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joshfornerwrites · 5 years ago

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Navigating the COVID-19 Reality

How our scrolling habits and sources of information are changing amidst the coronavirus pandemic.

Editorial by Josh Forner (www.joshforner.com)

In our new reality post-COVID-19, it's easy to get lost in the torrents of information being spewed out from the news and media platforms daily. Figures, graphs, charts, new lingo like “flatten the curve,” and “social distancing;” but one thing that hasn't yet been spoken about in any great depth is people's reactions with their devices.

I – for one – have certainly noticed a heavy increase in my social media use and news scrolling, and I figured that surely, I wasn't alone.

The reason for spending so much time on social media may be obvious to some, as we begin our lives in isolation, it only makes sense that we turn to the most convenient option available to keep in contact with loved ones. Yet, I am one person who is still out at work in the public, and I too see my social media scrolling hit an all-time high.

For me, I presume it is the worry for friends and loved ones, the fear of misinformation penetrating the communities that I am involved with, and certainly a way to release my over-arching worry.

Facts and education are the main reasons behind one Victorian's recent habitual scrolling. AJ - a 51 year-old educator and business owner from Victoria's Grampians region - had strong and immediate reactions to the first news of COVID-19 becoming a problem in Australia.

AJ has a non-functioning adrenal gland which puts her in the highly susceptible group of the population who are immuno-compromised, and therefore have a much higher risk of both contracting the infection, and inevitably dying from it.

“Considering my position, I had to find the hard facts,” she says, “and I feel it is my role as an educator to speak the truth at the time and educate others”

Having not really ever been a news follower, and living in an area with no television reception, AJ had to start her fact-finding mission somewhere, and it just so happened that her husband's PC had the ABC News website as its homepage. “I had to ask him if he trusted ABC News as a source, because I know a lot of these mainstream media outlets are biased towards their own agenda. He said yes, which was good enough for me”

This has led to a daily scroll-and-refresh habit that was never part of her life prior to the virus hitting Australian shores. She says that her social media use has also seen a strong increase during this time.

There has, however, been a resistance to scrolling.

Cara (real name withheld) is a 34 year-old musician and disability support worker from Melbourne's North-East. She claims she has weened off social media due to the concerning responses she was having to the constant blast of coronavirus news.

“I'm hardly looking at my phone any more. I'd been trying to spend less time on it anyway, but I just found [that] reading a million people posting about this virus made me feel pretty shit”

This poses the next invisible casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic, which is likely to be a spike in mental-ill health. The reactions that people are having to the news and the virus in general is usually quite full of anxiety and fear, if not for themselves, for their loved ones that may be susceptible to infection, and the fate of the world as a whole.

It may just be that a social media detox is exactly what the world needs right now, and there are certainly a number of people leading the way in that regard.

“I'm still keeping enough of an eye [on COVID-19 news] that I know what's happening, but not reaching for my phone all the time like I often do out of habit.”

AJ applauds this measure as she delves deeper into the misinformation being spread across these channels, “I'm specifically seeing a lot of negative responses from people on my friends list to a lot of either what I post or what is posted by news outlets,” she says “This forces me to go and investigate some of their previous posts, and anything else they may be contributing about coronavirus, and the non-truth that is being put out there is astonishing.”

“I think it's really bringing out everybody's true colours.”

Paul is a father of 3 in his 40's who up until recently was employed in customer service within the insurance sector. Whereas he left his job voluntarily before the pandemic had hit, he empathises with others who now find themselves in this situation.

“I have been scrolling and refreshing my mailbox at least 10 times daily,” he says in relation to job applications and newsletters which arrive through his email. It extends to social media use as well: “Once I would have been content checking these platforms maybe five times daily each, however now it is up to 15 times, in order to give me the sense of being updated”

It is my belief that the current crisis highlights how much we unfortunately rely on the wrong media to attain our information. Ever since the Cambridge Analytica saga, the spotlight has well and truly been on social media outlets to try and curb the amount of 'fake news' content and 'data skimming' of people's personal information, but COVID-19 has shot that in the foot in two ways:

1. The vast and ultimately unending articles being published with unsubstantiated claims, incorrect figures, concentrating on the wrong factors or even giving the population a premature sense of hope, and;

2. The keyboard warriors spinning whatever information they find interesting, without checking sources or facts against respected publications. Not to mention that Facebook’s algorithms (for one of the many social media platforms) have remained largely unchanged.

“I'm worried that it took so long for us to start taking note of community transmissions,” says AJ, “I want to draw people's attention to this as being the key number. Not the infection rate or the fatality rate, but community transmissions. This means that we don't know where the virus has spread from, and no idea where it goes”

All in all, whatever your reasons for scrolling more often, it is quite apparent that social media is going to have a heavy influence on our lives over the coming months, if we indeed choose that path. Maybe it is time we all took a leaf out of Cara's book and took a more conscious approach to where we get our information, and also to alleviate our minds from both panic and overload.

I've certainly been bickering and arguing with people over quite a few topics related to the virus, including the government's apparent lack of a plan (prior to the rolled out measures over the past few weeks), schools remaining open and people not adhering to physical distancing and isolation requirements in our major cities – particularly those who are still at work in the public. This may be useful to get off my chest, but it does nothing at the overall level but heighten my frustration and destabalise my current mental state, as well as 'poke the bear' for others to retaliate.

One of the silver linings in this whole episode may be that a good chunk of the population begins to re-think the way it uses and relies on social media, however on the downside we know that the spread of farce and misinformation will no doubt expand and deepen as we sink further into the COVID-19 crisis.

#covid-19 #covid19 #covid19au #covid19australia #coronavirus #writing #article #informative #editorial #freelance #opinion #social media #scrolling #news

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anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 6 years ago

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the wall is Donald Trump’s binkie, and other parts of the truth

As you probably know, the United States federal government is twenty-three days and counting into its longest ever shutdown. The Democratic majority in the House of Representatives has passed a bunch of bills trying to reopen the government. Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has yet again decided to abandon his constitutional duties, and is refusing to allow his colleague to vote on any bill that might not please the Dear Leader, who in turn has said that he will not sign any budget that doesn’t include billions of dollars for his Great Wall of Freudian Overcompensation.

