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nephihaha 9 minutes ago [-]
The BBC is part of the problem. For example, Nigel Farage is very much their own Frankenstein's monster, because they promoted him heavily long before GB News and AI fake videos. One of its flagship political programmes, QuestionTime had him on a disproportionate amount of the time, to the extent that he almost felt like an industry plant. (To be fair, Farage makes better telly than most of dull workaday politicians, but he still wasn't getting support until the BBC bigged him up.). They even had him on a Scottish independence special back when he had no elected representatives in Scotland. Farage, Brexit, UKIP and Reform are all seeds that the BBC planted fifteen years ago.
As for UK decline, I am afraid that it very much is visible in the 2020s. There was no real debt protection during the lockdown as there should have been (to prevent people's homes and businesses being seized due to non-payment), and the price of everything is sky high. This is attributed to Brexit, but I suspect that is part of the issue. As for migration, it definitely is much higher than it was twenty years ago, and there are elements which are playing both ends of that debate like the BBC itself.
big85 1 days ago [-]
Such is the way to radicalize people - convince them with propaganda that their way of life is at risk.
sznio 23 hours ago [-]
what I find worst is that not all of this seems to be a work of a nation-state actor.
it seems like quite a lot of these are just made by people in 3rd world countries to make ad revenue. making videos for westerners gives you the richest audience, so the best ad revenue. and anger creates engagement, so making polarizing content gives you most reach.
mamonster 22 hours ago [-]
On Twitter I think most of the "Decadent West" accounts are for ad share. Elon has a whole harem of these accounts to retweet and ask stupid shit like "But has he actually done something illegal"
altcognito 23 hours ago [-]
Not what I expected when it was said “we will hang you with the rope you sell us”
dijksterhuis 23 hours ago [-]
yeah they cover this in the article. broadly theres like three types of this activity: nation states; individuals / loose groups with an ideological agenda; people who want ad revenue money.
flohofwoe 23 hours ago [-]
Could also be a combination of both, e.g. like Russia's "rent a disposable saboteur" concept, just for misinformation instead of physical sabotage. If it brings in additional ad revenue then that's just the cherry on top.
Imustaskforhelp 23 hours ago [-]
It does go both way as for example I have seen westeners make videos about developing nations with huge population say India because it would get them more views. Sure the ad revenue per 1000 views would be less but you would just get more views overall and I have seen that there is still anger/polarizing content generated towards Indians as such.
Which also generates hate towards Indian people online too which is definitely quite a problem, so this issue cuts both ways.
In my opinion, I used to think that there used to be nation-state actors involved within the perception of a country but the thing is that you can just have such perverse incentives and you wouldn't even need to create nation-state actors and they can then stay away blame-free even.
Edit: another thing that I remembered is that it shouldn't be a developing nation or developed nation critique but rather an critique of the system in general as I have seen western people critique about for example UK's downfall and I have seen Indian people critique about for example say India's downfall.
My point is, everyone makes rage inducing content nowadays if one looks for it and the algorithm sometimes even pushes it and so the algorithmic structure has created these perverse incentives and is pushing them on all of us basically
SideburnsOfDoom 22 hours ago [-]
Worse, it's often just monetisation without a specific agenda of radicalisation.
> The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.
― William S. Burroughs
soco 23 hours ago [-]
And it's scary how effective it seems to be, scary that an internet-based "reality" can appear more trustworthy that your real life...
tim333 13 hours ago [-]
I've noticed a lot of Americans believing the fake stuff about the islamization of England. Living in England it's obvious a lot is fake by looking out of the window and similar. Not that there aren't any issues but it gets hugely exaggerated and some things completely made up.
citrin_ru 23 hours ago [-]
It seems the more people spend online the more they trust online picture whatever it is (for most people it's an algorithmically generated feed) and less pay attention to what they can see in person. Smartphone addition is harmful in so many ways.
ChrisMarshallNY 23 hours ago [-]
I have a friend that is a "Bernie Bro." Basically, everyone sucks; right, left, etc.
He constantly sends me hate-porn videos; much of it obvious fakes; AI or not (It's been going on far longer than AI tools).
People get hooked on anger. It's -literally- an addiction, and they behave like addicts; seeking out the best "hate dealers," selling the "best" anger-inducing content, and savagely attacking anyone that questions the stuff.
