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Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

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Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#151

Post by palmotea »

tl;dr:

> [The person they're investigating] even posted about income she generates from Meta's monetization program, which rewards creators for engagement and solicits subscribers on her personal page.

Facebook pays people to post content that people "engage" with, outrage is engagement, and tiny amounts of money incentive money are significant to poor people in the 3rd world.

It's the same cluster of facts that lead to "Shrimp Jesus" slop: https://www.forbes.com/sites/danidiplacido/2024/04/28/facebo....

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#152

Post by graemep »

throwthrowuknow wrote: post #117
ifwinterco wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a meme that most "nationalist" Twitter/X posters in the UK are actually from South Asia, and only doing it because for people in low-income countries the Twitter payments are a viable source of income. I'm not on Twitter anymore thankfully, but when I was there seemed to be a lot of truth to this. It even got to the point of there being successful witch hunts outing quite large/popular accounts as being India…

Makes sense for the UK since if you post the same content as a citizen you could end up with the police at your door.

Not most of it - at least on Facebook where there is a LOT posted by people from South Asia and racist/extreme nationalist posters - far more than on Twitter the last time I compared my feeds. For one thing most of it on Facebook is dogwhistle racism not direct. A lot more does not meet the legal standards for creating records. Very little gets reported so no on investigates.

You "could" end up with police at your door, but even if reported most of these things do not meet the requirements for being recorded: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/non-crime-hate-in...

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#153

Post by vrganj »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #149
trumpdong wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Facebook does this consistently though.

Bars consistently serve people who will later drive home drunk, and yet it would be wrong to say the purpose of a bar is to cause drunk driving.

If you reread my comment, you will see that I never said the purpose was what it does.

That word choice was not by accident, it wasn't meant to be a simple paraphrase.

I said a system is what it does. In this case bars are the cause of drunk driving, just like in my parallel. Not on purpose. But by effect.

You mismatched my statement to the famous quote, then pointed out it didn't fit. I know that one doesn't. That's why I said something different.

My entire point is that identity and effect are not the same as purpose.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#154

Post by pseudalopex »

p-e-w wrote: post #147
reddozen wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Free speech absolutists just don't defend their position because it devolves into absurdity immediately. It's just a dogwhistle of the far right or people that haven't put any thought into their beliefs.

It’s interesting how the idea that free speech is too important to sacrifice to any other cause, which was the position of Rousseau and other enlightenment luminaries, has supposedly turned from the foundation of humanism into a “dog whistle”. The implication that if someone is unwilling to compromise on free speech, they must belong to the far right, is certainly revealing.

> The implication that if someone is unwilling to compromise on free speech, they must belong to the far right, is certainly revealing.

No. The implication was almost no one who claimed to be unwilling to compromise on free speech was.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#155

Post by KingOfCoders »

roncesvalles wrote: post #60
detectivestory wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I always find it so interesting how little the topic of Californian independence comes up online. You would think there would at least be a decent amount of organic content around that, never mind external interference.

Separatism is born of a sense of ethnoracial exceptionalism: 1) we're a genealogically different ethnic group from the rest of the country 2) we're better than the major ethnic group of the rest of the country Both bits are absolutely essential. I can't recall a single instance of a separatist movement based on purely political differences gaining serious ground, Alberta included.

It would be kind of a stretch to argue this as the reasons for separation of the US from the UK - I can see some of it, but I think the argument is a stretch.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#156

Post by jitix »

ifwinterco wrote: post #4
vintermann wrote: post #2

I've said for a while that I think this sort of thing is a much better explanation for trends we see than moustache-twirling foreign dictators "spreading dissent" for the heck of it. Yes, they exist and yes, they have troll factories, but they usually promote narratives with some immediate benefit to themselves. When they do promote irrelevant stuff, I think it's just to build social media clout for their actual mess…

There's a meme that most "nationalist" Twitter/X posters in the UK are actually from South Asia, and only doing it because for people in low-income countries the Twitter payments are a viable source of income. I'm not on Twitter anymore thankfully, but when I was there seemed to be a lot of truth to this. It even got to the point of there being successful witch hunts outing quite large/popular accounts as being India…

Is the solution that global wages are normalized?

