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Connecticut Will Pay a Security Analyst 150K To Monitor Election Memes - Slashdo...

 1 year ago
source link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/22/06/01/2118256/connecticut-will-pay-a-security-analyst-150k-to-monitor-election-memes
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Connecticut Will Pay a Security Analyst 150K To Monitor Election Memes

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Connecticut Will Pay a Security Analyst 150K To Monitor Election Memes (popsci.com) 58

Posted by BeauHD

on Wednesday June 01, 2022 @08:02PM from the who-controls-the-memes-controls-the-universe dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Popular Science: Ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, Connecticut is hiring a "security analyst" tasked with monitoring and addressing online misinformation. The New York Times first reported this new position, saying the job description will include spending time on "fringe sites like 4chan, far-right social networks like Gettr and Rumble and mainstream social media sites." The goal is to identify election-related rumors and attempt to mitigate the damage they might cause by flagging them to platforms that have misinformation policies and promoting educational content that can counter those false narratives. Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont's midterm budget (PDF), approved in early May, set aside more than $6 million to make improvements to the state's election system. That includes $4 million to upgrade the infrastructure used for voter registration and election management and $2 million for a "public information campaign" that will provide information on how to vote. The full-time security analyst role is recommended to receive $150,000. "Over the last few election cycles, malicious foreign actors have demonstrated the motivation and capability to significantly disrupt election activities, thus undermining public confidence in the fairness and accuracy of election results," the budget stated, as an explanation for the funding. While the role is a first for Connecticut, the NYT noted that it's part of a growing nationwide trend. Colorado, for example, has a Rapid Response Election Security Cyber Unit tasked with monitoring online misinformation, as well as identifying "cyber-attacks, foreign interference, and disinformation campaigns." Originally created in anticipation of the 2020 presidential election, which proved to be fruitful ground for misinformation, the NYT says the unit is being "redeployed" this year. Other states, including Arizona, California, Idaho, and Oregon, are similarly funding election information initiatives in an attempt to counter misinformation, provide educational information, or do both.

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The Democrats need to just call it Wrongthink and admit they are the new bad guys.

Or, perhaps crazy is crazy regardless of politics.

In this particular space-time juncture, the right is dabbling in crazy a lot more than the left. That will not always be the case. But crazy should always be ignored and rejected, no matter what form it takes.

  • Re:

    Every crazy on the right can be matched and exceeded by the crazy on the mainstream left.

    • The mainstream left conceded when they lost the election and never much raised the idea of overturning it. Even when they win the popular vote too.

      That's the specific type of crazy being talked about here.

      • Re:

        You're a damn liar. There were all sorts of allegations about the 2016 election, from the left, about voter fraud.

        In 2020 Hillary was STILL claiming it had been tampered with.


        https://news.yahoo.com/hillary-clinton-maintains-2016-election-160716779.html

        • That article doesn't say anything about voter fraud.

          It does point out the problem with the popular vote not matching the electoral result.

      • Apart from persistent allegations of fraud during the 2016 allegations, unfounded claims of Russian collusion, and four years spent in repeated attempts to remove the elected candidate through impeachments - none of which went anywhere.

        Or are the entire left-leaning media and the Democratic Party not mainstream?

  • Re:

    Don't kid yourself. Both extremes have been eating plenty of crazy paste within the last 10 years. If there's any clear epidemic to be raised lately, it's that all of major politics has been advertised to be outright insane lately, so it's either the politicians or the cable news heads that need to go to the looney bin for social reprogramming -- personally, I don't care which, I think we could make it work either way.

    • That's why I'm a centrist.

      The difference is Dems nominate centrist candidates, whereas Republicans don't right now. Candidates like John Kaisch don't have a chance.

      • The candidates may be "centrist" themselves but they're conspicuously too scared shitless of hard-left twitter to tell them to go fuck themselves.

        Hence, mostly peaceful riots, "defund the police" and the CHAZ got free passes for a few months and now they pretend they never happened.

        The parties have gone whacky, but in an entrenched two-party system I must vote for the extremists who scare me least. The "legitimate rape" and life beginning at the moment of arousal stuff I don't care for, but the out-and-prou

        • Re:

          Don't forget about those who support the irreversible genital mutilation of children.

          • Re:

            Opposing "the irreversible genital mutilation of children" is a perfectly rational position, provided of course that you're not just using it as a justification to deny rights to adult members of the LGBTQ+ community.

