Fake News

[sivispacem 21,713]

10 hours ago, Spaghetti Cat said:

Roy More blames Democrats for fake Twitter followers (He was right wasn't he?)

Was he? Sounds to me like you're conflating following by Russian bots (which did in fact happen; it would be pretty challenging for the Democrat supporters to create Russian bots and if that's the cut-and-thrust of your argument you're going to have to supply some actual evidence) with the alleged covert promotion of this fact by Democrat supporters (which, as I alluded to in my last post, is the "new normal" in political campaigns. But it wouldn't be a Spaghetti Cat summary post if it didn't misconstrue or misrepresent things, would it?

 

10 hours ago, Spaghetti Cat said:

The document also makes bold but unverified claims about the effects of the operation

I don't know about you, but I've learned to take any document that makes "bold but unverified claims" with a fairly hefty pinch of salt. 

 

Dare/Darth does raise a good point, though- as interesting as this all is, the numbers in play and the alleged influence (still unclear at this point but far from obviously noticeable) do rather pale compared to the fact Moore is an alleged child molester. In the court of public opinion, he might as well be satan himself. 

[Spaghetti Cat 3,282]

Then why cheat against an (alleged) child molester? Shouldn't that be a gimmie? Especially if he wasn't going to be seated anyways?

Doug Jones (50%) - 673,896

Roy Moore(48.3%) - 651,972

Write-in (1.7%) - 22,852

https://ballotpedia.org/United_States_Senate_special_election_in_Alabama,_2017

The target audience for Project Birmingham was 650,000. That's a pretty large group. So much so that the Justice Dept. is looking into it. And Sen. Jones, to his credit, is encouraging the probe.


Here is Reid Hoffman's take:

"One of the early organizations that we supported was American Engagement Technologies (AET), a group which sought to develop technical solutions to counteract fake news, bot armies, and other kinds of digital manipulation and disinformation, and to use social media and data analytics to increase civic engagement and improve access to accurate information about candidates and issues. (and not use that info to run false flag operations, no sir) AET, in turn, provided funding to a group called New Knowledge. Through AET or otherwise, I have never personally authorized or directed any funding to New Knowledge. I — regretfully — do not know why AET chose to support New Knowledge or for what specific purposes, if any, this funding was allocated.
To reiterate yet again, I find the tactics that have been recently reported highly disturbing. For that reason, I am embarrassed by my failure to track AET — the organization I did support — more diligently as it made its own decisions to perhaps fund projects that I would reject."

https://medium.com/@reidhoffman/truth-and-politics-1a532bc6c2b1


So what has AET been up to lately? How about taking the Alabama "experiment" national?








https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/01/07/facebook-is-investigating-political-pages-ads-another-group-backed-by-reid-hoffman/?utm_term=.22de40cba58b&noredirect=on


But I'm sure Fake News CNN is covering this threat to our democracy, right? Right?

[sivispacem 21,713]

9 hours ago, Spaghetti Cat said:

Then why cheat

I'd question whether it is at all. Really, it's just a digital application of the same tactics that have always been used to try and dissuade people from voting or splitting it between write-in candidates. The exact same tactics that have been used by Conservative groups during the 2016 election.

 

I absolutely agree this kind activity should be investigated and some determination made on it's legality, but let's not pretend that these tactics are the sole reserve of Democrat supporting groups. 

[Eutyphro 3,110]

The whole upheaval about the Catholic school kids is one of the fakest mainstream news hoaxes I have yet seen. So some kids with MAGA hats that came from a pro life rally started getting vile insults by the racist hate group the 'black hebrew israelites' thrown at them. They start dancing and singing in response. Then a Native American group walks towards them with cameras rolling to frame them, out of sympathy for the racist hatred spewing 'black hebrew israelites'. During the confontation one of the Native Americans tells the boy 'to go back to Europe'. So they get racist heckles twice. A Native American man starts beating a drum in the face of one of the kids The kid commits the crime of responding with a smug c*ntish grin. Mainstream news "racist schoolchildren harass Native American man".

[Caysle 1,729]

1 hour ago, Eutyphro said:

The whole upheaval about the Catholic school kids is one of the fakest mainstream news hoaxes I have yet seen. So some kids with MAGA hats that came from a pro life rally started getting vile insults by the racist hate group the 'black hebrew israelites' thrown at them. They start dancing and singing in response. Then a Native American group walks towards them with cameras rolling to frame them, out of sympathy for the racist hatred spewing 'black hebrew israelites'. During the confontation one of the Native Americans tells the boy 'to go back to Europe'. So they get racist heckles twice. A Native American man starts beating a drum in the face of one of the kids The kid commits the crime of responding with a smug c*ntish grin. Mainstream news "racist schoolchildren harass Native American man".

While black hebrew israelites were saying some homophobic crap, lots of people booed them there. Some dude (most likely a kid from that MAGA hat group) shouted "they are still humans" (or something similar). 

As for the "go back to Europe" part, I haven't seen that. Do you have video for it?

[Eutyphro 3,110]

 

[Eutyphro 3,110]

It's kind of interesting how in newer articles the msm try to bring a more nuanced view to the case, because it can't really be denied anymore that it was fake news, and they see many people are angry about it and not buying it. The Twitter account that posted the out of context confrontation with the smug grinning MAGA hat kid has been suspended, because it might have been a foreign troll account, and many reasonable commentators have even apologized to these kids for the witch hunt against them.

