[eptakilo]

30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. Whatever dumb thing they posted in their teens will be brought to light.

It's probably going to raise a lot of discussions about what constitutes normal human behavior. We might finally stop pretending they are perfect humans.

After realizing that everyone, even future politicians post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy.

It might also be a bad thing because society would expect oversharing as the norm and would consider anyone who doesn't put their private lives on display, to be hiding something.

Either way social media is here to stay. But it will change, this is version 1.

[Pigo]

It's really funny when people bring up things people said or did 10 years ago as way to knock them down a peg. If anything, it should show that a person has the capacity to change and mature if they are no longer acting the embarrassing way. It does bother me that people are expected to behave perfectly their entire lives in order to be a leader. It creates a situation that caters to psychopaths.

[tachyonbeam]

What makes it even worse is that there are always people who will try to put forward the worst possible (mis)interpretation of what you said, ie: in the guise of social "justice", and the domain of what constitutes acceptable discourse (the overton window) is constantly shrinking. There is a fair chance that some of what you posted, which was considered perfectly acceptable and maybe humorous 10 years ago, is now considered toxic / harmful / triggering / misogynistic / oppressive / etc.

Heck, what you say now can put you in trouble today. There are a number of opinions that I hold which I consider to be fairly balanced and mild, but am afraid to discuss online, because I think they could put me at risk. If you upset the online twitter mob, they're not going to fight you with coherent arguments and thoughtful discourse. They're going to insult you, threaten you, publicly shame you, and maybe get you fired from your job.

[adventured]

And further to that point, the way it works for partisans, is that if someone from their side did/said something terrible in the past, then presumably they have learned from it and should be forgiven; if someone on the other side did/said something terrible in the past, then it should still be used against them today. The political landscape in the US today is overflowing with that style of aggressive hypocrisy.

[agumonkey]

To me all this hints at an emerging religion like idea that data is important and of value. I think society is going into quant/science/algo because of a mix of trend, boredom, distress, desire to control and predict more (probably caused by distressing times). And now everybody is scrutinizing every little fact, piece of text, "citing sources"; because many believe it's truer than just babbling around as most of us do.

Side note: after diving into a lot of research topics (as a semi educated newb), I realized that there's a focal point of science, above it you're ignorant, on it you know the mainstream accepted battle tested science of the day, after that you enter another domain of blur where a lot of things are "maybes" including possible refutation of accepted ideas (maybe not in physics, but medical domains for instance).

[andrepd]

I think you may be exaggerating a tad. I think it is hardly a significant phenomenon, people getting fired from their jobs for saying stuff online. As for insults and threats, well that's a consequence of being able to say what you want to people halfway across the word. 99% of people saying mean stuff on social media wouldn't say it to people's faces.

[nasredin]

The attempts to demonize the words "social justice" are quite Orwellian.

"Justice" is literally the last word in America that I thought would be used in some RWA-type context.

[tachyonbeam]

What's Orwellian is being publicly lynched for wrongthink. The far-left is just as authoritarian as the far-right, IMO. The left accuses the right of living in a bubble, but they're completely unaware of their own dogmatic echo chamber.

I'm queer. I'm in favor of universal access to abortion and socialised healthcare, but there are a few things I could say that would quickly get me labelled as right-wing and all sorts of bad things. It used to be that being liberal, being left stood for freedom of speech and the open discussion of ideas.

[fzeroracer]

Ah yes, the ever-famous both sides argument. I always hear this alongside arguments from people using the word Lynch in an incredibly inappropriate context.

[jklinger410]

Are you familiar with how senators name bills in the US? The patriot act, no child left behind, so-on.

If you are against the patriot act, are you against patriotism? If you are against no child left behind, would you prefer to leave children behind?

I suggest you reconsider what end you define as Orwellian.

[gaius]

The attempts to demonize the words "social justice"

How do you feel about despotic regimes that prefix themselves "Democratic"? People have been hiding behind benign-sounding words for a very long time.

[lainga]

Yes, how dare they? I imagine Father Coughlin [0] and the NUSJ are spinning in their graves.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Coughlin

[jstalin]

"Social justice" is the opposite of justice.

[bourgoin]

The term Orwellian is usually used in allusion to the book 1984, in which the official terms for institutions are direct opposites of what they actually are - e.g., the Ministry of Plenty oversees rationing, the Ministry of Truth oversees propaganda, and so on, and in which thoughts are strictly controlled and unapproved, unorthodox ideas are labeled "wrongthink."