As with any of Individual-1’s tantrums, it’s worth trying to understand why he’s really doing it, as opposed to why he says he’s doing it.

Any number of things that we don’t know about yet could have happened to set him off. His party’s humiliating defeat in the midterm elections, and the consequences of a house of Congress being in Democratic control, may have taken a couple of weeks to sink in. He, or someone who knows a lot about his wrongdoing, may have been subpoenaed by federal prosecutors. His former personal attorney dramatically abandoned him. He may have been asked for comment on the current round of bombshell reports about his ties to the Kremlin. But I’m inclined to think it was the coat.

The shutdown started just before the holidays – after the midterms, but before the new Congress had been sworn in. The week before that, Trump had summoned Democratic leaders Senator Chuck Schumer and once and future Speaker Nancy Pelosi to the White House, surprised them by insisting that the meeting be televised, and then blustered about how he was “proud” to get all the blame for a government shutdown. He clearly thought he had set up a big win for himself.

Pelosi spanked him raw. Her coat got better press than he did. (It wasn’t even new! It was just fabulous!)

But the 2019 budget had to be voted on. The Senate agreed to a routine bill, but House Republicans, right up until their last minute of power, decided to screw over their successors and refused to vote for anything. First thing the House Democrats did was to try and open the government back up again, so they voted on a bill just like the one the Senate agreed to – but Senate Majority Leader McConnell and other Senate Republicans don’t like it anymore because Trump’s on his whole thing about how he won’t sign any budget without several billion set aside for his magic beans dumb wall.

So here we are. Most federal agencies aren’t getting any more money until the government reopens, so they’re making do with whatever they have lying around from last year. People who rely on some form of federal aid are in trouble. Hundreds of thousands of federal employees are on unpaid leave or are working without pay. A lot of important things can’t be done without the money it costs to do them.

As an apparent way out, Republicans have been floating the possibility that Trump could declare a national emergency, so that he could use the U.S. military resources to build a wall as a face-saving stunt. That is exactly the kind of banana republic shit that the “paranoid,” “hysterical” “alarmists” have been warning about with Trump for years. As of this writing, it hasn’t happened yet, but it is a very real possibility.

There’s a lot of news focus on debunking Individual-1′s lies about the southern border. That’s appropriate; as long as he keeps insisting on racist nonsense, people should keep reiterating that it’s racist nonsense. We should also contextualize it with considerations of why he’s actually doing it.

Sometimes Trump’s fixation on the idea of a southern border wall gets mocked as “his precious,” the glimmering bauble in Lord of the Rings which drives its wearers to madness. That’s not quite right, though: the One Ring actually does stuff, whereas Trump’s wall is worthless.

A conventional media narrative is that he’s trying to follow through a campaign promise. But, you know, why? If his voters were willing to believe that a wall on the southern border would a) exist, b) meaningfully deter immigration, and c) be paid for by Mexico…… he doesn’t need to actually do it to make them happy. He could just tell them that Mexico paid up and he built the wall, mission accomplished. Is that a ridiculous lie? Yes. Is it any more ridiculous than the other lies he’s gotten them to swallow? Nope!

Of course, the details of this particular ridiculous lie may be totally beside the point. It’s entirely possible that he just wants an excuse to keep the government shut down because he thinks it’s a way to stop public congressional hearings where Maxine Waters can make fun of his tiny hands. Maybe he really thinks that if the federal courts run out of money, the indictments and guilty pleas of his inner circle will stop. Neither of those things are true, but that has no bearing on whether Trump believes them.

Another theory is that screeching BUILD THE WALL!!! is how Individual-1 retreats to an emotional safe space. While that seems unlikely to be the entire explanation, it is certainly true. Trump is weak, stupid, and spectacularly overmatched by the job he stole. He at least felt like he understood real estate development (he didn’t), so he feels comforted by a policy that boils down to a construction project. And being hateful toward immigrants is how he likes to vent his spleen when the special prosecutor’s investigation heats up. In fact, a Trump campaign staffer recently said that “build the wall” was initially just a trick they used to make sure the candidate remembered to include racist rants about immigrants in his Nuremberg rallies.

Trump campaign staff did not explain how they stumbled onto a buzzword which just so happened to have been poll-tested a year earlier by the criminal “data firm” Cambridge Analytica.

That leads us to the darkest timeline scenario: we have to consider the alarming possibility that the damage this shutdown is doing is actually the point. American cybersecurity will not recover for a long time. Neither will American diplomacy. TSA agents – the people who check bags at the airport – are calling in sick because they don’t want to work without pay. Those who do show up are under the extreme strain of not knowing when they’ll be paid again, and so they are more likely to make mistakes. FBI agents think that the shutdown is a genuine national security threat. Field agents are working without pay, while the lab techs they depend on have been sent home indefinitely.

That same FBI is investigating whether the person who has claimed sole responsibility for all this is an agent of a hostile foreign power.

Even if the worst-case scenario is not true, this shutdown is catastrophically bad. But we do have to get used to considering it as a possibility.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:

The House has already passed a bunch of bills to reopen the government, so you want to prioritize contacting your senators. Tell them they must immediately pass the 2018 bill that they approved unanimously last month. Republican senators need to be pressured to do the right thing here. If you have Democratic senators, let them know you appreciate that they’re holding the line.

The chances of Trump doing something unhinged and despotic – always high – have increased remarkably. If he does, keep an eye out for rapid response protests around the country. Don’t let anyone tell you this doesn’t matter. Two months ago, Individual-1 fired his attorney general in a transparent effort to end or curtail special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s investigation, and thousands of people hit the streets in protest. Guess what? Mueller’s still there.

#donald trump #shutdown #congress #immigration

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functioningcog · 5 years ago

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Hitting the bail button

"Commercial television delivers 20 million people a minute. In commercial broadcasting the viewer pays for the privilege of having himself sold. It is the consumer who is consumed. You are the product of TV. You are delivered to the advertiser who is the customer. He consumes you. The viewer is not responsible for programming - You are the end product."(Serra and Fay, 1973)

If it was true of television, it's even more true in the interactive and widespread media platforms of today. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. Their brands are omnipresent. You are not their consumer. You are their product, and your data is offered and sold to the highest bidder. I have known this for sometime, but the mountain of reasons not to participate has finally tipped me over the edge. I am deleting Facebook. This doesn't make me better than anyone else, nor am I hear to preach. I just thought I'd share with you my reasons. Do with it what you will. First, a look into the past. Both mine, and ours.

