Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Users Cry 'Censorship' After Being Told Which Russian Troll Pages They Liked (gizmodo.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Gizmodo: As the FBI's investigation into Russian election interference reaches a fever pitch, Facebook rolled out a new News Feed alert Monday night. The bulletin told users who followed pages created by Russian trolls that those pages have been removed. And some of the affected users did not like this. A brief search revealed that numerous people believe that this is an act of censorship by Facebook. Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what's "true, fake, or otherwise," a challenge that's bound to be a slippery slope in this era of algorithm-based confirmation bias. Others took on a more conspiratorial tone, claiming that Facebook failed to reveal which pages were removed (despite the alert containing a link listing the pages in question). Facebook first released the information in December, creating a help page that showed users if they liked or followed pages and accounts associated with the Internet Research Agency, Russia's notorious troll farm, but today's alert seems to have inspired newfound alarm. The fact that Facebook explicitly stated which pages were deleted seems to have done little to reduce the anger over the allegedly clandestine silencing.
It'd be sad if it wasn't so predictable.
from the article:
> Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what’s “true, fake, or otherwise,”
yes, your feelings affect the facts
except they don't
This is what a post-truth world looks like. The truth is whatever you prefer it to be, and many people seem to prefer not to think of themselves as having been manipulated by Russian trolls. Or maybe they are just so far down the rabbit hole they can't climb back up yet.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Republicans whine and cry when you point out that Moscow Donald has been caught red handed committing treason, and that the republican party is committing obstruction of justice to cover for Russia's attack on America.
When people say "I want the truth," what they really mean is "I want evidence that justifies my forgone conclusions."
They want the beliefs they already have to turn out to be true. So they will like anything that reinforces it.
They might reject this and say they want to learn what the real truth is. But the moment you start giving them evidence that they don't like, they pull out every irrational trick in the book to reject it. And they insist that they aren't doing this.
It really is quite amazing how good people are at this.
(of course, there are SOME people who have an honest interest in truth and the will to overcome their biases in the pursuit of it, but they are so rare as to be statistically insignificant)
Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide what's "true, fake, or otherwise," a challenge that's bound to be a slippery slope in this era of algorithm-based confirmation bias.
One summer in college, I was fortunate enough to take a Chemistry course taught by Bassam Shakhashiri.
One of the things he would do is ask, "How many people think it's A?" and a bunch of people would raise their hands.
Then he would ask, "How many people think it's B?" and a bunch of other people would raise their hands.
He would then say, "Science is not a democracy. The answer is ____."
Truth is not a democracy either.
It'd be sad if it wasn't so predictable.
Incorrect. It is still sad.
Cloudiot: A person who does not see offsite storage as a way to lose control over access to his or her own data.
People don't like to be shown for fools, and these messages are Facebook telling them they've been taken. Furthermore, they're already invested in whatever political side was favored by the Russian posts they liked, so it's easy to discount this as targeting their personal beliefs. It's like some kind of Stockholm Syndrome, or maybe a sunk cost fallacy situation. People seem more likely to double down on their position even when it's made clear that they were wrong.
Like it or not, there are objective facts.
The Donald didn't have the biggest inauguration crowd ever, there are no 'alternative facts'.
How people can say they want to be able to choose 'truthiness' as if it is equally valid with what is true.
Anyone who uses Facebook for news deserves everything they get. Including the president they got saddled with. But don't worry folks, only 1085 days 2 hours to go!
ps. where is the next social media platform... I want it bad.
Nice try ivan.
come from an outfit called "The Internet Research Agency", which you can read about on Wikipedia.
TL;DR: The Internet Research Agency is a St. Petersburg based company which has among its customers the government of Russia. The company specializes in astroturfing -- not just in the US but in Russia as well. In Eastern Europe they're focused on Ukraine but in the US they post on both sides of issues (e.g. posting as socially conservative groups or as radical LGBT groups) in order to stir up division, e.g. posing as American Muslims or gays or as American evangelical Christians.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That's the problem with the "Like" button. Just because those troll pages were lies, doesn't mean that some people stopped "liking" them. It also doesn't mean that the users "Agree" with them. "Like" is just too broad a term.
I think back then we had motivation to beat them. Today our independently wealthy citizens who own the republican party want to JOIN them, or at least set up a corrupt system like theirs.
An old co-worker had a habit of posting obviously fake right wing news articles, so-and-so arrested for treason, Obama caught admitting to X, etc.
