The internet has given birth to many new mediums for people to interact. These mediums sometimes offer a hiding place, a refuge for fugitives, or even a command room to develop war strategies.
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By Khaerudin
·7 minutes read
Kompas/Hendra A Setyawan
Fake news or hoaxes are spread all over the internet nowadays. People are urged to sort real news from the fake by verifying them through trusted sources.
Without the arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union, it could be that we might not be finding a partner on Tinder, listening to music on Spotify or posting our ideas on Facebook or Twitter today. Long before that, the Soviets had "stolen" nuclear bomb technology from a US scientist who was a member of the Manhattan Project.
A security hearing in 1949 between the US House of Representatives and Manhattan Project coleader Robert Oppenheimer perhaps marked the beginning of the tense period of the US arms race with the Soviets. Oppenheimer, a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and the head of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the first nuclear bomb was created, was accused of being a Soviet agent. He was believed to have sympathized with the Communist Party and the Soviet Union prior to the Second World War.
The arms race then prompted the US to create a military computer network. As reported in The Guardian, it was originally a dream of the US armed forces to use computing power to defeat the Soviets. In the late 1960s, the US Department of Defense funded the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), tasked with bringing computing to the front lines.
Although many parties should be credited for initiating the creation of the internet, such as the Cyclades, a computer network sponsored by the French government, as well as a separate network developed by the United Kingdom’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL), it was the US military that played the biggest role. In 1969, ARPA created a computer network owned by universities, government institutions, and defense contractors. By the following year, it had connected at least 60 points. This network was later named Arpanet, the forerunner of the internet.
In the summer of 1976 in a cafe called Rosotti, located 18 minutes by car from Silicon Valley, California, eight ARPA researchers tested the capabilities of the computer network they had built. Thousands of texts were sent over the computer network from the US West Coast to the East Coast. Today, it is not just thousands of texts that are sent successfully, but 2.5 exabytes of data every day.
As for the internet, because of its data traffic, it gave birth to many innovations that were often unlimited.
Two decades later, the US enjoyed its victory over the Soviet Union, which had collapsed and separated into many countries, although it still left Russia as a formidable opponent. Meanwhile, Silicon Valley became a high-tech hub and home to global tech giants. As for the internet, because of its data traffic, it gave birth to many innovations that were often unlimited.
The internet has given birth to many new mediums for people to interact. These mediums sometimes offer a hiding place, a refuge for fugitives, or even a command room to develop war strategies. People can be anonymous on the internet, traceable only through their internet protocol. This is where trolls
were born, users who typically post malicious messages in online communities to provoke and manipulate people\'s minds. Included among them are “buzzers” (influencers) who often deliberately post misleading information and spread false news in order to achieve the goals of their paying clients.
Best hacking tool
The Soviet Union may have lost, but Russia may have not. In 2016, a Russian cyber group allegedly sponsored by the government spread disinformation to US voters ahead of the presidential election. Timothy Summers, an ethical hacker, wrote in The Conversation that cyber warfare was “no longer just about the technical details of computer ports and protocols”.
“Rather, disinformation and social media are rapidly becoming the best hacking tools. With social media, anyone – even Russian intelligence officers and professional trolls – can widely publish misleading content. As legendary hacker Kevin Mitnick put it, ‘it\'s easier to manipulate people than technology,’" he wrote.
In the end, technology is thus being used to manipulate people.
In Indonesia, “buzzers” and trolls have been active since the 2012 Jakarta regional elections. They carried on their activities until the 2019 presidential election. The public disunity that resulted from the hoaxes, incitements and provocations they disseminated through social media is still felt today.
KOMPAS/TATANG MULYANA SINAGA
Young people join the Bandung Anti Hoaks (Bandung Against Hoaxes) declaration organized by the Indonesian Anti-Libel Society (Mafindo) during Car Free Day on Jl. Ir Djuanda, Bandung, West Java, on March 31, 2019 (31/3/2019).
During the Covid-19 pandemic, “buzzers” are using social media for misinformation. At the beginning of the pandemic, they even spread false information that the pandemic was mere rumor and exaggeration by the media.
New technologies actually allow the public to become aware. The invention of the internet further democratized knowledge. Apart from using it to manipulate people, the internet is a place to learn all kinds of knowledge.
Five centuries before the internet was invented, Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in Europe, which may have started the so-called explosion of knowledge. Gutenberg\'s printing press allowed knowledge to be transferred en masse.
Centuries earlier, knowledge was written by hand. Books were produced through a labor-intensive process, handwritten and expensive. A book could cost as much as a plantation or vineyard back then. Producing a book by hand could take months.
The printing press allowed written text to be transferred quickly to the pages of a book and widely reproduced. Thanks to Gutenberg, knowledge was democratized.
Authors Bill Kovach and Tom Rosenstiel of The Elements of Journalism, called Gutenberg\'s invention one of the most important transformations in the history of human civilization. The first newspapers appeared about a century after the printing press was invented. Journalism was born. At around the
same time, the English word “fact” first appeared, meaning a thing that really happened or was proven true. Truth is proven through actual observation or valid testimony, not just conjecture.
Kovach and Rosenstiel wrote that common, personal views that had been regarded as crude opinion for centuries became a more respected concept: public opinion. Things that had been lost since the Greek and Roman civilizations reappeared with the birth of journalism. With the dissemination of information, the idea that people can self-regulate emerged as a more solid concept. The greatest fruit of Western civilization, democracy, is none other than the product of the evolution of communication (Kovach and Rosenstiel, 2010).
Journalism was a pillar of democracy for a long time until the development of technology finally disrupted it. The internet that has democratized information has unseated mainstream media as the traffic controller of information. Today, everyone can be a content creator. Media no longer competes with other media outlets, but with individual content creators who share their content through social media.
Kompas/Alif Ichwan
A number of activists of the Anti-Defamation Society of Indonesian (Mafindo) carry pamphlets to remind the public about fake news or hoaxes along a pedestrian area during a car-free day in Jakarta, Sunday (12/2). Coming into the regional elections cooling-off period, it is hoped that the people are not provoked by fake news or hoaxes.
The Digital News Report 2021 by the Reuters Institute revealed that social media use for news searches remained strong, especially among young people and those with less education. Communication apps like WhatsApp and Telegram were hugely popular in the southern hemisphere, and posed the greatest concern over the spread of misinformation about the pandemic.
Unfortunately, according to editor-in-chief Kyle Pope of the Columbia Journalism Review, the lies being spread on social media are growing more sophisticated and journalism\'s ability to counter bad information with valid reports seems to be growing more difficult by the day.
(This article was translated by Hendarsyah Tarmizi)
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