You say that the word 'justice' is being used in a Right-Wing Authoritarian (I assume that is what you mean by RWA) context. Here is a definition of RWA from Wikipedia (original source from "The Kinds of Conservatism" by Karen Stenner, Psychology Press 2009): "Right-wing authoritarians are people who have a high degree of willingness to submit to authorities they perceive as established and legitimate, who adhere to societal conventions and norms and who are hostile and punitive in their attitudes towards people who do not adhere to them. They value uniformity and are in favour of using group authority, including coercion, to achieve it."

Merriam-Webster's first definition for 'justice' is "the maintenance or administration of what is just especially by the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims or the assignment of merited rewards or punishments." Now, that's a bit of a circular definition given that it contains the word 'just' in it, but the 'especially' clause is substantial.

I think that the common objection that people have to 'social justice' types is that they strongly reject those whose ideas do not fall in line with orthodoxy, and are quick to brand anyone who disagrees with them with labels like 'misogynistic', 'Nazi', 'alt-right', etc. The phenomenon of 'outrage mobs' (I find the term 'lynch mob' to be distasteful and inaccurate here) is a common example of this trait. Outspoken supporters of 'social justice' engage passionately in public shaming, in 'no-platforming' (i.e., suppression of free speech), and demand that targets lose their jobs. They seek to punish dissenters outside of the formalized system of justice (the courts; imperfect as their implementation of justice may actually be, they are certainly fairer than the mob rule and/or sovereign edict that they have replaced), and minimize the presumption of innocence before guilt is proven, preferring instead to encourage believing in victims unquestioningly. These tactics seem to be in direct contradiction to our definition of justice: 'the impartial adjustment of conflicting claims,' and sound more like the use of coercion to achieve uniformity.

I think that most people agree that in our society people should have equal access to opportunities, that unfair discrimination is bad, that it is good to help the disenfranchised, and that pervasive systemic injustices exist which should be rectified (reasonable people disagree on the degree to which the government is the entity responsible for implementing remedies, and how it should do so - but that is a separate discussion). Thus, it's difficult to argue against something which on its face bears the name of the concept of justice. Just like it's difficult to argue against something like 'The Patriot Act' which bears the unassailable concept of patriotism in its name, even though in reality it is unpatriotic. Those who oppose 'social justice' and 'political correctness' I think more specifically oppose the policing of discourse and the silencing of dissenters.

Thus, I implore you to reexamine your usage of the term Orwellian and consider that what is Orwellian is not the 'demonization of the words social justice,' but rather the usage of that very term by a group of people whose tactics are decidedly the opposite of justice in practice.

[TorKlingberg]

The problem is that people don't usually switch opinion completely, just moderate them. If 10 years ago you wrote about the proletariat rising up and now you just want universal healthcare, your opponents will still call you a communist.

[gilleain]

Exactly - a decade is a long time; you can be a youth of just 60 years old and make locker room comments about women and furniture shopping that are captured on a hot mike!

People should realise that we mature when we reach 70 and change our opinions :)

[asveikau]

It's hard to tell when something like that is a deeply revealing character flaw that the subject will never turn around, or more along the lines of what you described. I think a lot of people's instincts, perhaps informed by life experience, is to assume the former. How often do you really see people improve on their character flaws?

[dwighttk]

>it should show that a person has the capacity to change and mature if they are no longer acting the embarrassing way.

I mean, it can show that, or it can show that they have gotten better at image cultivation. And the latter is much easier to believe about a person running for office. (I'm not saying that is good.)

[Pigo]

I guess my point was, who is capable of being honest and not being embarrassing at some point? A lot of comments seemed to assume I was talking about Trump, probably because that's all some people know how to talk about. But I'm talking about everyone. The only people who never say or do anything imperfect online have some sort of complex or maybe afraid of being punished by their Scientology buddies. Our brains don't finish developing until we're 26.

[mikenew]

The problem with social media isn't that we aren't sure how much privacy we want to have or how long the things we say should stick around. The problem is that social media is a gamification of social interaction, and it causes us to behave in ways that we normally wouldn't.

In normal life, people don't take turns loudly stating their political opinions to a room of people and then looking to see how many people agree with them. They also don't have product placements or subtle advertising injected into their normal conversations. They also don't obsessively and continuously call up other people to see if they have any interesting new content to share.

Social Media is not just a tool that we use to communicate with each other along the lines of a phone or messaging service. It is a platform that is designed to be addictive and to carefully meter out hits of dopamine to keep people coming back. The current popular social media platforms aren't popular because they provide a nice service that people enjoy, they're popular because they exploit weaknesses in human behavior and cause people to use them obsessively and unhealthily. The customers that are funding these platforms and driving the design are not the people that use them, they are advertisers that want their ads to be as targeted, subtle, and as widely viewed as possible.

