Racism And Misogyny And Lies–Oh My

This is a post about Twitter (I refuse to use ‘X’) and what it has become….the article referenced in this post is from The Guardian….I ceased all association with Twitter right after Musk took over basically because I think he is huge prick and figured he would piss up Twitter at his first opportunity.

I considered leaving Twitter as soon as Elon Musk acquired it in 2022, just not wanting to be part of a community that could be bought, least of all by a man like him – the obnoxious “long hours at a high intensity” bullying of his staff began immediately. But I’ve had some of the most interesting conversations of my life on there, both randomly, ambling about, and solicited, for stories: “Anyone got catastrophically lonely during Covid?”; “Anyone hooked up with their secondary school boy/girlfriend?” We used to call it the place where you told the truth to strangers (Facebook was where you lied to your friends), and that wide-openness was reciprocal and gorgeous.

It got more unpleasant after the blue-tick fiasco: identity verification became something you could buy, which destroyed the trust quotient. So I joined the rival platform Mastodon, but fast realised that I would never get 70,000 followers on there like I had on Twitter. It wasn’t that I wanted the attention per se, just that my gang wasn’t varied or noisy enough. There’s something eerie and a bit depressing about a social media feed that doesn’t refresh often enough, like walking into a shopping mall where half the shops have closed down and the rest are all selling the same thing.

In 2023, the network now known as X began sharing ad revenues with its “premium” users, and I joined Threads (which is owned by Meta), but all I ever see on it is strangers confessing to boring misdemeanours. I remained on X, where everything got darker. People get paid, indirectly through advertising, for engagement. Even that is a bit murky, since it’s described as “revenue sharing”, but you don’t get to see which ads’ revenues were shared with you, so can’t measure revenue-per-impression. Is X sharing it 50/50? Or 10/90? Are they actually paying you to generate hatred?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/article/2024/sep/05/racism-misogyny-lies-how-did-x-become-so-full-of-hatred-and-is-it-ethical-to-keep-using-it

I originally used Twitter for a news feed and it progressed into a cluster fuck and has become a monumental cluster fuck since Musk acquisition.

Please share your thoughts on Twitter and its direction.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

TikTok–A Step Closer

In the past few months as a diversion the Biden people have been thumping their chest about TikTok….and it looks like the ban is a step closer….

The House passed legislation Saturday that would ban TikTok in the US if the popular social media platform’s China-based owner doesn’t sell its stake within a year. That doesn’t mean the app will go away anytime soon, the AP reports. The decision by House Republicans to include TikTok as part of a larger foreign aid package fast-tracked the ban after an earlier version had stalled in the Senate. A standalone bill with a six-month selling deadline passed the House in March as both Democrats and Republicans voiced national security concerns about the app’s owner, the Chinese technology firm ByteDance.

But the maneuver could speed up the TikTok crackdown’s route through Congress, per the Washington Post, while putting pressure on the Senate. Negotiations between the chambers had produced a compromise measure, and the Post finds support increasing in the Senate. TikTok is “a spy balloon in Americans’ phones” used to “surveil and exploit America’s personal information,” Republican Rep. Michael McCaul told the House in introducing the provision for debate on Saturday. The company could challenge the law in court, per the AP, possibly arguing that it deprives millions of TikTok users of their First Amendment rights. President Biden said last month that he would sign the TikTok bill if Congress passes it.

Is TikTok truly dangerous?

Researchers studied the app’s source code and reported it carries out “excessive data harvesting”. Analysts said TikTok collects details such as location, what specific device is being used and which other apps are on it.

However, a similar test carried out by Citizen Lab concluded “in comparison to other popular social media platforms, TikTok collects similar types of data to track user behaviour”.

Similarly, a report by the Georgia Institute of Technology last year stated: “The key fact here is that most other social media and mobile apps do the same things.”

If TikTok does nothing different than other social media sights why then is TikTok the only danger?

What do you think this proposed ban is all about?

Is this truly a freedom of speech thing?

How will the Supreme Court rule on this for we know it will make it there for their ruling?

Do we really want to start down this road of banning social media?

