I think you’re probably right, my feeling is that organic pro-regime internet campaigns are possibly more important than traditional censorship. The PRC has been good at this and I’ve also been worried about how vocal Hindutva elements are becoming.
I don’t know that we’ve yet found the optimal formula for information control (which is a good thing) and I remain a little agnostic on the balance between censorship and propaganda. This post focused on old-style censorship because it’s better documented, but a contemporary information control strategy necessarily involves a lot more.
I’ve so far been skeptical of a lot of misinformation narratives because I don’t think fake news articles for example are labor constrained, but LLMs can definitely be used to boost in the official narrative in more interesting ways. Looking at the PRC again, at least some people in Xinjiang have reported being coerced into posting positively on social about state-narratives, and I have Chinese contacts who have been discouraged socially from posting negative things. I’m guessing some of the censorship tools can also be used to subtly encourage such behaviors and grow the pro-regime mobs.
I think you’re probably right, my feeling is that organic pro-regime internet campaigns are possibly more important than traditional censorship. The PRC has been good at this and I’ve also been worried about how vocal Hindutva elements are becoming.
I don’t know that we’ve yet found the optimal formula for information control (which is a good thing) and I remain a little agnostic on the balance between censorship and propaganda. This post focused on old-style censorship because it’s better documented, but a contemporary information control strategy necessarily involves a lot more.
I’ve so far been skeptical of a lot of misinformation narratives because I don’t think fake news articles for example are labor constrained, but LLMs can definitely be used to boost in the official narrative in more interesting ways. Looking at the PRC again, at least some people in Xinjiang have reported being coerced into posting positively on social about state-narratives, and I have Chinese contacts who have been discouraged socially from posting negative things. I’m guessing some of the censorship tools can also be used to subtly encourage such behaviors and grow the pro-regime mobs.