When I saw it I would usually post a quick comment pointing out it was fake (often providing counter-evidence) and he'd reply "opps" and move on to most the next obvious piece of BS.
Eventually I prodded a bit too much during the health care bill and he unfriended me.
I still have no idea if he actually believed some of that fake news or if he simply didn't care.
I stole this Sig
And still predictable.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Oh puh-lease. These accounts and ads got canned because they violated Facebook's TOS, which forbid pretending impersonating other people or deceptively misidentifying yourself.
The Russians were free to say whatever they wanted to say about American politics, as long as they didn't pretend to be Americans.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This is why the utopia of a democratized internet of citizen reporters and transparency is a false hope. As much as you'd like to believe in such a future, we need *authorities* and institutions to do the work (yes, hard work) to determine what is truth and have some objective standards.
Uninformed crowds voting for what they believe sounds correct or newsworthy (or worse, what's just trendy or fun, no intellectual effort required) leads to very damaging scams and fake news flying around like a virus on an unvaccinated population.
Smart governments know that information is not just something that can be left to figure itself out at the whim of the crowd.
What made the USA great was the ability to read, publish, self publish, review publications, talk about books and news. Now social media wants to stop all that discussion in the USA.
I guess since we can't do it on facebook, that means it's prohibited everywhere! Oh wait, no, nobody is stopping you from doing any of those things! It's almost like there are some Terms of Service that you have to abide by for certain platform! If there were some way people could put content on the internet without such things. Too bad nobody will ever figure out how to make a website or connect a server to the internet. Clearly facebook was the last site that ever figured that one out!
Your argument holds less water than aerogel.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Be fair now. beauHD also posts some good left wing news, or in some cases adds a nice left-wing slant to the summary.
You can still do all of this outside of facebook.
In fact, let's make the Russians set foot on our soil to talk about these issues, freedom of speech and all.
Facebook Users Cry 'Censorship' After Being Told Which Numbers Are Less Than Fifteen
As mathematicians investigations into the properties of all real numbers, Facebook rolled out a new News Feed alert Monday night. The bulletin told users who used numbers greater than or equal to fifteen that they would no longer return true compared to fiften with a less than operator. A brief search revealed that numerous people believe that this is an act of censorship by Facebook. Some users argued that they should be allowed to decide which numbers were "bigger, smaller, or otherwise"...
Seriously, facts are facts. The only thing to be challenged are sources, and, good, do real research, learn. (Strangely, the less a person knows, the more confident they seem to be that are correct.) Facebook can do what they want, really. It's their product. Users use it by the permission of Facebook. Users have no direct say. Don't like it? Don't use it.
Like it or not, there are objective facts.
The Donald didn't have the biggest inauguration crowd ever, there are no 'alternative facts'.
How people can say they want to be able to choose 'truthiness' as if it is equally valid with what is true.
Be careful because there is such a thing as not having ALL the facts. Especially in political theater, the omission of objective facts and cherry picking the disclosed facts to support one's desired narrative is an art form. Misleading use of facts is common. Being objectively true isn't enough. You need "The Truth, the Whole Truth, and nothing but the Truth" to get the full picture.
BTW... Trump is often just boasting to watch folks scurry around making weird noises. I think he enjoys watching folks go off the deep end about things that don't matter such as your inauguration crowd size thing. He made a stupid boast, he does that from time to time. Everybody knew he was that kind of guy when he got elected and he's getting better about this kind of thing. I suggest you let this specific thing go and go after him on things that actually matter..
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
You have to be a complete moron, if you get any of your news, from ONE source. Shoot, sometimes I find LESS bias, by reading from news sources OUTSIDE of the USA, than I do INSIDE the USA. Everything is so politicized, it's hard to know what is real, what is fake, what is "edited" to sway people on either of the two political groups in the USA. I'm conservative (NOT to be confused with the so called Republican party) but, I read several sites that are considered left leaning. Why? Because I want to know the thinking process of "the other side" so to speak. To try and figure out WHY they have such views. Believe it or not, a RATIONAL person, will, on occasion, agree with someone on the left, not because of politics, but because they are correct in their view.
The Russians were free to say whatever they wanted to say about American politics, as long as they didn't pretend to be Americans.
Where did FB say they were pretending to be Americans?
