Most of us don’t give much thought to what we post on social media, and a lot of what we see on social media is pretty innocuous. However, it only seems that way at first glance. The truth is that what we post online has a frightening potential. According to recent research from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and the University of Washington, the things we post on social media could be utilized by software to predict future events.
In a paper that’s just been published on Arxiv, the team of researchers found that social media can be used to “detect and predict offline events”.
Twitter analysis can accurately predict civil unrest, for instance, because people use certain hashtags to discuss issues online before their anger bubbles over into the real world.
The most famous example of this came during the Arab Spring, when clear signs of the impending protests and unrest were found on social networks days before people took to the streets.
A system called EMBERS (Early Model Based Event Recognition using Surrogates) has also yielded “impressive results” not just in “detecting events, but in detecting specific properties of those events”.
It has been used to predict unrest in South America, forecasting events with 80 per cent accuracy in Brazil and a slightly underwhelming 50 per cent in Venezuela.
Another study showed “impressive” results in detecting “civil unrest” linked to the Black Lives Matter group, which formed in America in response to police shootings.
And that’s not all. The researchers found that social media posts could be used to predict the weather, disease outbreaks, future crimes, and the mental health of individual social media users.
So we should probably ask ourselves, is the government using this kind of technology? Because the vast troves of personal data that is collected by the NSA every day could be used to make very accurate predictions. It’s one thing to plug publicly available social media posts into predictive software, but the government has access to all of our personal emails, phone calls, search histories, and even our online purchases.
When you combine that data with social media posts, you can make a very sophisticated profile of any individual, because you know what kind of persona they’re trying to project in public, and you know who they really are on the inside. And if you have access to internet histories from hundreds of millions of people, as well as advanced supercomputers, there’s no telling what you could predict.
Make not mistake, this isn’t science-fiction. There are private companies working for the government right now who are creating powerful computer forecasting programs.
It is called the “Sentient World Simulation.” The program’s aim, according to its creator, is to be a “continuously running, continually updated mirror model of the real world that can be used to predict and evaluate future events and courses of action.” In practical terms that equates to a computer simulation of the planet complete with billions of “nodes” representing every person on the earth.
The project is based out of Purdue University in Indiana at the Synthetic Environment for Analysis and Simulations Laboaratory. It is led by Alok Chaturvedi, who in addition to heading up the Purdue lab also makes the project commercially available via his private company, Simulex, Inc. which boasts an array of government clients, including the Department of Defense and the Department of Justice, as well as private sector clients like Eli Lilly and Lockheed Martin.
Chatruvedi’s ambition is to create reliable forecasts of future world events based on imagined scenarios. In order to do this, the simulations “gobble up breaking news, census data, economic indicators, and climactic events in the real world, along with proprietary information such as military intelligence.” Although not explicitly stated, the very type of data on digital communications and transactions now being gobbled up by the NSA, DHS and other government agencies make ideal data for creating reliable models of every individuals’ habits, preferences and behaviors that could be used to fine-tune these simulations and give more reliable results…
If anything, that may be the real purpose of the NSA. When you think about it, it makes a lot more sense than what the government claims this technology is used for, which is to stop terrorism. Are they really spending billions of dollars on a massive surveillance grid just to stop a handful of terrorist attacks? Or are they really trying to predict major global events?
Bullshit. 99% of all predictions are dead wrong.
So, when I post a dick pick, is it predicting someone is about to get screwed?
Cars ? can’t drive uphill, planes can”t fly, submarines can’t stay submerged underwater for weeks, spaceships can’t get into space ?, and there is no way people can be communicating long distances with a watch ⌚️ like device like Dick Tracy had. This is all a figment of the imagination! And so it was!
Louisiana Eagle ?
Youtube has a fucking gay rainbow flag up today.
Motherfuckers.
Yeah I saw that Gay Rainbow flag on Youtube last night. I was thinking WTF? BTW/ I thought you were gay eisenkraut? Or did you see the light?
That prompted me to look at youtube alternatives, there are quite a few.
Think chatter! Think trends!
Social media and smart phones have changed society in ways we still don’t understand or comprehend. If the frequency of certain behaviors, words, events can be measured then it is possible to look for trends which can then be used to help predict future occurrences! I don’t know if anything can be predicted with pinpoint accuracy but it is worth a try. How can they calculate a path to the moon?!!! It is amazing what can be calculated, graphed, and tracked!
Louisiana Eagle
What a crock of BS. The Arab Spring was caused by the West Powers2B to incite rioting. Special Operations at Macdill AFB has thousands of fake profiles on Social Media that will cause a fake concensus. All tobmale you think some uprising is happening. Its all fake and just a ploy and tool to create chaos to overthrow Governments or create a mob uprising. Do not get lured into such phony propaganda.
I will clarify- The Arab Spring was caused by the Western Powers2B to incite rioting in Egypt, Via- TWITTER.