I agree that social media is not going away, but unless there is a fundamental shift in the way it's designed it may be "here to stay" in the way that gambling is "here to stay". Okay in moderation, but dangerous and fundamentally designed to take something from you.

[djsumdog]

The leaders of tomorrow are the leaders of today. Prescott Bush groomed his son to be president and the same with W and H.W. Obama was most likely sifted out of the pool in U Chicago by all the Strauss followers. The Clintons are a pretty powerful family and had Hillary won, it would have been a continuation of the Bush Clinton dynasty.

Trump might seem like an outlier, but he's more like Reagan: an actor. He's a puppet on stage and the corporations actually running the show know they can play him. He's there to distract America from all the interest groups that really run things and they selected him because he's so out there.

Make no mistake, the future leaders will either be groomed from an early age to be very careful with their public image or the puppet masters will latch onto actors who will be bombastic to keep America distracted.

The rules are different for the rich. Their PR departments build worlds around them that use social networking. If there's any doubt, remember Obama joked about predator droning people interested in his daughter and people laughed.

[eldavido]

I don't see it man. I think this was the most democratic election in US history, where the people finally got what they really wanted - a blustering populist without a shred of actual policy experience. I mean, come on - the wall, tariffs, and now the death penalty for drug dealers? Is there any mainstream academic/intellectual on either side of the aisle that's really "running the show" here? I don't think so.

[exelius]

I think we had an election where misinformation was being spread like wildfire and used to inflame passions to support a populist candidate against the mainstream academics / elite. But the divisions were already there and had been growing for decades; but they hit a turning point during the (very uneven) recession recovery where middle America saw wages and unemployment stagnate, while the top 10% of the country reaped almost all the rewards of the recovery in the form of stock market gains.

I think any other Democrat besides Hillary would have won easily; but a lot of Dems stayed home because they felt a shitty Trump presidency was better than setting a precedent for dynastic politics. I voted for her, but grudgingly for that reason — she’s totally qualified, she has the experience, but there are other people who are qualified and had the experience too; Hillary beat them in the primaries because lots of people owed her favors due to her influence with her husband. She ingratiated herself to the party elites (unelected “superdelegates” who cast a huge percentage of the votes that determine the candidate to represent the party) and won that way.

Hillary ran a tone-deaf campaign, but I think her loss really highlighted how the Democrats lost because they were basically telling people in rural areas that their problems weren’t really problems, and if they were smarter they could figure that out. The Dems need to realize that wealth inequality has disproportionately hit these rural areas, and all the issues we see with Trumpism (Nazis, racism, anti-immigrant sentiment) are essentially borne out of frustration that individuals feel they have less control over their lives than they used to.

[Spooky23]

Not really.

One of the reasons that the Russia thing is such a big deal is that nobody, including Trump, expected Trump to win. Laser targeted ads deployed in a few swing states turned the election much more effectively than anticipated, and the impact of Trump's investments there were amplified by the other social media fodder.

There was also alot of specific targeting of disaffected union guys that moderated the GOTV efforts that are usually fruitful for democratic candidates.

End of the day Hillary was a machine candidate, except the machine broke down.

[eldavido]

Having read the Mueller report, I'm not ready to jump quite that far yet. But I do know it's certainly changed my view of what's possible, from Russia messing with the US election being "total conspiracy level stuff" to "they probably interfered, but it's not clear how effective it was".

I think the bigger point is exactly what you said though, the machine is broken. The candidates are going "direct to voter" and bypassing the "intermediaries" of the party.

[ghfbjdhhv]

Hillary had the majority of non-superdelagates, too.

[saget]

Can't speak for the nation, but in Colorado Sanders won the primary by a landslide yet received exactly 0 super deligate votes. Anyone who lived in a state where this happened could feel the elitism the previous comment was talking about

[exelius]

Yeah, Trump picked up a lot of votes simply because he addressed it as a problem while Hillary said “everything’s fine”. That was pretty insulting for a lot of people, and I don’t think the Democrats realized they were alienating their blue collar base.

[jazzyk]

Just to be fair:

Wasn't Obama a "blustering populist without a shred of actual policy experience", either? And, no business experience.

Also, Trump's message (however controversial) was more concrete than "hope and change".

[anthony_romeo]

I mean, he was a professor of constitutional law at one of the top law schools, a community organizer, a state senator, and a US senator.

Also, Republicans in the 2008 election cast him as only having "hope and change," but his campaign website had detailed policy proposals, with like, tables and charts and stuff.

