Fear is a powerful motivator in propaganda messaging: How its used to sell third party solar
Third party companies offer to install solar PV arrays on your home and promise to save you money on your monthly electric utility costs. Bloomberg found they use a mix of false assertions, lies, cherry picking and fear as sales methods, to persuade homeowners to sign up and lease the solar PV system for decades. Over time, the lease costs increase such that the homeowner spends far more in the future, while the third party company collects large government subsidies. Few homeowners understand what they got in to. When they go to sell their home, the lease is transferred to the buyer – in effect, TPO solar PV arrays become a dead weight on the home’s future sales potential, particularly to informed buyers who understand the game.
NYPD says Waze app must censor what it presents
NYPD never heard about this radical notion of the “First Amendment” apparently.
Social media and the “instant expert”
Social media enables anyone to become an “expert” on any topic. Is this a good thing?
Apple revokes Facebook’s “enterprise certificate”; Facebook staff can no longer use any internal company iOS apps
Facebook loses all access to its own internal iOS apps after Apple revokes Facebook’s developer enterprise certificate for having violated Apple’s terms of service, using the certificate to install a market research (in this case, spying/privacy violating) app on research participants’ devices.
Ouch: The goal of news reporting is to “reinforce the prejudices of your readers”
Journalism today: “If you want your story to be well placed and if you want to be professionally rewarded, you have to generate page views — you have to incite social media. The way to do that is to reinforce the prejudices of your readers.”
Companies Game Their Glassdoor Ratings
Glassdoor is a web site where workers write reviews of their employer and work environment. Not surprisingly, many companies are gaming the system, flooding it with 5-star reviews.
Media influences your thinking merely by choosing which stories to run
435 Congressional Representatives were elected last November. How many can you name? Probably not many. But you can probably name Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez due to the media’s odd fixation on her with non-stop saturation coverage. Why has the media singled out one Representative for saturation coverage – and largely ignores the other 434 Representatives?
The “cherry picking” method of propaganda
Simple example of “cherry picking” use in propaganda messaging.
Controversial “viral” video clip was pushed on social media by “a network of anonymous” and apparently fake accounts
Social media is the new battleground. It’s being used to push people over the edge, to threaten violence against others, and in some cases, leading to actual violence. A controversial video clip that spread online in the past day was pushed by what appears to have been a fake account.
Facebook’s own employees give FB products 5-star reviews on Amazon
Facebook employees write 5-star reviews of Facebook products sold on Amazon.
How the news media protects and covers up for its own
In 2012, an editor for The Oregonian newspaper died of a heart attack. The paper printed his obituary citing his wonderful career, awards and track record. Left out of the story was the married editor died in the arms of his prostitute, a fact which another editor deliberately covered up.
Russians ran pro-Jill Stein social media propaganda campaign
Russian trolls ran a social media campaign to encourage votes for Jill Stein for president in 2016.
How language is twisted into propaganda messaging
The surprising observation that “medium confidence” in a scientific finding means we have no confidence at all and high confidence means we have only moderate evidence and medium consensus.