Is this a made up ‘crisis’ or is it an accusation with some teeth?

All good questions that deserve good answers….

Your thoughts included.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

That TikTok Ban

Let’s talk about this piece of brilliant BS.

There is a major story going on right now about the social media site, TikTok….and Congress gets involved….

A bill that could see TikTok banned in the US if its Chinese owner doesn’t sell the app passed the House as expected on Wednesday, with a vote of 352-65. It now goes to the Senate, where its fate is less certain; Majority Leader Chuck Schumer hasn’t yet committed to taking the bill to the floor. President Biden has said he’ll sign the bill if it makes it through Congress. Nearly half of all Americans use TikTok, which is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Chinese firm ByteDance. If the bill were to pass and be signed into law, ByteDance would have 165 days to divest from the social media app or see it banned in US app stores and by web hosting services.

The AP describes lawmakers’ concerns: “that ByteDance is beholden to the Chinese government, which could demand access to the data of TikTok’s consumers in the US any time it wants. The worry stems from a set of Chinese national security laws that compel organizations to assist with intelligence gathering.” Standout quotes from the bill’s passage:

From GOP Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers: “We have given TikTok a clear choice. Separate from your parent company ByteDance, which is beholden to the CCP [the Chinese Communist Party], and remain operational in the United States, or side with the CCP and face the consequences. The choice is TikTok’s.”

From Democrat Nancy Pelosi, per NBC News: This is “not an attempt to ban TikTok. It’s an attempt to make TikTok better. Tic-tac-toe—a winner, a winner.”

From Democratic Rep. Jim Himes, ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, per the Guardian: “I have more insight than most into the online threats posed by our adversaries. But one of the key differences between us and those adversaries is the fact that they shut down newspapers, broadcast stations, and social media platforms. We do not. We trust our citizens to be worthy of their democracy.”

This has been a nagging subject for some time now….back and forth….but all of a sudden it is a major problem that needs fixing.

What’s the rush?

The purported threat of TikTok to U.S. national security has inflated into a hysteria of Chinese spy balloon proportions, but the official record tells a different story: U.S. intelligence has produced no evidence that the popular social media site has ever coordinated with Beijing. That fact hasn’t stopped many in Congress and even President Joe Biden from touting legislation that would force the sale of the app, as the TikTok frenzy fills the news pages with empty conjecture and innuendo.

In interviews and testimony to Congress about TikTok, leaders of the FBI, CIA, and the director of national intelligence have in fact been careful to qualify the national security threat posed by TikTok as purely hypothetical. With access to much of the government’s most sensitive intelligence, they are well placed to know.

The basic charge is that TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, a Chinese company, could be compelled by the government in Beijing to use their app in targeted operations to manipulate public opinion, collect mass data on Americans, and even spy on individual users.

TikTok Threat Is Purely Hypothetical, U.S. Intelligence Admits

It seems to me that Biden was getting lost of bad press because of his handling of the Middle East situation and he needed a diversion from his bad policies and what better way to do this than come up with a ‘national security’ problem?

Timing is everything.

Is this TikTok thing truly a problem?

Is this a first amendment thing?

I need not worry about my data for I do not use TikTok for anything….other than a post.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

SCOTUS And Social Media

Those political hacks that we call the Supreme Court are about to lay into the Constitution to settle a ‘First Amendment’ issue….

Supreme Court justices sounded hesitant Monday to dismiss First Amendment concerns about state laws that would restrict social media companies’ ability to moderate users’ posts. The court spent four hours hearing oral arguments about laws passed in Florida and Texas that are blocked for now, the New York Times reports. Both laws were approved by Republican-controlled legislatures, a response to complaints from the political right that the companies were censoring comments from its supporters while allowing posts expressing other viewpoints. The court’s decisions could have broad implications for the future of online debate.

A series of issues involved includes censorship and whether to treat social media like a phone company that transmits users’ content and can’t block any of it at will, or like a newspaper, which can decide what opinions it will run. The Florida law is the more sweeping, and Justice Sonia Sotomayor said it could keep the online marketplace Etsy from curating items being sold by its users, per CNN. “This is so, so broad, it’s covering almost everything” on the internet, Sotomayor said. President Biden’s administration agrees with the technology companies that say the platforms have the right to moderate content; Donald Trump’s lawyers filed a brief calling on the court to uphold Florida’s law.

