Social media mob targets wrong person
A social media mob targets the wrong person after a viral video shows a man harassing a woman at a protest. Yet another example of the dangerous and reckless characteristics of social media.
Sourcing serious allegations from social media posts is never a good idea
An egregious example of badly sourcing one’s allegations from social media posts? This time, a political candidate published a list of victims of sexual assault, some of whom say they are not victims, and some who say they never gave permission for their name to be published on a public list. U.S. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (ND) has apologized and appears to blame “victim advocates” for the error.
Example of erroneous social media post gone viral-yet is factually incorrect
A widely shared social media post about the Supreme Court contains 4 major errors according to an expert on law. Yet at the time of his writing, had been shared over 18,000 times on Facebook. Social media enables anyone to act as a propagandist, and once memes go viral, they become “facts” even though they are completely wrong.
NBC acknowledges news story headline was fake
NBC makes a major error in reporting on a Trump speech and then retracts its claim, on Twitter – but leaves the original incorrect headline and incorrect video online. NBC News had the story completely wrong.
Facebook’s #Instagram is as privacy invasive as #Facebook
Log in to Instagram in a browser. Click on your profile icon at upper right. Click on the round, slightly gear shaped icon next to your channel name and “Edit Profile” button. Click on Privacy and Security option on the pop up menu. Page down and click on View Account Data. Here you can see that they record – forever – any current and former phone numbers and email addresses you have provided. They also record – forever – any…
Automated detection of copyright violations on social media does not work
Source: Platform Censorship: Lessons From the Copyright Wars | Electronic Frontier Foundation I had two music publishers both claim copyright ownership of a music track in one of my videos. Obviously, both could not own the copyright. The music selection I used was written during the U.S. Civil War, decades before music was copyrightable, and the performance was by the U.S. Army with a specific license that it may be used by anyone for any purpose. I challenged the copyright…
Boeing accused of orchestrating propaganda/media blitz over future rockets
Boeing has planted an opinion column in multiple newspapers around the country – a column intended to cast doubt on SpaceX, a competitor. Are you feeling manipulated yet?
An inside look at how political propaganda operations function
An interesting inside look at how political propaganda operations function.
“Riches Await as Earth’s Icy North Melts”
Years ago, the Washington Post wrote a story about a ship reaching the North Pole without the aid of an ice breaker. Some how, they missed that the ship is itself an ice breaker. Duh. They also had the ship manufactured in the wrong country.
“Nobel Prize-winning physicist Leon Loederman sold his medal for $765,000 to pay medical bills”
A Nobel prize recipient dies. Vox misspells his name and makes a false claim about his medical bills. This 21st century reporting stuff isn’t turning out so well…
Official, provable, corporate funded marketing lies from Code.org
Code.org is a lobbying organization funded by high tech industrial giants. They are lobbying to have more kids K-12 studying computer science and less time spent studying other subjects in school. One of their methods is to straight up lie about the size of the job market, as you’ll see on the attached post. And its not a little lie, but being off by a factor of ten. This is a great example of corporate funded propaganda that turns into “facts” quoted in media news stories and then likely gets quoted by politicians.
“LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media”
A new book explores how social media has become weaponized and is being used to disrupt our societies, to push people in to a state of perpetual outrage and anger. This is not for the better of any of us.
Apparently Star Wars was a propaganda film
Much of the online criticism about the Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi, was driven by Russian troll farms and bots as a form of information warfare intended – successfully – to tear our society apart. It’s pretty ugly.