Imagine an AI impersonating your friends and relatives and trying to tell you that you are not trans/gay/green/vegan or whatever the president doesn't like that very morning.
They're building the Ministry of Truth.
If you need an AI and propaganda to convince someone instead of neutral, rational, and educational means - then guess what, you are in the wrong.
candiddevmike · 3h ago
Would this replace Facebook?
actionfromafar · 3h ago
Will FB partner with it?
echelon · 3h ago
It hasn't already?
I'd be shocked if this wasn't already happening. Both with domestic and foreign targets.
We've been doing propaganda for a century. The methods are changing.
sneak · 3h ago
It’s a common misconception that people have that propaganda is untrue.
Just like a good documentary, selecting which set of true, objective facts to insert into one’s attention and narrative can perfectly serve an agenda.
> the board would have no operational authority or capability but would collect best practices for dissemination to DHS organizations already tasked with defending against disinformation threats,
> the board would not monitor American citizens
> the board would study policy questions, best practices, and academic research on disinformation, and then submit guidance to the DHS secretary on how different DHS agencies should conduct analysis of online content.
> the board would monitor disinformation spread by "foreign states such as Russia, China, and Iran" and "transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling organizations", and disinformation spread during natural disasters (listing as an example misinformation spread about the safety of drinking water during Hurricane Sandy). The DHS added that "The Department is deeply committed to doing all of its work in a way that protects Americans' freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy."
> the DGB announced that it would provide quarterly reports to the United States Congress.
There was zero benefit of a doubt given by the GOP, and merely the idea of trying to work against foreign influence seemingly unacceptable. Anything to drum up more fear, and frankly, to give quarter to the destabilizing awful elements of this planet.
Tulso Gabbard called this the Ministry of Truth. But she's also the one who has left America utterly defenseless by ending all safeguards against international disinformation, by shutting down CISA cyber security protection, and by being a fountain of rank disgusting disinformation weaponizing intelligence agencies for base political gain again and again and again. She has close ties to Russia and in my opinion is working for them. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
It's all spin, no bite. The endless fear mongering of the GOP is preventing even basic security of the nation.
throwawayq3423 · 4h ago
Your first citation exposes disinformation it doesn't create and disseminate it. Your second citation was a Cold War shitshow that has no relevancy today.
jerkstate · 4h ago
even the word "disinformation" is just a frame
malfist · 3h ago
That's the tolerance paradox. Things can be disinformation without playing games with equivocation.
If Phillip morris is running a bot farm or paying people to tell others that smoking is healthy and doesn't cause cancer, then we have a duty to call that disinformation and strive to correct it. And I'm sure someone will be along shortly to tell me about the growing lung cancer rates in nonsmokers or that lung cancer is more deadly in nonsmokers.
jerkstate · 2h ago
That's completely irrelevant to the original poster's point. The "Disinformation Governance Board" as referenced in the original post was not sponsored by phillip morris, and did not claim that smoking was healthy. Instead, it was sponsored by taxpayers, and was run by people with clear political goals for the suppression of what they considered "disinformation" "misinformation" and "malinformation"
netsharc · 4h ago
Ha, quick, make GaslightGPT and sell it to governments..! Non-stop, never tiring system to convince citizens that they're wrong!
Even the "we're not Trump" EU are still gaslighting about the genocide, amongst other things.
michaelterryio · 3h ago
It's a bit strange you think the government has a problem with any of those things. Those are not the right examples.
thejazzman · 3h ago
it's a bit strange that you're unaware that those are some of the current governments biggest concerns -- as evidence by their endless direct attacks on those precise subjects..
HaZeust · 2h ago
Brother man, Trump cares so much about LGBT rhetoric that it was one of the first executive orders he signed:
I assumed they were already doing this domestically.
robotnikman · 4h ago
IIRC there was an act passed in the early 2010's that allowed them to legally do this. Probably been going on for a decade at least
hungmung · 4h ago
Reminds me of those Army recruitment commercials from a few years back that were advertising their psyops as a career path.
throwawayq3423 · 4h ago
PSYOPs meaning targeting foreign nations and foreign people. That's not what this is.
hungmung · 3h ago
Well, maybe.
throwawayq3423 · 4h ago
Quite the opposite. There are strict rules against producing propaganda with the American people (in the US) as a target.
I'm not aware of any agency with the authority to do so.
anonymousiam · 3h ago
I suggest that you review the 2013 NDAA amendment that basically repealed the Smith-Mundt Act, which prohibited the U.S. government from disseminating propaganda to the American public. The original intent was to prevent the State Department and its agencies from engaging in domestic propaganda.
One could argue that the changes require that the material be originally intended for foreign consumption, but how does one prove "intent?"
Flip side is we just use AI to promote dissenting arguments.
This feels like the war on drugs and it won't end well in that nobody wins.
ares623 · 3h ago
Well, somebody wins
sneak · 3h ago
Nvidia, TSMC, ASML
ronbenton · 4h ago
I would be unsurprised that the US wants to "suppress dissenting arguments" using anything at their disposal
cronelius · 3h ago
but they're not doing here it at home, of course. that would be silly
jbm · 4h ago
This is worrisome but you would be naive to think this isn't already having by private parties online.
On a side note, it is interesting to see how quickly America's elites turned against free speech after Israel takes a few Ls online for murdering "lesser beings that don't actually exist" in the middle east. Maybe their support was akin to how Martin Luther thought publishing the Bible would result in everyone having the same opinion as him.
bilbo0s · 4h ago
American elites have never been like MLK in any way.
