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Category: Business

News: When is a scientific study, or the reporting on it, just propaganda?

News: When is a scientific study, or the reporting on it, just propaganda?

Today’s news brings the following announcement: By modifying their lifestyle, including diet and exercise, people can lower their blood pressure just as effectively as with medication, according to a study. Researchers studied the effects of adapting the Newstart Lifestyle program, which includes a vegan diet, daily outside walks, substantial quantities of water, adequate daily sleep and optional spiritual activities. Source: Healthier lifestyle as effective as medication to lower blood pressure, study says – UPI.com Most people will read only the…

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#Facebook is designed to “reward content that elicits emotion”

#Facebook is designed to “reward content that elicits emotion”

Because emotionally roused viewers are more susceptible to advertising messages: The service’s algorithm, designed to reward content that elicits emotion, made it a perfect tool for Russian propagandists to spread disinformation during the 2016 election. Source: Instagram Looks Like Facebook’s Best Hope – Bloomberg Nice to see others recognizing that Facebook emotionally manipulates people.

Computer algorithms that analyze #Facebook “Likes” understand your thinking better than your spouse #DeleteFacebook #Privacy

Computer algorithms that analyze #Facebook “Likes” understand your thinking better than your spouse #DeleteFacebook #Privacy

Facebook (and Youtube and Twitter) have conducted a global experiment on human populations without consent of the guinea pigs by analyzing our “Likes”. Facebook’s digital model of us is more accurate than our own understanding of ourselves. Computers need evaluate as few as 100 Likes to make a judgement more effective than a human. Analyzing just 300 Likes enables the model to know more about the subject than does the subject’s spouse. Computer models achieve “peak” accuracy when more than…

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Architectural propaganda – how stores are designed to trap you

Architectural propaganda – how stores are designed to trap you

Costco stores, like many stores, are designed to trap you inside longer and to walk further to be exposed to more buying temptations. Food and toilet paper are placed in the back so you will have to walk past more tempting items to buy. Costco tends to move products around inside the store so that you will walk more to find them on your next visit. Costco is not alone. Grocery stores put milk and eggs in the back of…

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#Facebook targeted emotionally vulnerable youth for advertising

#Facebook targeted emotionally vulnerable youth for advertising

Facebook … conducted research about exploiting posts by kids as young as 14 to show how its algorithms could help advertisers pinpoint emotionally vulnerable moments for the purpose of targeted ads. Source: Facebook able to target emotionally vulnerable teens for ads | CSO Online Facebook research showed how to identify young people who felt “worthless”, “stupid”, “anxious” and so on, based on their Facebook usage, and researched how this could be used to target them for advertising. Facebook does not…

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Proctor and Gamble decided in 2016 that targeted #Facebook advertising did not work #DeleteFacebook

Proctor and Gamble decided in 2016 that targeted #Facebook advertising did not work #DeleteFacebook

If targeted advertising does not work, then the only remaining business for Facebook is spying on people: Targeting to super-specific audiences was expensive but didn’t result in a big difference to its business, P&G CMO Marc Pritchard told The Wall Street Journal. The company, whose massive portfolio of household brands includes Tide and Crest, had experimented with Facebook’s most sophisticated targeting tools, which allow advertisers to reach a narrowly defined audience. Source: Why P&G Decided Facebook Ad Targeting Wasn’t Worth…

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Privacy policies are bogus and reading all of them would take about 30 days per year

Privacy policies are bogus and reading all of them would take about 30 days per year

The reality is that the incentives of a privacy policy are to not use it to keep your info private. In fact, the incentives are to make a privacy policy as permissive as possible. Because the only time you get in trouble is not if you fail to protect someone’s privacy… but if you violate your own privacy policy. So companies have the incentive to write a privacy policy that is as permissive to the company as possible, so that…

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Facebook provided Cambridge Analytica/Kogan with “57 billion friendship” links

Facebook provided Cambridge Analytica/Kogan with “57 billion friendship” links

Two of Facebook’s own data scientists worked with Kogan between 2013 and 2015, according to the paper. As part of the research, which was separate from Kogan’s work for Cambridge Analytica, Facebook provided Kogan with data on 57 billion Facebook friendships, according to the paper. …. Facebook then provided the authors with data “on every friendship formed in 2011 in every country in the world at the national aggregate level.” The data set included a total of 57,457,192,520 friendships, according…

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Facebook and Instagram apps are used to track your location

Facebook and Instagram apps are used to track your location

Facebook and Instagram apps, routinely installed on smart phones, collect your location information and log it with Facebook. In fact, 49 out of 93 apps on my Android device have the Location permission set to ON (I have since turned several of them to OFF). Source: Three ways social media is tracking you – Business Insider More evidence that the sole business of social media is surveillance spying and propaganda messaging.

Store “Loyalty Cards” are combined with social media data to log your purchase habits

Store “Loyalty Cards” are combined with social media data to log your purchase habits

Stores use your loyalty card to identify you and all of your purchases. Your purchase transactions are then sold to other marketing companies. This data, in turn, can and is matched to your Facebook account and other online data using the phone number that you gave to the store and to Facebook or Google. Source: Loyalty Cards are used to spy on  your purchases, and not just with the vendor | Coldstreams The matching operation uses the phone number you…

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