In the fast food documentary "Super Size Me", one of the participants tells an anecdotal tale about cigarette companies of the past. Long before it became socially taboo to smoke, advertising for cigarettes was as commonplace, though maybe not as entertaining, as many ads we see today. Big Tobacco went further though; they advertised directly to children. Children far below legal smoking age were given toy cigarettes. It's hard today to see this as innocuous, but I imagine at the time most people had far bigger things to worry about. Well, those little innocuous toy cigarettes often had name brands on them. The tobacco companies were practicing "brand imprinting" on children as young as toddlers. They would pretend to smoke with their parents, and later on when they were old enough to smoke, they would unconsciously reach for the name brand they were familiar with. The sinister side of marketing, hard at work. It has not changed or improved in the years since.

Once when I was a kid, my father sat me down to have a talk. I wasn't in trouble; just being educated. The topic was Pokémon. The adorable, ubiquitous, trademarked pocket monsters that have dominated their corner of popular media for just about the same amount of time as I have been alive. They exist in many forms, and have evolved with the times. Videogames, toys both stuffed and model-like, card games, TV shows and films, all ad infinitum. My dad told me about the addictive nature of the games; how it's designed to grab hold of your attention, and your pocket book, and never let go. I don't remember his exact words, but the message has never left me. "Pokémon is addictive. I'm not going to buy you addictive things".

Not only is Pokémon addictive, but my father also stressed the fact that it creates a never-ending cycle for itself. There will always be new games, new cards, etc. Many medias that we enjoy have a planned ending to them. Movies, books, most TV shows, etc. They conclude and we move on to something else. We now live in an age where some of the most pervasive means of entertainment do not end. There is no logical stopping point. You can look at memes and posts and photos as long as your heart desires.

Note on Pokémon: I don't think the brand itself is evil. I have played the games in recent years and enjoy them. The lesson my dad taught me about addictions and marketing just happened to feature them. I wish I could say I have continued to avoid addictive habits and tech as an adult, but the battle is a lifelong one. Other addictions, mostly minor, have come and gone. It is the most pervasive and major one that brings me here; "Facebook"

Before I dive more into my own experience with Facebook, I'd like to share with you several of the most important influences that led me here today. The first is a fictional short story told via the anthology series "Black Mirror"; a favorite show of mine. The other two are documentaries, one from last summer and one newly released.

If you are unfamiliar with the show Black Mirror, it is an anthology series that explores the ethics and future of technology in our world through short self-contained stories. I highly recommend it. The Season 3 episode "Nosedive" follows a young woman in a world in which social standing is determined by internet interactions. People like and rate each other based on every interaction throughout their day. On your best behavior? You get some points. Accidentally snap at someone or make an off-color joke? You lose some points. Those points determine what events you attend, what cars you drive in, what jobs you can do, etc. It's not hard to extrapolate from there how our society is already well on its way to this kind of a system. The more addicted to social media we are, the more our lives revolve around the attention we get there. Likes and comments dominate our daily mood; they certainly have mine for years. It made me uncomfortable to realize how much my emotions could be controlled by digital reactions, or lack thereof. As "Nosedive" faded to black, I immediately pulled up my Facebook feed and then froze in place for a minute. "This is it. I'm looking at it". A sobering realization, yet I didn't stop my usage. The addiction continued, but no longer felt wholly innocent. By the by, this technology now exists in China. Look it up.

"The Great Hack" tells the story of a British Company called Cambridge Analytica, and how it developed it's technology to a point which the British government labeled "weapons grade communication". Analytica had contracts with a number of internet companies and groups to collect data on their users and used this data to develop tools, ads and propaganda designed to affect their target audience in highly specific ways. With the knowledge freely and unwittingly offered up by social media users, the degree to which you can predict and direct the users behavior and actions is truly disturbing. It's just human psychology and sociology combined with the newest tech. Cambridge Analytica used this data to influence elections in a number of countries around the globe, most notably the U.S. 2016 and the Brexit campaign in the U.K. They were hired first by Ted Cruz, then by Donald Trump's campaign. At the peak of the election season their American home base was being funded to the tune of over a million dollars a day and by it's end they had created and shared literally millions of targeted ads on social media. Were the ads truthful or reliable? Didn't matter. They were targeted at people most likely to shift their opinion based on the right information. And it worked. I wouldn't say that they single-handedly won the election for Trump, but they played a major part.

Cambridge Analytica was later shut down, but the cat’s out of the bag. I would expect to see both sides playing by these new rules throughout 2020. And that's all without even mentioning Russian hackers and bots, which Cambridge Analytica had nothing to do with. This documentary disturbed me. My own internal arguments and justifications in favor of Facebook were wearing thin. I began attempting to limit my usage, and calling out unreliable news posts when I saw them. But I also kept logging on daily. Repeatedly. My awareness of my addiction was growing more acute. I noticed my own behavior and reactions to the site more than before. The camels back was just a couple straws away from breaking point.

“Screened Out” focuses primarily on the how and why of social medias effects on us as people. The aforementioned psychology of what's happening. Turns out, it was always intended to addict us and keep us coming back for more. It's inherent in the design. Like gambling, like cocaine, our seemingly innocent social media is triggering dopamine reactions in our brain. Every like, every reaction, every notification is designed to draw your attention and satisfy the itch the system itself gave you. It was crafted this way knowingly and intentionally. The most widespread addiction in our modern world is available for all ages and free to top it off. Just like those toy cigarettes I mentioned earlier, the tech companies and marketing developers know quite well that children are more unsuspecting and susceptible to addictive behaviors and media. My childhood was predominantly internet free, and for that I am thankful; my addiction developed as an adult. But many children of today have all the access they want to social media and it's hard to argue it’s a good thing. They are becoming reliant on and obsessed with their image and perception before they even know who they are. Their addiction has drawn many of them into depression, or even suicide. Is being "connected" really worth it at this price?

