The authoritarian Right is benefitting the most from the use of disinformation on the internet

Who can seriously argue that the Trump administration is not the most authoritarian sympathetic Presidency we have seen?    All the shouting of Trump that media criticism is fake news, and musing about revoking media licences;  his invitation in campaign rallies that protestors be beaten up; his thwarted desire for a military parade at his inauguration; his Chief of Staff drawing elitist distinctions between people who have served in the military and those who haven't; his inability to clearly condemn Nazi style marches because he knows the alt.right supports him.  

And who can argue that the disinformation rife through wingnut sites and social media was a major influence on his "base"? 

Today, I see that the New York Times has an article by a Filipino writer about how such deliberate disinformation techniques are prominent in the Philippines too, fully endorsed by the dangerous and nutty Duterte.

It starts:

MANILA — Yen Makabenta, a veteran journalist now at The Manila Times, wrote a prominent column last month about the American ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, who enthusiastically praised President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines. “The Philippines is suffocating,” Mr. Makabenta quoted the ambassador as saying. “We must give President Duterte the space to run his nation.” Ms. Haley, he reported, warned of “destructive forces” that “have calibrated their plot to ouster movements” against Mr. Duterte.

Mr. Duterte no doubt appreciated Ms. Haley’s support. The only problem: It wasn’t true. Mr. Makabenta had based his column on a fake story from a website whose web address, grammatical errors and far-fetched assertions should have made clear that it was a counterfeit of Al Jazeera.

As it has around the world, the internet in the Philippines has become a morass of fake news and conspiracy theories, harassment and bullying.

Further down:

Mr. Duterte’s opponents have at times benefited from fake news, but a disproportionate amount of it favors him. Nobody knows for sure who funds these efforts, though a study by Oxford University’s Computational Propaganda Research Project determined that the Duterte campaign paid $200,000 for as many as 500 dedicated trolls to attack dissenters and spread disinformation. (In response, Mr. Duterte called Oxford “a school for stupid people” — before admitting that he had in fact hired trolls.)

One of the most egregious employers of this tactic is an informal group that calls itself the Duterte Diehard Supporters, whose initials, not coincidentally, are the same as those for the Davao Death Squads, which killed crime suspects in Mr. Duterte’s hometown when he was mayor. These supporters spin circuitous defenses of Mr. Duterte’s administration, disseminate spurious reports and cast dissent as destabilization. The most dedicated have been rewarded with government positions or other employment with his allies.

That's awful, and once again it makes me think how no one saw this coming as a consequence of the medium for distributing information changing.   (Well, maybe someone gave warnings about it, but not that I'm aware.)