I’m not trying to mean, but you don’t know what you don’t know. I have friend who is a “Computer Guy” and I’ve seen what his little invention can do. He called Sea World and told them they were about to have protesters. Yhe Security people there ignored him, so he called the CEO on his cell phone and told him the same thing. Guy took it seriously, especially after he was told how his cell number was found. They had extra security during the time they were told and guess what? Protesters showed up to a large security force waiting for them.
I call Bullshit too!!!
If this is so they would be able to tell us when and where tornadoes will hit, Set up riot lines to stop a riot.
Again B.S.
Sgt.
unrest in South America
You don;t need social media to predict that unrest.
Sarge, I also call BS on it. This article sounds like one of Michael Snyder’s relatives. And that EMBERS system they mention reminds me of that PRECRIME crap that first came out in the movie “Minority Report”. Total illegitimate concepts.
True
Riots / social unrest sure, especially in nations where people feel (regardless if its reality) safe to communicate. Weather? GTFOOH.
What’s next…Potty breaks?
in regard to civil unrest, it ten million armed people decide to take to the streets its all over for the existing government
PO’D Patriot, maybe someone can look up my ass and find some ‘Russian hackers’ in it, LOL!
LOL!
I think no matter how sophisticated the technology, no matter how well society is informed, there is no such thing as the ability to accurately ascertain the future, especially long-term. For example; today we have the highly developed science discipline of meteorology, Doppler radar, satellites, computers and math models, global weather data collection stations, etc., yet predicting accurate weather beyond seven days is little better than what the old Farmer’s Almanac did based on observation.
Take another example; this web site has regularly featured articles from a large variety of “prophets” who have over at least the past ten years stated with unwavering certainty imminent nuclear attacks, massive Chinese army invasions, asteroid strikes, global pandemics, economic crashes, civil wars, election results, and on and on. They have proven to wrong literally 100% of the time.
Books were written by well respected scientists in the 60’s and 70’s about coming ice ages, global starvation, and the atmosphere would be unbreathable. Then in the 80’s, 90’s, and recently about anthropomorphic climate change. All wrong, the only thing they all have gotten right was that climate conditions are cyclical. I remember a publication in elementary school called “The Weekly Reader”, it predicted flying cars and common ownership of personal robots by the year 2000.
I understand the principles about planning; one has to be prepared for possible future events whether it’s in business, gov’t, or just in one’s family life, so we make reasonable expectations and take reasonable actions (like prepping), but it does not mean we are making absolute calculations for the future. It is a paradox of human existence in that we have to plan for the future but it is based on what we only know today.
As society, technology, and everything else becomes more complex predicting becomes more complex in orders of magnitude. The only thing that doesn’t change is human nature. Predicting is really nothing more than guessing or wishful thinking. There is an old saying “most of the time the majority is wrong”. My guess is because most people live by the herd instinct, everyone doing and believing what everyone else does.
Bad things do happen, but my advice is to not worry about the future, worrying is nothing more than subconsciously praying for something to happen that you don’t want to happen. It is always best to just act with reasonable prudence in your affairs, and keep situations and conditions as simple as possible in your life, doing that will give you the best grip on the future.
They probably take each person’s posts and put them into a file.
Then they look and diagnose how many mental disorders you supposedly have. The more trouble you are to them, the more they want to label you.
Political prisoners have been put into custody for many years without trial. Eustace Mullins wrote extensively at the request of Ezra Pound, who was kept as a prisoner because he opposed American intervention in WW2.
Pound had a radio show in Italy. He was the greatest genius (in literature) of the twentieth century. If someone like that can be undermined, how much easier to undermine an ordinary person. It is probably more common than people think.
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So when a friend has the flu and I look up a remedy for him/her “they” decide I have the flu?
If I read a recipe doesn’t mean I cooked it.
Collecting data is one thing….factual interpreting is another.
Social Media has no credibility. Its mostly phony Psyopps. Like marketing and propaganda to get you to react in a certain way.
Never believe anything you hear and only half of what you see. The bst indicator of fact is using your 2 eyeballs. Anything written on paper can and usually is Fraud. Like Religion. Idiots can weote what ever they want. Facts are what you can see as fact. Way to many sheep are lured into thinking what ever is written is fact. Just not so.
Take off the tinfoil hats boys and girls it is real and the last newspaper I worked for had a programs that used all this info plus personal contact info to predict the out come of house,sen,govner,pres,and courts. This info was then used by the party’s that owned the papers to sell ads,the legal,and inform the top tier or share holders,never proved it be illegal or in side trading, because they were harmless B’s between friends.
So yes they are doing this and the %’s is going up on it everyday, remember this is not for us to use it is for government and sales. They try to dumb us down but this shows they fear us and are true intelligent informed decision-making.
Because they do not have everyday common life experience they create the artaficail world see how to deal with all of us. We are just walking banks or beasts of burden that they must some how control and or market to. Do not think of them as Bean counters they become very angry and when you laugh at third anger they become vindictive and close down whole plants, because you told coworkers and they laughed to. They have this in place and are using it and they think we will be impressed by it.