One of the most common and persistent things I've told myself: "It's a way to stay in touch with family and friends". Yes, it certainly is. When the site was created, that goal was much more front and center and easier to enjoy. It's an admirable goal too, and if it works for you I'm happy for you. From where I'm sitting, Facebook's use for that well-meaning purpose has taken a backseat to what dominates its feed. As I scroll through multiple times a day, 80-90% of what I see is ads for things I don't need, news that I usually could do without or that is outright false, memes I could find elsewhere and people arguing and debating topics that are better discussed in person or not at all. This is what Facebook is for me now. That once enticing prospect of glimpsing the lives of my friends and family surfaces from time to time, and it's still enjoyable. Unfortunately, the bad outweighs the good these days. Again, if your experience is better than mine, please enjoy it and I'm happy for you. Aside from "Screened Out", the last piece of this decision was caused by nature; not human, but microscopic. I already knew about how fake news is created and spread via Facebook and Twitter. Donald Trump showed us just how incredibly effective it is and more evidence is not really necessary. Enter COVID-19. A global pandemic that should unite people of all beliefs in a common goal of defending ourselves from an enemy that has no morals or code. An enemy that has no mind or plan of its own. It simply spreads.

What did social media do in the face of this crises? Everything negative and nefarious about it kicked into high gear and was on full display. False narratives and conspiracies that actually endanger lives in the immediate future spread like wildfire. People arguing about data and statistics that effect us all and are utterly bipartisan. Guys, this is not ok. I do not think it an exaggeration to say that social media is precipitating a partial or total collapse of society. Something must be done to fix it, and I don't know what that something is. But I'm bowing out. This is not a system that can be fixed from the inside. Picture a casino sponsoring a gambling addicts rehab right next to the slot machines. You'd be better served just not going. As I said at the beginning, I don't want to sound preachy. My goal here was to share my decision making process and some information sources that you might appreciate. Maybe you're better at tuning out the bad side of social media than I am. Maybe you have ways by which you limit your exposure to it. I personally have addictive tendencies, and this is my way of addressing one of my longest and most insidious habits. And yes, I know that tumblr is technically another social media platform. My current intention is to use it as an outlet for my writing.

If you read all that, hi-five. Maybe being off Facebook will lead me to write more on my blog. I wish you all well and look forward to talking to you on other platforms or in person. Peace - JCP

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noramoya · 6 years ago

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THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT FOR US, SOCIAL MEDIA USER,TO READ !

“LET’S ADMIT IT, SOCIAL MEDIA HAS TAKEN OVER OUR LIVES ! A STUDY FROM HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW SHOWS THAT THAT THE FIRST THING MOST SMARTPHONE OWNERS DO IN THE MORNING IS CHECK SOCIAL MEDIA. WITH THAT, THERE COMES AN EVER MORE PRESSING NEED TO START LOOKING INTO ALL OF THE SOCIAL MEDIA SITES AND ASKING AN IMPORTANT QUESTION : ‘SHOULD THESE BE A PUBLIC FORUM ?’

Before we really get into this topic, it’s important to define terms and set some boundaries. First, when I say “social media”, I’m primarily talking about the big four; Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, and Facebook. And out of those four, I’ll be focusing mostly on Facebook. Next, I’m going to be using a few terms you may not know: engagement, user, and network. Engagement is the number of likes, shares, and comments a post gets. A network is the people and pages you engage with the most. And users here are what these sites call “active users”, which are people who have logged onto their account within 30 days of each report. With all of these explained, let’s move on.

Recently, there has been a big uproar about people being kicked off of social media. From Alex Jones being banned from Facebook for 30 days to literally anyone being kicked off of Twitter, there is almost always one reaction; cries that this is a violation of free speech and the first amendment. Now, legally speaking, no it’s not. The first amendment applies only to the government, which isn’t Facebook. But there is a more important question going on here, and it’s whether or not social media sites should be considered a “safe space” for any type of speech. Now, again, legally speaking Facebook isn’t required to adhere to the constitution. But should they ethically be?

To start off, we can’t go on telling ourselves that more people interact in the real world than on the internet. Social media has, and it hurts me to admit this, taken over as our prime form of interaction. Now, I will hold that this interaction can be very good, it’s just that it’s now more common than actually meeting with people. Because of this, many people have formed these social networks, which they are wary of straying from. How many times have you heard people bragging about the number of Twitter followers or Facebook friends they have? Snapchat even gives users a score based on the number of friends they have on the site. And to most, we build this immense and intricate social networks without ever realizing how fragile they actually are. We don’t realize that we are one person’s momentary decision away from, essentially, being deleted from our friend’s lives entirely.

Because of this, there has been a growing movement calling for Twitter and Facebook to refrain from banning users from it’s site. These people are calling for social media sites to become a sort of public forum; where people can listen to or ignore you but they can’t remove you. The funny thing is, Facebook actually tried this hands off approach in between 2012 and 2016. The 2012 election, the year Barack Obama was reelected, was an interesting one for Facebook. It was that year that they rolled out their “Get Out the Vote” initiative; which was where they tried to encourage their users to vote by giving users an “I Voted” button they could share once they voted.

What’s interesting is that, in between 2008 and 2012, Facebook saw unprecedented levels of growth. However, towards the end of 2012, that growth basically ground to a halt. For a comparison, Facebook grew it’s membership by over 950% in between 2008 and 2012; going from 100 million users to 955 million. In between 2012 and 2016, that number is only 56%; going from 1,056 to 1,654. However, it was in between 2012 and 2016 that Facebook tried to gain a monopoly on social media sites. Quick note to clarify: Economic monopolies are illegal in most cases in the United States. However, brand monopolies aren’t. For instance, while there are other brand of tissues, do you really trust anything that isn’t Kleenex? I mean you should, it’s all fine, but do you?

First, Facebook took notice of Twitter and how it was attracting more news outlets and journalists. Shortly after, Facebook moved to increase it’s news platform and by 2014 had hashtags, verified users, a “trending news” section, and was making a big push to promote news pages on it’s site. Next, they acquired Instagram, which was posing a threat to them on the pictures front. They then tried to purchase Snapchat for the first time. Then, when Youtube started to really take off, Facebook made significant upgrades to it’s video technologies. Finally, although this happened after 2016, Facebook introduced stories to try and compete with Snapchat.