            There's always going extremists on both sides of the political spectrum who are the outliers. I don't call every Republican voter an insurrectionist because a few nutcases decided to attack the capitol on Jan 6th. Nor should you believe that everyone who votes Democrat supports kids having se

            • Re:

            • Re:

              Opposing "the irreversible genital mutilation of children" is a perfectly rational position, provided of course that you're not just using it as a justification to deny rights to adult members of the LGBTQ+ community.

              No, he's just using it as a smoke screen to hide his antisemitism.

        • What scares me about the right is that they're trying to break the SYSTEM. Some elections you win and some you lose, the gestalt shifts a bit left or a bit right, but there's always another chance in a few years.

          Currently, the right is trying to game the system so they never lose again. That's scary as hell.

          The pattern which has emerged recently is that you always know what the right is trying to do because it's exactly what they claim the left is doing---falsely, in most cases. If the right screams ele

          • If you believe in free and fair elections, you should have no problem with the concept of a universal requirement that a voter identify themselves with government issued identification as a condition of casting a ballot, or with the requirement that governments keep voter rolls current and remove individuals who are no longer living in a particular district from the voter roll for that district.

            In fact something like 60% of the voting public supports these measures (to the extent that an opinion poll about

            • I would be in favor of any voting measure that ensured maximum participation with minimum fraud.

              However, in practice, those things tend to be in tension. Given that low participation tends to be a much bigger problem than fraud in practice, I prefer to err on the side of increasing participation.

            • Re:

              The right likes to mention voter ID because people without IDs tend to be poorer minorities that vote Democrat.

              If you could guarantee free and easy access to IDs for everyone on the voter role then you wouldn't see anyone against it.

              That being said, individual voter fraud is almost non-existent. It's just used by the right to scare you (which I assume you dislike so you don't vote for them). If a measure prevents 1 person from fraudulently voting but prevents or discourages 1000 people from legitimately vo

              • Numerous polls show a majority of Americans supporting voter ID requirements, and for good reason.

                1. It makes sense. If you need ID to buy a beer, is an election less important? Trust in elections matters, and that's a bipartisan feeling. The only reason there's less support on the Democratic side is because of the myth that brown people are being uniquely targeted.

                2. The vast majority of Americans already have suitable ID. This includes the brown people.

                3. For those that don't drive, ID is incredibly cheap

                • Everything in politics is percentages.

                  Minorities don't all vote one party and voter restrictions don't affect all minorities. But all it takes is a little bit of bias, a 1% greater reduction in voting for one party relative to the other, and suddenly it's gospel truth, We Must Do This.

                  Democrats benefit from high turnout. Reducing turnout is therefore a Republican objective. It's really that simple.

  • Re:

    No, they actually aren't. You do realize that the same number of Democrats think the 2016 election was "stolen" as Republicans who think the 2020 election was "stolen", right?

    You do realize that the Russian Collusion Hoax was started and perpetuated by the Clinton campaign, right?

    I don't even know how people don't understand this. Right-wing idiocy seems to be confined to Facebook and whatever, whereas left-wing idiocy is everywhere. The amount of literal fake news showing up on what should be legitimate

    • Re:

      No, that's a lie. Around 80% of Republicans say the election was not legitimate compared to around 42% of democrats in 2016. Those aren't even close.

      Another lie. It's been proven Russia interfered with the election (bipartisan Senate committee released a report) and multiple members of the Trump campaign worked with Russia to make it happen.

      Not only that but the crazy conspiracies are being repeated by mainstream Republicans including those at the head of the party compared to a few fringe people on twit

      • The Russian Interference story was a rather clever bit of Spin... today most people think their influence was the result of shitty memes and barely intelligible shitposts. When in fact, the only thing they did which had any effect was hacking and releasing the proof that Hillary literally rigged the Party Nomination.
    • 2016 was a clusterfuck, but not because the votes weren't counted fairly. I literally have not heard that claim anywhere, ever. Just a lot of bad judgment calls by people who should have known better.
  • that won't always be the case? Remember that the main difference between the left and the right is that the left looks towards the community or if you want to be less charitable collectivist action to solve problems while the right wing looks towards individuals or again if you want to be less charitable strongmen.

    I know this doesn't go over well but I think the right wing is fundamentally more prone to what we would consider antisocial and dangerous behavior just by the very nature of their obsession

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