 

But this is a case of how mainstream media chose sensationalism that fits preconceived biases (racist Trump supporters harassing people) over actual journalism. And we see this all the time, because liberals/the left have in the past years increasingly embraced sensationalism and biased content. I remember the days when Fox was evidently more biased than other news, but these days I don't even think that's true anymore. In their hysterical anti Trump crusade the mainstream has thrown the idea of nuance in the trash, and force everyone into their Trump derangement syndrome. In this climate of Trump derangement syndrome all bad things in the world come from Trump and the left can do no wrong. Harassment by the left or left leaning liberals is irrelevant to the mainstream, but one c*ntish grin by a MAGA kid goes around the world. The standards for behavior by anyone right wing are miles higher than for anyone who has the 'correct' ideas.

Edited January 22, 2019 by Eutyphro

[Raavi 23,731]

To be fair, you even had people like Charlie Kirk, and publications like the National Review jumping on this and taking it as fact. Hell, even the organizers of the "March for Life" themselves came out against it. So the outrage wasn't contained to lefty outlets and commentators. Of course the MSNBCs and CNNs of the world turned it up to 11, but others dedicated airtime to it as well. So aside from the widespread lack of in concreto fact checking across most mainstream outlets; I think this incident shows something far more interesting and troubling: Precisely row ridiculously easy it is to engineer a news story. To the point where these kids faced death threats and were about to expelled from their school. Crazy stuff. The only reason this was stopped in its tracks is because someone else filmed another angle of the incident. But just imagine if that had not been the case.

[Eutyphro 3,110]

43 minutes ago, Raavi said:

To be fair, you even had people like Charlie Kirk, and publications like the National Review jumping on this and taking it as fact. Hell, even the organizers of the "March for Life" themselves came out against it.

It's because we live in a society where people instantly join in to throw someone else's reputation down the gutter if it can be used to virtue signal or protect one's own reputation. Trump derangement syndrome is making society collectively go full retard. I see intelligent decent people baited into becoming twitter trolls all the time these days.

[Tchuck 3,462]

That's why if you really want to find out the truth about an event, you gotta wait a couple of days. The immediate reaction of either side is to find a way to capitalize on it for their virtue points. After a few days, you'll finally be able to have all the facts as they happened, and properly understand what happened.

 

Which is insane. In today's world, with information so easily accessible, we have the complete capability to have the facts as they happened right from the start. But that's not what happens. Instead, we end up with outlets rushing to find the angle that bests serves their interest. 

 

This particularly interesting twitter chain shows how it's done.

[Caysle 1,729]

Yeah, you having only 1 follower on twitter should make what you say invalid and you should be considered a bot. lol

[Yokelsson 6,558]

Of all the things to care about, a Gillette commercial just doesn't seem all that important.

[Eutyphro 3,110]

It wasn't even fake news. There's plenty of people that don't want to buy Gillette anymore. I'm not going to buy Gillette products anymore either. f*ck Gillette. This was probably the worst commercial I have ever seen. Their sales should suffer for this in my opinion.

[Clem Fandango 5,174]

14 hours ago, Eutyphro said:

In this climate of Trump derangement syndrome all bad things in the world come from Trump and the left can do no wrong. Harassment by the left or left leaning liberals is irrelevant to the mainstream, but one c*ntish grin by a MAGA kid goes around the world. The standards for behavior by anyone right wing are miles higher than for anyone who has the 'correct' ideas.

lol the mainstream media has repeatedly drawn parallels between leftists bothering politicians in restaurants and right-wingers running people down with their cars and sending people pipe bombs. Including your favourite network CNN (for Communist News Network LOL) despite being one of the intended victims of the failed bombing campaign. Or hey, maybe compare the constant hit pieces on Sanders to the lukewarm reaction to Steve King. Really the MSM lets the right get away with murder, but a dent has been put in this by Trump's insanity and disrespect for norms. That's all this is. 

 

Also you just said 'Trump derangment syndrome' like four times. How many Ben Shapiro videos have you seen, f*ck me. 

 

5 hours ago, Eutyphro said:

I'm not going to buy Gillette products anymore either. f*ck Gillette. 

Log off my dude. You are spending way too much time on twitter. I would suggest getting a satellite so you can directly consume American media rather than through the lens of right-wing twitter and see how insane you sound. CNN is half business news and half human interest stories about the decline of ostrich farming.  

 

 

[Yokelsson 6,558]

21 hours ago, Eutyphro said:

It wasn't even fake news. There's plenty of people that don't want to buy Gillette anymore. I'm not going to buy Gillette products anymore either. f*ck Gillette. This was probably the worst commercial I have ever seen. Their sales should suffer for this in my opinion.

I bet you don't even use Gillette. This is too stupid of a "controversy" for anyone to care that much.

[make total destroy 20,255]

On 1/22/2019 at 4:17 PM, Eutyphro said:

It wasn't even fake news. There's plenty of people that don't want to buy Gillette anymore. I'm not going to buy Gillette products anymore either. f*ck Gillette. This was probably the worst commercial I have ever seen. Their sales should suffer for this in my opinion.

lmao

 

Don't you have real sh*t to worry about like making rent or something?

[Ned Bingham 327]

The extent to which the 'serious' media seizes upon, collates and regurgitates social media content these days is disturbing imo. You can see the appeal of this to media outlets. Less need to have journalists out in the field, instead just sit at your desk and trawl Twitter or whatnot. No need to canvas opinion about what various parties think and feel about issues - the medium generates its own issues, thoughts and (especially) feelings, which can then be fed back in in a positive feedback loop. You could of course argue that the Media has always operated in this fashion and that Twitter etc, is merely a modern development and extension of age old practice.  But has the media always been so closely aligned with what is often no more that mass hysteria?

 

If we can for a moment regard social media as an extension and enrichment of democracy should we then ask whether there is such a thing as too much democracy?

Edited February 1, 2019 by Short Stay

[Evil empire 2,775]

Of course there are fake news, a lot of propaganda and diversions since in many countries the medias aren't independent from the state and the company bosses.