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Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

washingtonpost.com

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Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#31

Post by Agustus »

WallWextra wrote: post #15

Here is, roughly, the media's playbook: 1. Never stop talking about Trump. Mention his name 300 times an hour on CNN. He's not a serious candidate, but he is entertaining so they give him free publicity until he is a serious candidate. 2. Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. 3. Now Trump is elected. In these tough times, it is more important than ever to support high-quality ind…

1. Look at the playbook from an agnostic position instead. The reason the media gave candidate Trump the press was because, just like candidate Obama, sold eyeballs; Trump more so because he got both sides mad. Recall the puff pieces and the discussion of Michelle Obama's fantastic arms, that is nothing but puff and she moved the papers, so they covered the candidate more; to Hilary's detriment.

2. You need to think about the emails as compromised material and a failure to secure information. If you are an IT person that circumvents security protocols that then end up with trade secrets being exposed, would you be in trouble. The reason this was covered in the press was that it was classified information on an unsecured server.

4. I shake my head at this, Obama for America was doing the exact same thing in previous elections and no one batted an eye. Now that the people who were okay see that detrimental effects could happen there is concern. The simple thing to do would be to delete / minimize the information on your account.

Just remember, the media is horrible at their job; you have people who do not have the time to dig into a story, are influenced by their editors to drop stories if they attack a major sponsor, and then write stories that are stacked with grammatical mistakes.

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#32

Post by supernumerary »

I have writen about why we scape-goat Facebook here - basically we are trained to be highly sceptical of illusions (cf. Plato's allegory of the cave):

http://iain.land/posts/20170201-transitional-object.html

And this kind of scape-goating - throws the 'baby out with the bath-water' as it were. Basically we need illusions and they effect how we all live. Especially when we all agree on what illusions we want to share...

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#33

Post by maxerickson »

ixtli wrote: post #25
tw04 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As evidenced by the gerrymandered districts intended to do things like sway presidential elections. Clearly the system is working as designed and not being cheated...

That's kinda what I'm getting at: gerrymandering is the implementation. Our legislatures need to specify and clarify rules to stop those kind of abuses, but I don't think anyone is going to jail for gerrymandering a district. My point was simply that these are the rules of the game but people seem to believe someone is cheating.

It's generally the legislators that are drawing the districts.

In Michigan there is a constitutional referendum coming up that will take that power away from them if it passes.

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#34

Post by g09980 »

Agustus wrote: post #31
WallWextra wrote: post #15

Here is, roughly, the media's playbook: 1. Never stop talking about Trump. Mention his name 300 times an hour on CNN. He's not a serious candidate, but he is entertaining so they give him free publicity until he is a serious candidate. 2. Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. 3. Now Trump is elected. In these tough times, it is more important than ever to support high-quality ind…

1. Look at the playbook from an agnostic position instead. The reason the media gave candidate Trump the press was because, just like candidate Obama, sold eyeballs; Trump more so because he got both sides mad. Recall the puff pieces and the discussion of Michelle Obama's fantastic arms, that is nothing but puff and she moved the papers, so they covered the candidate more; to Hilary's detriment. 2. You need to think…

So the use of Facebook data was lauded as genius and now isn't. [1] Now you got me curious if the media would be saying all the same things if Cambridge helped the other candidate get elected.

[1] http://thehill.com/opinion/technology/379245-whats-genius-fo...

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#35

Post by awinder »

Agustus wrote: post #31
WallWextra wrote: post #15

Here is, roughly, the media's playbook: 1. Never stop talking about Trump. Mention his name 300 times an hour on CNN. He's not a serious candidate, but he is entertaining so they give him free publicity until he is a serious candidate. 2. Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. 3. Now Trump is elected. In these tough times, it is more important than ever to support high-quality ind…

1. Look at the playbook from an agnostic position instead. The reason the media gave candidate Trump the press was because, just like candidate Obama, sold eyeballs; Trump more so because he got both sides mad. Recall the puff pieces and the discussion of Michelle Obama's fantastic arms, that is nothing but puff and she moved the papers, so they covered the candidate more; to Hilary's detriment. 2. You need to think…

Obama for America was upfront about what they were doing, and the user initiated the action willingly. Cambridge Analytics was not, and people had no idea what their data was being used for. This is not some capricious delineation.

