Category Archives: Social media

Crime/Corruption, Education, Other, Policy/Government, Security, Social media, Think

Insurrection is more common than we realize, and how to stop this madness

Insurrection

noun

an act or instance of rising in revolt, rebellion, or resistance against civil authority or an established government.

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/insurrection?s=t

We’ve had 3 insurrections in the past 12 months. Version 1.0 was done by some in public health who thought they could suspend the Constitution (somewhere I have a quote from a public health person who actually said that). Version 2.0 was a combination of Antifa, anarchists and right wing provocateurs, and version 3.0 was extreme right pro-Trumpers on January 6th.

Insurrection seems quite common – is it stoppable? I think so but it requires a government that truly listens, bases decisions on evidence and logic, explains clearly and is transparent.

Unfortunately, seems unlikely we will see that soon.

Continue reading Insurrection is more common than we realize, and how to stop this madness →
Business, Crime/Corruption, Policy/Government, Social media

BigTech confirms it now can control the world

1 Comment
  • FB, IG, Twitter and now YouTube have shut down Donald Trump.
  • Twitter deleted Tweets from the official U.S. government account @POTUS and has shut down access to it.
  • Youtube has suspended his Twitter account, including comments, for seven days.

Think about this for a moment: BigTech has the power to shut down world leaders, even official government communications.

This is not whether Trump is an idiot or not – these actions demonstrate that BigTech is in a position to control the world.

BigTech is now more powerful than the President and more powerful than the U.S. government – more powerful than any government entity.

This represents a MASSIVE SECURITY THREAT to all world governments, all world leaders, and to all people.

They have just demonstrated that BigTech must be broken up AND heavily regulated.

BigTech just killed itself.

Business, Online marketing, Social media

Facebook Ad targeting said to be fraudulent

True:

…Facebook has been selling them ad targeting that is unreliable to the point of being fraudulent.

The documents feature internal Facebook communications in which managers appear to admit to major flaws in ad targeting capabilities, including that ads reached the intended audience less than half of the time they were shown and that data behind a targeting criterion  was “all crap.” Facebook says the material is presented out of context.

Source: Facebook Managers Trash Their Own Ad Targeting in Unsealed Remarks

I have long noted Facebook’s “targeted ads” were a mess, even illegal (being used to exclude job seekers over certain ages, being used to exclude racial groups, used to exclude women from job ads and so on). Now we learn that FB was apparently aware it was peddling snake oil cures.

Continue reading Facebook Ad targeting said to be fraudulent →
Social media

Social media titans to act as the arbiter of truth

What could possibly go wrong?

The social network said it’ll add more warnings and restrictions on misleading tweets from US political figures and other popular accounts.

Source: Twitter to further limit misleading tweets ahead of the US election – CNET

I am so old, I remember when Mark Zuckerberg waved his hand and said how artificial intelligence would magically solve the problems of social media. Oh well.

Security, Social media

Twitter is garbage: “All your data is belong to us”, to paraphrase

Twitter’s oversight over the 1,500 workers who reset accounts, review user breaches and respond to potential content violations for the service’s 186 million daily users have been a source of recurring concern, the employees said. The breadth of personal data most of those workers could access is relatively limited — including such things as Internet Protocol addresses, email addresses and phone numbers — but it’s a starting point to snoop on or even hack an account, they said.

The controls were so porous that at one point in 2017 and 2018 some contractors made a kind of game out of creating bogus help-desk inquiries that allowed them to peek into celebrity accounts, including Beyonce’s, to track the stars’ personal data including their approximate locations gleaned from their devices’ IP addresses, two of the former employees said.

Source: Twitter Hack: Broad Access to User Accounts, Security Woes – Bloomberg

Automation, Business, Social media

CBS flags its own marketing material on Youtube as a copyright violation – heh!

When Youtube originally announced they would auto-detect music copyright violations, I noted that they could not tell the difference between a licensed use and an unlicensed use. CBS just managed to issue a take down notice on its own stars – hilarious – and shut down a much watched live stream run put on by CBS marketing.

A bot can’t tell when playback is approved or infringing if nobody tells it.

Source: CBS’s overzealous copyright bots hit Star Trek virtual Comic-Con panel | Ars Technica

One of my videos was flagged on Youtube for a music copyright violation that illustrate that Youtube’s much vaunted AI is a joke.

I put together an edited video of a U.S. Civil War era historical camp and battle re-enactment. I added a recording of Taps, performed by a US Army trumpet player, and posted on an official US Army web page, with unambiguous wording that the recording was in the public domain and could be used for any purpose.

And then two different recording companies, Sony being one of them, flagged my video has copyright infringement!

First, how could both of them claim copyright simultaneously? That right there illustrated their fraudulent claims.

Second, the music was written by a Civil War private and a General during the Civil War and before the enactment of copyright laws. The music itself is not copyrighted.

Third, the music was performed by the US Army and released in a public recording which they said was not copyrighted.

I had to file a complaint to Youtube and my video was eventually released.

It sure illustrated the absurdity of automated copyright strike systems.