While many aren’t sure what cause the lack of growth in between these years, I’d like to propose that it was Facebook adding too many unpopular changes to it’s interface; while trying to’fly too close to the sun’. However,after the 2016 election, Facebook saw a huge period of growth. Namely, the “alt-right” news sites on Facebook exploded in membership. Breitbart went from having just over 100,000 fans to over 1.5 million. But it wasn’t just far-right sites that were growing. Sites on the extreme of either side of the political spectrum became ultra-popular, as demonstrated by graph. By the way, this is one of the scariest things I’ve seen all year !

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/10/what-facebook-did/542502/

However, that growth was soon killed when it was revealed that Facebook sold user data to Cambridge Analytica, which then used the data to target political ads to people. Many of these ads were sponsored by Kremlin backed organizations and were targeted to voters in the swing states; with the rest of the country being completely blind to the ads. Now, while many people were shocked that Facebook pages could target ads to specific people, this came as no shock to admins of other pages on Facebook. Targeted advertisement was a feature for many years. But this scandal forced Facebook to take a more hardlined stance on politics and to abandon its hands off policy; now Facebook took to removing any user they believed was using their site with malicious intent.

The data breach and the removal of many (mostly conservative) users caused Facebook to have another period of stagnation. So why bring all of this up? I mean, Facebook has one of the lowest active user numbers of the big four sites. Why does this all matter? Well, because Facebook somehow achieved a brand monopoly. How is this possible, I mean, they have such a low number of users. But consider this, in the past three years Twitter has shrunk in membership twice and went completely stagnant once. Facebook never did either of those thing. In between 2017 and 2018 Youtube users grew by 1.4% and Facebook nearly matched them. Facebook has become part of our mainstream culture, in a way that no other social media site has. And I believe that it’s because of all of those unpopular changes they made.

So with Facebook and other social media sites now becoming part of our everyday life, it’s time to ask, should they be a public forum? Ultimately, viewers can always find your content elsewhere, whether it be on TV, radio, or on your website. But none of those other options seem to have stuck with us the way social media has. In that way, someone could legitimately argue that being taken off of social media could have a hugely negative impact on their life. Not to mention the power of the precedent that was set when Trump didn’t remove himself from his business. If Zuckerberg becomes president and he doesn’t have to relinquish control of Facebook, and Facebook can silence whoever they want, that’s a scary thought. But don’t take it from me, take it from this Medium post, by a wonderful writer for those who don’t know Adam, that talked about it back in March.

In the end, I believe social media sites should not be viewed as a public forum, but they need to have a legitimate excuse for silencing someone. Having the power to almost entirely erase someone from their social network is a dangerous and scary thing, and should not come without a ton of checks and balances. Facebook shouldn’t, as some suggest, be handed over to the government. The option for them to become the largest government controlled propaganda machine (something that Facebook could quickly become) is too scary to allow that to just happen. Social media sites need to be held accountable for their actions, and we need to be sure that we won’t be removed just because we caught good ol’ Mark on a bad day.

Other Sources: https://www.statista.com/statistics/264810/number-of-monthly-active-facebook-users-worldwide/ | https://www.statista.com/statistics/282087/number-of-monthly-active-twitter-users/

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srasamua · 6 years ago

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Eight social media trends that will make 2019

If there’s one thing that is constant about social media, it’s change.

So many things influence the way we behave on social media: technology, social changes, economy, and politics. All of them are changing at a rapid speed, so you can imagine how volatile the social media world is.

This makes predicting trends for a year ahead quite difficult. However, there are tendencies that stick around and affect the industry in a major way for a long time. For example, influencer marketing has been winning the hearts of social media marketers and the pockets of consumers for a couple of years now, and the ephemeral content, even though it has been around for a while, got a significant boost with Instagram’s investments put into the Stories feature.

Considering these points, I present to you the eight social media trends of 2019. These are the tendencies that take their roots in the current cultural zeitgeist, technological development, and social platforms’ respective strategies, and are expected to take over social media this year.

1. Social listening

Social listening is not a new thing by any means, but the way we apply social listening is changing right now. In the past years, social listening was a way to manage brand mentions and reputations for big brands like Apple or Hilton. However, two things happened that altered the social media listening industry:

Social media monitoring tools have become more evolved, with new sources of data, new features, etc being added constantly.

The tools became affordable not just for huge corporations, but for mid-sized and small businesses, local businesses, and startups as well.

How did this affect social listening strategies? Well, nowadays, the new features and data sources allow going beyond basic brand monitoring. You can use social listening for social selling, SEO, and customer care to name a few.

If I’d have to point out one area where social listening could really change the current marketing landscape, I’d go with sales. Social selling is a unique tactic that gives you an opportunity to engage with people who are seeking services and products in your industry directly.

One tool in particular even added a specific feature dedicated to social selling called Awario Leads.

For now, this tactic is extremely underused, but we can expect to see more and more brands taking on social selling this year.

2. Buying on social

Social selling is one thing, but what if you could choose and order a product without even leaving the social media app?

To be fair, it’s not a new thing, Facebook already allows users to buy products from brands’ pages in their ‘Shop‘ section. They also have a Marketplace feature launched way back in 2007 which is an alternative to Craigslist, a platform where individuals can sell or exchange mostly second-hand items.

In 2019 we will see more social media companies opening up their platforms for ecommerce. It would be the next logical step for companies which already offer brands a wide range of features for advertising, like YouTube or Instagram. In fact, one of these might be already working in that direction.

Last September, The Verge reported that Instagram might be working on an ecommerce app. According to the article, the app will let users browse collections of goods from merchants that they follow and purchase them directly within the app.

Surely, the app is not an additional feature to Instagram but rather a stand-alone entity. However, this indicates Instagram’s understanding and interest in implementing e-commerce in their product (which is only natural considering that Facebook owns Instagram).

3. Transparency

Social media data has become essential to any marketing strategy, hence social listening is on this list. However, this past year proved just how little knowledge we as a society have of the scope and impact of social media data collected on a daily basis.

Last year was marked by an array of privacy scandals, with Cambridge Analytica being the most prominent one. However, Facebook wasn’t the only one who suffered, Twitter, YouTube, and even Reddit reported at least one security breach last year.

However, let’s not diminish Facebook’s role in this regard, they seemed to have one PR nightmare after another. This probably prompted Mark Zuckerberg to make a special New Year’s resolution for 2019 to organize a series of public discussions dedicated to how Facebook influences society.

