The Deceivers

 There’s no doubt but that we are all manipulated in some way or another. The media is known for it since it will strive to report the news (and opinions) that coincide with those of the reader, listener or viewer. Conservatives read El Mundo, the ABC and La Razón and watch Tele5 and Ana Rosa Quintana; conspiracy conservatives read OKDiario and Libertad Digital (and probably watch the Catholic Trece TV); socialists read El País (with a certain disappointment as it moves slowly rightwards) or El Huff Post and get their news from the RTVE’s Telediario; while the lefties devour elDiario.es, Público and ctxt. There’s not much TV for them, but there’s always Miguel Charisteas on YouTube (who’s much more fun anyway).

But what happens when we didn’t know that we were being coerced, or fiddled with, or fooled?

There’s a Barcelona firm called Eliminalia that meddles with Google and its search engine. We read that ‘…over several years, the company deployed unethical or deceptive methods to scrub unwanted and damaging content from the internet’. Thank goodness for Wikipedia, hey.

We have regular stories of lawfare in Spain – the conservative-leaning judiciary usually either attacking or manipulating Podemos and its leaders through the courts. Stories which are, naturally, bled to the Press.

Then there’s the far-right Alvise Pérez who plants any number of bulos in the social media. I ran one of his the other day on Facebook saying, ‘this is obviously bogus’, and got a warning from Mr Zuck himself to take it down as it was fake news and I would have my modest readership whittled down if I didn’t. At least he didn’t send me to Facebook Jail like he did to Mr Trump (who’s now out again I see).  

Facebook, which runs adverts for free camper-vans with just a small scratch, genuine leather boots at $9.95, closing-down sale of cushions at 90% off and tee-shirt photos with a pithy text superimposed.

Oh, and pretty girls who admire my posts and just want to be friends.

Talking of manipulation.

More seriously, the news has broken of a furtive Israeli company that professionally plants fake news and has been active in influencing people in various general elections. We read that they claim to have ‘completed 33 presidential-level campaigns, 27 of which were successful’. The article at The Economic Times also notes that: ‘…It adds to a growing body of evidence that shadowy private firms across the world are profiting from invasive hacking tools and the power of social media platforms to manipulate public opinion…’.

Artificial Intelligence is now taking over the job – for better or worse – of Photoshop. Love means hate, as George Orwell might have explained if he lived today.

We also read uneasily about Russian bots: multiple troll-accounts echoing each other with falsehoods and propaganda.

All of which begs the question (and, after all, this is what all this handling is ultimately about): are you sure you are a free agent when you go to the polling station?