The DNC and the Clintons were in deep with the Russians (the fake dossier paid for by HRC PAC and the DNC, from the Russians, the uranium One deal, the 500 thousand Bill Clinton got after the deal went through when HRC was Sec. of State)
That's "in deep" by your reckoning? What about in 2008 when Trump sold a Palm Beach mansion to Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million, $50 million more than Trump paid for it a few years earlier? Couldn't be that Trump was helping launder money for the Russians, right? No, the house must have doubled in value in a few years, right? Never mind that it was the highest price paid for a Palm Beach house (by $13 million), that's just what the market could bear, right? Maybe the guy just really liked the property, even though he specifically said he didn't plan to live in the house or the US in general. No, he said it was an investment property, and if I know anything about real estate investments, I know that you should pay double what it's worth, and more than any other property in the area. I'm pretty sure that's how investment works. And this is a continuing pattern of Trump selling condos and other high-value real estate, a notorious target for money laundering, to a long list of shell companies. This is following Russia identifying Trump as exactly the kind of person they might want to groom as an oblivious foreign agent because of his easily manipulated personality, only to drop the effort after a decade or two because he's too unpredictable. Instead you want to try to drag up a payment made to Bill Clinton for $500k, and use that as evidence that they are "in deep" with the Russians. Where's the paper trail on that payment to Bill, by the way, which connects it to Russia?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Something got fucked up in your post. I think you meant to link to "actual text messages from the FBI demonstrating malfeasance towards Republicans", but instead of you linked to some crap on Fox News.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
What other topics can get "canned"?
Movie reviews? Tech news about not showing ads? Crypto? Linking to sites about whistleblowers? Movie reviews? Time to support another nations blasphemy laws globally?
Freedom of speech and the freedom to petition your government on a site many parts of the US gov use a gateway to interacting with the US gov locally?
Once a site starts to accept the US gov as part of their service, that TOS should offer the full protections of the USA.
Would a comment about the US gov get "canned" for political reasons on a part of social media set up by a town, city, local police to interact with and accept reports from local people?
The ability to hide behind TOS only works if the brand stays in the private sector and does not offer US gov support.
Do party political activists get to ban people using TOS from interacting with their gov locally?
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
This is why the utopia of a democratized internet of citizen reporters and transparency is a false hope. As much as you'd like to believe in such a future, we need *authorities* and institutions to do the work (yes, hard work) to determine what is truth and have some objective standards.
The problem is that there is no penalty for producing information that is outright fabrication, no punishment for acting against the interests of the greater good of an information based society. You can lie and fabricate for your own selfish ends as much as you like, and people don't realize that.
In a way, the Internet is like an early capitalist economy, where any actor can engage in predatory monopolistic behavior without any fear or repercussions. In a truly free market, you should act as destructively as possible towards ecenomic rivals before they catch on and do the same to you. In an open Internet, why not just produce lies and propaganda to support your POV or political ends? If you don't do it, your rivals will.
An open and free Internet is an achievable goal. It just requires a few rules that can be enforced fairly for all parties involved. Eventually there will be some sort of Internet laws created that are agreed on by a number of countries, and all the rest of the world will be forced to play by them or kicked off the Internet. It will be something like:
1) No attacking underlying infrastructure
2) No censoring other parties
3) No spreading false or misleading information.
It won't likely be soon though, so expect more bullshit like this until it happens...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
What other topics can get "canned"?
I just got through saying they got canned for misrepresenting their identity, not the topic.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
If you are getting your news filtered by Mark Zuckerberg and accomplices then you are getting it from one troll or another. Which one is a minor point.
No, I did.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Where did FB say they were pretending to be Americans?
here, to wit:
This is not very well written, so I've italicized the relevant bits. They didn't find any of this while it was going on, but later were able to identify the fake accounts.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
This is not very well written, so I've italicized the relevant bits.
So poorly written, apparently, that it doesn't say anything at all about the fake accounts pretending to be Americans. Apparently that's just your inference/desire/whatever, which is a bit ironic in a discussion about whether there's any such thing as facts.
Sweet dreams are made of this
Who am I to disagree?
I travel the world
And the seven seas,
Everybody's looking for something.
Some of them want to use you
Some of them want to get used by you
Some of them want to abuse you
Some of them want to be abused.
Re "can still do all of this outside of"
How much longer will "this outside of" social media still be searchable giving the US party political efforts to derank internet search results AC?