CSS,
I partially agree with you. I believe all our 5 senses can be decieved under the right circumstances. Even our power of reasoning and logic can be deceived and needs to be examined and provened with a good dose of skepticism. I use to teach for years how to calculate and use the concept of ‘the trans tubular potassium gradient’ until some smart person was able to see the fallacy in one of the premises and was able to debunk it and now that analytical tool has been thrown into the ash heap of history. Your cynicism is good but you need to check out/test the people Test wrote about in earlier postings. Ultimately life comes down to love and ‘faith’. It is through the eyes of faith that we see the unseen, we find the power to remove mountains, and ultimately understand the the divine connection and see into eternity.
Louisiana Eagle ?
LA I disagree, Life does not come down to love and faith. Life comes down to breathing and eating. Faith is for those who are lazy, and like to remain ignorant in their safe bubbles, like religion. If you have any ambition in your life, instead go seek the facts, it blows the Faith BS out of the water most all the time. Way too many have blind faith, these are the 37% we call sheep, that go along with the crowd, or the herd, and do what ever they are told or commanded to, by some fraud fiction written on paper.
LA I will add, regarding your comment:Ultimately life comes down to love and ‘faith’. It is through the eyes of faith that we see the unseen,
Yeah, a lot of idiots have faith in CNN also, They keep lying about the Trump Russian Connection and wish and hope it is true, and those who do that, think it is true. But is grossly false.
Go look up the word “Faith” – “Faith is a set of beliefs absent of any facts or proof.” So many ignoramouses blow their wads believing in faith. Faith is a pacifier for those who cannot accept reality. They are weak minded and easily persuaded, and too lazy to seek the facts.
Ever want to challenge the liars in public, go to Church sometime, and when the Sermon BS gets really thick with nonsense, Stand up and Yell, “Bullshit!!” You will hear gasps from the ignorant sheep who believe everything he preaches.
LOL! That was funny!
Louisiana Eagle
Crack Sum Skulls:
That’s exactly what Jesus did !!!
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CSS,
You are absolutely right! Keep reading from the ‘Good Book’! He also hung out with social outcasts and the ‘common’ working-class man.
Louisiana Eagle
For those posters who think this is all tin foil & BS, I’ve got a news flash for you.
This is why Google Analytics was invented. It is why ALL the data mining companies exist.
That some idiot “academic researchers” have finally “discovered” the purpose of all these companies tells you everything you need to know about the basic intelligence of college professors.
Stuart,
I completely agree! That was my point above.
Louisiana Eagle
Of course you do Eagle. We’re both from Louisiana 🙂
Stuart:
This is not news. I read about it years ago in many articles coming out of Silicon Valley; my old stomping ground. What I don’t believe is that it is merely intended to predict group dynamics. It is also intended to predict individual behavior based on general analysis. It is 1984, and this really is the birth of precrime analysis.
If you shoot a minority, a cop, or a government employee; you can have some of the cuff remark come back to haunt you, as a hate crime, or as some how premeditated. We are all idiots for saying anything.
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…”OFF” the (top of your head – spontaneous – half joking – without thoughtfulness – not truly reflective of ones feelings or deeply held beliefs – just messing with you)…
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Social Media does provide indicators of probability. That’s why the government gathers as much electronic intel on all Americans as possible. If you don’t know what you’re going to do next week, just call the NSA and they can tell you what you’re going to be doing. The government knows more about you than you do.
Cliff High is an excellent example on the use of social media to predict the future…..he has several good interviews on USA WATCHDOG.COM…..
“They” will have a hard time trying to predict my behavior. I don’t keep regular hours. I do things at random. For example, you can check the times of my previous posts, and you will see mostly random times all around the clock.
I shop at different stores. I let other people use my grocery store card so the computer thinks I’m some kind of Mexican-Yewish weirdo based on the crap that gets posted under my name. And I have someone else’s card that I use occasionally also. I use credit, checks, or cash at random times and places.
I even put random stuff on Facebook just for the heck of it.
I always tell the truth in person, but what I post online may be true, it may be false, or it may be an exaggeration. But any advice I give is correct to my knowledge.
I try not to bring myself to the notice of the evil ones.
I don’t think you get what the story implies.
Yes, on one end, they are predicting a material outcome, based on social opinion.
But, you forget —
On the other end, they have shaped social opinion. There are stories, in which social media was used, to trigger people, on purpose.
By extension, then, they could cause civil unrest or weather events.
In Cali, We got our 30 round magazines back! Now the bullet button magazine release requirement makes no sense at all.
Also open carry must come back. When did these marxists STEAL THAT?!
Sanctuary City SF, CA to payout $190k to illegal alien. How to stop it?
This kind of thing guarantees more gang activities in California. Trans national Gangs don’t care about gun laws.
We need CCW Reciprocity to side-step the psychopaths and defend our lives