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Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

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Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#51

Post by 659087 »

rndmize wrote: post #18
foodislove wrote: post #4

This is why I don't want Mark Zuckerberg in any public office. I really think the guy has no moral compass because all his actions point to a very sinister "money is everything" attitude and that everything has a price.

Come now, Zuckerberg doesn't even need public office. He's more powerful where he is now than he could ever be in an elected position. Just based on the information in the article, he could offer technical embeds to campaigns he likes and ignore the ones he doesn't, or provide them with a much smaller degree of assistance, with no one the wiser. I don't think there's a single person in the world with as much potentia…

What could be more powerful than a US president who also happens to have direct control of a large portion of the world's communications and information consumption?

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#52

Post by H99189 »

wfo wrote: post #44
734786710934 wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The writers for most prime-time sitcoms are Democrats. They do it for free.

But their owners and managers who actually tell them what to do and have all of the power over the networks are nearly all Republicans (or right-wing democrats). They don't do it for free, they do it out of self-interest. For example, Sinclair broadcast group that owns a huge amount of local broadcasting in every media market in the US. Their national corporate governance literally requires all subsidiaries run blata…

I've read the "journalists lean left, owners lean right" mantra many, many of times over the last 10 years on various boards, yet the overwhelming majority of network news and shows, cable news and entertainment shows dump on Republicans/Conservatism and fawn over Democrats/Liberalism. IMO, it's a very misleading idea meant to deceive people into thinking their sources of news or entertainment are somehow more honest than they actually are.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#53

Post by newobj »

734786710934 wrote: post #12
fortythirteen wrote: post #2

Imagine if ABC/CBS/NBC actively went to political parties and sold them on buying their way into the scripts of the top prime-time sitcoms to shape the opinion of viewers. That's essentially what Facebook is doing out in the open.

The writers for most prime-time sitcoms are Democrats. They do it for free.

734786710934 "knows things"

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#54

Post by jhiska »

"Dark art" is really glorifying what those desk jockeys do.

It's just a bunch of organized paid trolls with fancy ideas about themselves and what they do, because it's all secret-y and covert-y, but really, they're incompetent people who after slamming their head against the problem many times have group-devised by trial-and-error rather nifty ways of manipulating online conversations.

Any place where you can add a comment is manipulable, but their manipulations only work if people aren't aware of their existence in the comments section and of their good-cop / bad-cop group tactics, the methodological flaws of anonymous online voting and why noise-flooding works.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#55

Post by philwelch »

mtgx wrote: post #31
fortythirteen wrote: post #2

Imagine if ABC/CBS/NBC actively went to political parties and sold them on buying their way into the scripts of the top prime-time sitcoms to shape the opinion of viewers. That's essentially what Facebook is doing out in the open.

You mean like the Pentagon has been doing for decades? https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/exclusive-documents-... I wasn't quite aware of this myself until a few years ago. Now I see it in almost every crime/spy/military-related show or movie. I've stopped watching several shows because of it and never started watching others.

Most of these conditions look to be along the lines of, "if you're going to use military property or equipment to film your movie, you don't get to turn around and disparage the military", which has done nothing to stem the tide of Hollywood films explicitly designed to disparage the military.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#56

Post by IronWolve »

I find it laughable that facebook/twitter/etc says it cant tell the difference between "kill Jews" and "kill Palestinians". But 1 groups kill messages will mostly not be censored.

Then they hire or allow groups to enforce rules who also cant tell the difference, and allow the "Kill Jew" statements to stay.

Yet, seems, most of US can see both "kill xxx" statements are equally bad and should be removed. I don't think most of us have any special skills that make us enlightened, just not so partisan heavy in attitude.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#57

Post by r00fus »

decebalus1 wrote: post #7

Remember this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15790687 To some extent it's still going on. Protests are still happening (and it's really bad) so lately I've been noticing a bunch of - what I think are - shill accounts. Couple of days before I went through some of the posts in news post about the protests and identified several profiles with no personal pictures, no posts, posting in broken Romanian about: - ant…

Persona Management software is a real thing.

This link is from 6 years ago. In the past 5 years, I'm sure it's been refined and weaponized.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#58

Post by philwelch »

fortythirteen wrote: post #2

Imagine if ABC/CBS/NBC actively went to political parties and sold them on buying their way into the scripts of the top prime-time sitcoms to shape the opinion of viewers. That's essentially what Facebook is doing out in the open.

Parks and Rec ran for seven seasons, and its protagonist was a fictionalized Hillary Clinton. The West Wing ran for seven seasons and explicitly featured a Democratic Presidential administration.

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#59

Post by DigitalJack »

hkmurakami wrote: post #40
pdpi wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve always suspected that the reason underwood is a democrat in house of cards is solely to deflect this very criticism.

Honestly I think it makes him more "relateable" by making him not "the enemy" for viewers

>Honestly I think it makes him more "relateable" by making him not "the enemy" for viewers

Does this mean you think all viewers are democrats (or even most) and that republicans are the enemy?

Re: Facebook’s Political Unit Enables Propaganda

#60

Post by DigitalJack »

zeveb wrote: post #5
fortythirteen wrote: post #2

Imagine if ABC/CBS/NBC actively went to political parties and sold them on buying their way into the scripts of the top prime-time sitcoms to shape the opinion of viewers. That's essentially what Facebook is doing out in the open.

> Imagine if ABC/CBS/NBC actively went to political parties and sold them on buying their way into the scripts of the top prime-time sitcoms to shape the opinion of viewers. That wouldn't happen, because on the one hand no amount of money from the Republicans would persuade ABC/CBS/NBC to support them, and on the other hand they're quite glad to provide free support to the Democrats. The situation is reverse with Fox…

The downvotes without reply to zeveb here pretty much prove zeveb's point.
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