Showing posts with label fringe groups. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fringe groups. Show all posts

Thursday, May 21, 2020

Facebook And The Unravelling Of Truth



At a time when access to accurate, well-informed and well-researched information is crucial, it is probably not surprising that there are bad actors who promote disinformation. After all, chaos, their preferred state, constantly needs stoking, and oh, what a friend they have in Facebook.

Earlier this month, the BBC exposed the internet giant for the amoral, greedy and even nefarious entity it is, one quite content to promote the ranting of the far-right fringe as it exploits the Covid-19 pandemic. Here is a sample of the posts regarding the virus gleaned from Mark Zuckerberg's baby:
"What if [they] are trying to kill off as many people as possible" reads one Facebook post.

"Eventually, these scum will release something truly nasty to wipe us all out, but first they have to train us to be obedient slaves" reads another.

A third: "Coronavirus is the newest Islamist weapon."
That Facebook willingly makes itself a vehicle (a very profitable one, of course) for hatred, prejudice and conspiracy theories comes as no surprise to me. A post I wrote almost five years ago shows why. Yet in our current situation, it can be argued that the stakes are even higher today.

Writing in The Markup, Aaron Sankind explains Facebook's tactics of open solicitation, i.e. prostitution, which openly contradict its promise to combat misinformation about Covid-19.

Facebook was allowing advertisers to profit from ads targeting people that the company believes are interested in “pseudoscience.” According to
Facebook’s ad portal, the pseudoscience interest category contained more than 78 million people.

This week, The Markup paid to advertise a post targeting people interested in pseudoscience, and the ad was approved by Facebook.
Interestingly, after posting it, Sankin writes that
an ad for a hat that would supposedly protect my head from cellphone radiation appeared on my Facebook feed on Thursday, April 16.

Concerns about electromagnetic radiation coming from 5G cellular infrastructure have become a major part of the conspiracy theories swirling around the origin of the coronavirus.
The social media giant's synergistic (some would say parasitic) money-making techniques are obvious here.
Kate Starbird, a professor at the University of Washington studying how conspiracy theories spread online, said one hallmark of the ecosystem is that people who believe in one conspiracy theory are more likely to be convinced of other conspiracy theories.

By offering advertisers the ability to target people who are susceptible to conspiracy theories, she said, Facebook is taking “advantage of this sort of vulnerability that a person has once they’re going down these rabbit holes, both to pull them further down and to monetize that.”
Actions speak louder than words, as they say, and it appears that Facebook may talk the talk, but refuses to walk the walk:
Facebook has also said that it is cracking down on ads on products related to the pandemic. “We recently implemented a policy to prohibit ads that refer to the coronavirus and create a sense of urgency, like implying a limited supply, or guaranteeing a cure or prevention. We also have policies for surfaces like Marketplace that prohibit similar behavior”...

However, earlier this month, Consumer Reports was able to schedule seven paid ads that contained fake claims, such as stating that social distancing doesn’t work or that people could stay healthy by drinking small doses of bleach. Facebook approved all of the ads.
Business is business would seem to be the only ethos Facebook lives by. And the consequences for a credulous public couldn't be more lethal.




Sunday, May 1, 2011

The Blowhard Donald Trump Finally Gets His Presidential Comeupetance

I'm sure that I'm not the only one who takes special pleasure in seeing blowhards cut down to size. (Indeed, aren't most of us hoping for that with Monday's election results?) Stateside, I can think of no bigger waste of resources and airtime than Donald Trump who, many will recall, took real pleasure in claiming victory in the recent White House decision to release Obama's birth certificate to prove that he is indeed an American, something that has long been disputed by racist fringe elements in that country, the Tea Party's 'birthers' being probably the best-known of such groups.

At this year's White House Correspondents' Dinner, Obama finally got his revenge. While his jokes may not have been consistent, the look on guest Donald Trump's face was. Pay close attention to it in this video, and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.