Social engineering and the continued emergence of Fascism in the USA

In case you missed the recent news that Facebook has been conducting an experiment by altering the feeds of their users to see how positive or negative information affects the moods and content created by the recipients of the altered feeds, new information has come out that the U.S. military may have been funding and supporting the effort. 

"There has been quite a bit of chatter this past week after it was revealed that a recent Facebook outage was the result of a psychological experiment that the company conducted on a portion of its users without their permission. The experiment, which was described in a paper published by Facebook, and UCSF, tested the contagion of emotions on social media by manipulating the content of personal feeds and measuring how this impacted user behavior.

Over 600,000 users were used as guinea pigs without their consent, which raises a number of serious ethical and legal questions (particularly due to the fact that this study received federal funding), however there is an even more disturbing angle to this story. It turns out that this research was connected to a Department of Defense project called the Minerva Initiative, which funds universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world."

--From SCGnews.

Here's a bit on the Cornell researcher who leads the study and some sketchy-looking track covering.

"Initially, the press release from Cornell highlighting the study said at the bottom: “The study was funded in part by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Army Research Office.” Once people started asking questions about this, Cornell claimed it had made a mistake, and that there was no outside funding. Jay Rosen, Journalism Professor at NYU, seems to find this highly questionable. He wrote on his Facebook page that:

Strange little turn in the story of the Facebook “emotional contagion” study. Last month’s press release from Cornell highlighting the study had said at the bottom: “The study was funded in part by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Army Research Office.”

Why would the military be interested? I wanted to know. So I asked Adam D.I. Kramer, the Facebook researcher, that question on his Facebook page, where he has posted what he called a public explanation. (He didn’t reply to my or anyone else’s questions.) See:https://www.facebook.com/akramer/posts/10152987150867796

Now it turns out Cornell was wrong! Or it says it was wrong. The press release now reads: “Correction: An earlier version of this story reported that the study was funded in part by the James S. McDonnell Foundation and the Army Research Office. In fact, the study received no external funding.”

Why do I call this strange? Any time my work has been featured in an NYU press release, the PR officers involved show me drafts and coordinate closely with me, for the simple reason that they don’t want to mischaracterize scholarly work. So now we have to believe that Cornell’s Professor of Communication and Information Science, Jeffrey Hancock, wasn’t shown or didn’t read the press release in which he is quoted about the study’s results (weird) or he did read it but somehow failed to notice that it said his study was funded by the Army when it actually wasn’t (weirder).

I think I would notice if my university was falsely telling the world that my research was partially funded by the Pentagon… but, hey, maybe there’s an innocent and boring explanation that I am overlooking.

It gets even more interesting from here. The Professor of Communication and Information Science, Jeffrey Hancock, who Mr. Rosen mentions above, has a history of working with the U.S. military, specifically the Minerva Institute. In case you forgot what this is, the Guardian reported on it earlier this year. It explained:

A US Department of Defense (DoD) research program is funding universities to model the dynamics, risks and tipping points for large-scale civil unrest across the world, under the supervision of various US military agencies. The multi-million dollar program is designed to develop immediate and long-term “warfighter-relevant insights” for senior officials and decision makers in “the defense policy community,” and to inform policy implemented by “combatant commands.”

Launched in 2008 – the year of the global banking crisis – the DoD ‘Minerva Research Initiative’ partners with universities “to improve DoD’s basic understanding of the social, cultural, behavioral, and political forces that shape regions of the world of strategic importance to the US.”

-- From Zerohedge.

Interesting stuff, eh? And remember the Minerva project? I linked to another ZeroHedge article that describes it in detail in "Well, I'm screwed".

What about this story from a few months back? The State Department created a social media platform aimed solely at undermining another sovereign nation. In case you missed it, "Cuban Twitter":

"The U.S. government masterminded the creation of a "Cuban Twitter" — a communications network designed to undermine the communist government in Cuba, built with secret shell companies and financed through foreign banks, The Associated Press has learned.
The Obama administration project, which lasted more than two years and drew tens of thousands of subscribers, sought to evade Cuba's stranglehold on the Internet with a primitive social media platform. First, the network would build a Cuban audience, mostly young people; then, the plan was to push them toward dissent."--- From the AP.

So it seems that the Military/Industrial/Information complex (that sure is a mouthful for plain old fascism) is joining together to do social engineering experiments on an unsuspecting populace with the aims of creating or stopping Arab Spring style unrest depending on where and when it is useful to their aims. In Cuba, Ukraine, and numerous Middle Eastern countries it would seem to be useful to create social unrest. But here at home, with a stagnant economy, wealth inequality, and little confidence in government or financial institutions to meet our needs, a stealth campaign of pacification is more the order of the day.

So, what to do about it? I would advise against abstaining from social media altogether. It is a useful tool to liberate minds and people, but it is obviously being weaponized against us. I think simply being aware that some parties are trying to manipulate you will go a long way toward avoiding the consequences they may desire. Be mindful, use this technology as a tool for good, and beware of the risks. You gotta fight for your mind.