📑 With Apologies to Orwell, We’ve Gone Way Past 1984

Bookmarked With Apologies to Orwell, We’ve Gone Way Past 1984 (Literary Hub)

Social media made this process all too easy as it became the primary news source for millions of Americans while lacking the editorial oversight of traditional media. Responding to criticism in 2017, Facebook’s chief of security, Alex Stamos, pointed out that using the blunt instrument of machine learning to eliminate fake news could turn the platform into “the Ministry of Truth with ML systems,” but by failing to act in time, Facebook was already allowing bad actors such as the Internet Research Agency to spread disinformation unchecked. The problem is likely to get worse. The growth of “deepfake” image synthesis, which combines computer graphics and artificial intelligence to manufacture images whose artificiality can only be identified by expert analysis, has the potential to create a paranoid labyrinth in which, according to the viewer’s bias, fake images will pass as real while real ones are dismissed as fake. With image synthesis, Winston’s fictional Comrade Ogilvy could be made to walk and talk while the crucial photograph of Jones, Aaronson and Rutherford could be shrugged off as a hoax. There is no technological remedy; the bug resides in human nature.

Excerpted from Dorian Lynskey’s book The Ministry of Truth, in which he argues that we have gone past George Orwell’s dystopia in 1984.

2 responses on “đź“‘ With Apologies to Orwell, We’ve Gone Way Past 1984”

  1. John Lyons reports on his use of Twitter to broadcast the AFP’s raid on ABC. He explains that each day journalists receive tips, often anonymous. The choice to publish the two pieces which instigated the raid did not put anybody in danger. The raid signifies a particular challenge on journalism and truth.

    In almost 40 years in journalism — and having myself been on an AFP warrant after I received and wrote stories based on leaked defence intelligence documents — I had never seen a warrant this all-encompassing.
    The power to delete official documents reminded me of George Orwell’s book 1984.
    Remember Winston Smith, who worked in the records department of the Ministry of Truth?
    Part of his job was to delete documents or newspaper reports of wars which his government wanted to pretend never happened.
    But this was Australia in 2019 — not George Orwell’s Oceania in 1984.

    As Cory Doctorow argues in a separate piece:

    The Australian authorities insist that the raids were not coordinated and that it’s all a coincidence. As Caitlin Johnson points out, that’s a hell of a coincidence, and if it’s true, it’s even scarier than the idea that the raids were coordinated — instead, it means that Australia’s cops and prosecutors have gotten the message that it’s open season on public interest journalism and are acting accordingly, with lots more to come.

    Rebecca Ananian-Welsh argues that the raids are a threat to democracy:

    One of the most disturbing outcomes is not prosecutions or even the raids themselves, but the chilling of public interest journalism. Sources are less likely to come forward, facing risk to themselves and a high likelihood of identification by government agencies. And journalists are less likely to run stories, knowing the risks posed to their sources and perhaps even to themselves.

    In regards to 1984, Dorian Lynskey argues that we have gone beyond the vision painted by Orwell.

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