That will be only one of the initiatives dedicated to bringing more transparency into the world of social media companies. Data is one of the most important resources in social media marketing, and ethical collection, as well as unbiased evaluation of it, will be a major priority for companies this year.

Our century is marked by brands developing personalities for themselves and building relationships with their audiences. According to this study by Sprout Social, millennials are expecting more transparency from brands than politicians or friends and family. Gaining the trust of the audience will become the focus of social media platforms’ strategies.

4. Live streaming

Powered by social media algorithms, pivoting to video content has been a trend for a while now. This year, however, live streaming is the new black.

Social streaming favors in-the-moment content, another trend that has been taking over social media for a while with Instagram Stories, Snapchat, and, most recently, Facebook stories. According to this Facebook report, daily watch time for Facebook live broadcasts grew four times over the course of a year.

You can use live streaming to present a new product, change the narrative during a PR crisis, or introduce a collaboration with an influencer.

What makes live streaming so special is the ability to create space for an actual dialogue with your customer in real time. Your viewers feel like they are in the middle of a natural conversation, and you’re speaking directly to them. It wins over highly produced video content because of its authenticity, the thing every marketer is trying to accomplish.

5. Private communities

2018 saw a trend of communication migrating to private channels.

More and more interactions occur in Facebook groups and private communities rather than on public pages, which is favored both by algorithms and people (unless these people are social media managers). Moreover, social media platforms keep adding new features to simplify the curation of private groups on top of integrating messaging features in their apps.

On Instagram, turning your growing Instagram account private creates a sense of exclusivity and urgency encourages people to follow, as described in this article by the Atlantic. Private groups and accounts make you feel like a part of an exclusive community, and who doesn’t want that?

Consider creating a private community for your brand, for example, a group on Facebook or LinkedIn. This will give your users an opportunity to not just communicate with you but also with each other, which contributes to building a strong community and encouraging brand advocacy.

6. Messaging

The most private communication channel is, of course, direct messaging. And for the last few years, brands have been engaging with customers through DMs and personal messages on social.

For now, brands are mostly using messaging apps and DMs for customer service purposes. But there’s untapped potential to create personalized, automated communication that’s even more effective than email.

This year, messaging will become a meaningful part of every social media strategy. Moreover, brands will finally embrace messenger automation. A study conducted by Relay revealed that out of 1000 trending B2B companies on Crunchbase, only 0.5 percent of the companies had a chatbot.

Chatbots could make messenger marketing the new email marketing, the open rate for messages is much higher than for emails, and messaging itself is seen as a more casual and personal way of communication.

Chatbots aren’t perfect yet, and people still prefer to converse with a human. However, as chatbots become more sophisticated and use more natural language, they will become necessary. You need to figure out which part of your marketing strategy could benefit from them.

Integrating eCommerce functions could also be beneficial for messaging apps. This is not the new idea if we remember WeChat, but it hasn’t been explored yet in the Western part of the world.

7. Personalization

Chatbots and messaging can also be a part of a comprehensive personalization strategy. 2019 will be the year when personalization powered by AI takes over marketing.

Considering the vast amount of personal information currently available to social media companies, it has become extremely easy to obtain insights into all kinds of information about your customers. Content consumed, purchase history, clicked links, social media interactions, and even personal messages. All this and more can be used to create a laser-targeted marketing campaign just for you.

However, some consumers may feel uncomfortable with how personalization is currently implemented in marketing. Brands need to find the fine line between being helpful and outright creepy.

One way to do this would be combining personalization and other types of marketing: influencer marketing, personalizing your messaging communication (beyond using first names), and so on. Take an example from Airbnb, which uses information about your past and upcoming trips to craft personalized traveling recommendations.

8. Augmented reality (AR)

AR can be used in a plethora of ways, from creating filters dedicated to certain events to actually implementing your product in videos or photos to let customers try it on.

At its F8 developer conference last year, Facebook announced that it was testing AR ads. In your timeline, they look like ordinary Facebook Ads but with a ‘Tap to try it on’ button that lets you try products on virtually with the help of camera filters.

AR could be the solution for those who don’t like online shopping and prefer to test a product before buying. If social media platforms successfully implement this technology on a wide scale first, they will become an even more attractive platform for advertising compared to digital space.

What you need to do in 2019

As you can see, none of these trends are coming at you completely out of the blue, most of them are a logical development of social media platforms’ strategies or the way ordinary users behave on social media.

So this year, it’s time to become an early adopter and try something new, be it a social listening tool or a messenger bot. In 2019, make sure you:

Collect and analyze social media data to guide your marketing decisions

Apply new technology to your social media strategy

Stay authentic and personal

You will undoubtedly see a boost in your social media ROI.

Got any unique social media strategies chalked out for 2019? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Aleh is the Founder and CMO at SEO PowerSuite and Awario. He can be found on Twitter @ab80.

The post Eight social media trends that will make 2019 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digtal Marketing News https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/01/eight-social-media-trends-that-will-make-2019/

0 notes

oscarkruegerus · 6 years ago

Text

Eight social media trends that will make 2019

If there’s one thing that is constant about social media, it’s change.

1. Social listening

Social media monitoring tools have become more evolved, with new sources of data, new features, etc being added constantly.

The tools became affordable not just for huge corporations, but for mid-sized and small businesses, local businesses, and startups as well.

One tool in particular even added a specific feature dedicated to social selling called Awario Leads.

For now, this tactic is extremely underused, but we can expect to see more and more brands taking on social selling this year.

2. Buying on social

Social selling is one thing, but what if you could choose and order a product without even leaving the social media app?

3. Transparency

4. Live streaming

Powered by social media algorithms, pivoting to video content has been a trend for a while now. This year, however, live streaming is the new black.

You can use live streaming to present a new product, change the narrative during a PR crisis, or introduce a collaboration with an influencer.

5. Private communities

2018 saw a trend of communication migrating to private channels.

6. Messaging

The most private communication channel is, of course, direct messaging. And for the last few years, brands have been engaging with customers through DMs and personal messages on social.

Integrating eCommerce functions could also be beneficial for messaging apps. This is not the new idea if we remember WeChat, but it hasn’t been explored yet in the Western part of the world.