[smokeyj]

Remember when Romney called Russia the greatest threat to U.S democracy and was made into a joke? I remember.

[anthony_romeo]

Yes.

[yazan94]

> Wasn't Obama a "blustering populist without a shred of actual policy experience", either? And, no business experience.

I think it is a stretch to say Obama didnt have a shred of policy experience[1]. Without trying to delve too much into politics here, but I would like to know how Trump's business experience is helping him. I haven't heard about too many terribly good decisions he has made in office regarding the economy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama#Legislative_caree...

[mjrpes]

That would be very unfair. Obama was Illinois senator for 3 terms, elected to US Senate in landslide, president of Harvard Law School, attorney, professor, liked by everyone who knew him, great listener, worked across the aisle, etc. So yes, almost stark opposites.

[dexterdog]

He was a STATE senator for ~2.5 terms. He was only elected to the US senate once. It was a landslide mostly because it's Illinois and also because he outspent his opponent $14m to $2.5m. He served half of that term most of which was spent running for president.

Worked across the aisle? Have you ever read how his major legislation was passed? Sure the Republicans were basically obstructionists, but I've never heard him to be known as "working across the aisle."

[ims]

Just a quick correction, he was president of the Harvard Law Review - not the school.

[cgmg]

Obama was a senator for 13 years before being elected president.

[jazzyk]

10 years, to be precise:

- IL Senator 1997–2004

- US Senator 2005-2008

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama

[cgmg]

I stand corrected.

[rovek]

> the wall, tariffs, and now the death penalty for drug dealers?

I think this backs up djsumdog's point that Trump's purpose, or the one for which he's being used, is misdirection.

[joering2]

What do you actually mean when you say “most democratic”. How “much more” was last election versus previous now.

From what I see coming out more and more evidence is that this was the most sophisticly hacked election in the modern times. The genius behind electing Trump seems to be his success with social media.

Just few days ago Facebook admit their info was not properly used. Basically voters were swayed to vioe Trump because they were unaware the been targeted based on their music taste and all other types of likes they feed Facebook with over the years. Brillian probably not illegal but totally unmorral. Hence stock is negative 5 today (for a stock this size that significiant move)

I say probably not illegal because what comes out is that Russia paid in most for Facebook pro-Trump advertising. And thats illegal to the tune of $20 mil. Will see if anything comes out of it but obviously dont hold your breath if you think current administration will investigate itself if it won illegally.

The genius behind social hack of our election goes deeper than just purchasing large stock of flashy ads and using trillion data points to target with surgeons knife precision.

Take the recent story done by CNN of some older lady that voted Tump and ran a rally for him with other “trump voters” (im on mobile i cant add links).

What turned out is the group she belonged to was started by russians and feed by russians. Basically what it was she was meeting other americans that have been duped by the same group, believing to her core the group is started and run by caring and loving patriotic americans. Even pressed by CNN with evidence said group was started by Russian advertising company, she refused to believe! This is a classic form of foreign romance scam taken to the new levels!

In romance scam, someone from third world country starts conversation with vulnerable women on Facebook telling her how much in love he is... Until he needs $1k to get out of hospital he just got in. Or bail his son from immigration jail, etc. such women after losing all her savings and 401 and pensions, when faced with truth that they been just scammed, rarely can believe in facts, and simply believe the offshore love of her life was stuck in hospital or had some other problems because she didnt send him the money! Its trully evil-brillian how this century old scam was used to shway recent election, at least when it comes to Facebook.

[Simon_says]

The Clintons are powerful now, but Bill came from rather inauspicious origins.

[glibgil]

> Bush Clinton dynasty

oxymoron

[djsumdog]

https://web.archive.org/web/20161110042000/https://en.wikipe...

It was originally titled "Bush Clinton Dynasty" then the "Bush Clinton Era" and now it's been deleted entirely.

[overgard]

I definitely don't support the guy, but to an extent we're already here with Trump. If that guys twitter feed didn't kill his political ambitions it probably points to the fact that people don't really care about their politicians presenting themselves as squeaky clean. It will probably take a decade for this to become the new normal though.

[losteric]

Have you seen how Trump supporters treat other politicians? Trump gets a pass on anything because he's on "their team", opponents are under a hyper-partisan microscope where even reasonable normal behavior is criticized.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

That's completely normal in partisan politics. This stuff occupies the same headspace as cheering on a football team for most people.

Which is to say, when you make being a member of a political group part of your identity, you are inclined to defend it as you would yourself: with irrational non-objective gusto.

