Was Russia-based 2016 social media propaganda effective?
If all it took was a few million dollars and about 100 people to throw an election, why did U.S. presidential candidates spend billions on U.S. media advertising?
Did someone really say that meat bought in stores does not harm animals?
Some one really did say this, in 2009, but not in San Francisco, and possibly intended as satire: “To all you hunters who kill animals for food, shame on you; you ought to go to the store and buy the meat that was made there, where no animals were harmed.”
Revisiting an old topic – almost every item on this propaganda poster was false
Revisiting the old Occupy Democrats propaganda poster from 2016, where nearly every item on the poster was an outright lie. I recently updated the “free childcare” section and added Parts 7 and 8 to this popular series. Seriously, it is the most searched for item on this blog!
Employers targeting Facebook job ads exclusively at men
Facebook ad network still being used to target ads based on gender, and in the past, on race, language spoken, age and more discriminators. It is likely all of these discriminators continue to be used.
Twitter gives greater visibility to those with a verified “blue check mark” account status
Tweets published by those with verified “blue check mark” accounts get greater visibility on Twitter. Twitter also admitted to using algorithms to shadow banning 600,00 accounts including those of U.S. Congressional representatives. Twitter is a mess.
Google analyzes the photos you take with your phone
Google even analyzes the photos you take with your phone, including collecting data for facial recognition, and attempts to identify the emotions of those in the photos.
Twitter admits to shadow banning users
This sure looks like an admission of shadow banning – this from Twitter:
“We want to be clear that we do not shadow ban according to political ideology or viewpoint. We do rank the timeline and we do that with the principle of relevance, but all the content is still there — you just have to do more work to see it.”
Click on the title for more …
Did Vox advocate censoring social media? No.
This propaganda poster is now spreading online. The original Vox Tweet is here. It contains a link to a video explaining their thinking. They are clear in their video that they are not advocating censoring these individuals. The video concludes with the problems that emerge when speech is censored and the practical problems of policing platforms like YouTube that see 400 hours of new video uploaded every minute. The Vox video does not encourage censorship. Commentary There is, though, a…
Journalists and Academics seek special privileges on Facebook
Facebook restricts certain conduct on its platform. However, journalists and academics are seeking to receive special privileges to do things that are prohibited for others. Journalists and academics, for example, would be permitted to set up fake accounts with fake or curated content, for the purpose of studying users. Individuals, however, would be banned from conducting the same research and thus, would be prohibited from verifying or evaluating the work of journalists and academics. Basically, the proposal is to have…
‘The idea of free information is extremely dangerous’
Why is liberalism under particular threat from big data? Liberalism is based on the assumption that you have privileged access to your own inner world of feelings and thoughts and choices, and nobody outside you can really understand you. This is why your feelings are the highest authority in your life and also in politics and economics – the voter knows best, the customer is always right. Even though neuroscience shows us that there is no such thing as free…