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Death of Michael Ledeen, maker of the phony case for the invasion of Iraq

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93 points nabla9 | 5 comments | 25 May 25 07:08 UTC | HN request time: 0.856s | source
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jaybrendansmith ◴[25 May 25 16:47 UTC] No.44089027[source]▶
This is the last time I felt the power of the propaganda machine. (The most recent time was the 2024 election) It was so obvious to myself and my friends that this was completely cooked up intelligence. And yet the truth was not getting out, and had fooled many people with this strange groupthink, almost like a dumb, braying herd animal, where the collective intelligence was utterly ambushed and tied up in a sack. I don't like feeling powerless, yet I have this feeling that our voices have been smothered of late, destroyed by ridiculous talking points.
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1. sigmoid10 ◴[25 May 25 17:21 UTC] No.44089247[source]▶
If you didn't feel the machine in all those other cases it has gone full swing since then, that just means these two attempts were extremely crude by comparison (and they were indeed). But Cambridge Analytica has really ushered us into a new era of manipulation, where most citizens don't even have the slightest chance of perceiving how they are getting played by nefarious actors. And that was just the tip of the iceberg. Today we have stuff like the Saudis buying access to Twitter/X after getting busted for planting literal double agents inside the company. The level and sophistication of propaganda we see right now is unprecedented in human history.
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2. dc396 ◴[26 May 25 01:56 UTC] No.44093220[source]▶
An interesting assertion. A quick Google search didn't turn up anything definitive for me. Do you have references?
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3. fooblaster ◴[26 May 25 02:56 UTC] No.44093538{3}[source]▶
One of many: https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/researcher-in-fac...

see comments of hacker news threads: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20800031

4. hulitu ◴[26 May 25 05:19 UTC] No.44094205[source]▶
> Cambridge analytica had absolutely no impact on the election whatsoever,

Of course not. They weren't even active on Facebook, they were selling potatoes at the local market. /s

5. sigmoid10 ◴[26 May 25 15:38 UTC] No.44098454[source]▶
>Cambridge analytica had absolutely no impact on the election whatsoever

Say the guys who were implicated and facing public humiliation or even punishment. Meta has already paid billions of dollars in fines and settlements because of this, so all these people not covering their asses would actually be surprising. But if you look at the raw evidence uncovered during the senate hearings, there is no doubt that it had a major effect on the election and beyond.