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Invisible Rulers

The People Who Turn Lies into Reality

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Invisible Rulers

By: Renée DiResta
Narrated by: Anna Caputo
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Summary

 An eye-opening look at the small communities of propagandists revolutionizing politics, culture, and society.

“Essential and riveting reading.” —Jonathan Haidt, author of The Anxious Generation

Invisible Rulers is about a profound transformation in power and influence that is altering our politics, our government, and even our relationships with friends and neighbors. Today, online propagandists increasingly shape public opinion and even control our relationship to the truth. Our shared reality has splintered into discrete bespoke realities driven by algorithms, influencers, and curated content. Very little can bridge the divide, making democratic consensus nearly impossible to achieve.

Renée DiResta exposes how these propagandists and their followers undermine the institutions that make society work, from anti-vaccine zealots who flood social media with fringe viewpoints to political influencers who use AI-generated images to manipulate our perception of reality. She also provides readers with a new conception of civics that helps us understand and fight back against these new invisible rulers.
 Elections & Political Process Politics & Government Social Sciences
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This was a clear history of propaganda and how we got to where we are now. This book is a vital and important input into how we can move forward if we truly want to live in a world of shared reality.

Empathetic intentional clear

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Have been following Renee's work for a few years. I heard her first on the infamous 'Joe Rogan Podcast' talking about Russian influence campaigns during the 2016 election. She was a researcher tracking online influence and the spread of narratives as part of the Stanford Internet Observatory. If you are a serious individual who revels in facts, credible and sound research then hear what she has to say. Her qualified opinions and insight into the social media and online influencer world that infects our minds lately (for better or worse) are timely. Renee is no amateur, she is not a pundit, she is not a 'CIA asset', she does not work for the US Government and as much as her detractors have tried to slander her, has never been involved in online censorship. If you want to know who the real censors are then look at her critics. She has since been hounded by those who would prefer that researchers like her did not do their work or lift up the curtain behind social media influence campaigns. This is the beating
heart of modern propaganda.

This book is framed by her work as part of the now 'cancelled' Stanford Internet Observatory. She traces a fascinating thread in how online influence works. Whether that's foreign propaganda from Russian bot farms targeting US domestic citizens as well as the radicalisation and monetisation of every day 'influencers' who have captive audiences where they create bespoke online realities for niche audiences and can make serious money. In these bespoke realities the 'truth' is whatever serves viral spread, earns them more followers, clout and money. I am not surprised she was hence targeted and slandered. Why? Because the real truth is inconvenient for those bad actors who want to wield social media as a weapon for propaganda and profit, both foreign and sadly domestic. If you want to understand how we got into this online mess and perhaps the way forward, read this book. Excellent.

Long awaited and it did not disappoint.

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