notes.husk.org/likes images.

Social Media Drones. The military do not like surprises, the development of early warning systems has always been key, which I guess is how things like radars and binoculars got invented. But now the armed forces have noisy social media networks to sift through, radars and binoculars won’t pick anything in time here. To address this Darpa have a Social Media in Strategic Communication program to not only spot a social uprising in the making, but also to “support the efforts of human operators to counter misinformation or deception campaigns with truthful information”. That means that algorithms will analyse and track the formation of new cultural narratives and then deploy social bots that respond to your rebel tweets with opposing ‘truthful information’. Well thats what I understand from it. Here’s a direct quote: 

“Researchers will attempt to track ideas and concepts to analyze patterns and cultural narratives.  If successful, they should be able to model emergent communities and analyze narratives and their participants, as well as characterize generation of automated content, such as by bots, in social media and crowd sourcing.”

The new cultural-algorithmic landscape hosts a battle for the minds and opinions of all of us. If you suspect you’ve been approached by a darpa bot, please get in touch.