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Would Twitter Make President Obama 'Follow' the Tea Party If the Price Is Right?
theodp (442580) writes Giving others the impression that individuals support something that they actually don't could get you fined and placed under house arrest. But if you're Twitter, it could boost your bottom line. Gigaom's Carmel DeAmicis reports that brands pay Twitter to falsely appear in your following list, an advertising technique brought to light by William Shatner after he saw that 'MasterCard' appeared in his following list despite the fact that he didn't follow it. "By making it look like someone follows an account that they don't," writes DeAmicis, "it sends a false signal that said user cares about that brand. Although the brands are marked as 'promoted,' it's not necessarily clear that the user in question doesn't actually follow the brand. There's ethical considerations to be had. Hypothetical examples: What if you're vegan and don't want people to think you're following Burger King? Or you're the CEO of Visa and don't want people thinking you're following MasterCard? Or you're a pro-life activist and don't want people thinking you're following Planned Parenthood?" Or, if you're @BarackObama and don't want people to think you're following @TPPatriots!
That's the new internet - anything for a buck. Lying, cheating, invading your privacy, not cleaning up the messes they've already started, only apologizing when they get caught (if then). You and I would be in jail if we did half what they do, and yet, because investors know they will get away with it, they keep throwing money at the worst offenders.
"Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
Obama, being a politician, would "follow" anybody on Twitter, without complaint, for a large enough donation to his or his wife's causes.
This two kingdoms version of america you all seem to live is absolutely retarded. The president should be listening to what his political adversaries are saying.
Facebook, Twitter, etc. Users are their products and their power. Stop giving them power, unsubscribe today.
But the real money is in "guerilla marketing", pretending to be normal people in order to change your opinion. They engage in all kind of anti-social activities like spreading rumors against resistors, as well as threats and cyberbullying people resistant to their marketing. They are also the ones generating the vast amount of black propaganda around the election proccess and are trying to get people amenible to seeing their neighbors as the enemy.
Just because you follow something on Twitter or Facebook does not mean you agree with or support it. Surely it makes sense to also follow the enemy/opposition/competition just to get more of an insight into what they are doing. So, it would make sense for Obama and/or his staff to follow the Tea Party.
If you're pro-life, why would you not follow Planned Parenthood? Most of what they do is preventative health care for poor women who have no other access to such services - life saving proceedures like mamograms. Or are we talking the crowd that supports life only until birth - like the "pro-life" governors who refused the affordable care act medicaid expansion killing thousands of post-partum people a year?
This isn't true. This was a bug that has already been fixed.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Here's Why We Have a Lawless Gotcha Capitalism Economy: "Gotcha Capitalism rewards bad behavior. It turns the normal reward function of capitalism on its head. Instead of good companies with good products and creative innovation rising to the top, we have companies that refine their gotcha mechanisms rising to the top. They create just enough surprise to walk the thin line of the law...or slip over it, but not enough to do something that might actually have a material impact on the bottom line. If you like my line of thinking, I've written an entire book about this - you can buy it here. But for now, know this: Until bad behavior starts resulting in material impact, companies won't stop. And we'll remain stuck in the sucker economy."
You know, back during an election season several years ago, I considered getting a bunch of people to wear all black and guy fawkes masks, with signs saying something like "politics leave you soured? lemonparty dot org" on them or something like that, and going to one of those tea party rallies where all of the national news crews were filming.
Figured it'd be both too tacky and possibly have too many consequences if caught, but it sure amused me to think of raging political buttheads all over the country pulling up that site because they saw it prominently displayed on FOX News...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Suggested viewing.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Well if we take the time to read just some of people in Barack Obama's 646k twitter subscription https://twitter.com/BarackObam... We will notice that this list includes Dmitry Medvedev, Prime Mister of Russia. https://twitter.com/MedvedevRu... Vladimir Putin on the other hand, only follows 9 people, all heads of state, but doesn't follow Barack Obama https://twitter.com/PutinRF_En...
The President should definitely listen to the Tea Party. He's supposed to be the President of everyone in the US, not just another partisan asshole.
He says he is open to ideas from anyone. As President, that is the correct attitude for him to have.
They are? OK, please answer for me:
1. Which party wants to decrease corporate money in politics?
2. Which party is for decreasing the length of copyright?
3. Which party supports jail time for fraudulent bankers?
4. Which party would increase the penalty for crimes committed by corporations, instead of the current toothless fees we currently have?
5. Which party is for reducing our illegal surveillance both here and abroad?
6. Which party is for eliminating the NSA?
I mean, sure, they're different on a bunch of minor crap no one (should) care about, but when it comes to major issues, they're identical.
I'm all for dividing good from evil, but I'm also a rationalist: I work from evidence, not hearsay. Please answer for me:
1. Which party decreased corporate money in politics?
2. Which party decreased the length of copyright?
3. Which party put fraudulent bankers in jail?
4. Which party increased the penalty for crimes committed by corporations?
5. Which party reduced our illegal surveillance both here and abroad?
6. Which party curtailed the NSA?
Democrats bemoan those nasty republicans for blocking all attempts at making a better world, but they have not blocked any of the bad stuff that makes this a worse world.
Rhetoric is useless, ignore what they say. Consider what they do
In a post on a similar article posted on the Hacker News a twitter employee explains that it was a bug in an unrelated (but, IMO, equally damning) advertisement feature on their platform.
According to him it was supposed to bump the advertised pages in the "following" list of their followers to the top. In order to do so it required removing it from the current position and reinserting at the top, as (again, according to him) the "following list" is not kept whole in whatever data structure it is stored.
I say equally damning because it reinforces the idea (common in here, not so common out there) that the user is not actually the customer but the product to be sold and "monetized" the harder it can be done without scaring him out.
This should be the definite proof of that (both the bugged and the intended feature) but people will happily trade their social influence for an easy to access technological soapbox.
No judgement being passed or merit being discussed on this post, just an observation of the current standing of the whole situation.