[overgard]

Of course people are always going to use social media for ammo, I just think the era where politicians can reasonably expect to curate a public image that's wildly different from their personal lifestyle is essentially over. And honestly that might be a good thing -- much like mutually assured destruction with nuclear missiles, if every politician knows their opponents can dig up bad stuff about them easily it might elevate the discourse since low blows will lead to a vicious cycle for everyone

[aaron-lebo]

Sounds like politics, generally. The only thing odd about Trump is how tactless he is.

[wlll]

I suspect that this was linked to people seeing Trump as different to the status quo. Yeah, he was rude, made incoherent outbursts, etc. etc. but that set him apart from the career politicians that had gone before.

I'm pretty sure that any "regular" candidates for political office in the future will still be judged harshly by what they have done in the past. I think that what Trump stood for got him a pass.

[martin-adams]

I see it like a credit report. Have a bad credit report, it makes you look bad. Have no credit report, it means you're a risk because there is no data on your behaviour. As the world leans in to using social as a form of credit check, we will have to learn the right way to use it for a very different purpose than it was designed for.

[VLM]

Legacy TV during non-prime time is full of commercials about credit cleaning services and similar; perhaps that's the future of social media.

I would be willing to pay a modest sum of money to a startup willing to provide bland and inoffensive social media "filler" content. This is already the norm for celebrities, but at some point it can be automated for the masses. Give me a giant list of checkboxes to select the message I'd like to provide to corporate data miners, then I never have to be bothered with facebook again...

[acobster]

I also see it like a credit report, but for a different reason: some companies make money by recording your activity and selling your data. They use their profits to corner the market and create an oligopoly so powerful that people just accept it as a fact of life. Finally, when people realize the power they've given these companies and the danger they're in (see: Equifax), they are outraged, but the companies are basically an institution at this point.

[notyourwork]

It is a good analogy, a character report if you will.

[tempodox]

> After realizing that everyone ... post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy.

1. “We” never did care about online privacy to begin with, that's what made social media and all the other surveillance monetizers what they are.

2. Caring about online privacy is about much more than “posting stupid things”.

[Slansitartop]

I'd say there are at least two kinds of privacy:

1) Social privacy from your peers and the public.

2) Technological privacy from customer profiling, data brokers, etc.

The OP who was channeling Mark Zuckerberg circa 2010 was talking about the first kind of privacy, "surveillance monetizers" are the second. I think people are much more comfortable with violations of their "technological privacy" by "surveillance monetizers" because they're so secretive and behind the scenes. It's harder to understand the violations, let alone be bothered by them.

[rsp1984]

Trump bragged about "grabbing women by the p*y" on tape only 13 years ago and he still became president.

No matter the amount of stupid or disrespectful stuff someone says on (social) media, many voters actually don't seem to care that much about it.

[WalterSear]

They care; they just have a different perspective than you on acceptable behaviour - one more driven by power dynamics and authoritarianism.

[WalterSear]

"A new study on the personal values of Trump supporters suggests they have little interest in altruism but do seek power over others, are motivated by wealth, and prefer conformity."

http://www.psypost.org/2018/03/study-trump-voters-desire-pow...

[CPLX]

Social norms will change.

But the concept of social norms will not go away.

There will always be some norms that society deems taboo to violate.

Therefore, there will always be reputational risks to someone by having a long record of social behavior in the public domain.

[cptskippy]

> After realizing that everyone, even future politicians post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy.

Online privacy isn't just about hiding the stupid stuff you post online. Do you wear a name tag on your shirt with PII at all times when you go out in public or interact with others in a public setting? Why not?

I'd love for everyone who says "I don't care about online privacy" to start wearing badges in public with a unique identifier and all the information available about them on the internet for others to see.

[gnode]

This could become a reality forced upon us by technological means with applications like FindFace (A Russian face recognition app which matches strangers' faces to their VK profiles). Unfortunately, I can imagine this just becoming the new normal.

[4684499]

> 30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope.

At least it's public, people will eventually accept no body is perfect, let alone when they were teenagers.

I concern more about Google. They monitor everything users did, they memorize everything users did even you delete your account, they use data for everything that may not benefit users.

[ymse]

There's an interesting case going on in Norway right now. The head of the Justice Ministry is being impeached because she made a post on Facebook saying that the police should be able to withdraw the passports of suspected terrorists without a court case.

When the labour party objected publicly, she accused them of being "in favour of terrorism" (again on Facebook I believe), which was very unfortunate seeing that their youth division were the target of the 2011 terror attack on Utøya.

So right now other parties in government are questioning her ability to serve as Minister of Justice and Public Security and she will likely have to leave her post this week.