I learned to just ignore most of what he sends me. I've asked him not to send it, and he's ignored it (like an addict).
I have friends that are into the far-right and far-left cesspits, too. It's pretty sobering.
What was it that Bill Burroughs said about heroin?
> "Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy."
You could replace "junk" with "hate," and it would apply.
dijksterhuis 23 hours ago [-]
long term recovering addict here and yeah i’ve been trying to work on the “anger” stuff in this last year. you’re right. in the moment it feels good. and it’s very easy to replicate that dopamine hit though getting righteous about stuff — just go on HN and find something about AI (that’s for me anyway - “they’re wrong, must fix the wrong!”).
i guess we are kinda hardwired as humans to react to perceived danger/threats. warm and fuzzy nice feelings seem harder to cultivate and take a lot of persistent effort. so it’s much easier to fall into this anger/hatewatching cycle than the other more compassionate/reasonable/warm and fuzzy side.
dunno, most of this comment is probably pop psych bs, but it feels right for my experience so i dunno.
fwiw, i hope your friends finds their way to something a little more peaceful one day.
ChrisMarshallNY 23 hours ago [-]
45 years, for me.
I see lots of that stuff in the Fellowship. I've seen resentments go on for decades, and metastasize. Since no one is putting a stem in their mouth, it's OK.
I gave up my anger at about the ten-year mark. It was really difficult. Just like giving up the substances.
panflute 23 hours ago [-]
In the past I think people were equally wrong when assuming their real life was accurately similar to average for the entire society they lived in and not a regional and perhaps class based bubble. I think there was a short period when amateur media was correcting more misconception than adding to it.
oulipo2 23 hours ago [-]
That's because Internet and apps has largely cut communities. People would rather stay at home and doomscroll tiktok videos, than meet their neighbors at the library and see that they are actually not scary at all
zipy124 23 hours ago [-]
Interestingly on Facebook, Threads and Instagram, Meta keeps trying to push it's video creation AI to me, with short video clips showing exactly this sort of content. So it seems Meta itself is pushing you to create it also.
LocalH 15 hours ago [-]
Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia. The Eastasians are our best allies.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. The Eurasians are our best allies.
hmry 23 hours ago [-]
Part of a larger pattern.
If you're into travel blogs YouTube will serve you an endless barrage of videos with photoshopped thumbnails, exclusively containing fearmongering about whatever country or city they're visiting. This has been going on since pre-AI times.
On social media, you'll see plenty of AI-generated videos of members of $GROUP acting badly. One way to make people hate each other even more.
It's been known for a decade+ that platforms paying by engagement / interaction incentivizes people to post things that cause strong negative emotions. Fear and hate sell in the algorithmic engagement economy.
Propaganda machine saying other sources are propaganda
instig007 23 hours ago [-]
Don't trust BBC, they are the state propaganda machine. Draw your own conclusions, there's plenty of UK-based channels that provide the current footage from towns and cities around the country.
The CBC recently reported on videos pretending to be from Canadians promoting similar anti-Canada messaging. They used AI generated copies of real Canadians and hired voice actors. They use this divisive content to drive views and ad revenue:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/alberta-separatist-youtube-ch...
AMerrit 22 hours ago [-]
Yes, this is story immediately came to mind to me. It also shows that the idea of poor people in the global south doing this for money isn't quite the entire story either. Most of the people exposed seem to be young Dutch people trying to make a quick buck attacking Canada.
SadErn 23 hours ago [-]
The decline of personal freedom in the UK is far more troubling than the rise of AI propaganda.
1. Protest rights have become more restricted
2. Online speech is more regulated and more policed
3. Digital privacy has weakened relative to state power
tim333 12 hours ago [-]
Debateable.
expedition32 23 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
instig007 22 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
dontwannahearit 22 hours ago [-]
Yeah, there's deprivation and poverty in parts of the UK and also extreme wealth. It's a spectrum.
But you want to focus on one end of the spectrum? Yes, it's the truth but not the whole truth.
instig007 21 hours ago [-]
> But you want to focus on one end of the spectrum?
Have you actually checked the contents of the channels? Despite the naming, they do provide a full spectrum. You won't see the Mayfair-Knighstbridge side of things though, as these are irrelevant outliers when it comes to the country as a whole.
npstr 23 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
abanana 23 hours ago [-]
> Rapes have not increased by some 200% over the last 10 years?