What is banned on social media won't be found "outside of" social media thanks to US search engines deranking/removing results for political reasons.
Social media is not much use if media cant be found, cant be commented on, is banned from been linked to...
Everything that made the internet free and great was the US protected freedom to comment, to link, to search.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Collectively, we are that stupid.
The "topic" is the way the "identity" got banned... thats the way party political censorship works.
It gets even more fun when social media allows other nations blasphemy laws.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Senator Burr has released the some of the specific ads identified by Facebook as Russian in origin. The House Democrats have also released a wider sample of ads flagged by Facebook as Russian fakes.
I'd say calling your group "Heart of Texas", or "United Muslims of America" is representing yourself as American. SO is calling your group "Being Patriotic" and using crossed American flags as your emblem. Calling yourself "Donald Trump America" is pretending to be American.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
No, government censorship is by definition a government activity, but censorship can be private. There's even self-censorship.
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'd say calling your group "Heart of Texas", or "United Muslims of America" is representing yourself as American. SO is calling your group "Being Patriotic" and using crossed American flags as your emblem. Calling yourself "Donald Trump America" is pretending to be American.
I know you'd say that. Others like myself read through your samples and would say it's crystal clear they never explicitly claimed to be American. The closest ones to the line appear to be the "X of America" set, which still doesn't speak to citizenship and is in the distinct minority in the group you sent me in any event. Generic groups like "Secured Borders," "Being Patriotic," "Don't Shoot," "Defend the 2nd," etc., don't come even close. If I were to create a FB group called "Tiananmen Square -- Never Again" that certainly would not constitute a claim to Chinese citizenship.
And that's the larger point here -- there are no objective "facts" at play. We both have subjective opinions about what the data says/doesn't say, and we're both entitled to those opinions. Which is why designating specific people/groups to decide which of those opinions will be deemed "fact" is (IMO :-) an exceptionally dangerous road to go down.
Immaterial. FB is a private company, and Zuck is well within his rights to say "fuck you, you can't use my printing press to say that in a way that is designed to mislead people and elect a president that's easy for your government to manipulate."
The real danger to the Free Speech Amendment is Dumpsterfire's attempts to erode the Fourth Estate. THAT is a free speech violation since he's (regretfully) part of the government.
"Oh my God. This is terrible. This is the end of my Presidency. I'm fucked."; ~ Donald J. Trump
Stopped using it entirely about a year ago. Haven't missed any of this crap.
I'm sorry, but people are correct to claim censorship: according to the summary, pages have been removed, yes for spreading falsehoods and propaganda, but they're gone all the same. That is censorship on the part of Facebook.
Is that censorship justified? According to Facebook's TOS, sure, but it still strikes me as a worrisome strategy. Rather than remove the pages, I'd think it'd be more sensible to label them as known propaganda sources, and provide references that contradict detected falsehoods. Since the detection is supposedly done algorithmically, it should be relatively straightforward for Facebook to take that approach.
Instead of exposing fallacies to the light, Facebook instead opted for censorship, relying on rather opaque (to end users) processes. Facebook is essentially saying, "trust us, you shouldn't look at this stuff." Is it really any wonder that people are skeptical of Facebook's claims and motives? Even if Facebook is 100% correct to remove the pages that it has, it establishes a precedent for removal with little -- if any -- oversight... and the crowd here is cheering for that closed process.
This sort of process just begs for abuse, and as already shown, it leads others to suspect abuse -- even if entirely unwarranted -- leading such people to cling to conspiracies. I'd be surprised if the strategy ultimately has the effect people here seem to think it will have, but hey, this crowd already surprised me with their embrace of closed, censorious tactics of a mega-corporation. Anything to stick a thumb in the eye of "people who think that they can establish what's true based on faith and feelings," aka, "Republicans," though, right?
"Is not a sentence" is not a sentence. Well damn.
People hate being called idiots and thats exactly what Facebook just did:
"You are an idiot because you believed into fabricated accounts distributing fabricated stories."
Now smart people could just shut up and swallow their hurt pride. But we are obviously not talking about smart people...
It's better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt.
Thank you Facebook for being a fool spotlight.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
Dude, you fell for a pretty simple variation of "whataboutism": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Your opponent was successfully switching its topic every time he wanted, every time he ran out of arguments, every time his POV looked bleak. And you let him. You followed him.
