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“From Propaganda to Algorithms” (KHPG)
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Early in October this year the east Ukrainian KHPG website (Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group) published a detailed and persuasive article by Vitaly Novykov, entitled “From Propaganda to Algorithms“.
It argues that “digital technologies are undermining critical thinking and freedom of expression” and began its argument with Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights passed in 1948 by the UN General Assembly, three years after the United Nations came into existence.
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The scale of manipulation: then and now
For those subject until 1991 to official State propaganda, the concern about the current and future role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) is particularly acute:
“To manipulate the masses, totalitarian regimes needed an enormous apparatus: censors, printing works, state radio stations and networks of informers. Their propaganda was the same for everyone, one-directional and overt. People generally knew they were dealing with propaganda and learned to ‘read between the lines’, while samizdat and foreign radio left gaps through which alternative information could pass.
“Digital technologies remove most of these constraints.”
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AI to AI:
From Amnesty International to Artificial Intelligence (1961-2026)
Amnesty International was launched in 1961.
In 1969 the Soviet Union’s first independent Action Group for the Defence of Human Rights (CCE 8.10) sent several appeals to the United Nations Commission.
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Earlier (8 January 2026) Novykov noted the positive reaction of the role of information resources in ‘the era of a new digital space and artificial intelligence reality’: “When Information Starts Working on Its Own“.
JC, 26 October 2026
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NOTES
Artificial Intelligence
The change on the CCE website to the article’s title was chosen
[1] due to the ponderous length of the original KHPG name, and [2] because the abbreviation AI relates in the subtitle to two aspects of the subject discussed.
JC
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The KHPG is the oldest human rights organisation in modern Ukraine.
It evolved in the late 1980s and 1990s from Memorial’s east Ukrainian organisation. It established its website in 1999.
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