In musing about censorship, Justices Samuel Alito and Brett Kavanaugh brought up George Orwell, per MSNBC. Alito expressed concern about “Orwellian” private conduct, while Kavanaugh said he thinks of government control of media, not private control, as being “Orwellian.” Alito expressed dislike of the term “content moderation,” per the AP. “Is it anything more than a euphemism for censorship?” Alito asked. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson brought up whether the platforms are a public square or a private company. A ruling should be issued by summer.

So are these sites public or private?

It will be interesting to see what the “Hacks” will do.

On a separate issue….is honking one’s horn protected under free speech?

If you’re tempted to honk your car horn in support of protesters, you might want to think twice in California. That’s because on Friday, a three-judge panel for the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit upheld a lower court’s ruling against Susan Porter, deciding that honking one’s horn isn’t free speech. The case saw its origins in October 2017, when Porter repeatedly leaned on her car horn in solidarity with protesters she was driving past outside of GOP Rep. Darrell Issa’s office in Vista, who were demonstrating against Issa’s support of then-President Trump, per the Washington Post.

Porter honked her horn a total of 14 times, in short bursts, as she cruised by the demonstrators—and was subsequently pulled over by a San Diego County sheriff’s deputy, who gave her a ticket and cited her for misusing her car horn. The citation came about because Porter was said to have violated a 1913 law that prohibits anyone from using the horn for anything other than warning other drivers, per Courthouse News. Although that citation was dismissed the following February when the deputy didn’t show in court, Porter brought a lawsuit, claiming her First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights had been violated.

Porter noted that honking wasn’t just for political speech, but also for celebrating good news, greeting people, or alerting someone that you’d arrived to pick them up. The lower court’s decision against her, however, was handed down in February 2021, which the appeals court upheld last week. “[For] the horn to serve its intended purpose as a warning device, it must not be used indiscriminately,” Judge Michelle Friedland wrote for the majority, per the Post. Friedland added that there were other ways to show support for protesters, including waves, giving a thumbs-up, and bumper stickers. Dissenting Judge Marsha Berzon disagreed, noting, per the Metropolitan News-Enterprise: “Honking at a political protest is a core form of expressive conduct that merits the most stringent constitutional protection.”

SCOTUS refuses to tackle this one….

The Supreme Court has declined to hear a case on whether honking a car horn is protected free speech, leaving in place a lower court’s ruling upholding a California law that bans excessive honking. Lawyers for Susan Porter, who was ticketed in 2017 after honking in support of anti-Donald Trump protesters outside the office of GOP Rep. Darrell Issa, said they were disappointed and they hope the issue will be revisited in future cases, the Hill reports. “We continue to believe that sounding the vehicle horn to support a protest or engage in personal expression is a core First Amendment right,” said David Loy, legal director for the First Amendment Coalition,” calling such honking a “longstanding tradition.”

And their term will continue….

I wait and watch.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Does Propaganda Really Work?

Short answer is….yes it does!

Propaganda has been used extensively by governments and now the media and social media has joined in the brainwashing of the people.

Interesting article that looks at the way propaganda has successfully controlled the minds of the people….

In the 1970s, I met one of Hitler’s leading propagandists, Leni Riefenstahl, whose epic films glorified the Nazis. We happened to be staying at the same lodge in Kenya, where she was on a photography assignment, having escaped the fate of other friends of the Fuhrer. She told me that the ‘patriotic messages’ of her films were dependent not on ‘orders from above’ but on what she called the ‘submissive void’ of the German public.

Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie? I asked. ‘Yes, especially them,’ she said.

I think of this as I look around at the propaganda now consuming Western societies.

Of course, we are very different from Germany in the 1930s. We live in information societies. We are globalists. We have never been more aware, more in touch, better connected.