That's why they jailed, beat, firebombed, and finally just shot him in the head.
ETA: Didn't have my glasses on. Wrong Martin Luther.
ceejayoz · 4h ago
ML (1400s German) !== MLK (1900s American)
virgil_disgr4ce · 4h ago
Not to be pedantic but the person you're replying to never said anything about MLK
throwawayq3423 · 4h ago
marketing and advertising was never illegal but Facebook doesn't have a monopoly on violence and can't disappear you into a series of prisons
There is a fundamental difference between the private sector and the government performing these actions.
jbm · 3h ago
We can both agree that the government has a monopoly on violence and thus the controllers and owners of government control violence. There is no contradiction.
(Bill Gates getting his car legalized is a great non-controversial example of how this had been the case for a LONG time.)
SilverElfin · 3h ago
Other governments already do this. See China’s 50 cent army:
And the USSR had its propaganda arm too. The US also effectively did this but without the same labels criticizing them - for example recently when the Biden administration was pressuring tech companies to censor or ban opinions they didn’t like.
The fact that AI may now be used for this purpose isn’t offensive. It’s that governments (or corporations or any other group) interfere with free speech much more broadly than we think, and don’t just limit that to a few exceptions. Whether the use people or AI, it’s wrong.
actionfromafar · 5h ago
Only overseas? If the Pentagon is deploying troops in DC, why not AI too?
yosito · 3h ago
Anyone who's been paying attention to AI probably already has an intuition that this is the whole purpose of companies like OpenAI.
They're building the Ministry of Truth.
If you need an AI and propaganda to convince someone instead of neutral, rational, and educational means - then guess what, you are in the wrong.
I'd be shocked if this wasn't already happening. Both with domestic and foreign targets.
We've been doing propaganda for a century. The methods are changing.
Just like a good documentary, selecting which set of true, objective facts to insert into one’s attention and narrative can perfectly serve an agenda.
To be honest, it's been going on for effectively forever.
See operation mockingbird -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird
> the board would have no operational authority or capability but would collect best practices for dissemination to DHS organizations already tasked with defending against disinformation threats,
> the board would not monitor American citizens
> the board would study policy questions, best practices, and academic research on disinformation, and then submit guidance to the DHS secretary on how different DHS agencies should conduct analysis of online content.
> the board would monitor disinformation spread by "foreign states such as Russia, China, and Iran" and "transnational criminal organizations and human smuggling organizations", and disinformation spread during natural disasters (listing as an example misinformation spread about the safety of drinking water during Hurricane Sandy). The DHS added that "The Department is deeply committed to doing all of its work in a way that protects Americans' freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy."
> the DGB announced that it would provide quarterly reports to the United States Congress.
There was zero benefit of a doubt given by the GOP, and merely the idea of trying to work against foreign influence seemingly unacceptable. Anything to drum up more fear, and frankly, to give quarter to the destabilizing awful elements of this planet.
Tulso Gabbard called this the Ministry of Truth. But she's also the one who has left America utterly defenseless by ending all safeguards against international disinformation, by shutting down CISA cyber security protection, and by being a fountain of rank disgusting disinformation weaponizing intelligence agencies for base political gain again and again and again. She has close ties to Russia and in my opinion is working for them. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
It's all spin, no bite. The endless fear mongering of the GOP is preventing even basic security of the nation.
If Phillip morris is running a bot farm or paying people to tell others that smoking is healthy and doesn't cause cancer, then we have a duty to call that disinformation and strive to correct it. And I'm sure someone will be along shortly to tell me about the growing lung cancer rates in nonsmokers or that lung cancer is more deadly in nonsmokers.
Even the "we're not Trump" EU are still gaslighting about the genocide, amongst other things.
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/defe...
And it's been one of the ones he's been actively trying to enforce:
https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/21/health/trans-community-trump-...
https://19thnews.org/2025/03/trump-anti-trans-executive-orde...
Shit, here's an article from TODAY if you want to say these measures are no longer high-priority:
https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/school-board-sues-tru...
I'm not aware of any agency with the authority to do so.
One could argue that the changes require that the material be originally intended for foreign consumption, but how does one prove "intent?"
https://www.usagm.gov/who-we-are/oversight/legislation/smith...
This feels like the war on drugs and it won't end well in that nobody wins.
On a side note, it is interesting to see how quickly America's elites turned against free speech after Israel takes a few Ls online for murdering "lesser beings that don't actually exist" in the middle east. Maybe their support was akin to how Martin Luther thought publishing the Bible would result in everyone having the same opinion as him.
That's why they jailed, beat, firebombed, and finally just shot him in the head.
ETA: Didn't have my glasses on. Wrong Martin Luther.
There is a fundamental difference between the private sector and the government performing these actions.
(Bill Gates getting his car legalized is a great non-controversial example of how this had been the case for a LONG time.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/50_Cent_Party
And the USSR had its propaganda arm too. The US also effectively did this but without the same labels criticizing them - for example recently when the Biden administration was pressuring tech companies to censor or ban opinions they didn’t like.
The fact that AI may now be used for this purpose isn’t offensive. It’s that governments (or corporations or any other group) interfere with free speech much more broadly than we think, and don’t just limit that to a few exceptions. Whether the use people or AI, it’s wrong.