If you use social media, then you are being manipulated
Research report out of Oxford finds extensive manipulation of users of social media via government and private organized propaganda campaigns.
Utterly fake news on Covid situation in Oregon
The media has done a spectacular job of fake news reporting on Covid-19. The news does not understand that Covid-19 daily body counts have nothing to do with the number of people who died in the past 24 hours. Instead, they report on the number of death reports received in the past 24 hours – the actual deaths occurred days, weeks even months earlier. Thus, the daily body count is a measure of data collection inefficiency – and has little to do with the disease itself. Today, this resulted in KOIN-TV running a completely fake news story about the post holiday surge.
38 of the 54 deaths reported yesterday were diagnosed BEFORE Christmas. Up through the 3rd week of December, the majority of deaths reported were diagnosed or occurred before the Thanksgiving weekend. The peak day of deaths in the state was Dec 9th, and the 2nd highest day was Nov 25th. But the media morons are too lazy to look at the actual data – instead, they just reprint the press releases without even bothering to think.
BigTech just killed themselves
BigTech is now more powerful than world leaders and government. They proved that this week. This is a massive security threat to the entire world – literally BigTech has signed their own death warrant. BigTech will be broken up and heavily regulated after this. No government can risk being shut down by BigTech. Think about this for a bit.
“Civil rights groups demand Google remove Trump’s YouTube channel”
Free speech is normally considered part of “Civil rights”, including speech that we do not like. “Civil rights groups” are demanding that Youtube engage in censorship, and threatening to attack their advertisers if Youtube does not comply. So we have “civil rights groups” threatening to use extortion to suppress speech of those they do not like. Interesting times.
Begging the Question Fallacy: “This is not who we are” … again and again and again …
When an organization suffers an embarrassing fiasco of their own making, they often respond with the silly “This is not who we are” claim, just after they’ve demonstrated that this is indeed who they are. This is known as the “Begging the question fallacy”.
Today, a PBS legal counsel was caught advocating for fire bombing the White House and sending children of Trump supporters to re-education camps. PBS has apparently fired the counsel, and made the usual “This is not who we are”, just after their own counsel demonstrated that this might be who they are… begging the question once again.
Twitter announces it is now an official satire web site
Twitter is secretly announcing it has become a satire site, a parody of Twitter itself 🙂
Facebook censors itself: “Facebook reportedly tells employees to avoid wearing company logo in public”
Facebook, whose platform has fostered a world of conflict and outrage- has told employees to hide their affiliation with Facebook. For safety reasons.
Powell’s Books: Our [Non] Commitment to Free Speech
Major bookstore pulls a book from its shelves after a group known for violence threatens the book store if they continue to carry the book. This, in turns, yields the Streisand Effect – those not aware of the book learn more about it because of the protest and decide to buy it.
It also raises questions about the roles of gatekeepers – the world’s largest independent book store is being forced to pull a book off its shelves.
Messing with you: “California virus deaths top 30,000 after deadliest weekend on record”
Great example of how the news media always focuses on the negative – gloom and doom works for click-bait and selling eyeballs to advertisers. From the headline you would never know that daily new cases have been trending downwards for a couple of weeks.
“Deplatforming” Parler
The controversy over hostile social media content advocating violence, hate, and lies on social media – and the deplatforming of individuals and entire services (e.g. Parler).
Was Parler deplatformed for “conservative” ideas or for users advocating violence?