The business model of the Internet is spying. Supposedly, by knowing everything about everyone, marketers selling products, services and political B.S., can target their ad (aka propaganda) messages precisely to each individual. An academic study finds these targeted ad do not work well and do not deliver a value commiserate with their higher price.
CrossFit abandons Facebook due their privacy problems, security problems and that FB randomly and without warning deletes legitimate accounts and groups with millions of followers. Keep this in mind if you believe there is no “slippery slope” in what FB is doing to public discourse, positive and negative.
RAND study find that news outlets have become less objective and more opinion and emotion-based. Television in particular tends to focus on personalities who talk about the news, versus objective reporting.
An academic study finds that Google steers news searches towards articles in left leaning publications versus to similar stories in right leaning publications. This is another post in our series about the influence that publishers and corporations (including social media) exert on public opinion.
Amazon, for some time, blocked advertisers from running ads that were said to contain “religious content”. This included gifts and clothing items with “biblical quotes and religious language”. Amazon has now announced this was done in error. This is another in our series of how large publishers and corporations use their online dominance to control online speech and thought.