SOCIAL MEDIA AS SOCIAL DISEASE: We’re building a dystopia just to make people click on ads. Well, for some meanings of “we.”
Related: The Social Media Upheaval.
Archive for 2020
October 18, 2020
PROGRESS TOWARD WORLD PEACE: Saudi foreign minister: *Now* would be a very good time for serious negotiations on Palestine.
THIS SEEMS ABOUT RIGHT:
IMAGINE WHAT BIDEN’S POLLING WOULD BE WITHOUT THE SUPPORT OF THE DNC-MSM: Joe Biden’s polling lead slips in wake of Post report on Hunter.
SEEN ON FACEBOOK:
OPEN THREAD: Just because.
WELL, BUZZFEED:
THE AUTHORITIES’ SQUANDERING OF PUBLIC TRUST HASN’T HELPED: As the Coronavirus Surges, a New Culprit Emerges: Pandemic Fatigue. “Citizens have made huge sacrifices.” Once the Chinese decided to let the international flights continue out of Wuhan, it was too late to contain the virus. It could only be managed, and it has been managed poorly.
THE TRUTH ABOUT SLAVERY IN 1619: Uniquely Bad — But Not Uniquely American. For much of history, slavery was as fundamental to society as agriculture. While slavery was a global multiracial phenomenon, “the abolitionist movement was a white Western invention.”
SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: Sugar, high-fructose corn syrup linked to ADHD, bipolar, aggressive behavior.
I THINK THE EVIDENCE IN FAVOR OF CHLOROQUINE IS STRONGER: WHO study says remdesivir has ‘little or no effect’ on COVID-19.
UPDATE: A reader emails: “Likely both hydroxychloroquine and remdisavir work when used properly. The evidence indicates that they need to be given early before the cytokine storm, coagulopathies, and other events triggered by covid-19 begin. Apparently, the WHO study did not strictly regulate the protocols to consider timing.”
THAT’S SWEET: Cayman couple shares ‘blessings.’ “Before the COVID-19 crisis hit Cayman’s tourism sector, Lisha and Tom Watling made their living operating Cayman Kayaks. With lockdown measures in March, however, came the immediate end to their tourism business. While the closure of Cayman Kayaks meant loss of income, what has come in the company’s wake has been a gift for the couple.”
FIGHT THE POWER: Iraqveteran8888 and Censorship of the Second Amendment. “I can certainly show instances where a couple of years ago, if I posted a melt-down video or a top 5 guns video, it might reach 2 or 3 million views in the first 90 days. There used to be a much larger potential for videos to go viral. And that change might be a shadow ban, or in the algorithm, and although we cannot see it, we can tell it’s there by what a video can do now versus what it did a few years ago. Now, a meltdown video might only get 250,000 views, where it used to get 3 million. I believe that is because they have an algorithm that prevents these videos from showing up in the recommended section.”
ROGER SIMON: Twitter’s Old Rules Worse Than Their New Rules.
The GOP has only itself to blame. Andrew Breitbart warned us years ago: “Politics is downstream of culture.”
Few listened—or did anything about it anyway.
Result: Twitter, Facebook, Google, Netflix, YouTube, and on and on. They rule the world.
Everyone, or almost everyone, crumbles before them, from your kindergarten teacher to major American corporations scared of being accused of racism, sexism or whatever new ism pops out of the mouth of Maisie Hirono.
You have to survive, after all.
“Better ‘woke’ than broke” has become today’s version of “Better Red than dead.” Indeed, they are much the same thing.
We live in the world according to Twitter, Facebook, and Google. A deceased Brit gave us the name for it. Welcome, as Tucker Carlson noted the other night, to the Ministry of Truth.
So when Twitter announces—via Vijaya Gadde, its “Legal, Policy and Trust & Safety Lead”—their two new principles in the wake of the Hunter/Joe Bidenemail censorship scandal, caveat emptor.
The first, about hacked content, is so much eyewash. The second is extremely dangerous and, yes, Orwellian:
“2. We will label Tweets to provide context instead of blocking links from being shared on Twitter”
I see. They will “provide context.”
This is actually more sinister than their previous approach—censorship. At least that was obvious.
This is, in essence, thought control.
You, the great unwashed, are not capable of analyzing for yourself. You need guidance—the same guidance they provided when publishing ad infinitum obvious disinformation about non-existent Trump-Russia collusion or propaganda from Javad Zarif, foreign minister of a country whose citizens are not allowed access to the internet but just happens to have 1.5 million Twitter followers.
I wrote “publishing” above because that’s what Twitter does, despite their denials and insistence that they only link to other publishers, supposedly giving Twitter itself a firewall against lawsuits.
This appears all the more ludicrous given their new rule two, which indicates that not only are they curating, they are editorializing (i.e., publishing… Congress take note).
So, in the words of V. I. Lenin, what is to be done?
Earlier:
● Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey will be subpoenaed to testify on Post censorship.
● Justice Dept. ready to charge Google with monopoly search practices.
UPDATE: The Models for Taming Social Media.
SO, LIKE TODAY’S POLITICAL CLASS, THEN: Ancient societies collapsed when leaders ignored the social contract.
ONE PICTURE SAYS IT ALL ON PARTIAL-BIRTH ABORTION: No, it’s not grisly, but it is graphic. And Frank Turek puts it in proper context.
TRUMP DIDN’T TAKE BLACK VOTERS FOR GRANTED. DEMOCRATS DID. “Democrats, too, were interested in cultivating the rapper…. But Ice Cube’s team left with the impression that Biden’s team was less committed.”
“From ‘The inside story of how Ice Cube joined forces with Donald Trump An unlikely partnership on a plan to lift Black Americans economically was months in the making.’ (Politico.)”
