“On the left if you’re consuming fake news you’re 34 times more likely than the general population to be a college graduate,” says Green. If you’re on the right, he says, you’re 18 times more likely than the general population to to be in the top 20 percent of income earners. And the study revealed another disturbing trend: the more you consume fake news, the more likely you are to vote. It’s “fascinating and frightening at the same time,” says…
Facebook users may choose to belong to private or closed groups. Some joined a private group for people having a gene associated with breast cancer – and likely did not want that information publicly shared. However, a feature of Facebook enabled Chrome plug-ins to harvest the names of members of closed groups. “A genetic test result like BRCA is protected by HIPAA [the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act] and it can’t be shared with marketers, if it is in…
From the Declaration of Independence to a paid music video, Facebook’s automated censorship system is flagging the wrong things. Facebook even prohibited a city government’s listing of 4th of July events as being “political” statements! And news media is finding that their news reports, cross posted to Facebook, get censored. Source: Facebook faces questions after flagging country song as ‘political’ content | KATU
Much propaganda messaging relies on showing us only a limited view of a story. Our quick acting thinking (Kahneman’s System 1 thinking style) jumps to a conclusion based on what we see, and usually fails to consider that there might be more to the story. Hence, this form of propaganda is “What you see is all there is”. Here is the example that went viral on social media. Here on Twitter, this video clip has been viewed over 3 million…
Source: Social media apps are ‘deliberately’ addictive to users – BBC News Their primary purpose is mind control, creating platforms for the dissemination of propaganda intended to persuade you to adopt someone else’s agenda (including buying products, services and ideologies). There is not much mystery here – it’s their business model!
Google has been a little more careful than Facebook when it comes to protecting your privacy. For example, the company stopped using contents of user emails on Gmail to personalize its ads back in 2017. But if you’re not careful about granting permissions in Gmail to third-party apps, your emails could still theoretically fall into the wrong hands. To check which third-party apps you’ve allowed to access your Gmail, go to myaccount.google.com and click on “Apps with account access.” In…
Occupy Democrats is an online, social media-based, for profit publisher of emotion laden political propaganda posters targeting those who view themselves as left wing. In 2016, Occupy Democrats used social media to distribute this propaganda through shares and likes. Every claim on this widely distributed and shared poster is essentially false – or two that are highly misleading at best (see links below for excruciating details.) Note their last item: SHARE if America should follow their lead! Occupy Democrats wants…
Is the main purpose of social media to spread disinformation? Sure seems so, whether intentional or unintentional. Yesterday, our local Sheriff’s Office spread disinformation on Twitter with a goal of encouraging safe driving (definitely approve that!) But they did so by using a logical fallacy linking bike and pedestrian accidents to cellular phone usage, a conclusion that is false per the reference they cited in their tweet. Because viewers of the tweet learned something that was not true, viewers became…
Because emotionally roused viewers are more susceptible to advertising messages: The service’s algorithm, designed to reward content that elicits emotion, made it a perfect tool for Russian propagandists to spread disinformation during the 2016 election. Source: Instagram Looks Like Facebook’s Best Hope – Bloomberg Nice to see others recognizing that Facebook emotionally manipulates people.
Facebook (and Youtube and Twitter) have conducted a global experiment on human populations without consent of the guinea pigs by analyzing our “Likes”. Facebook’s digital model of us is more accurate than our own understanding of ourselves. Computers need evaluate as few as 100 Likes to make a judgement more effective than a human. Analyzing just 300 Likes enables the model to know more about the subject than does the subject’s spouse. Computer models achieve “peak” accuracy when more than…