Instead you should press your point. Never argue too many points at once but never give up a single point. Choose your points wisely. Something like "select your one or two most valid argument out of the thousands of possible arguments". Press them. Never let go of a good point.
You opponent tries to change topic? Ignore it. Bring back your Topic. Tell him you do not fall for his lousy Whataboutism. Bring back your topic. He tries to avoid it? Ask him why he tries to avoid it. You will drive your opponent either into submission ("I can see your point now"), resignation ("You are a meany, I will never ever talk to you") oder madness ("but the illuminate and the pink invisible CIA agents!!!"). And finally, have the last word, no matter what, make clear your hard facts won the day while his failures to deliver hard facts are obvious. Be a gentle dick.
Facts are a wonderful thing because the longer and deeper you discuss them the harder they get.
Lies on the other side are brittle. Discuss them for long and they crumble to dust.
"Life is short and in most cases it ends with death." Sir Sinclair
People simply don't understand one of the most basic properties of websites. They are not government controlled entities and have absolutely no rules regarding your free speech. They are free to censor, modify and repackage anything put on their site. Most of the legalese you blindly agree to signs away most of your rights to even content you create.
The most important property of a website to remember is: You are a guest in someone else's domain.
As a guest, you have no say, no rights, no recourse but to leave the site. You're free to create you own site to write all about your horrific experience with another site, but think again if you think you have any rights as a guest. The only right you have is to leave.
And these days, ugh, even that's a little questionable, some of these sites out there retain everything they know about you even if you tell them you're done and want to remove your account entirely.
"If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever."
--George Orwell, 1984
Curiously, Facebook, Inc. owns the domain Faceboot.com, and it redirects to Facebook.com.
Think what the rulers / SJWs claim is "wrong" actually is factually wrong and not just opinions and views they don't want to be heard and shared.
Just mark them as suspicious, don't outright remove them.
Table-ized A.I.
Nothing with over a billion years of historical precedent that it is indefinitely sustainable.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Doesn't mean they aren't after you. There is Radio Free Europe that has been broadcasting into Russia since Cold War. It would be naive to think that its programs have been unbiased. At the same time, Facebook has bazillions of advertisers and domestic political advertisers are trolls too. Maybe it's marginally better to have competition from foreign trolls. However much they lie, they will also expose whatever truthful information suits their needs. You can see Russian propoganda in action for yourself. No doubt biased, but isn't there still something useful to learn from a different perspective?
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Those are absolutely attempts at representing themselves as Americans.
If I made a FB group called "Heart of Texas" do I need to explicitly state that I am an American Citizen and domestically invested this cause?
There are objective facts at play. Russians astroturf farms in the emply of the Russian state represented themselves as Americans and marketed themselves to stupid Americans in an effort to cause political division. That is an objective fact. And there are gaslighting pieces of shit like you trying to bring even that into question.
*Russian
*employ
I mean, there are real reasons to be angry at Facebook available.
Inquiring minds wants to know. I'm not entirely sure that the origin defined the content, i.e. the stories might be true despite coming from Russia, especially if the content reported is being suppressed elsewhere in the world.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Mainly among people of certain age, with certain (lack of) knowledge/principles/clear ideas and self (mis)perception, blindly sticking to whatever is way easier than recognising their original mistake. For these people, consciously avoiding anything which might prove them wrong seems really easy, although they usually rely on some kind of external help like echo chambers of similar "views". The final scene of Memento is quite descriptive of these (surprisingly common) behaviours: they HAVE TO BELIEVE (not really, but they will do it anyway). Once you fully accept that this sub-reality exists and can't be changed, you stop caring about it.
Custom Solvers 2.0 = Alvaro Carballo Garcia = varocarbas.
So, the only bad thing is that the troll factory was in St Petersburg, Russia, not in St Petersburg, Fla.
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
We almost need some kind of education program to identify legitimate sources of news. Using Google to search for "Fact Check title" often works, though care is required there as with anything else.
Which exactly what is happening in some other countries : France is having a few pilot program of teach media to kids (random example of a youtuber who's a teacher in real life and has published records of a classroom. Sorry it's in French. And sorry for the unfortunate implication if you translate the title in English, that wasn't intended in French).
The Herman Goering applies, and I fear it probably always will.
His assert about people getting used to (and eventually somewhat believing) a lie repeated enough might apply as well.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
how is this modded insightful? You made a claim, that is no no way correct, and didnt back that claim with any facts.
oh wait... i see what you did there..... russian troll, got it
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
I'm not on Facebook! Screw Facebook.
