Cybersecurity / Cyber Power / Disinformation and Troll Farms

[Leonardo17]

   The price of a successful election campaign in Africa is about 6 million $. The puts the cost of a successful election campaign in my country to about 60 million $. Therefore a successful election campaign in some part of the developed world should be around 600 million $.
 
   I decided to create a new topic on this. Because I believe the aim of the internet is to allow the free movement of ideas and information between people all over the world. I’m OK with commercial and entertainment usage of these new abilities. But how can a group of people become able to use it as a tool to undermine democracy and democratic processes of our modern societies?
 
   By the way, Russia and China seem to have become number 2 and 3 of these “cyber warfare” technologies. Number One is Israel:
 
“An Israeli firm sought to influence more than 30 elections around the world for clients by hacking, sabotage and spreading disinformation (…) The firm was dubbed "Team Jorge" by investigating journalists who posed as potential clients in order to gather information on its methods and capabilities (…)Its boss, Tal Hanan, is a former Israeli special forces operative who boasted of being able to control supposedly secure Telegram accounts and thousands of fake social media profiles, as well as planting news stories (…)"Evidence of a global private market in disinformation aimed at elections will also ring alarm bells for democracies around the world." (…) Tal Hanan: "We are now involved in one election in Africa... We have a team in Greece and a team in [the] Emirates... [We have completed] 33 presidential-level campaigns, 27 of which were successful," (…)Online public influence campaigns were carried out via a software platform, known as Advanced Impact Media Solutions, that allegedly controlled nearly 40,000 social media profiles across Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, the reports say. (…)Other similar companies have been named in media reports or sanctioned by Western governments in recent years over their role in trying to influence elections and public opinion….
 
https://www.france24.com/en/technology/2...-worldwide
 
The website also contains an interview with Mr. Eviatar Matania (Founder of the Israeli Cybersecurity directorate). It’s also very interesting.
 
It may be too late for us. But I think newer generation should learn to protect their brains from all of this + There has to be tougher rules on social media, especially in democratic societies. 

[Leonardo17]

Social Media has also a huge toll on teenagers, especially on young-adult females. One event that clearly exemplifies this is the suicide of Molly Russell in 2017 (https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022...her-london). This 14 year old has posted a lot of material on suicide before truly getting into action. Her parents where naturally completely shocked / completely unable to understand what had happened to their daughter.

Here is another article I found today on the subject:

“Some of the most alarming data collected by the CDC involved the rise in suicidal thoughts among teen girls - 24 percent of teen girls have made a plan for suicide while 13 percent have attempted it, almost twice the rate for boys.”
(…)
“Many of the girls interviewed for this story asked that adults listen to and believe girls, and stop dismissing their concerns as drama. "Adults don't get all the pressure that teenage girls have to deal with, from appearance to the way they act to how smart they are, to the things they do," said Villegas, the Eastvale 10th-grader. "It can be very overwhelming."”
(…)
“Many girls across the country describe teen cultures of casual slut-shaming, of peers greeting girls with sexist slurs such as "whore" or "ho," based on what they wear or how they look.
In Los Angeles, Elida Mejia Elias says it's a no-win situation. "If you're skinny, they judge you for being skinny and if you're fat, they judge you for being fat," explains the 18-year-old, a senior.”
(…)
“Jean Twenge, a psychology professor at San Diego State University and author of the book "iGen," said part of the problem is that digital media has displaced the face-to-face time teens once had with friends, and that teens often don't get enough sleep. Adding to those influences are the hours teens spend scrolling social media. For girls, she said, this often means "comparing your body and your life to others and feeling that you come up wanting."
https://www.yahoo.com/news/crisis-americ...21721.html

While it is true that every generation is being heavily criticized for whatever type of media it that they are using (For me it was PC and Internet, 10 years before me it was Television programs, now it’s social media) there is a still a clear inability of some children and / or teenagers to manage the huge amount of information that is being provided to them through those gadgets. In my time the debate was about violence and consumerism behavior that were being promoted through movies and video games. And of course, adults wanted to protect us by limiting our time in front of screens and directing us to more constructive / self-helping behavior instead. So in a way, this is exactly the same thing. The fact is that we as adult are very able of filtering out everything that is B.S. on social media. So it’s not that much of a threat to us (although I personally simply don’t have time for some platform that is being ruled by a total Luni like Elon Musk). But I think the issue of teenagers in particular is different (especially for the female sex). Because to platform is interactive, young adults are more prone to dislike themselves because of the overwhelming influence of social media. When you are a teenager, if if you are a boy, your head is too small, your hair is not right, you are not smart enough, you are either too tin, or too fat, that’s the state of mind of the typical teenager. It will take at least half a decade for someone to learn to love his/her body and/or personality entirely. And that’s adulthood. So if you allow teens to push each other around on these platforms the result can and is being quite dramatic. Because it’s completely normal for teens to hate themselves and their friends. They are simply not adults. So this body-shaming or perfect body / perfect person like propaganda behaviors will have to be limited as well. The way we are using if it’s simply pure narcissism and voyeurism. The way they use it, it’s nothing less than self-destructive behavior.