<nettime> Ideological Turks

[Morlock Elloi <morlockelloi@gmail.com>]

Recently there was a leak from a fringe decaying country about numbers 
involved in poor man's version of social media manipulation. Having no 
access to control structures of network monopolies like the big guys, 
Serbian honchos had to resort to manual labor:

In the last 12 months, about 3,500 workers were engaged (full time it 
appears) to inject pro-employer messaging, and they did quite well: 10 
million comments. Note that Serbia has population of about 8 million.

See 
https://www.serbianmonitor.com/en/sns-sponsored-bots-made-10-million-comments-online/

It works. They ain't being paid for nothing.

Does this mean that there is a proportional number - around 3 million - 
of such workers worldwide? Probably not (I'd guess 1 million.) More 
developed countries (with far more expensive labor) likely pay only the 
elite liars, and do the rest by directly manipulating platforms from the 
inside (algorithm tweaking.) Efficient liar is not something that can be 
easily outsourced, because it's relatively easy to spot a cheap wetback 
from somewhere around the world telling you how bad or good something is.

I think that even in developed countries the ruling classes are 
recognizing the limits of the combination of automata and few elite 
influencers, so there may be a real solution on the horizon for the 
dwindling job market. Instead of deploying the poor as cannon fodder or 
sex service for the rich, they can be employed as direct persuaders. 
There should be no stigma around this profession. The wages will be good 
enough for a decent living, and it even may help re-populating the 
middle classes. Many of your neighbors can be working as persuaders.

This is far more preferable to the situation today, where elite liars 
(euphemisms like 'activists', 'social scientists', 'lecturers', 
'speakers', 'critics' and such are used instead) work in combination 
with crude algorithms. Everyone knows that these are just liars and just 
machines. Even the workers know it deep down, which causes painful 
cognitive dissonance. It's dehumanizing on many levels. We don't need 
that. The next revolution will involve removing the stigma and making 
this a legitimate and compassionate mass-employment profession. The New 
Deal.

Down with elites!






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