I could not find any sources in English, but it's the headline of any .no news sites at the moment: https://www.nrk.no/norge/krf-har-holdt-skjebnemote-om-mistil...

[VLM]

Use of social media seems to be a exponential or power law distribution where a tiny fraction of people are responsible for most posting, then the next one percent down are half as active, then the next percent down is another half lower yet, and so forth. Not entirely different than criminal activity or any other hobby.

Similar to criminal activity, a very small number of very active social media people will simply be disqualified from office, and it won't really matter to most people.

"Either way social media is here to stay." Like CB radio, or telegrams, or pro sports, or newspapers, or TV, or vinyl records, or magazines, etc. Note that none of those have entirely disappeared, but have gone from utterly culturally dominant and universal, to "is that still around?".

[mic47]

> We might finally stop pretending they are perfect humans.

This is good thing. Once everyone will be embarased by his history,

> We probably will stop caring about online privacy.

This would be bad, I would rather this to happen: "We probably will stop pretending of being perfect and become more honest."

[mtgx]

It's not just about being able to discredit candidates. An even bigger issue is using this data to manipulate voters, which is the main thing revealed about Cambridge Analytica in the story.

[chabes]

> An even bigger issue is using this data to manipulate voters

Really. The fact that the comments in this thread hardly talk about the actual issue is concerning..

[smartness]

This is the most terrifying about this Facebook situation. It's scary how easily people can be manipulated.

[samstave]

We need a #DELETETWITTER as well, esp. considering current POliTicians post stUpid drivel conStantly.

[squozzer]

Let's hope in the future that we won't judge others so harshly, either past or present.

But I doubt it, because we have an oversupply of friends / job candidates / political aspirants, all vying for a piece of us.

[drinchev]

> 30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. Whatever dumb thing they posted in their teens will be brought to light.

Considering that the leader of the free world is currently using twitter the same way as some of my friends do it, I really doubt that the social media will be such a significant way to check politicians.

More or less it will happen the opposite ( already happening ), where the politicians will judge the "average" citizen, by analysing tons of social media posts and reactions to them.

[riq_]

> Considering that the leader of the free world

nit: I think you are referring to Trump, the president of the USA. But I doubt he is the "leader of the free world", whatever that means.

[dang]

Please don't isolate the most flamebaity bit of a comment and then respond to that. It paves the way for full flamewar below. We're all responsible for fire safety here.

In a way you can think of this as a variant of the site guideline which asks:

"Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize."

It's not what we originally had in mind when we added it, but "strongest plausible" can be taken to include "least flame-prone".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[akhilcacharya]

The President of the US used to be referred to as the leader of the free world with some credibility.

That is less true today but the term remains.

[Raphmedia]

That title was only valid from 1940 until around the end of the cold war. How can the "Free World" be free if it is dominated by a single foreign nation? If anything, that title should be given to an organization.

[adventured]

The title isn't: dominator of the free world. It's leader of the free world. You can lead without conquering or dominating. Ideally in this use concept, the free world willingly follows. Whatever the most powerful nation in the so called free world is, that will always be the leader (even if people don't like it), particularly if there's an outsized difference in economic & military capability as is the case with the US vs everybody else.

[adventured]

It's very clearly not less true, even if Trump's critics like to discredit him with that (Merkel being the new leader of the free world).

The sole thing presently keeping Russia from invading Eastern Europe and taking more territory, is the US military presence in Europe. The sole thing keeping North Korea from invading South Korea and attempting to annex it, is the US. The sole thing (maybe temporarily) keeping China from officially annexing Taiwan, is the US military presence in Asia.

Not Germany, not France, not the UK, not Australia, not Canada, not New Zealand, not Japan, not the UN.

Here are your realistic alternative choices: China, expansionist dictatorship with minimum human rights; Russia, expansionist dictatorship with minimum human rights. And then for 'free world' choices: Germany, UK, France, Japan - which of those has any kind of global power today, economically or militarily? None. Germany doesn't even have its own currency, and their military capabilities can barely push beyond their own borders, not to mention they have no nuclear umbrella capability to bring the rest of the free world under.

The US is all the world has on that side of the board in terms of an actual superpower. It's going to remain that way for the forseeable future. Like it or not. I fully understand why people don't like Trump and I understand why they'd wish for a different President to be in there. Nixon mostly sucked too (despite a few significant domestic & foreign policy accomplishments). The US will, from time to time, elect bad and or mediocre leaders. And then Trump's term will be over.

[wycy]

The US may still well be the protector of the free world, but we've otherwise abdicated our global leadership role. And, with Trump's coyness on US commitment to Article 5 of NATO, whether or not we'll continue to even be the protector in the future is anyone's guess.

