No. This is a form of lazy thinking, because it assumes everyone is equally affected. This is not what we see in reality, and several sections of the population are more prone to being converted by manipulation efforts.

Worse, these sections have been under coordinated manipulation since the 60s-70s.

That said, the scope and scale of the effort required to achieve this is not small, and requires dedicated effort to keep pushing narratives and owning media power.

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swed420 a day ago | parent | next [-]

> This is a form of lazy thinking, because it assumes everyone is equally affected. This is not what we see in reality, and several sections of the population are more prone to being converted by manipulation efforts.

Making matters worse, one of the sub groups thinks they're above being manipulated, even though they're still being manipulated.

It started by confidently asserting over use of em dashes indicates the presence of AI, so they think they're smart by abandoning the use of em dashes. That is altered behavior in service to AI.

A more recent trend with more destructive power: avoiding the use of "It's not X. It's Y." since AI has latched onto that pattern.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45529020

This will pressure real humans to not use the format that's normally used to fight against a previous form of coercion. A tactic of capital interests has been to get people arguing about the wrong question concerning ImportantIssueX in order to distract from the underlying issue. The way to call this out used to be to point out that, "it's not X1 we should be arguing about, but X2." This makes it harder to call out BS.

That sure is convenient for capital interests (whether it was intentional or not), and the sky is the limit for engineering more of this kind of societal control by just tweaking an algo somewhere.

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bee_rider 21 hours ago | parent [-]

I find “it’s not X, it’s Y” to be a pretty annoying rhetorical phrase. I might even agree with the person that Y is fundamentally more important, but we’re talking about X already. Let’s say what we have to say about X before moving on to Y.

Constantly changing the topic to something more important produces conversations that get broader, with higher partisan lean, and are further from closing. I’d consider it some kind of (often well intentioned) thought terminating cliche, in the sense that it stops the exploration of X.

	▲	buu700 9 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The "it's not X, it's Y" construction seems pretty neutral to me. Almost no one minds when the phrase "it's not a bug, it's a feature" is used idiomatically, for example. The main thing that's annoying about typical AI writing style is its repetitiveness and fixation on certain tropes. It's like if you went to a comedy club and noticed a handful of jokes that each comedian used multiple times per set. You might get tired of those jokes quickly, but the jokes themselves could still be fine. Related: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/03/magazine/chatbot-writing-...
	▲	swed420 18 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> Constantly changing the topic to something more important produces conversations that get broader, with higher partisan lean I'm basing the prior comment on the commonly observed tendency for partisan politics to get people bickering about the wrong question (often symptoms) to distract from the greater actual causes of the real problems people face. This is always in service to the capital interests that control/own both political parties. Example: get people to fight about vax vs no vax in the COVID era instead of considering if we should all be wearing proper respirators regardless of vax status (since vaccines aren't sterilizing). Or arguing if we should boycott AI because it uses too much power, instead of asking why power generation is scarce.

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vintermann a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

I assume you think you're not in these sections?

And probably a lot of people in those sections say the same about your section, right?

I think nobody's immune. And if anyone is especially vulnerable, it's those who can be persuaded that they have access to insider info. Those who are flattered and feel important when invited to closed meetings.

It's much easier to fool a few than to fool many, so ,private manipulation - convincing someone of something they should not talk about with regular people because they wouldn't understand, you know - is a lot more powerful than public manipulation.

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pjc50 a day ago | parent | next [-]

> I assume you think you're not in these sections? And probably a lot of people in those sections say the same about your section, right?

You're saying this a lot in this thread as a sort of gotcha, but .. so what? "You are not immune to propaganda" is a meme for a reason.

> private manipulation - convincing someone of something they should not talk about with regular people because they wouldn't understand, you know - is a lot more powerful than public manipulation

The essential recruiting tactic of cults. Insider groups are definitely powerful like that. Of course, what tends in practice to happen as the group gets bigger is you get end-to-end encryption with leaky ends. The complex series of Whatapp groups of the UK conservative party was notorious for its leakiness. Not unreasoable to assume that there are "insiders" group chats everywhere. Except in financial services where there's been a serious effort to crack down on that since LIBOR.

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intended 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Would it make any difference to you, if I said I had actual subject matter expertise on this topic?

Or would that just result in another moving of the goal posts, to protect the idea that everyone is fooled, and that no one is without sin, and thus standing to speak on the topic?

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vintermann 21 hours ago | parent | next [-]

There are a lot of self-described experts who I'm sure you agree are nothing of the sort. How do I tell you from them, fellow internet poster?

This is a political topic, in the sense that there are real conflicts of interest here. We can't always trust that expertise is neutral. If you had your subject matter expertise from working for FSB, you probably agree that even though your expertise would then be real, I shouldn't just defer to what you say?

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NoGravitas 21 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

I'm not OP, but I would find it valuable, if given the details and source of claimed subject matter expertise.

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intended 18 hours ago | parent [-]

Ugh. Put up or shut up I guess. I doubt it would be valuable, and likely a doxxing hazard. Plus it feels self-aggrandizing.

Work in trust and safety, managed a community of a few million for several years, team’s work ended up getting covered in several places, later did a masters dissertation on the efficacy of moderation interventions, converted into a paper. Managing the community resulted in being front and center of information manipulation methods and efforts. There are other claims, but this is a field I am interested in, and would work on even in my spare time.

Do note - the rhetorical set up for this thread indicates that no amount of credibility would be sufficient.

	▲	eudamoniac 8 hours ago \| parent [-]
		So basically a reddit mod?

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coldtea a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The section of the people more prone to being converted by manipulation efforts are the highly educated.

Higher education itself being basically a way to check for obedience and conformity, plus some token lip service to "independent inquiry".