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Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

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Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#91
post #31

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…

If useful, I wrote a media literacy guide for engineers that touches on a lot of things discussed in this thread:

Hacking Engineers and Engineering Media

https://github.com/nemild/hack-an-engineer

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I quick scan through the news search engine finds that almost exclusively right wing sources publish on this. Be critical about such news articles.

So what about left wing published news? Automatically becomes legit? By the way, I didn't know that site was right or left.

"Independent" "fact-checkers" will make sure of that.

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#93
post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like to talk about social issues and politics and stuff but the more I do it in public the more I run into what feels like "politics-as-basketball." It's really begun to feel like team sports as opposed to a critical analysis of conditions and power analysis.

As I've gotten older and have seen enough side switches, I've found it increasingly astounding to watch how predictably the partisans memory wipe themselves about XYZ terrible thing that their side did. Now that the bad side - the side they're not on - is in power, they must protest that same XYZ thing. It's said that Trump is terrible with journalists (he is). And there's Obama's quiet, terrifying war on journalists…

> Assisting in the destruction of Syria and Libya is a fine thing to ignore

Will the US agression ever end? It is sickening.

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Maybe he's just overtooting his own horn, but CA's CEO claimed differently: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/20/cambridge-analytica-claimed-... > In the video posted by Channel 4, Nix is heard saying that the company did much of the work behind Trump's campaign, which resulted in a shocking upset victory over Hillary Clinton in November 2016. > "We did all the research, all the data, all the analytics, all the targeting,…

Yeah, that's why I say it's hard to get a read on it. There's also plenty of people claiming that they were crucial to the effort.

This article seems pretty clear headed and makes the Nix quote sound like a sales pitch:

https://www.wired.com/story/what-did-cambridge-analytica-rea...

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#95

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…

>2. Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important.

I am really tired of this twisted version of the relative privation fallacy.

Trump is worse != Hillary was good

Her email situation was, in fact, an issue. Worse than Trump? Absolutely not. But even in context it doesn't belong in "as if that were somehow important" territory. Under normal circumstances (had she been elected) we'd probably still be talking about it.

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. Well, it was certainly an incident of corruption and/or incompetence. People do (and should) get fired for mishandling sensitive information. Maybe the HN community in general wants to give Clinton a pass on it, but investigating facts that illustrate the character and competence of presidential candidates is certainly newsworthy. There was…

I yearn for the Obama days when this and Beghasi were the biggest scandals that anyone could come up with. Now it’s collusion, financial opacity in business dealings, sex with playmates, etc... it really is too much.

I thought it was kind of scandalous that Guantanamo never closed, contrary to campaign promises...

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#97

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.

All politics using it, some use targeting sevices and some of them use trolls

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#98
post #34
post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Everybody aptly forgets that Eric Schmidt's company was helping Clinton run digital ads in "novel ways".

Re: Facebook is America’s scapegoat du jour

#100

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…

>2. Start blathering about Hillary's emails, as if that were somehow important. I am really tired of this twisted version of the relative privation fallacy. Trump is worse != Hillary was good Her email situation was, in fact, an issue. Worse than Trump? Absolutely not. But even in context it doesn't belong in "as if that were somehow important" territory. Under normal circumstances (had she been elected) we'd probabl…

We are still talking about it and she wasn't even elected. The emails should definitely have been a scandal. Being the leading story for a few weeks seems reasonable, but its being treated as a massive, important scandal years later.
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