[aaron-lebo]

There's not a small portion of US society which believes that Trump is a moron and a disaster. I'd wait until after his term to determine whether this is a 4 year fluke or the sign of something bigger.

Nations operate in terms of centuries not 4 years.

[ako]

And that is exactly why the rest of the free world is so upset with the americans choosing Trump as their president. Trump doesn't seem to understand this role of the US, and he may very well be in the pockets of rusia.

[y4mi]

> The sole thing presently keeping Russia from invading Eastern Europe and taking more territory, is the US military presence in Europe. The sole thing keeping North Korea from invading South Korea and attempting to annex it, is the US. The sole thing (maybe temporarily) keeping China from officially annexing Taiwan, is the US military presence in Asia.

I don't now about Taiwan, but I doubt it as the other points are utter nonesense. China is the only reason why NK still exists. And China 'protects' NK because the US wants it.

And I have no idea where you got the russian thing from. That makes simply no sense. It was true about ... 40 years ago? and thats stretching it. The economic sanctions from the EU had a way bigger impact on their last 'invasion'

> Not Germany, not France, not the UK, not Australia, not Canada, not New Zealand, not Japan, not the UN.

I agree on that front. None of them deserve that title. Nor does the US though. The position of 'leader of the free world' is - in my opinion - vacant at the moment.

[GCU-Empiricist]

Did sanctions stop Russia from securing another warm water port in Ukraine?

[aaron-lebo]

Russia invaded Crimea with NATO and the US watching. It's not a stretch at all to imagine that Russia would be much more active if The US didn't spend more than anyone else in the world on their military many times over. You are drastically underestimating just how big the US military presence is. Either European nations would have to spend much more on their military (and lose some of their social democratic nature), or they'd be under constant threat.

Japan, Taiwan, and SK the same. Just look at the numbers.

Here's military expenditures for 2017 if you'd like facts:

1 United States 611.2 billion

2 China 215.7

3 Russia 69.2

4 Saudi Arabia 63.7

5 India 55.9

6 France 55.7

7 United Kingdom 48.3

8 Japan 46.1

9 Germany 41.1

10 South Korea 36.8

[logfromblammo]

The "leader of the free world" stops being coincident with the officeholder of the US presidency the instant someone devoid of positive leadership qualities steps into it. It is entirely possible that there no longer is a "leader of the free world" now, or that it might change hands on an ad hoc basis, depending on who was particularly brilliant on a given day.

One might be able to make a case for Angela Merkel or (metonymically) Brussels, Belgium, in it's role as headquarters for NATO and host of the EU parliament, but I'm inclined to believe the title is still awaiting someone worthy of it.

[sklivvz1971]

> After realizing that everyone, even future politicians post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy.

Online privacy is not about posting rude stuff on Twitter, come on

[api]

We've already come to terms with human imperfection in politics. Clinton was known as "slick willie" for his philandering. Obama wasn't known for much personal impropriety but his last name was Hussein Obama which is phonetically similar to both Saddam Hussein and Osama. Trump... well... my god Trump... the guy is such a walking scandal and fountain of political incorrectness he's just overflowed the integer and nobody cares. I mean his team is not even really denying the whole porn star thing.

The thing that concerns me about social media is the way it can be used as a training data set to train propaganda bots. Now that is scary.

[shortoncash]

This new fear around propaganda bots seems unwarranted. I've gotten mail advertising specific political newsletters or products for as long as I've been an adult. Someone was aggregating information and targeting me long before social media was around.

I feel as if the political class is just upset that they are not protected by the usual gatekeepers and that this is a non-issue.

[api]

I think we're in the early stages of the development of what I've termed the propaganda doomsday machine. Think of it as the PR equivalent of the hydrogen bomb.

What I'm concerned about is the combination of AI and big data to generate autonomous personalized intelligent agents that can actually converse with you, or at least can tailor propaganda to your specific cognitive profile with an incredible degree of insight and accuracy. Think of it as the ability to dispatch an army of billions of con artists with each tasked to work on an individual target person and with the benefit of "fleet-wide learning." I've heard this called "AI-assisted demagoguery."

Keep in mind that it doesn't need to work on everyone. A system like that with a ~10% success rate at changing peoples' minds could allow its wielders to quite literally conquer any democratic nation. That would be enough to sway nearly every election. Non-democratic nations wouldn't be immune either as such technologies could be used to foment revolutions, though I suspect that the smarter autocrats would invest as much as it took to make sure they were the wielders and not others. You can see this in China right now where its autocrats are deploying a system very much like this against their population.