If someone makes a Facebook group defending the 2nd amendment, the obvious assumption is that they are a US citizen. Why the fuck would anyone else do it? Well, now we know why...
maybe because they wish their country had a 2nd amendment??? There could be any number of reasons that dont have anything to do with being an actual american.
if you are going to insult others, try not sounding so dumb yourself
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
What the fuck is wrong with you?
Clearly, that I look at the evidence myself, form my own opinions, and don't just swallow the party line. Sorry about that.
There are objective facts at play. Russians astroturf farms in the emply of the Russian state represented themselves as Americans. That is an objective fact.
There are at least three discrete things rolling around in that sentence that you would need to prove. Let's break it down:
(1) The source was a Russian astorturf farm -- we're ultimately taking FB's (and the WaPo's, IIRC) word for this as far as I know, but let's take this one off the table so we can focus on the core of the debate.
(2) The groups were representing themselves as Americans -- just because you and others may have believed they were Americans doesn't mean they said they were.
(3) They were employed by the Russian state -- again, just because you and others want this to be true doesn't take it past the realm of pure speculation.
At bottom, you're simply connecting a set of dots into the constellation you want to see. Calling the result of that process "objective facts" may make you and your echo chamber buddies feel better, but doesn't change the reality of the situation one iota.
gaslighting pieces of shit like you
Pounding the table and slinging invective is generally an effort to distract from a weak position. Hardly a surprise given the above.
Uh... no.
Trees.
Solar power does not inherently have to be dirty.... we just haven't figured out how, yet. Renewables in conjunction with nuclear is a fine stepping stone in that direction, but it shouldn't be thought of as an end game because it's still not as indefinitely sustainable as 100% renewable energy.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
How predictable of you...
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Where can I go to find them all collected together, I'd quite like a binge read of fake news. Get a feel for what was said...
Nullius in verba
...
That may be the most ignorant statement I have ever read on Slashdot. Photosynthesis is a chemical process which is not even in the same league of efficiency as photovoltaic cells.
You might as well rely on us discovering magic.
It would be one thing if FB drunken unicorn algorithms notified the user of potential X and detailed WHY information Y is suspect. But FB has a growing history of making "decisions" with no explanation or even worse, no evidence it has done so. Or to summarise, "utterly shit transparency"
When the algorithms start making decisions for you without your knowledge, is the machine serving you or are you serving the machine?
The real answer is shoring up, teaching critical thinking skills and proving people with information so they can make their own decisions. Given the growing body of evidence that FB, Google, Twitter's collective political ideologies guide the above non-transparent actions, it's not unreasonable to wonder if the aforementioned drunken unicorn algorithms / AI don't reflect some of that.
People need more information, no less. And they generally abhor the mere possibility that they're being manipulated, rightly so.
I'm starting to think 1984, Brave New World got one critical idea wrong - that in the future, Gov'ts would wield power to control and rewrite information. The reality is showing corporations are the behemoth we should be every bit as wary of. This is exactly what worshipping at the alter of business as the ultimate savior gets you.
No, in many cases, the market *won't* fix it.
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
It would be one thing if FB drunken unicorn algorithms notified the user of potential X and detailed WHY information Y is suspect. But FB has a growing history of making "decisions" with no explanation or even worse, no evidence it has done so. Or to summarise, "utterly shit transparency"
When the algorithms start making decisions for you without your knowledge, is the machine serving you or are you serving the machine?
The real answer is shoring up, teaching critical thinking skills and proving people with information so they can make their own decisions. Given the growing body of evidence that FB, Google, Twitter's collective political ideologies guide the above non-transparent actions, it's not unreasonable to wonder if the aforementioned drunken unicorn algorithms / AI don't reflect some of that.
People need more information, no less. And they generally abhor the mere possibility that they're being manipulated, rightly so.
~Any apparent grammatical or typographic errors are caused by defects in your display device.
Very predictable of me.
I usually know what I'm going to post.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Trust me, photovoltaic energy IS dirty. There are better renewable energies.
How about you give people a reason to trust you in the form of data and detailed analysis? A link would suffice.
Did they spontaneously cry censorship? Or did they fall for another troll campaign? I really want to know...