I’m not an economist but it seems that a lot of things boil down to “X is cheaper in country A” or “Y is more costly in country B” creating arbitrage opportunities for players operating in grey area.

Again, I’m not an economist and am just speculating as a layman who understands math, but without wage normalization it seems the other option would be to only have per-country regulated social media. So Canadian social platforms are only accessible to users with Canadian IDs, US to US ID holders, and Indian ID holders can only access Indian social networks. And so on and so forth.. but then we become China.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#157

Post by cameldrv »

These incentives are IMO a significant part of the political problems we are having around the world and even the general decline in mental health.

Just on a personal level I’ve found it hard for example to get YouTube and Facebook to stop showing me short videos, which I don’t want to see. You can click the “not interested” or “show less” button, and it doesn’t do much.

What works though if you apply it consistently is, when you see something on a feed that you don’t want anymore, is to immediately close the app and don’t come back for a while at least. That’s the strongest signal you can send to their recommender.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#158

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

vrganj wrote: post #153
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bars consistently serve people who will later drive home drunk, and yet it would be wrong to say the purpose of a bar is to cause drunk driving.

If you reread my comment, you will see that I never said the purpose was what it does. That word choice was not by accident, it wasn't meant to be a simple paraphrase. I said a system is what it does. In this case bars are the cause of drunk driving, just like in my parallel. Not on purpose. But by effect. You mismatched my statement to the famous quote, then pointed out it didn't fit. I know that one doesn't. That's…

I don't understand your point. Identity and effect are not the same as purpose, but identity also isn't the same as effect. If a news headline read "Bars are encouraging foreigners to drive drunk", and the contents were just that the reporter compiled a list of 14 foreigners who were served alcohol when the bartender knew they drove there, I would say that's similarly misleading.

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#159

Post by vrganj »

SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #158
vrganj wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you reread my comment, you will see that I never said the purpose was what it does. That word choice was not by accident, it wasn't meant to be a simple paraphrase. I said a system is what it does. In this case bars are the cause of drunk driving, just like in my parallel. Not on purpose. But by effect. You mismatched my statement to the famous quote, then pointed out it didn't fit. I know that one doesn't. That's…

I don't understand your point. Identity and effect are not the same as purpose, but identity also isn't the same as effect. If a news headline read "Bars are encouraging foreigners to drive drunk", and the contents were just that the reporter compiled a list of 14 foreigners who were served alcohol when the bartender knew they drove there, I would say that's similarly misleading.

What if it was a list of 14 foreigners that were given money for drinking even though the bartender knew they drove there?

Re: Facebook is paying people overseas promoting Alberta separatism

#160

Post by dismalaf »

vincnetas wrote: post #89
vintermann wrote: post #2

I've said for a while that I think this sort of thing is a much better explanation for trends we see than moustache-twirling foreign dictators "spreading dissent" for the heck of it. Yes, they exist and yes, they have troll factories, but they usually promote narratives with some immediate benefit to themselves. When they do promote irrelevant stuff, I think it's just to build social media clout for their actual mess…

Its been discussed for long time already how russian methods work : The ex-KGB defector you're thinking of is Yuri Bezmenov (also known by his alias Tomas Schuman). The strategy he described is called "Ideological Subversion" (also referred to as "Active Measures" or "Psychological Warfare") Their time scale is measured in decades. 1. Demoralization Undermining the moral and cultural foundations of a society — making…

Lol sounds like my country (Canada).

We're in a recession caused by the current government's 11 years of mismanagement but approval ratings are higher than ever because our government just blames the US.

Meanwhile the gap between our peers and us is widening and certain Canadians (mostly boomers) just refuse to see the problem.

Everyone I know has left the country and I've already got one foot out the door.

https://economics.td.com/ca-silent-brain-drain

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