5-10% success rates could just be the beginning. As we say in information security: "attacks only get better." Iterative development and the ensuing arms race could eventually yield systems that exploit tremendous insight about the structure and function of the human mind down to the neurological level. Unfortunately unlike software we cannot patch our brains to fix vulnerabilities. Eventually it may not be possible to engage in honest public discourse at all, since any person in the public square would have a high chance of not being a person at all but an AI-powered con artist attempting to sell you something or change your mind.

I"ve also thought that this -- not Terminators shooting people with lasers -- is what an AI takeover would look like. The ultimate intelligences behind it might be AIs but are more likely to be super-wealthy and politically powerful humans wielding AI as a tool to cognitively enslave the rest of humanity to themselves.

Also what's this "the political class" stuff? If you're talking about Trump vs. Clinton, both of them are incredibly wealthy and highly connected insiders. Trump has somehow managed to pose as an outsider but 10 minutes of reading about his background and connections will disabuse you of that. He's as much an insider as Clinton, albeit in a different clique of the global superclass. The people who funded Cambridge Analytica were also members of the global superclass. What we're seeing here is not insiders assaulting the elite but different camps of elites waging propaganda wars against each other. It's the haves vs. the haves, not the haves vs. the have-nots.

[shortoncash]

Your fears are noted and valid. However, this propaganda hydrogen bomb already happened once to humanity with the advent of mass media. The wealthy were (and are) using mass media to sway the same 5-10% (and likely more) that you're referring to.

Maybe the future brings us more personalized and targeted propaganda, but the number of sources will likely be more varied. The propaganda distribution cost is lower. Moreover, I think much of humanity will adapt and counter propaganda as part of an ongoing cat-and-mouse game in the persuasion and disinformation business.

I only referred to the political class because I think this topic is only getting attention currently because of political games being played. However, I believe the current beneficiaries of the last propaganda hydrogen bomb (the current mainstream media) dislike the new market entrants and don't want to compete -- that is why they are vilifying the owners/controllers/developers of the AIs that you are also concerned about.

[maxerickson]

Clinton was first called Slick Willy by journalists who thought he misrepresented his politics on the campaign trail:

As best as I can determine, thanks to the help of the Pine Bluff public library, it had it's origin on September 27, 1980, shortly after Bill Clinton gave a speech before the state Democratic convention in which he depicted himself as in the tradition of progressive governors in this state, an assertion that offended us at the Pine Bluff Commercial because we thought of him as more of a trimmer who had broken this succession of reform governors, from Winthrop Rockefeller, to Dale Bumpers, to David Prior. And so we used the sobriquet, Slick Willy on that occasion and it caught on.

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/choice/bill/g...

I'm sure others had their own reasons for using it.

[matz1]

I think this how lgbt gaining more and more acceptance, the more it exposed through social media, the more it talked about, it become more normal.

[pat_space]

I have no passcode on my phone. I don't expect privacy anymore.

[ZayleePyrex]

Relevant xkcd: https://m.xkcd.com/1370/

[TallGuyShort]

Yeah, can you imagine how stupid it would be to have the leader of the free world post ridiculous status updates for everyone to see, and it would get dissected for hours on end by CNN? Man, I sure am glad I didn't wake up in that world this morning.

[greggarious]

>30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope.

You're assuming the United States exists in 30 years, and that it still elects its leader by popular vote :)

[theandrewbailey]

You're assuming the United States elects its leader by popular vote. I guess you didn't check the latest results.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

[greggarious]

>You're assuming the United States elects its leader by popular vote.

We do currently, albeit indirectly. I could see a future where we no longer hold elections and have the electoral college pick the president without any pretense of voting.

[cuckcuckspruce]

It would really be a change if we elected the president by popular vote because we don't now and haven't ever.

[Slansitartop]

> 30 years from now, candidates for president of the United States will have their old social media posts under a microscope. Whatever dumb thing they posted in their teens will be brought to light.

In 30 years, the candidates for president will either be bizarre freaks like Trump, or the kind of people who locked down their social media profiles early or were good at covering their tracks.

> After realizing that everyone, even future politicians post stupid things, We probably will stop caring about online privacy.

People have been saying stuff like this for ages, I've seen no evidence things will play out that way. In fact, you're literally parroting points Mark Zuckerberg made circa 2010 [1], when he was trying to push more public content to increase "engagement" with Facebook.

However, many, many people are reacting to social media by caring about their privacy more. Facebook's original selling point was that was restricted to your peer group. Snapchat's selling point was self-destructing messages. People are locking down the privacy settings on their social media accounts private or deleting them entirely.

[1] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/facebook/6966628/Face...