We are living in an era where many -- perhaps most -- in the public don't really believe or understand that Russia is run by a dangerous group of powerful plutocrat gangsters that would love nothing more than to see the United States break apart at best, or return to isolationism barring that. Meanwhile in China, the ChiComs are busy stealing every last bit of useful intellectual property, military or otherwise from the complacent Americans.
my view is the 2016 election night was very similar to the 2000 election night. between 10pm and 2am very little update to vote totals was taking place. then as in 2016 close states ended up going republican by not a very wide margin. the election winner did not win popular vote. the Russians had media bots. heck, one thing yet to be explained is why many of the frequent talking heads for trump on the news programs were Russians. anyway, as i felt in 2000 , i again felt in 2016, the forces that wanted the republican to win found a not very legal way to do it. not sure how, but they did. if the election had been left to just the voters clinton would be president.
What are the odds that all of these stories and data coming out about Russia Trolling the U.S. is just another part of Russia trolling the U.S.?
Yeah right you have access to google to find facts on your own if you actually care. Besides he's not exactly making a point either.
I suspect you'll get a bonus if someone argues with you Ivan.
So a few things are undeniable. First off, Facebook is most certainly censoring content. They by their own admission removed pages. Secondly, information from Russia is not inherently false, anyone who says this is committing a logical fallacy: Damning the Source http://commfaculty.fullerton.e... Were these sites Russian propaganda outlets? That is very likely. Should they have been banned from Facebook? Again, I think that was still the right move, but the above are also true, and it is a slipery slope to have any corporation decide what information US citizens have access to. Combined, Facebook, Google and Twitter are now positioned to become big brother controlling the information that you have access to and knowing every deep dark secret you would rather not have made public. It is high time that they are legally regulated to reserve the power to manipulate our lives back to the government and officials who we at least have the ability to elect or kick out of office...
As for the entire Russian investigation heating up, it has been nearly 18 months (the FBI investigation started in August 2016) and there is zero evidence that Trump or his administration colluded, in fact the only evidence that has turned up is that the Obama administration used a false report to spy on the Trump campaign, which is a felony, and everyone involved with that deception is facing 10 year prison sentences. It will be interesting to see how this all plays out, but the more shrill the MSM gets about Trump collusion, you will know that the noose is closing in on the Obama administration.
In 2 years, when the economy is great, religious freedom is better protected, 2nd amendment is less infringed, crime is lower, drug deaths are down, and no collusion is found and 15 plus high ranking Obama officials are in federal prison for abuse of power (18 USC 242) https://www.law.cornell.edu/us... which is actually a crime, unlike the alleged Trump collusion, it will be interesting to see if MSNBC, CNN and the rest of the MSM go the way of the newspapers, bankrupt and looking for a new line of work. It would truly be refreshing to have a brand new media landscape who focus on getting the truth, no mater where it leads, rather than trying to "change the world" based on their twisted, alt left fascist worldviews...
If you disagree, please post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like
I'm so pleased that people who got trolled by Ruskie plants, have a way to protect their precious, delicate egos! Yes, it must be censorship, that you got trolled, and then it was pointed out. That's the only possible explanation for you.
P.T. Barnum said "there's a sucker born every minute." Welcome to the cold truth, you got suckered. Big time!
But the suckers have already been protecting their egos for a year now. "No one changed their vote because of Russian trolling!" is what they now claim. Funny that there's a complete lack of evidence, and all opinion in that statement. Yes, protect your fragile ego, or your whole world will collapse.
Trump has blocked sanctions at every turn. They were passed by the House with only 3 members voting no and passed by the Senate 98-2. Trump missed the first deadline, in October, to apply the sanctions and has now missed the second deadline, as of Monday of this week.
https://www.reuters.com/articl...
This was a law that Trump himself signed because Congress had a veto-proof majority. He is in direct contravention of the law.
You are welcome on my lawn.
I know you'd say that. Others like myself read through your samples and would say it's crystal clear they never explicitly claimed to be American.
While the rest of us know you're splitting hairs incredibly finely to torpedo the discussion.
Torpedo what discussion, exactly? GP said the accounts were terminated due to violations of Facebook's TOS. Some of us actually choose to be concerned with the purported standards Facebook is using here (if any), or whether they're just taking action on this particular set of accounts due to the political stench surrounding them. Others may content themselves to cuddle up with their blankies and warm milk and beg for the next story of puppies and unicorns to grace their feeds (until their accounts are the next to be arbitrarily and capriciously terminated because they were determined post-hoc to be on the naughty list for some ill-defined reason). Which are you?
ad hom, yawn
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
So your problem is that as a private businessman, conducting business years before he ever considered running for president, Trump may have made a profit larger than you think is reasonable.