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#36

Post by orbital-decay »

wu-ikkyu wrote: post #30
orbital-decay wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Implying that media is manipulated "from the top" seems needlessly complex. The perpetual urge to produce more makes the media chaotic, it can amplify any fluke in the white noise. You can manipulate the opinions while being nobody.

Why is it "needlessly complex"? Aren't all corporations "manipulated from the top"?

Because to manipulate the topic of the day, it's far easier to make a single article or interview which will then be reposted, rewritten and mixed with opinions countless times without really checking it or even critically thinking about it, than to organize a collusion with evil masterminds on top, involving huge amounts of people.

All the viral trends can be traced back to one-two sources which got picked by influential media, everybody else is talking about it because others do the same. The media always worked that way, it's nothing new, it's just more apparent in the age of hyperconnectivity.

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#37

Post by madmax96 »

The meta-narrative of this thread: people have outsourced their thinking to massive media companies who have a rational self-interest to capture their audience's attention in order to increase revenue. People assume that these media companies are portrayers of truth. While these companies are not (usually) telling lies, they are presenting a point-of-view that suits their interests. The narratives being consumed by the public are designed to keep them in fear and outrage. By being in a state of fear and outrage, the mob produces more stories for the media to sell back to it to induce more fear and outrage.

The other day, I took a taxi. The driver was talking about how he stopped logging into Facebook, consuming the news, etc. and was instead focusing on spending more quality time with his wife and daughters. He was the happiest person I spoke to yesterday.

We already had what we needed to be happy. Entertainment tools like Facebook are good insofar as we are made better people. Perhaps it's time for us to reflect on how satisfied we are with the people we've become, and accept the personal responsibility of bettering ourselves before we try to save the world.

"Turn on, tune in, and drop out."

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#38

Post by Chardok »

dalbasal wrote: post #29

All the terms and templates we are using legally and in the media... they are painting a totally (imo) misleading picture. FB's "crime" is painted as data security. The "criminals" are trump, Bannon, Putin or whoever is alleged to have used this data to "manipulate public opinion." This misses the entire point. FB's business model is based on using large datasets of mundane (in isolation) information in order to "pro…

This article practically comes off as apologetic for Facebook and absolutely ignores the point of outrage for a lot of people. Great example of language designed to lead.

"Facebook, of course, lets you target exactly those boring, old demographic qualities" - just boring old mundane everyday Facebook. No worries here

"To be clear, what Cambridge Analytica did was somewhat worse" - Just a bit worse, but not too far from the norm

"Facebook no longer allows anyone to do this, thankfully, and hasn’t for years" - this has been a non-issue for years, what are you worried about?

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#39

Post by ffffffffffs »

WallWextra wrote: post #15

Here is, roughly, the media's playbook: 1. Never stop talking about Trump. Mention his name 300 times an hour on CNN. He's not a serious candidate, but he is entertaining so they give him free publicity until he is a serious candidate. 2. Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. 3. Now Trump is elected. In these tough times, it is more important than ever to support high-quality ind…

here, roughly, is the dipshit’s playbook

1) never stop looking for who to blame because people hate hillary fucking clinton so much that donald trump became a viable candidate

keep up the good work!

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#40

Post by maxerickson »

dalbasal wrote: post #29

All the terms and templates we are using legally and in the media... they are painting a totally (imo) misleading picture. FB's "crime" is painted as data security. The "criminals" are trump, Bannon, Putin or whoever is alleged to have used this data to "manipulate public opinion." This misses the entire point. FB's business model is based on using large datasets of mundane (in isolation) information in order to "pro…

As I understand it, the Trump campaign mostly used Facebook's in house ad targeting services. In contrast to the Clinton campaign that relied on their own data team for targeting.

It's hard to get a read on it, but there are plenty of people slagging Cambridge Analytica as being pretty worthless.

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