#information deficit

[justinspoliticalcorner]

'This is why Harris lost': Ex-right-wing media insider pinpoints Democrats' fatal mistake

Matthew Sheffield, a former right-wing media insider, believes that Democrats have been making a massive mistake when it comes to waging inf

Brad Reed at Raw Story:

Matthew Sheffield, a former right-wing media insider, believes that Democrats have been making a massive mistake when it comes to waging information wars. Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Sheffield explains that the Democrats have flat-out failed to create a media ecosystem that functions in the same way that right-wing media does by creating what he describes as a "partisan ecosystem" whose sole goal is to constantly reinforce negative partisanship among voters. "Partisan ecosystems make a party's job so much easier in several significant ways," he writes. "They can 24/7 attack the opposition without the candidates sullying themselves. They provide a jobs base that makes it easy for new party members to earn a living." Sheffield also argues that such ecosystems can "educate reluctant and loyal party members and maintain negative partisanship, meaning that people who dislike the leaders will still vote for the party," which he says was key to former President Donald Trump's 2024 election victory, as there was a significant chunk of voters who voted for him despite personally disliking him.

Sheffield believes that Democrats have failed to engage with low-information voters who often lack college degrees, which has left them wide open to hear right-wing messages on social media platforms.

Matthew Sheffield is spot-on as to why progressives and liberals need to create a media ecosystem that gets low-info folks engaged.

[vicky-nanjappa]

How information deficit led to Chhattisgarh Naxal attack The lack of intelligence was one of the primary reasons why the Naxals were able to carry out such as deadly attack on the CRPF personnel at Chhattisgarh on Monday. One of the key informers for the CRPF was killed by Naxals in a bid to send out a warning. Read more 

[quirksintech]

Demand for secret messaging apps is rising as Trump takes office

The day after the election, encryption messaging app Signal vaulted up the rankings of the most popular iOS social networking apps. Worldwide downloads grew 70 percent in the last quarter of 2016, with nearly half a million downloads coming from the US.

Marlinspike’s goal isn’t unicorn riches, but unicorn ubiquity. For that, he wants to make encrypted messaging as easy — as beautiful, as fun, as expressive, as emoji-laden — as your default messaging app. His reason: if encryption is difficult, it self-selects for people willing to jump through those hoops. And bad guys are always willing to jump through the hoops. “ISIS or high-risk criminal activity will be willing to click two extra times,” he told me. “You and I are not.”

Marlinspike's protocol for secure communication is incredibly effective at protecting message content from third party observation. Few protocols are nearly as effective, however, and most chat companies now claim that they offer 'secure' communciations. Almost no consumers are situated to evaluate those claims: there are known deficient applications that are widely used, despite the security community having identified and discussed their problems. Encryption isn't actually going to provide the security that most users think it does so unless the best-of-class protocols are widely adopted.1

The problem of imperfect consumer knowledge is a hard one to solve for, in part because the security community cannot evaluate all claims of encryption. In work that I've been involved in we've seen simplistic ciphers, hard coded passwords, and similar deficiencies. In some cases companies have asserted they secure data but then fail to encrypt data between smartphone apps and company servers. It's laborious work to find these deficiencies and it's cheap for companies to claim that they offer a 'secure' product. And it ultimately means that consumers (who aren't experts in cryptography, nor should they be expected to be such experts) are left scratching their head and, sometimes, just throwing their hands up in frustration as a result of the limited information that is available.

Admittedly, Marlinspike's goal is to spread his protocol widely and the result has been that the largest chat service in the world, WhatsApp, not provides a robust level of communications security. To activate the protocol in other chat services, such as Google's Allo or Facebook's Messenger you need to first set up a private conversation. ↩︎