Are we? Or do we live in a Media Society where brainwashing is insidious and relentless, and perception is filtered according to the needs and lies of state and corporate power?

The United States dominates the Western world’s media. All but one of the top ten media companies are based in North America. The internet and social media – Google, Twitter, Facebook – are mostly American owned and controlled.

In my lifetime, the United States has overthrown or attempted to overthrow more than 50 governments, mostly democracies. It has interfered in democratic elections in 30 countries. It has dropped bombs on the people of 30 countries, most of them poor and defenceless. It has attempted to murder the leaders of 50 countries. It has fought to suppress liberation movements in 20 countries.

The extent and scale of this carnage is largely unreported, unrecognized; and those responsible continue to dominate Anglo-American political life.

In the years before he died in 2008, the playwright Harold Pinter made two extraordinary speeches, which broke a silence.

Silencing the Lambs: How Propaganda Works

I have written about this subject many times and still no one seems to care as long as they can find anything that will confirm that their thoughts are accurate.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Those Conspiracy Fantasies

Social media has given rise to a wealth of manure spread as ‘conspiracy theories’…..I mean there is NOTHING that cannot be said and then turned into a conspiracy that grows legs and gets wilder and crazier…..NOTHING.

Let’s look at those theories…….

Conspiracy theories or better yet, conspiracy fantasies – as these are in fact, not theories – have been around for a long time. Worse, the advent of the Internet including the so-called social media, which in reality are corporate media run by huge online business corporations, has significantly cranked up the spreading of conspiracy fantasies. Today, everyone can “publish” and with this, more and more conspiracy fantasies appear and they gather speed. The Internet provides a rather fruitful ground for conspiracy fantasies.

Whether Internet has fueled conspiracy fantasies or not, virtually all conspiracy fantasies have a few common parameters that practically all of them share. Perhaps one of the most important signifier of conspiracy fantasies is the fact that those who create and believe in conspiracy fantasies are convinced that nothing happens by chance – not in society, not in politics, not in the economy, and not in history.

Secondly, conspiracy fantasies connect things that are not connected. The fact that something can happen “out of the blue” is impossible to comprehend for the advocates of conspiracy fantasies, and even more so for those who invent, sell, and broadcast conspiracy fantasies.

Thirdly, conspiracy fantasies thrive on the hallucination that nothing is quite what it seems – whether at first sight, or even after a second look. Fourthly, creator of conspiracy fantasies are also convinced that everything that occurs is the result of some secret machinations. And, finally, behind many things lurk a destructive, and above all, secret groups of plotters and schemers.

These conspirators, secret organizations, and institutions (preferably government institutions) are manipulating everything from behind the scenes. Secretly, they pull the strings behind almost everything. On the whole, UNESCO and the European Union suggest that virtually all conspiracy fantasies have six commonalities.

Virtually all of these are found on conspiracy fantasies placed on the Internet. At the dawn of the Internet, Mike Godwin has proposed something that became Godwin’s Law. This law says, that the longer an Internet discussion goes on, the more likely it is to mention Hitler, at which point it usually, though not always, comes to an end.

Old Nazi and New Conspiracy Fantasies

I am an old fart and have been living long enough to watch this moronic exercise go from fringe to main street…..and all that time I scratch my head to try an understand how it has come to the age of ignorance.

Once again I blame the rise of ‘indispensable’ social media as the culprit to spread lies and stupidity.

Any thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Beware Of Your ‘Smart’ Devices

It is Sunday and time for a little FYI…..

These day it seems that devices will do everything you use to do for yourself short of wiping your butt.

I am an old fart so I prefer to turn the TV on myself….make my own coffee and answer the door bell…..but the generation now has come to depend on their smart devices for everything short of impregnating their partners.

But please beware…..

Have you ever felt a creeping sensation that someone’s watching you? Then you turn around and you don’t see anything out of the ordinary. Depending on where you were, though, you might not have been completely imagining it. There are billions of things sensing you every day. They are everywhere, hidden in plain sight – inside your TV, fridge, car and office. These things know more about you than you might imagine, and many of them communicate that information over the internet.

