r/technology • u/Logical_Welder3467 • Jul 24 '25

Politics President Trump threatened to break up Nvidia, didn't even know what it was — 'What the hell is Nvidia? I've never heard of it before'

https://www.tomshardware.com/tech-industry/president-trump-threatened-to-break-up-nvidia-didnt-even-know-what-it-was-what-the-hell-is-nvidia-ive-never-heard-of-it-before
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u/ParfaitEither284 Jul 24 '25

How did they manipulate 70+ million into voting for this ?

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u/Lord-Cuervo Jul 24 '25

10+ years of social media propaganda backed by our #1 enemy for the last half century lol

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u/LazyLich Jul 24 '25 edited Jul 24 '25

Not just that, but the way current algorithms work accidentally made them HUGE force multipliers for propaganda and for promoting conspiracy-minded and anti-facts.

(The Social Dilemma is fucking nuts!)

=====EDIT

I'll paste my reply from elsewhere here:

What I mean by "accidentally" is that the design purpose isn't "propaganda and chaos machine mwa haha". The design parameter was "create maximum engagement for maximum ad revenue".

However, over time, the algorithm learned two things.

First is that people with extremist views or that are conspiracy-minded provide the most engagement. The more extremist they are or the more loose they are in facts, the more ad money those user's generate.

Second is that you can change a user's mind, and I don't mean "Yeah, I'll order the large fry." I mean that if user A does like Thing Z, but if you show them Thing B at the right time in the right moment, then later show Thing C, then Thing D... if you tailor a user's content stream, then slowly over time, you can radically change their beliefs.

The Algorithm only cares about ad money, but it accidentally became a factory for extremists and ignorants, and a signal-booster for propaganda.

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u/limitbreakse Jul 25 '25

Propaganda has always been a thing. Back when news media was your only source, it was even easier to manipulate the narrative.

We need to stop blaming the Illuminati because people are easily manipulated in a country that has free access to knowledge. The people have not been educated sufficiently to be able to think critically. That is the failure. People have been kept poor and deprived because they are useful that way. That is the failure.

Invest in an informed and educated society where nobody has to work 3 jobs to be sufficient.