7. Personalization

Chatbots and messaging can also be a part of a comprehensive personalization strategy. 2019 will be the year when personalization powered by AI takes over marketing.

However, some consumers may feel uncomfortable with how personalization is currently implemented in marketing. Brands need to find the fine line between being helpful and outright creepy.

8. Augmented reality (AR)

AR can be used in a plethora of ways, from creating filters dedicated to certain events to actually implementing your product in videos or photos to let customers try it on.

What you need to do in 2019

So this year, it’s time to become an early adopter and try something new, be it a social listening tool or a messenger bot. In 2019, make sure you:

Collect and analyze social media data to guide your marketing decisions

Apply new technology to your social media strategy

Stay authentic and personal

You will undoubtedly see a boost in your social media ROI.

Got any unique social media strategies chalked out for 2019? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Aleh is the Founder and CMO at SEO PowerSuite and Awario. He can be found on Twitter @ab80.

The post Eight social media trends that will make 2019 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digtal Marketing News https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/01/eight-social-media-trends-that-will-make-2019/

0 notes

evaaguilaus · 6 years ago

Text

Eight social media trends that will make 2019

If there’s one thing that is constant about social media, it’s change.

1. Social listening

Social media monitoring tools have become more evolved, with new sources of data, new features, etc being added constantly.

The tools became affordable not just for huge corporations, but for mid-sized and small businesses, local businesses, and startups as well.

One tool in particular even added a specific feature dedicated to social selling called Awario Leads.

For now, this tactic is extremely underused, but we can expect to see more and more brands taking on social selling this year.

2. Buying on social

Social selling is one thing, but what if you could choose and order a product without even leaving the social media app?

3. Transparency

4. Live streaming

Powered by social media algorithms, pivoting to video content has been a trend for a while now. This year, however, live streaming is the new black.

You can use live streaming to present a new product, change the narrative during a PR crisis, or introduce a collaboration with an influencer.

5. Private communities

2018 saw a trend of communication migrating to private channels.

6. Messaging

The most private communication channel is, of course, direct messaging. And for the last few years, brands have been engaging with customers through DMs and personal messages on social.

Integrating eCommerce functions could also be beneficial for messaging apps. This is not the new idea if we remember WeChat, but it hasn’t been explored yet in the Western part of the world.

7. Personalization

Chatbots and messaging can also be a part of a comprehensive personalization strategy. 2019 will be the year when personalization powered by AI takes over marketing.

However, some consumers may feel uncomfortable with how personalization is currently implemented in marketing. Brands need to find the fine line between being helpful and outright creepy.

8. Augmented reality (AR)

AR can be used in a plethora of ways, from creating filters dedicated to certain events to actually implementing your product in videos or photos to let customers try it on.

What you need to do in 2019

So this year, it’s time to become an early adopter and try something new, be it a social listening tool or a messenger bot. In 2019, make sure you:

Collect and analyze social media data to guide your marketing decisions

Apply new technology to your social media strategy

Stay authentic and personal

You will undoubtedly see a boost in your social media ROI.

Got any unique social media strategies chalked out for 2019? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Aleh is the Founder and CMO at SEO PowerSuite and Awario. He can be found on Twitter @ab80.

The post Eight social media trends that will make 2019 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

from Digtal Marketing News https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/01/eight-social-media-trends-that-will-make-2019/

0 notes

kellykperez · 6 years ago

Text

Eight social media trends that will make 2019

If there’s one thing that is constant about social media, it’s change.

1. Social listening

Social media monitoring tools have become more evolved, with new sources of data, new features, etc being added constantly.

The tools became affordable not just for huge corporations, but for mid-sized and small businesses, local businesses, and startups as well.

One tool in particular even added a specific feature dedicated to social selling called Awario Leads.

For now, this tactic is extremely underused, but we can expect to see more and more brands taking on social selling this year.

2. Buying on social

Social selling is one thing, but what if you could choose and order a product without even leaving the social media app?

3. Transparency

4. Live streaming

Powered by social media algorithms, pivoting to video content has been a trend for a while now. This year, however, live streaming is the new black.

You can use live streaming to present a new product, change the narrative during a PR crisis, or introduce a collaboration with an influencer.

5. Private communities

2018 saw a trend of communication migrating to private channels.

6. Messaging

The most private communication channel is, of course, direct messaging. And for the last few years, brands have been engaging with customers through DMs and personal messages on social.

Integrating eCommerce functions could also be beneficial for messaging apps. This is not the new idea if we remember WeChat, but it hasn’t been explored yet in the Western part of the world.

7. Personalization

Chatbots and messaging can also be a part of a comprehensive personalization strategy. 2019 will be the year when personalization powered by AI takes over marketing.

However, some consumers may feel uncomfortable with how personalization is currently implemented in marketing. Brands need to find the fine line between being helpful and outright creepy.

8. Augmented reality (AR)

AR can be used in a plethora of ways, from creating filters dedicated to certain events to actually implementing your product in videos or photos to let customers try it on.

What you need to do in 2019

So this year, it’s time to become an early adopter and try something new, be it a social listening tool or a messenger bot. In 2019, make sure you:

Collect and analyze social media data to guide your marketing decisions

Apply new technology to your social media strategy

Stay authentic and personal

You will undoubtedly see a boost in your social media ROI.

Got any unique social media strategies chalked out for 2019? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Aleh is the Founder and CMO at SEO PowerSuite and Awario. He can be found on Twitter @ab80.

The post Eight social media trends that will make 2019 appeared first on Search Engine Watch.

source https://searchenginewatch.com/2019/03/01/eight-social-media-trends-that-will-make-2019/ from Rising Phoenix SEO http://risingphoenixseo.blogspot.com/2019/03/eight-social-media-trends-that-will.html

0 notes

paullassiterca · 6 years ago

Text

Is It Time to Forget Facebook?

youtube

Despite the controversy swirling around Facebook and its founder Mark Zuckerberg in recent years, the social media platform keeps growing. As of December 31, 2018, Facebook had 2.32 billion active users1 around the world, up from 2.27 billion2 at the end of the third quarter that year.

This does include an estimated 83 million fake profiles,3 though, which is just one of the many hazards of Facebook. It should come as no surprise at this point that Facebook is monetizing your involvement with the site.4 As the saying goes, “There’s no free lunch,” and this certainly applies here.

