Identifying Astroturfing on Social Media

This is a topic which hasn't received enough attention. Astroturfing is probably a bigger issue than most people realize. When one side does this on a large scale, the other side will need to do the same thing in order to compete. The potential end result is people end up with someone elected to office because some PR strategist cooked up a bigger crock of slop than the other side.

Using a right example, this video will be analyzed.

The channel this video comes from has 200,000,000 views, and pitches itself as comedy. There isn't any explicit advertising in the videos. The channel has about 2500 consistently right-based videos. The creator appears to be a single person. One to two short (not shorts) videos are produced daily.

This video is about a party/pool party happening at a short term rental. Just about all the people attending were Black. Anyone could organize something like this and target specific demographics as participants. 

Looking at the comments section, just about all the comments have distinct, biased patterns. There's an abundance of racist comments. Regardless of the reasons for the video, this means votes. It boils down to votes, money and power.

This could just be a normal video, but looking at it the other way reveals the potential dynamics. Someone could pay a few people to engage in this behavior. First of all, this situation in this area is very unusual. There's more views than the population on the island. Looking at the comments, there's an excessive level of racial content. This gets into "get tough on crime" things, and there's comments about gun rights. This affects tourism, so local business owners could be persuaded to vote a different way. Property owners might be influenced because of property values. 

Identity Politics vs. Working Class Politics

 

For quite a while now, we've had this identity politics thing going on. We need a shift in focus to working class politics. Right now, we have someone on one side standing there with a flag that represents conservative identity politics, and someone on the other side with a flag that represents liberal identity politics. While all this goes on, inequality grows and we see the same outcomes.

Working class voters account for about 60% of voters, by the traditional definition. The traditional definition usually means someone without a bachelors degree. Currently, the definition of working class should include teachers, nurses, flight attendants, and all sorts of people who may have 4 year degrees. There's a growing number of people with degrees that are doing working class work.

The "modern" definitions of working class are a bit dated. A two year degree 50 years ago was probably as marketable as a bachelors or masters degree is today. People didn't share the same concerns back then. Today, if a teacher can't afford rent, I'd say that qualifies as working class. Same thing with a medical professional that has their hands full with their job, then they have to deal with relatives that moved back in with them.

In this day and age, someone's niche interests aren't a priority. Given an expanded definition of working class, something like 75% of voters share the same major concerns, like affordable housing, affordable healthcare, food security, transportation, education, and less global conflict. A person's biased views on race, gender, nationality, or religion don't have anything to do with these issues, and pushing these personal agendas won't fix the major problems.

Working class people need to ask their politicians what they are doing to fix these things. To politicians, this is 75% of the vote, and voters need to use this to ensure proper representation. If these things aren't front and center in politicians' agendas, people should just vote them out. 

 

Modern City Planning

Here's a modern city plan. So instead of spending all kinds of resources on working on areas that are old and overpopulated (often coastal), cities like this could evolve in places that are affordable and could use development.

This is kind of the opposite of traditional planning. In the past, cities were developed around waterways, railroads and highways. Highways were introduced to go right through the cities. This design emphasizes using busses for public transportation, and minimal traffic patterns and parking requirements. 8 foot wide multi-use paths could be used where sidewalks would usually be. Bike lanes probably came from vehicular cycling ideas, which is a poor concept.

Clicking on the image will allow for better viewing. With this design there are minimal obstructions to travel. Someone could get anywhere in the city with one bus transfer or turn. All of the industrial facilities, warehouses, box stores, storage units, and strip malls are along the beltway/highway. Freight traffic within the city is minimized. Other highways, railroads, large parks, airports, large recreation facilities, rivers and lakes would be outside the beltway. The parks could have fountains or ponds.

Notable features include: No difficult to navigate subdivisions with features like cul-de-sacs, no gated communities, plenty of mixed use areas outside of downtown where there can be houses, tiny homes, micro-apartments, apartments, stores, services, restaurants, etc. There would be about 25 bus lines running east-west, and north-south.

With someplace like this, a household that would normally need two cars could get by with one car, or a car and a motorcycle/scooter. Fuel and maintenance costs for autos is reduced. If someone's car breaks down, they can leave it at a shop down the street and take a bus. This would be very walkable and bike friendly. Busses would be on the smaller size, with strong service times and reliability. Probably not hydrogen. A good, free on demand bus service could be utilized for the handicapped.

Image generated with Chat GPT

Social Media and Misinformation

 

Social media platforms are open content. Open is good up to a point. It's good to be able to look at things from different perspectives and hear opposing viewpoints. However, these platforms do very little to filter out junk content. Junk content could be described as low effort, low quality videos posted for virality to rage baiting content posted for profit, political reasons and various negative reasons.

Looking at this junk from an educated perspective, this could be many things. First, who is this person, and why are they doing this. Ultimately, someone could incentive groups to engage in the behavior, then you have the source propagating it. It's best if you just filter out the garbage.

This needs to be discussed in high school classrooms. Whereas the mainline media is limited in scope, social media platforms can contain harmful information and content people are just wasting their time looking at as opposed to learning something or being healthfully entertained. For some reason, the platforms haven't really evolved to productively serve the public.

Here, we have the supply and demand issue. The supply side isn't working properly, so people need to know how to use demand to make social media more efficient. The designs of the platforms usually amplify extremely polarizing content, also known as rage baiting. Most of the time this is junk information which is counter-productive. 

The content is amplified when people view, share and comment on it. If people know how all of this works, and how to distinguish quality content from junk, they won't view it, share it or comment on it, thereby fixing the problem from the demand side. Another issue is phishing. Some of these creators can be phishing for extreme reactions.

All of this is a really serious thing when it comes to politics. If junk content such as this can be used to sway elections, that's bad. People need accurate information in order to make informed voting decisions. A final consideration is bots, which are used to post, share and comment.

 

Philanthropy, Nonprofits and Education Spending

 

Philanthropy is supposed to support humanitarian causes. When it comes to donating to educational institutions, funding isn't going to the most needy areas. There's a lot of money going toward higher education, and very little going to public K-12 schools, especially the most disadvantaged ones.

More specifically, top ranking public and private colleges and universities receive most of the donations to education. In general, colleges and universities don't need that much money. If any colleges need more money, it's community colleges. When all kinds of funding goes to a few elite schools, this mostly just perpetuates inequality. For instance, someone graduates from an Ivy League school and becomes a billionaire. Then, they donate back to the same institution, and a couple more to-be billionaires are produced.

If things with AI go the way experts are predicting, several types of degrees aren't going to be very desirable. Right now we need medical professionals and trade workers. Higher education needs to expand their capacities for needed types of education, and cut back in other areas, and stop selling so many people on degrees they can't use.

What little philanthropy goes to public K-12 schools, most of it goes toward shaping policies, classroom supplies, technology, and activities. Public education teachers need better pay. Poor and rural school districts definitely need way more funding. Literacy in general, for public education students, is declining. Better funding in these ways would reduce inequality and boost upward mobility and productivity.

As far as philanthropy toward education goes, regulations could require that for every dollar given to higher education foundations or institutions, the donor (whether it's a foundation or individual) is required to match it with one toward public K-12 schools. The funds could be applied across the board on an equal per student basis, or go toward the more needy institutions. A special foundation would need to be developed to deal with this.  

The price of higher education is already inflated. So instead of diverting funding to a handful of elite schools, the funds could be used to bring up the lower classes, pay teachers what they deserve, and achieve a more educated society.