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Tag: propaganda

I was shadow banned by Oregonian censorship, a powerful form of propaganda

I was shadow banned by Oregonian censorship, a powerful form of propaganda

Today, the Oregonian ran a story from the AP about the high costs of ACA insurance policies. I added two comments to the story. One of my comments appears online and the other is “shadow banned”. When I am logged in to the Oregonian, I see this When I am not logged in, I see only this which is presumably what everyone else sees as well. In other words, my comment is visible only to me but invisible to everyone…

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Social media companies really do read your posts, emails and documents

Social media companies really do read your posts, emails and documents

Google’s GMail service “scans” your emails and Google Docs to serve you ads. The word “scans” implies scanning for keywords but that is a false assumption about what is actually being done. Natural language processing technology has advanced to where these algorithms are the equivalent of someone reading all of your emails and taking notes. Literally, online services are reading all of your email and building dossiers on what they think they know about you, ostensibly to better target advertising…

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June 2015 article about Internet Research [Agency] in Russia

June 2015 article about Internet Research [Agency] in Russia

The article details an attempt to gather information about the Internet Research [Agency] organization in St Petersburg, Russia, described as a professional propaganda operation run by an oligarch. This article is of interest in its description of a propaganda operation. The article was published in June 2015, well before the U.S. media and political interest in social media propaganda. I friended as many of the trolls on Facebook as I could and began to observe their ways. Most of the…

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Cleaning up your social media news feed #politics #socialmedia #propaganda

Cleaning up your social media news feed #politics #socialmedia #propaganda

Last winter I created an informal policy on what to do about the propaganda appearing in my social media news feed, particularly Facebook. As remarked on this blog, social media is a frictionless platform for the rapid spread of propaganda messaging. Many people are outraged over something and for whatever reason are compelled to share their outrage online. Being outraged all the time is not likely a healthy state of life. Thrusting your outrage on to your “friends” is probably…

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Disaster Propaganda

Disaster Propaganda

This might be the first of more than one post. I have been collecting, when possible, social media propaganda items regarding recent natural and unnatural disasters (such as local arson caused wildland fires). First, many people use unusual events as a platform for propaganda messaging to persuade others of their own agenda. Second, much of this propaganda messaging takes the form of asserting claims that when examined in context of historical data, are not true or are weakly partially true…

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