No. There has been an increase in reported rapes across many Western countries, due to a combination of much higher awareness (especially due to celebrities), and clearer laws and guidelines for the police on how to report, including many cases where offenses that would previously have been reported as "sexual assault" are now reported as "rape". There was also a huge jump in the reporting of historic offences, so if you want to know when they happened, you need to make adjustments from when they were reported.
> the social housing in London area is not majority occupied by foreigners?
No, it is not. That's (famously) completely made-up.
You appear to have been taken in by exactly the type of propaganda the article is exposing.
tristanj 23 hours ago [-]
Social housing in the London area is only occupied by 47.6% foreign born nationals, which is technically not a majority. But that figure is from 2021, rather old, and in 2026 this figure may actually be a majority.
Less than half (47.6%) of London’s social housing was occupied by people describing themselves as born outside of the UK in the 2021 Census.
If someone tells you that some assertion about the world is completely made up and that you're falling for propaganda for believing it, this gives you extremely little information about whether or not that assertion is true, or whether closely-related assertions to that one are also true.
ceejayoz 23 hours ago [-]
> Rapes have not increased by some 200% over the last 10 years?
Recorded rapes. Which, giving the timeline of #MeToo, may reflect a change in willingness to report and prosecute.
generalizations 23 hours ago [-]
This is the BBC, of course they're going to support the official position.
oulipo2 23 hours ago [-]
It's wrong and condemnable to use fake AI-generated videos or articles to push a narrative which is largely false, indeed.
You seem to be blinded by racist views, probably because you don't have access (or don't search for) evidence-based news channels
Most of the immigration is largely well-integrated, and is essential to the functioning of our economies. And that's even before we start talking about our values, which are to help each other out, when they are in dire situation, not push them down like racists do
MrBuddyCasino 23 hours ago [-]
On one hand those 3rd world despair porn accounts are a plague. On the other hand, my god has the UK declined.
phoronixrly 23 hours ago [-]
How has the UK declined and who is to blame you think?
vkou 23 hours ago [-]
I mean, it has objectively declined from a point in time where it held dominion over one in four of the world's souls, keeping most of them in poverty as it siphoned resources out of them, and blocked their own economic development, by dumping its own products into their markets at gunpoint.
And that decline is a good thing.
More recently? It's been making some effort towards burning the furniture.
tim333 12 hours ago [-]
We in the UK are better off in many ways than back then - more GDP per capita, better houses, longer life expectancy and the like. There's more to life than having an empire.
abanana 22 hours ago [-]
It can be very interesting to read opinions in such places as "Letters to the Editor" in newspapers from the 1800s. The conviction that "things were so much better in the past" and "everything's gone to shit" (in the face of clear evidence to the contrary) is, and always has been, an integral part of the human condition.
jacknews 23 hours ago [-]
Whereas the true story is that since Brexit, Britain has experienced a renaissance and a new golden age of prosperity, human flourishing, and enlightenment.
lol.
IAmBroom 12 hours ago [-]
That kool-aid must be delicious.
jacknews 7 hours ago [-]
I think it must be some exotic foreign brand of kool-aid, it's called "Sark Asam"
rurban 21 hours ago [-]
Fake? These viewpoints won the majority in the brexit election. So it's a pushed narrative that won the majority of the public view.
As if Farage bought a cheaper Sri Lanka media consultant to win the next elections.
As for UK decline, I am afraid that it very much is visible in the 2020s. There was no real debt protection during the lockdown as there should have been (to prevent people's homes and businesses being seized due to non-payment), and the price of everything is sky high. This is attributed to Brexit, but I suspect that is part of the issue. As for migration, it definitely is much higher than it was twenty years ago, and there are elements which are playing both ends of that debate like the BBC itself.
it seems like quite a lot of these are just made by people in 3rd world countries to make ad revenue. making videos for westerners gives you the richest audience, so the best ad revenue. and anger creates engagement, so making polarizing content gives you most reach.
Which also generates hate towards Indian people online too which is definitely quite a problem, so this issue cuts both ways.
In my opinion, I used to think that there used to be nation-state actors involved within the perception of a country but the thing is that you can just have such perverse incentives and you wouldn't even need to create nation-state actors and they can then stay away blame-free even.
