I absolutely agree that propaganda without censorship can be very weak. However, it can also not be very weak. The JFK situation doesn’t seem penetrable by open-source researchers like Zvi, because it’s oversaturated; redundant information can drown out truth by making it unreasonably expensive to locate.
There’s also the use of modern psychology to manufacture “vibes” or steer people’s thinking in specific directions. That’s a whole can of worms on its own. I happen to be >90% confident that elites like Zvi can be duped by techniques (including but not at all limited to the use of LLMs to label content) that are widely employed but not known to the public. However, I’m less sure about the success rate, i.e. 20% versus 80%, but even a 20% success rate can still dampen the spread of true information:
I absolutely agree that propaganda without censorship can be very weak. However, it can also not be very weak. The JFK situation doesn’t seem penetrable by open-source researchers like Zvi, because it’s oversaturated; redundant information can drown out truth by making it unreasonably expensive to locate.
There’s also the use of modern psychology to manufacture “vibes” or steer people’s thinking in specific directions. That’s a whole can of worms on its own. I happen to be >90% confident that elites like Zvi can be duped by techniques (including but not at all limited to the use of LLMs to label content) that are widely employed but not known to the public. However, I’m less sure about the success rate, i.e. 20% versus 80%, but even a 20% success rate can still dampen the spread of true information: