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Facebook AKA “Hydra” Thread


Hugo Stiglitz

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Facebook seemed to skew to the olds and right wing. Twitter to the 30s-40s demo and more left leaning. Tik-Tok is for the young and goes left and right. I think Instagram might be the only one that's more apolitical. 

This seems like a good thread to link a trailer that I saw the other day for a Netflix documentary on social media that's coming in September. Relevant to the interests of this thread.

 

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On 8/30/2020 at 2:23 PM, mdmost said:

Facebook seemed to skew to the olds and right wing. Twitter to the 30s-40s demo and more left leaning. Tik-Tok is for the young and goes left and right. I think Instagram might be the only one that's more apolitical. 

This seems like a good thread to link a trailer that I saw the other day for a Netflix documentary on social media that's coming in September. Relevant to the interests of this thread.

 

Everyone should be required to watch this. Scary shit. Explains the polarization of today 

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33 minutes ago, Mrs Whiggins said:

SIAP

 

Good.  More than that, THIS SHIT NEEDS TO BE FUCKING REGULATED.

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/facebook-ignore-political-manipulation-whistleblower-memo?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=BuzzFeed News - September 15%2C 2020&utm_term=News confirmed list

 

Quote

“I’ve found multiple blatant attempts by foreign national governments to abuse our platform on vast scales to mislead their own citizenry, and caused international news on multiple occasions. I have personally made decisions that affected national presidents without oversight, and taken action to enforce against so many prominent politicians globally that I’ve lost count.” “I Have Blood on My Hands”: A Whistleblower Says Facebook Ignored Global Political Manipulation

 

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3 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Yeah, I'm afraid this isn't that kind of lawsuit. I assume this is more of the "You bought Instagram, you keep buying competition" shit. But yeah, they need to get on board with certain behaviors that are good for America, and good for the world, and not letting foreign powers use it the digital roofie they use to date rape the entire free world. 

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On 9/10/2020 at 8:20 PM, Neonmoon said:

Everyone should be required to watch this. Scary shit. Explains the polarization of today 

Yep. Just finished it. Social media, specifically Facebook, is the greatest propaganda machine in history because it is a drug and is programmed that way. 
 

There are much deeper and better points in the documentary. It should be required viewing for all citizens of the world. Even those that don’t use social media. 
 

Fuck. 

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Another point I would bring up from this is that people rely on one source (usually Facebook) for literally all of the information in their lives and that is killing us.  That's not how truth works.  A large number of people have, either deliberately or not, decided the source of truth for them is an algorithmically created information bubble that is tailored specifically for them and their clicking habits.  This is where some of the blame has to fall on the people.

It is not hard to listen to multiple sources and use logic to decide who is telling the truth and who is not.  That is actually one of the reasons I like the Surl.  It's an amalgamation of many different sources brought to the board by real people, not algorithms.  That said, I still listen to NPR and other middle of the road news sources.  When people have abandoned that, I guess due to pure laziness, you get what we have now.  Truth is no longer objective and democratic societies are unable to function under that premise.

God help us all because I don't know how you unfuck this situation.

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3 minutes ago, Biff Tannen said:

Another point I would bring up from this is that people rely on one source (usually Facebook) for literally all of the information in their lives and that is killing us.  That's not how truth works.  A large number of people have, either deliberately or not, decided the source of truth for them is an algorithmically created information bubble that is tailored specifically for them and their clicking habits.  This is where some of the blame has to fall on the people.

It is not hard to listen to multiple sources and use logic to decide who is telling the truth and who is not.  That is actually one of the reasons I like the Surl.  It's an amalgamation of many different sources brought to the board by real people, not algorithms.  That said, I still listen to NPR and other middle of the road news sources.  When people have abandoned that, I guess due to pure laziness, you get what we have now.  Truth is no longer objective and democratic societies are unable to function under that premise.

God help us all because I don't know how you unfuck this situation.

Social "media" needs to be highly regulated. Zuckerberg needs to go fuck himself. His pro trump, let misinformation run rampant, and let any dictator buy targeted mind manipulating ads to influence their population needs to not only be stopped but investigated. I mean what kind of fucking sociopath lets that happen. 

Paper & TV are highly regulated and their actual purpose is to report on news to a consumer. They actually sell their papers to people, they sell news to people. Yes, they sell advert space, but in no way are they targeted or manipulating consumers with their advert. For one, they're not allowed to run conspiracy shit, and second, it's a one time print and if they don't "grab" the readers attention, tough shit. 

Social "media" has no regulations, they use data to see what conspiracy theories and news you like, and keep feeding your thread to keep you looking at your screen. They're not selling you anothing, no real news, just whatever crazy shit keeps your eyeballs on your screen, and then selling that to whoever the fuck wants it, including piece of shit dictators who say yeah, send a bunch of videos of mobs attacking the whites, spread that fear. Social media is like no problem!

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18 minutes ago, Neonmoon said:

Social "media" needs to be highly regulated. Zuckerberg needs to go fuck himself. His pro trump, let misinformation run rampant, and let any dictator buy targeted mind manipulating ads to influence their population needs to not only be stopped but investigated. I mean what kind of fucking sociopath lets that happen. 

Paper & TV are highly regulated and their actual purpose is to report on news to a consumer. They actually sell their papers to people, they sell news to people. Yes, they sell advert space, but in no way are they targeted or manipulating consumers with their advert. For one, they're not allowed to run conspiracy shit, and second, it's a one time print and if they don't "grab" the readers attention, tough shit. 

Social "media" has no regulations, they use data to see what conspiracy theories and news you like, and keep feeding your thread to keep you looking at your screen. They're not selling you anothing, no real news, just whatever crazy shit keeps your eyeballs on your screen, and then selling that to whoever the fuck wants it, including piece of shit dictators who say yeah, send a bunch of videos of mobs attacking the whites, spread that fear. Social media is like no problem!

This is exactly right.  The business model is not selling information.  Our attention is what is being sold.  The content of the information distributed on the platform doesn't matter to Facebook, as long as it keeps people clicking and eyes on the screen.  We are lab rats to them.  It's essentially the Matrix, but instead of using humans for energy, they are using them to get money from advertisers.

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  • 2 weeks later...

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trumps-2016-campaign-listed-millions-of-black-voters-it-wanted-to-stop-from-voting-leak-reveals?ref=home

 

Quote

Over three million Black voters in key states were identified by President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign as people they had to persuade to stay at home on Election Day to help him reach the White House.

The revelation comes from an enormous data leak obtained by the British news network Channel 4. It shows that, four years ago, the Trump campaign prepared files on almost 200 million American voters and separated some out into eight different categories. One such category, assigned to 3.5 million Black voters, was titled: “Deterrence.”

 

Quote

The leaked database was reportedly used by Trump’s digital campaign team, which was critical to Trump’s narrow victory. Channel 4 News has a track record of exposing the unethical practices of Cambridge Analytica—the now-defunct British digital black-ops firm that harvested the Facebook data of tens of millions of voters for the use of Team Trump.

The leaked files show that Black Americans were disproportionately marked ‘Deterrence’ by the 2016 campaign, making up far more of the category when compared to general population stats. For example, in Georgia, Black people make up around a third of the population, but 61 percent of the Trump campaign’s ‘Deterrence’ category there. The same pattern can be seen in data for North Carolina and Wisconsin.

 

Quote

Overall, people of colour—labelled by the campaign as Black, Hispanic, Asian and ‘Other’ groups—made up 54 percent of the people in the ‘Deterrence’ category, according to Channel 4 News. In contrast, the lists of voters that the campaign wanted to encourage to head out to vote were mostly white. It’s impossible to say how effective the tactics were, but research shows that, in 2016, Black turnout fell by eight points.

The data does not offer a complete picture of exactly how the ‘Deterrence’ list was exploited, though it’s likely that it was used to help the campaign micro-target people on Facebook in the months leading up to Election Day in 2016. The Daily Beast revealed two years ago that Team Trump used audience lists created by Cambridge Analytica to target “dark ads” on Facebook in the final months of the 2016 campaign.

 

Spoiler

There’s no public record of those “dark ads,” which disappeared when the campaign stopped paying for them, and there’s no public information on the lists that were used to target voters. However, Channel 4 does report that it found some evidence that Team Trump pushed ads at Black voters designed to damage opinions of Trump’s rival, Hillary Clinton.

One video ad showed Clinton talking about “super-predators” in 1996—a comment she apologized for in 2016 after the clip spread online. Channel 4 reports that Cambridge Analytica privately admitted that the campaign did target “AA,” or African Americans, with what it called the “Predators video,” though it’s not known if the ‘Deterrence’ list was used.

Presented with Channel 4’s findings, Jamal Watkins, Vice President of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said: “We use data... but it’s to motivate, persuade and encourage folks to participate. We don't use the data to say who can we deter and keep at home. That just seems, fundamentally, it’s a shift from the notion of democracy.”

Watkins added: “It's not ‘may the best candidate win’ at that point it’s ‘may the best well-funded machine suppress voters and keep them at home thereby rigging the election so that someone can win’.”

An unnamed Facebook spokesperson said: “Since 2016, elections have changed and so has Facebook—what happened with Cambridge Analytica couldn’t happen today.” The company cited its new rules prohibiting voter suppression, and its searchable political ads library which means that ads don’t just disappear from the network as they did in 2016.

The Trump campaign didn’t provide any comment.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 9/28/2020 at 1:34 PM, Neonmoon said:

Putting this here I guess since the Devil sold everyone's data to these monsters

 

Just when you think it can't get any lower, one shovel at a time, they just keep digging.  The evil in men just can't be quenched. 

 

5 hours ago, Bama Chick said:

I mean, better late than never I guess?
 

Going to get every dollar they can before calling it quits after the race.  Democracy be damned--don't care getting paid, taking mine now.  Way to do the right thing you soulless bitch. 

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11 minutes ago, Fudge Nuggets said:

Banning political ads after the election seems a bit "after the fact", right?  Something about horses and barn doors if you will.

Not really. It’s after the election when “politics ad buys” would become “the election was stolen hit the streets” messages. Not vote for X messages. The ads would be displayed all over. 
 

this prevents using ad buys in that way. Do o think they should eliminate politics ads permanently? Yes. But this at least prevents ads from being used to declare victory. It’s not nothing. But it’s still not good enough. 

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2 hours ago, SydneyCarton said:

Not really. It’s after the election when “politics ad buys” would become “the election was stolen hit the streets” messages. Not vote for X messages. The ads would be displayed all over. 
 

this prevents using ad buys in that way. Do o think they should eliminate politics ads permanently? Yes. But this at least prevents ads from being used to declare victory. It’s not nothing. But it’s still not good enough. 

Oh don't worry.  There's some loophole where they will still be able to put out the "call everyone to arms" ads.  Just you watch.

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I don't think we have a separate tweeter thread:




With Election Day looming, Twitter imposes new limits on U.S. politicians — and ordinary users, too
By Elizabeth Dwoskin and Craig Timberg

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/10/09/with-election-day-looming-twitter-imposes-new-limits-us-politicians-ordinary-users-too/

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The FB ban on Ads after 11/3 is actually good news from a firm that has produced a lot of chaos.

The "Red Mirage" is the active playbook for Trumpers. Simple version: Due to proliferation of mail-in votes, the results on 11/3 will probably skew far more Republican than the actual vote - since counting the mail-in votes will take quite a while to tabulate. Combine that with Trump states not counting mail-in ballots until after 11/3 polls close and the army of lawyers out there ready to challenge every Democratic Party vote and 11/3 might show a "Red Mirage" with Trump/Repubs doing quite well. 