Edit: another thing that I remembered is that it shouldn't be a developing nation or developed nation critique but rather an critique of the system in general as I have seen western people critique about for example UK's downfall and I have seen Indian people critique about for example say India's downfall.
My point is, everyone makes rage inducing content nowadays if one looks for it and the algorithm sometimes even pushes it and so the algorithmic structure has created these perverse incentives and is pushing them on all of us basically
> The junk merchant doesn't sell his product to the consumer, he sells the consumer to his product. He does not improve and simplify his merchandise. He degrades and simplifies the client.
― William S. Burroughs
He constantly sends me hate-porn videos; much of it obvious fakes; AI or not (It's been going on far longer than AI tools).
People get hooked on anger. It's -literally- an addiction, and they behave like addicts; seeking out the best "hate dealers," selling the "best" anger-inducing content, and savagely attacking anyone that questions the stuff.
I learned to just ignore most of what he sends me. I've asked him not to send it, and he's ignored it (like an addict).
I have friends that are into the far-right and far-left cesspits, too. It's pretty sobering.
What was it that Bill Burroughs said about heroin?
> "Junk is the ideal product... the ultimate merchandise. No sales talk necessary. The client will crawl through a sewer and beg to buy."
You could replace "junk" with "hate," and it would apply.
i guess we are kinda hardwired as humans to react to perceived danger/threats. warm and fuzzy nice feelings seem harder to cultivate and take a lot of persistent effort. so it’s much easier to fall into this anger/hatewatching cycle than the other more compassionate/reasonable/warm and fuzzy side.
dunno, most of this comment is probably pop psych bs, but it feels right for my experience so i dunno.
fwiw, i hope your friends finds their way to something a little more peaceful one day.
I see lots of that stuff in the Fellowship. I've seen resentments go on for decades, and metastasize. Since no one is putting a stem in their mouth, it's OK.
I gave up my anger at about the ten-year mark. It was really difficult. Just like giving up the substances.
Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. The Eurasians are our best allies.
If you're into travel blogs YouTube will serve you an endless barrage of videos with photoshopped thumbnails, exclusively containing fearmongering about whatever country or city they're visiting. This has been going on since pre-AI times.
On social media, you'll see plenty of AI-generated videos of members of $GROUP acting badly. One way to make people hate each other even more.
It's been known for a decade+ that platforms paying by engagement / interaction incentivizes people to post things that cause strong negative emotions. Fear and hate sell in the algorithmic engagement economy.
https://www.youtube.com/@theallornothingpodcastwith4442/vide...
https://www.youtube.com/@ukexplored/videos
https://www.youtube.com/@wanderingturnip/videos
https://www.youtube.com/@Turdtowns/videos
1. Protest rights have become more restricted 2. Online speech is more regulated and more policed 3. Digital privacy has weakened relative to state power
But you want to focus on one end of the spectrum? Yes, it's the truth but not the whole truth.
Have you actually checked the contents of the channels? Despite the naming, they do provide a full spectrum. You won't see the Mayfair-Knighstbridge side of things though, as these are irrelevant outliers when it comes to the country as a whole.
No. There has been an increase in reported rapes across many Western countries, due to a combination of much higher awareness (especially due to celebrities), and clearer laws and guidelines for the police on how to report, including many cases where offenses that would previously have been reported as "sexual assault" are now reported as "rape". There was also a huge jump in the reporting of historic offences, so if you want to know when they happened, you need to make adjustments from when they were reported.
> the social housing in London area is not majority occupied by foreigners?
No, it is not. That's (famously) completely made-up.
You appear to have been taken in by exactly the type of propaganda the article is exposing.
Less than half (47.6%) of London’s social housing was occupied by people describing themselves as born outside of the UK in the 2021 Census.
https://www.reuters.com/fact-check/foreign-born-residents-li...
Recorded rapes. Which, giving the timeline of #MeToo, may reflect a change in willingness to report and prosecute.
You seem to be blinded by racist views, probably because you don't have access (or don't search for) evidence-based news channels
Most of the immigration is largely well-integrated, and is essential to the functioning of our economies. And that's even before we start talking about our values, which are to help each other out, when they are in dire situation, not push them down like racists do
And that decline is a good thing.
More recently? It's been making some effort towards burning the furniture.
lol.
As if Farage bought a cheaper Sri Lanka media consultant to win the next elections.