements for the purpose of virtue signalling, but not much insightful content. After explaining the difficulties and failures of tech firms' current attempts to rein in violent content, in their conclusion, they say we must hold tech firms accountable for censoring such content. How? They are trying and failing. So what do you want them to do?
I think a lot of the issue really lies with why are people influenced or susceptible to crappy, deceitful, hateful content - which the authors don't address at all. Russ Roberts, @econtalker, has a great podcast monologue that touches on such issues- http://www.econtalk.org/russ-roberts-....
I thought they missed a golden opportunity to expound on the young American girl who almost joined ISIS after being ostracized. As Russ Roberts discusses in his podcast, or societal safety net is failing. People who are marginalized are being left out and left behind.
Anyway, if you share the authors' political leanings, you'll love this book. If you wish they could have at least tried to present a balanced history of the use of social media for political ends, you'll be disappointed.
November 15, 2018
LikeWars is a well written, well researched and penetrating analysis on how powerful social media has become in influencing society, politics and our perceptions of what is real and what is not. More importantly, it attempts to chart a trajectory of how social media will evolve in the future and powerful role artificial intelligence (AI), specifically neural networks, will play in determining that trajectory. The solutions presented by the authors to the issues we are facing and will face are as insightful as their observations. I would hope that every educator and policy maker here in the United States would read this book and be motivated to take action.
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