Back in 2007, it would have been hard to imagine the revolution of useful apps and services that smartphones ushered in. But they came with a cost in terms of intrusiveness and loss of privacy. As computer scientists who study data management and privacy, we find that with internet connectivity extended to devices in homes, offices and cities, privacy is in more danger than ever.

Your appliances, car and home are designed to make your life easier and automate tasks you perform daily: switch lights on and off when you enter and exit a room, remind you that your tomatoes are about to go bad, personalize the temperature of the house depending on the weather and preferences of each person in the household.

To do their magic, they need the internet to reach out for help and correlate data. Without internet access, your smart thermostat can collect data about you, but it doesn’t know what the weather forecast is, and it isn’t powerful enough to process all of the information to decide what to do.

https://theconversation.com/smart-devices-spy-on-you-2-computer-scientists-explain-how-the-internet-of-things-can-violate-your-privacy-174579

Damn! I am lazy but I still had rather to do things for myself. I will not allow any of these devices in my home….I may have a smart phone but that is the extent of it for me.

BEWARE!

Guard your life carefully.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Violence Against The Russian People

I post this because we Americans will gladly hate a people….which is so sad.

The people of Russia are in the dark about this war in Ukraine….thanks to the tight control Putin and his government has over the content they are allowed to see and hear.

But even the hypocrisy and cynicism we have seen to this point by Big Social Media does not prepare one for a shocking development today, as first reported by Reuters and then picked up by the Washington Post: Facebook (and Facebook-owned Instagram) have “updated” their “Community Standards” guidelines and will now allow calls for violence against Russians.

Yes that’s right. Russians – not the Russian government or the Russian economy, or even top Russian political figures but just plain old Russians – are now subject to new guidelines that ALLOW rather than forbid “Hate Speech” and even actual calls for violence!

…

It is very clear that we are not progressing as a society toward ever-more liberal values. We are regressing to a violent, feral state. Endlessly looking inward for enemies to destroy. “Anti-vaxxers,” Trump voters, and now just plain old everyday Russians. Kill them. They are evil. Is this OK?

Facebook, a de facto arm of government, is now encouraging calls for violence against innocent people who happen to be of a particular race or ethnic background or linguistic group.

Race-hate of an unpopular ethnic and religions group? Haven’t we seen this horrific movie before?

(antiwar.com)

Seriously?

So it is perfectly OK to use violence against a people that have no idea what is happening in Ukraine……how sad.

Actress Mila Kunis, who is Ukrainian, has made a statement about this……

Mila Kunis says she has always felt far more like an American than an Eastern European—but when Russia invaded Ukraine, it felt like “part of my heart just got ripped out.” Kunis was born in Chernivtsi, southern Ukraine, and moved to the US with her family in 1991, when she was 7. In an interview with Maria Shriver, she said the world should blame the people in power in Russia for the conflict, but ordinary Russians shouldn’t be seen as the enemy, the Hill reports. “I do really want to emphasize that. I don’t think that that’s being said enough in the press,” Kunis said.

“I don’t think it’s the people of Russia, so I don’t want there to be a thing of all Russians are horrible human beings,” Kunis told Shriver, per People. “I don’t want that to be the rhetoric.” Kunis and her husband, Ashton Kutcher, started a GoFundMe fundraiser last week to support refugees and humanitarian aid efforts. It has now raised more than $20 million, with Kunis and Kutcher contributing $3 million. The full interview will be released Sunday via Shriver’s Sunday Paper newsletter.

I agree….do not hate a people for the stupidity of their leaders.

But sadly I feel this will all fall on deaf ears….for Americans seem to have to have someone to hate.

Thoughts?

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Ukraine And Social Media

I have bitched about the media coverage of the Ukraine/Russia conflict…..the lack of actual action footage just regurgitation of stock vids and photos….then there is social media which seems to have better coverage of the armed conflict….but then the question should be asked if their reporting is accurate or just propaganda.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has already fueled some nascent misinformation tactics, including the spread of realistic video game footage and the use of TikTok to create fake war zone livestreams.