No. Try to read what I wrote again and see if you can figure out what problem I have with all of that. Nothing even similar to the phrase "profit larger than I think is reasonable" is in anything I wrote.
Meanwhile, as described over and over in the comments of this posting you ignore a payment to Bill Clinton and his money laundering foundation
I'm not ignoring shit. If you have evidence that Clinton received a money laundering payment from the Russians, then please, give your evidence. If your evidence is nothing more than circumstantial, then you can put your circumstantial evidence of $500k being laundered by Clinton against my circumstantial evidence of dozens of millions of dollars being laundered by Trump. I don't want to ignore any evidence, circumstantial or not. I can't stand the Clintons, so if you've got the smoking gun then bring it out big guy.
a clear case of bias on your part as you reject facts you don't like about a politician you support.
You're a fucking idiot if you think I support the Clintons, which makes all of your other claims about what I wrote pretty useless. Stop attacking me and support your statements and claims. You don't win this argument by attacking me.
Meanwhile Rybolovlev might very well have been overpaying Trump in return for some business favors, a practice that is not money laundering
Um, OK. And he might very well have been laundering money. Who the fuck knows? What I know is that he specifically said this was an investment property, he did not say anything about "favors". If he had a "favor" to Trump, you know what works for that? Paying cash. You don't need to pay double on an "investment" in order to return a favor. You just return the favor, no reason to get into a terrible investment.
the kind of pragmatic business practices followed in most of the world
You're not an intelligent person, are you? Most of the world does not follow the kind of "pragmatic business practices" that involve buying an "investment" for double what it is actually worth. Overpaying for an investment is not a pragmatic practice of any kind.
To prove money laundering you'd have to be able to prove Trump passed the money back to Rybolovlev or some other Russian.
No you don't. The guy pays Trump with his dirty money, but for Trump it's clean, because he sold the guy something. So for Trump that money isn't dirty, he doesn't have to explain where he got it because he has a bill of sale. And the Russian gets a property to sell for clean money. Sure, he paid $100 million in dirty money in order to get back $50 million of clean cash, but that's the cost of doing business. So, no, I do not have to show that Trump passed shit to anyone. If you want to prove it's money laundering then you need to prove the money was dirty to begin with, which means the Russian needs to straight up tell you the money is dirty. Now I'm no master criminal, but I think that one of the general rules of money laundering is to not tell everyone that you're doing it. This is why I have said that this is circumstantial evidence. I really really doubt it's going to put anyone in jail but it is very clearly Trump doing deals with shady Russians. I'd love to give you a list of other people who overpaid for condos in Trump Tower, but those are overseas shell corporations without an obvious owner, so we don't know where that money came from. It's convenient how it works that way. Even so, people, similar to yourself, see straight up treason in allegations against people like the Clintons that have far less evidence than this, so surely you wouldn't try to just brush all of this away because it'
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
So a private sale by a private citizen is the same as people in office taking money?
Did I say that? Did I draw any sort of equivalence? If Clinton did anything illegal, lock her up. If Trump did anything illegal, lock his ass up too. That's pretty simple. What I think is stupid is idiots who ignore the dozens of millions of Russian dollars moving through Trump's properties while focusing on payments to the Clintons that don't even total 1 million dollars. What I think is stupid is idiots who are laser-focused on an ex-politician with little to no influence when the past and present activities of the current president indicate a major threat to the country.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Yawn.
https://www.wired.com/story/di...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Ultimately, you have to take *someone's* word. Your standard of proof is ridiculous, and you know it. You're gaslighting. And you know it. Just admit it- you liked a few of the links.
Hmmm, there's probably an almost-interesting question of historical fact buried in the assumptions behind that assertion. Not being an American, and having no interest in re-visiting the place, I don't personally give a shit, but I do wonder when the country's level of literacy reached being a majority, and if it was before or after the famously bigoted and biased press barons of the 10s, 20, 30s and 40s, as so ably parodied in Orson Welles' "Citizen Kane".
Biased press and controlled information sources have been a popular and effective technique since ... well, Jonathan Swift was complaining about it in the 1720s. So as a problem it's considerably longer-established than the USA.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"