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People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

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Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#41

Post by pjc50 »

onlyrealcuzzo wrote: post #26
sjwright wrote: post #22

It doesn’t matter how autonomous and free thinking you are or any other individual is— social media is transforming us into a collective. Like ants excreting pheromones, our actions in aggregate are more powerful than any individual, the result being whatever results from this untested cocktail of biology, language and global connection. It’s unprecedented and borderline unpredictable. Nobody is in a position to dire…

How is this worse than tightly controlled mass media? I think people like to look back on this non-existent golden era of News where it was fair and balanced and just reported the truth. That era never existed. At least now you have options. I hate social media as much as anyone, but it's not bringing an end to the world. It's easy to manipulate people of Facebook. But it's way easier on Fox News or CNN.

I think they're actually feeding off one another. e.g. recent controversy:

> In December 2019, Newton Dunn wrote an article for The Sun titled "'HIJACKED LABOUR'", in which he reported that former British intelligence officers alleged that "Jeremy Corbyn is at the centre of an extraordinary network of hard-left extremists."[10] It was later found that the ultimate sources for the claim included the antisemitic, far-right websites the Millennium Report and Aryan Unity... The article was deleted on the day of publication, without comment from the paper or Newton Dunn.

( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Newton_Dunn ; I believe this has already been through the wikipedia controversy process)

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#42

Post by pjc50 »

josteink wrote: post #30
sjwright wrote: post #22

It doesn’t matter how autonomous and free thinking you are or any other individual is— social media is transforming us into a collective. Like ants excreting pheromones, our actions in aggregate are more powerful than any individual, the result being whatever results from this untested cocktail of biology, language and global connection. It’s unprecedented and borderline unpredictable. Nobody is in a position to dire…

> social media is transforming us into a collective Or said another way: if you play, you lose. Your best bet is not to play. Quit social media. It’s actually not hard.

I can still lose if my fellow voters are making decisions based on nonsense, electing the Flat Earth Bridge Construction Party.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#43

Post by droithomme »

txcwpalpha wrote: post #11
ProAm wrote: post #2

What age demographic still really uses facebook? American's 35+? All my friends us Messenger and the rest is on other social media platforms for content. edit dont know why this got downvoted, it was a legit question because everyone knows who the primary age group of votes is, so Im wondering if there is data on age demographics of actual FB use.

>All my friends us Messenger and the rest is on other social media platforms for content. Be cognizant of your bubble. All of my friends (aka people I actually regularly interact with) don't ever use FB anymore, but a quick glance at my FB feed shows that a huge population of people from my high school (people in their mid-to-late 20s), mostly the ones I haven't interacted with in years, still use it heavily.

I've got every known facebook domain blocked in my hosts file (basic common sense move for the non-dumb) and can't even verify that sort of thing.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#44

Post by m0zg »

It'll be fun to see the DNC and the democratic nominee's campaign employ armies of paid shills like they did last time (Correct The Record, Share Blue, etc), after they spent 3+ years railing against the practice. :-)

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#45

Post by droithomme »

andrewbinstock wrote: post #16
ProAm wrote: post #2

What age demographic still really uses facebook? American's 35+? All my friends us Messenger and the rest is on other social media platforms for content. edit dont know why this got downvoted, it was a legit question because everyone knows who the primary age group of votes is, so Im wondering if there is data on age demographics of actual FB use.

> American's 35+? FB has >1 billion real users. So by the simplest arithmetic, the vast majority of its users cannot be American, regardless of age.

We're including bogus accounts then?

Or are we saying that foreign users are more naive and less likely to value privacy? I doubt that that racist supposition is true, but respect your opinion and your forthcoming documentation proving it.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#46

Post by hoistbypetard »

catalogia wrote: post #32
avivo wrote: post #14

I actually just published a guide on how you can help ensure that ("deepfake") tools that you make are less likely to end up misused like this: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/614912/ethical-deepfake-t... Curious what folks think. I also just posted it to /newest if you want to respond there.

Is anybody old enough to remember if people once had analogous reactions to software like photoshop?

While I don't recall any specific article like this one published, I do remember people writing about similar worries in the mid '90s.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#47

Post by anigbrowl »

ProAm wrote: post #2

What age demographic still really uses facebook? American's 35+? All my friends us Messenger and the rest is on other social media platforms for content. edit dont know why this got downvoted, it was a legit question because everyone knows who the primary age group of votes is, so Im wondering if there is data on age demographics of actual FB use.

All my friends us Messenger

You mean...Facebook Messenger?

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#48

Post by mherdeg »

tabtab wrote: post #3

Fake people reading and writing fake news on fake websites? If this keeps up, we'll end up with a fake President. Don't give me negative points, for this is a fake reply.

In Neal Stephenson's "Anathem" he proposes a distant alternate-history future where a priest-like cult of technical experts set themselves up to do effective human-aided Google searches which were necessary because the Internet was full of machine-generated disinformation.

I genuinely thought this was an implausible, hokey premise when I read the book in 2008.

I felt similarly about Orson Scott Card's plot in "Ender's Game" where two teenagers influence global political trends by posting a lot on social media (and I'm not the only one who thought this was silly: https://xkcd.com/635/ ). Then a bunch of Macedonian teenagers proved it worked in 2016.

It is very difficult to predict the future.

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#49

Post by Animats »

ProAm wrote: post #2

What age demographic still really uses facebook? American's 35+? All my friends us Messenger and the rest is on other social media platforms for content. edit dont know why this got downvoted, it was a legit question because everyone knows who the primary age group of votes is, so Im wondering if there is data on age demographics of actual FB use.

The same group is on Twitter, and just got kicked off.[1] Fake Messenger accounts are a thing, too, and harder to report.[2]

[1] https://thehill.com/policy/technology/475536-facebook-twitte...

[2] https://www.zdnet.com/article/facebook-messenger-user-watch-...

Re: People Who Do Not Exist Invade Facebook

#50

Post by alexpetralia »

dilyevsky wrote: post #21
tabtab wrote: post #3

Fake people reading and writing fake news on fake websites? If this keeps up, we'll end up with a fake President. Don't give me negative points, for this is a fake reply.

The world has gone full Philip K Dick

For those interested in understanding the reference here, I found this useful: https://expressiveegg.org/2017/01/03/four-kinds-dystopia/
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