The content highlights how misinformation on the internet tends to constantly evolve, with some older forms of misleading content remaining relevant (many users continue to share older videos mislabeled as coming from the ongoing conflict).

And while TikTok has in recent years vowed to crack down on misinformation, its relatively recent entry into the mainstream as a major social media platform, along with some of its unique features, have made it ripe for misleading content.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/war-ukraine-sparks-new-wave-misinformation-rcna17779

Maybe we should not believe everything we see on social media…..maybe we should look deeper for what the real story is…..just a thought…..

Amid the alarming images of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine over the past few days, millions of people have also seen misleading, manipulated or false information about the conflict on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and Telegram.

One example is this video of military jets posted to TikTok, which is historical footage but captioned as live video of the situation in Ukraine.

Visuals, because of their persuasive potential and attention-grabbing nature, are an especially potent choice for those seeking to mislead. Where creating, editing or sharing inauthentic visual content isn’t satire or art, it is usually politically or economically motivated.

Disinformation campaigns aim to distract, confuse, manipulate and sow division, discord, and uncertainty in the community. This is a common strategy for highly polarised nations where socioeconomic inequalities, disenfranchisement and propaganda are prevalent.

How is this fake content created and spread, what’s being done to debunk it, and how can you ensure you don’t fall for it yourself?

https://theconversation.com/fake-viral-footage-is-spreading-alongside-the-real-horror-in-ukraine-here-are-5-ways-to-spot-it-177921

This article gives the reader that truly wants to know what is happening in Ukraine and not buying into the hype then the 5 ways to spot bad info is perfect (if only people will do what is needed)

But that assumes that the reader wants to know or just follow the lies that fit what they want to believe.

So far I have seen nothing in the media that they are trying to debunk the spread of misinformation on their part…..they just keep spreading the manure of hearsay.

People are dying at least we could do is ask hard questions and find out why this is happening.

Turn The Page!

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”

Closing Thought–13Dec21

“Birds Aren’t Real!”

This has been a trending meme on Twitter for months.

Want more information?

Have you ever seen a baby pigeon? No? It’s probably because birds aren’t real but rather government drones used to spy on you and steal your information. That’s according to the Birds Aren’t Real movement, and a movement it is: hundreds of thousands of young people are now on board. Some will even tell you that woodpeckers are fluent in Morse code. Thankfully, it’s all a joke, as the 23-year-old founder of Birds Aren’t Real finally admits in a New York Times interview. “Yes, we have been intentionally spreading misinformation for the past four years, but it’s with a purpose,” says Peter McIndoe of Memphis, Tenn. “It’s about holding up a mirror to America in the internet age.”

It was a spur-of-the-moment decision. McIndoe was in downtown Memphis in January 2017 when he spotted a women’s march and counterprotesters in support of then-President Donald Trump. He grabbed a poster, flipped it over and wrote “Birds Aren’t Real,” then began spouting stuff about a government cover-up. “It was a spontaneous joke, but it was a reflection of the absurdity everyone was feeling,” he tells the Times. The episode went viral, drawing in Generation Z, which grew up in “a world overrun with misinformation,” per the Times. McIndoe knew a thing or two about that himself, having been homeschooled in rural Arkansas, where he was taught that “evolution was a massive brainwashing plan by the Democrats and Obama was the Antichrist.”

He began embodying the character he’d created, not faltering once in a 30-minute interview with Audubon in 2018; paid actors to pose as bird truthers; and built a fake history of the movement with friend Connor Gaydos. It fooled the public and local media, but members knew the reality. One describes the movement as “fighting lunacy with lunacy,” per the Times. Another says it’s “more about media literacy.” Or as Audubon described it: “a chimera of conspiracies that wraps satire, modern insecurities, and internet culture into a successful marketing scheme.” Merchandise sales not only cover McIndoe and Gaydos’ living expenses but support the movement overall. As McIndoe tells the New Statesman, it’s “a safe space of sorts, for people to come together and laugh at the absurdity of the world that we’re in right now.”

This illustrates the stupidity that social media creates…..and the stupidity that people are willing to accept.

I Read, I Write, You Know

“lego ergo scribo”