Slashdot Mirror
Facebook Quietly Hid Webpages Bragging of Ability to Influence Elections (theintercept.com)
Sam Biddle, reporting for The Intercept: When Mark Zuckerberg was asked if Facebook had influenced the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, the founder and CEO dismissed the notion that the site even had such power as "crazy." It was a disingenuous remark. Facebook's website had an entire section devoted to touting the "success stories" of political campaigns that used the social network to influence electoral outcomes. That page, however, is now gone, even as the 2018 congressional primaries get underway.
In the wake of a public reckoning with Facebook's unparalleled ability to distribute information and global anxiety over election meddling, bragging about the company's ability to run highly effective influence campaigns probably doesn't look so great. Facebook's "success stories" page is a monument to the company's dominance of online advertising, providing examples from almost every imaginable industry of how use of the social network gave certain players an advantage. "Case studies like these inspire and motivate us," the page crows.
In the wake of a public reckoning with Facebook's unparalleled ability to distribute information and global anxiety over election meddling, bragging about the company's ability to run highly effective influence campaigns probably doesn't look so great. Facebook's "success stories" page is a monument to the company's dominance of online advertising, providing examples from almost every imaginable industry of how use of the social network gave certain players an advantage. "Case studies like these inspire and motivate us," the page crows.
Of course they are falling-over-themselves power hungry. They're just still fuming sour grapes because that guy won and their gal lost. If the outcome was different the response would be quite the opposite. They are hypocrites, really.
The bigger they get, the less they get to hide behind that "hey it's our platform, don't like our bias? Build your own" bullshit. At some point people who care about election integrity and things like that are going to wake up to the fact that allowing a seriously biased company like Facebook to play power broker in one moment and go John Galt on the other is just straight up poisonous for our society.
At some point, their "standards" are going to have to start resembling that of common carriers and the "mistakes" where somethings like a total annihilation of conservative content (with no comparable loss elsewhere) will have to be treated as an obviously intentional propaganda act.
Of course Facebook is going to have pages touting how successful messaging is on Facebook.
Why should you believe them, any more than you believe using Axe Body Spray is going to land you dates with hot models?
In reality, how many times has Facebook, or anything you saw on Facebook, changed YOUR mind? It's a place where people do not go to change minds, theirs or anyone else's.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You mean like the British data mining and analytics firm that has messed in dozens of American elections, including the trump campaign and brags a near 100% win rate? Or the American media giving trump 6 billion dollars of free air time to boost ratings, more money than all other candidates combined? I'm confused if we are supposed to bomb the British or the MSM. I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest the playing field would be vastly improved by removing all large donor and any corporate donor money. If Bernie can raise half a billion dollars in small donations then anyone who is fit to run can too.
It's a leap to say that the comment was "disingenuous". Facebook is a large company, with departments handling different things, some of which would be outside of Zuckerberg's knowledge. What he said at one moment can be in conflict with what his company does without it being a lie. Not defending him or FB. I just wish people would write things more fairly.
One of the interesting (but not unprecedented!!) things about this story, is that most of us are pointing our fingers at Facebook and/or the people who bought the ads, rather than pointing at the voters who decide who to vote for based on random ads, even though everyone knows that ads can say whatever, and don't necessarily tell you anything true or useful. Yet your biggest civic contribution, you throw it away on whatever an ad told you to do.
But like I said, it's precedented. Many of us are also not convinced that money==speech and therefore campaign financing is something that could/should be fairly regulated, without at all compromising traditional American values and the words&spirit of the 1st Amendment. But of course that point of view acknowledges that advertisers, not voters, are who are responsible for election results. If voters were responsible, then you wouldn't care how much was spent on advertising.
Even so, I think voters are given way too much slack. There ought to be more public shaming of people who say they voted stupidly, rather than just telling 'em, "so sorry you were fooled." It's your duty as a citizen to not be fooled.
When Facebook tells their customers that they can buy elections, we ought to be insulted, not threatened.
Of course they do! They constantly "play down/block" a lot of conservative posts, stories etc, but, PROMOTE liberal causes & stories. http://dailycaller.com/2016/05... https://gizmodo.com/former-fac... http://money.cnn.com/2016/05/0... https://www.npr.org/sections/t...
I hope that's sarcasm. There's always been hucksters trying to convince you of nonsense. There always will be hucksters. It's the same game, just with ever so slightly different rules -- and the marks are easier to find.
Common sense and critical thinking cannot be legislated -- how can having mommy government step in and protect us help in the long run? All it'll do is further erode the very things that got us to this point in the first place (critical thinking and common sense)
If things like Facebook and twitter are influencing elections, it's our own god damn fault -- and we have much, much deeper problems to address first.
The key issue is radicalization. You might have started thinking that democrats are well-meaning but ultimately untrustworthy to govern people. ... and then you kept on believing that, only a little moreso... it's not changing what they think. I don't even think it's radicalizing people especially much, because at least on Facebook you see other opinions to some degree whereas if you were off Facebook, you would just read websites that reenforced your opinion otherwise. As people age, a form of radicalization is essentially what happens to most people - opinions bake over time and get harder to change, that is just how people are.
Facebook is not radicalization in another important way, a lot of people use it to keep in touch with people from their lives. The more contact you have with other people in a wider circle, the less radical you tend to be.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The degree to which this lunacy rubs off on other people is proportional to how close their positions are to those listed above.
What I'm hearing you say: Gotta flush some batshit 11s, so that we don't look bad as batshit 10s.
The whole reason that pizzagate became a cross-spectrum meme is because it's a handy batshit 11, where the pizzagate meme-dropper doesn't need to know a damn thing, because it simply can't go seriously sideways (99% of the sober Internet is on your side).
A know-nothing spectral boob trying to mock a batshit 9 in a roomful of true believers soon gets his fingers and toes hacked off. And so we have the safe, cliche uber memes.
What On Earth Does Kent Hovind Believe - Part 1 - The Flat Earth
Start at about 2m30 (the narrator's preamble is pretty smug).
So he's a Young Earth creationist through and through, but he somehow draws the line over Biblical literalism concerning a flat earth. What does that argue for his mental competence? I can't figure that out, but I do know that people are complicated, and that isn't going to change soon.
no shit they had adverts touting their effectiveness. Now, I'm the libbiest lib who ever libed. I waited 3 hours in line to vote for Bernie in my primary in a Red f'n state. But after this I'm starting to wonder if maybe Trump winning was, while legitimately awful, still better than Hilary. I mean, at least I might get a Democratic House & 2 years of grid lock. And these days that seems like all I can hope for.
I'll still be voting for Bernie in my primary in 2 years.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
I just googled agenda 21 and it looks like an actual UN action plan. Why is that lumped in with pizzagate? Are UN documents also conspiracies?
When researching this kind of stuff, remember to also double the search by running the exact same keywords, but this time adding "conspiracy" at the end (or any other similar keyword that is likely to show up in conspiracy theorists' title - 'plot', 'evil', 'truth' might also work too).
Basically :
Agenda 21, the normal outlook - Well a set of recommendation by the UN, in the hopes that maybe we won't completely fuck up our planet and it environment. Written at some ecological conference a couple of decades ago. If you're a corporate magnate, you might be mumbling about potential implementation being hindrance to your current business model.
Agenda 21, the conspiracy theorist's take - It' an evil plot on the leftists agenda to limit our sovereignty. It's an effort by the Deep Goverment to control the global subserviant sheeple population. UN Black Helicopters are going to invade the White House and tople the government ! The end game is to dismantle the western industry and eventually lead the population to extinction !!! Somehow, the reptilian Illuminati are Involved !!!!
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]