Our brain was not built for this

[Nevilledog]

https://elmmagazine.eu/resistance/our-brain-was-not-built-for-this/


When Alice Stollmeyer first started working as an independent consultant in Brussels, her focus was on advocating more sustainable energy and ambitious climate policies in the European Union.

With a background in science communications, Stollmeyer quickly became active on Twitter, finding it a good platform to highlight policy points and ask critical questions directly of those holding political power.

Then she started tweeting about Russia.

“It was around 2014, when Russia was invading Crimea in Ukraine, and I got more interested in its geopolitics. That’s when the Russian trolls found me on Twitter,” Stollmeyer says.

The trolls and bots meant to silence Stollmeyer, but instead she started reading more about new forms of propaganda, algorithms and paid campaigns on social media – things that were just starting to become hot topics.

The more she learned, the more she wanted to get involved and do something to fight these new threats that were mostly taking shape online. In 2017, Stollmeyer decided to start a new organisation, Defend Democracy.

*snip*

[Wounded Bear]

1. K & R...if she's fighting bots and trolls, I'm on her side...nt

[SheltieLover]

2. Kicking for visibility

[Demovictory9]

3. Kick 🦵

[Evolve Dammit]

4. Big Kick and R. Russia has played us so bad in cyber space. Mueller showed how it influences,

our elections but sadly, we can't see the report.

[erronis]

5. Thank you. Looks like a good article to dig into and understand.

[Aussie105]

6. If Twitter has become a playground for bots and propaganda machines

aimed at manipulating people the only safe thing a normal person can do is . . . depopulate Twitter.

Run away as fast as you can! And turn off Fox as well.

Once the human brain goes into information overload, it becomes harder to differentiate between things that help, and things that harm.
Trust me!
I am not on Twitter and don't watch Fox and can still tell the difference.

[Hermit-The-Prog]

7. Advice dating back to the old BBSes and newsgroups still applies ...

One of the Defend Democracy projects, Act on Disinfo training, was originally developed for communications professionals. It offers tangible tools for dealing with information manipulation, disinformation, conspiracy theories, propaganda and other harmful information activities.

As an effective strategy for anyone wanting to reduce disinformation or propaganda online, Stollmeyer offers a simple reminder: don’t feed the algorithm.

“For example, when Trumps was still on Twitter, my whole feed was full of people either responding to him or quoting his tweets. Even if the comments were negative, they were still feeding the algorithm and amplifying Trump’s message,” she says.