Repubs will be calling for Dems to concede on 11/3 while mail-in votes are being counted.

If that dynamic ("Repubs won and now Dems are cheating") is unleashed on FB, the mass disinformation might be devastating. 

Kill your facebook. But kudos to FB for recognizing the danger of the Red Mirage.

Background on the Red Mirage for the few of you who have not heard of it yet - https://www.axios.com/bloomberg-group-trump-election-night-scenarios-a554e8f5-9702-437e-ae75-d2be478d42bb.html

 

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  • 5 weeks later...

Parler isn't going to be big. They need liberals to fight against and they need new converts. They will always need Facebook and Twitter. Most of the major right wing pundits are famous because they are openly mocked on Twitter and they get a great amount of new support, regardless of their idiocy, from their fellow people.

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Not bad Wash, not bad.

 

Quote

The FB ban on Ads after 11/3 is actually good news from a firm that has produced a lot of chaos.

The "Red Mirage" is the active playbook for Trumpers. Simple version: Due to proliferation of mail-in votes, the results on 11/3 will probably skew far more Republican than the actual vote - since counting the mail-in votes will take quite a while to tabulate. Combine that with Trump states not counting mail-in ballots until after 11/3 polls close and the army of lawyers out there ready to challenge every Democratic Party vote and 11/3 might show a "Red Mirage" with Trump/Repubs doing quite well. 

Repubs will be calling for Dems to concede on 11/3 while mail-in votes are being counted.

If that dynamic ("Repubs won and now Dems are cheating") is unleashed on FB, the mass disinformation might be devastating. 

Kill your facebook. But kudos to FB for recognizing the danger of the Red Mirage.

Background on the Red Mirage for the few of you who have not heard of it yet - https://www.axios.com/bloomberg-group-trump-election-night-scenarios-a554e8f5-9702-437e-ae75-d2be478d42bb.html

 

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Facebook is banking that they will get a bunch of those users back once they realize they can't handle the turbo charged fentanyl high platforms like Parler offer and want that mellower oxy high.  I know of a couple that have already abandoned Parler because once they got there, they were shocked at the level of actual overt racism.

Social media is like a pinball machine for dipshits.  You keep chasing that high score thinking you are Tommy. In reality, you are just terrible at pinball.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Facebook has used illegal monopoly power and an “unlawful scheme” to stifle competition, degrade personal privacy, and crush rivals, according to antitrust lawsuits filed Wednesday by 48 state attorneys general and the Federal Trade Commission.

“For nearly a decade, Facebook has used its dominance and monopoly power to crush smaller rivals and snuff out competition, all at the expense of everyday users,” New York Attorney General Letitia James said at a press conference announcing the action. “By using its vast troves of data and money, Facebook has squashed or hindered what the company perceived as potential threats.”

James said the company’s “unlawful scheme” has reduced choices for consumers and “degraded privacy protections for millions of Americans.”

The long-anticipated suits allege that the social networking behemoth has abused its market dominance in order to acquire or kill competitors, abuse the privacy of Americans, and punish rivals who refused to be bought out. The suits cite Facebook’s 2012 acquisition of Instagram, a photo-sharing app, and its 2014 purchase of WhatsApp, a messaging app, as key examples of its alleged anticompetitive behavior.

 

 

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/craigsilverman/us-government-facebook-monopoly-sell-instagram-whatsapp

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I mean, under normal circumstances be indifferent to this. This isn't like Bell, unless someone wants to make equivalent of "regional" social media applications that somehow all work together seamlessly so people can actually enjoy the benefits of what social media is supposed to offer people. That being said, Zuckerberg and his people have demonstrated repeatedly that they are such shitbags that they without a doubt shouldn't hold this kind of power or responsibility and they can get proper fucked.  Fuck them. I hope it's broken as much as humanly possible and they're fined like a motherfucker. 

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