Facebook Primary ‘Product’ Is You

Your hobbies, habits and preferences are meticulously tracked by the site,5 and your personal data is then sold to whomever wants access to it — ostensibly for targeted marketing purposes, but there are no real safeguards in place to prevent scammers and even political agents from using the data, as detailed in Frontline’s “The Facebook Dilemma,” featured above.

In it, Frontline PBS correspondent James Jacoby investigates Facebook’s influence over the democracy of nations, and the lax privacy parameters that allowed for tens of millions of users’ data to be siphoned off and used in an effort to influence the U.S. elections.

The problem is, Facebook has repeatedly been caught mishandling users’ data and/or lying about its collection practices, and it seems precious little is being done to really correct these shortcomings.

Its entire profit model is based on the selling of personal information that facilitates everything from targeted advertising to targeted fraud. For individuals who start using Facebook at a young age, the lifetime data harvest is likely to be inconceivably large, giving those who buy or otherwise access that information an extraordinarily comprehensive picture of the individual in question.

Facebook even has the ability to access your computer or smartphone’s microphone without your knowledge.6 If you suddenly find yourself on the receiving end of ads for products or services you just spoke about out loud, chances are one or more apps are linked into your microphone and are eavesdropping.

The Origin of Facebook Speaks Volumes

While Zuckerberg insists that Facebook was created “to make the world more open and connected,” and “give people the power to build community,”7 his early foray into social media could hardly be called altruistic.

A front-runner to Facebook was a “hot or not” site called FaceMash,8 where people voted on the attractiveness of Harvard students’ photos — photos which, according to Tech Crunch, were obtained and used without permission.9 As noted in Tech Crunch:10

“Blogging about what you were doing as you did it, you wrote:11 'I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of some farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.’ Just in case there was any doubt as to the ugly nature of your intention.

The seeds of Facebook’s global business were thus sown in a crude and consentless game of clickbait whose idea titillated you so much you thought nothing of breaching security, privacy, copyright and decency norms just to grab a few eyeballs …

[T]he core DNA of Facebook’s business sits in that frat boy discovery where your eureka internet moment was finding you could win the attention jackpot by pitting people against each other.”

Indeed, the Frontline report starts out showing early video footage of Zuckerberg in his first office, complete with a beer keg and graffiti on the walls, talking about the surprising success of his social media platform. At the time, in 2005, Facebook had just hit 3 million users.

The video also shows Zuckerberg giving an early Harvard lecture, in which he states that it’s “more useful to make things happen and apologize later than it is to make sure you dot all your i’s now, and not get stuff done.” As noted by Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor, it was Zuckerberg’s “renegade philosophy and disrespect for authority that led to the Facebook motto, 'Move fast and break things.’”

While that motto speaks volumes today, “It wasn’t that they intended to do harm, as much as they were unconcerned about the possibility that harm would result,” McNamee says. Today, one has to wonder whether lack of concern is truly the core problem. Increasingly, it appears Facebook’s leadership know exactly what they’re doing, and the harm — especially the harm they expose users to — appears intentional.

Facebook Fact-Checkers Have Lost Trust in the Site

In a December 2018 article in The Guardian,12 Sam Levin reported that a number of journalists hired as fact-checkers for the site have quit, saying “the company has ignored their concerns and failed to use their expertise to combat misinformation.”

One of them, Brooke Binkowski, told Levin that Facebook is “not taking anything seriously,” and “are more interested in making themselves look good and passing the buck.”13 She also said she “strongly believe[s] that they are spreading fake news on behalf of hostile foreign powers and authoritarian governments as part of their business model.”

Binkowski used to be the managing editor of Snopes, a fact-checking site partnered with Facebook for two years. She has since quit Snopes and started her own fact-checking site. Another Snopes content manager also left the company due to frustrations over Snopes dealings with Facebook, saying she thought Facebook was trying to give the “appearance of trying to prevent damage without actually doing anything.”

She also discovered Snopes was being paid by Facebook, which she felt was “really gross,” as the two companies “have completely different missions.” The fact that Snopes employees are disgusted over Facebook’s apparent disinterest in the facts seems ironic in and of itself, considering Snopes itself has repeatedly come under fire for being ill-equipped to discern facts from lies due to apparent biases.

Most recently, Snopes’ fact-checking of a vaccine injury report by former CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson got an “F,” as they were clearly going to great lengths to simply discredit the report and not actually looking at the factual basis behind it.

According to Attkisson, “[T]he Snopes article debunks claims that were never made and uses one-sided references as its sources — other propagandists — without disclosing their vaccine industry ties.”14 The fact of the matter is, Snopes engages in massive censorship of natural health, and promotes industry talking points regardless of what the scientific reality is.

Facebook Accused of Creating Propaganda

Facebook is also accused of hiring Definers Public Affairs, a PR firm whose use of “anti-Semitic narrative to discredit critics” — in this case a group of protesters called Freedom From Facebook — created “the same kind of propaganda fact-checkers regularly debunk.”15

According to The Guardian,16 Facebook’s media partners (about 40 in all, located across the globe) are split in their views about their fact-checking relationship with Facebook. While some believe it’s a positive step, others claim to have:

“ … [G]rown increasingly resentful of Facebook, especially following revelations that the company had paid a consulting firm to go after opponents by publicizing their association with billionaire Jewish philanthropist George Soros.

The attacks fed into a well-known conspiracy theory about Soros being the hidden hand behind all manner of liberal causes and global events. It was later revealed that Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, had directed her staff to research Soros’ financial interests after he publicly criticized the company.

'Why should we trust Facebook when it’s pushing the same rumors that its own fact-checkers are calling fake news?’ said a current Facebook fact-checker … 'It’s worth asking how do they treat stories about George Soros on the platform knowing they specifically pay people to try to link political enemies to him?’”

A November 15, 2018, article in Tech Crunch reported on the PR scandal, saying:17

“Facebook is facing calls to conduct an external investigation into its own lobbying and PR activities by an aide to billionaire George Soros …

The call follows an explosive investigation, published yesterday by the New York Times based on interviews with more than 50 sources on the company, which paints an ugly picture of how Facebook’s leadership team responded to growing pressure over election interference … including by engaging an external firm to lobby aggressively on its behalf.”

Facebook leaders deny the allegations — Zuckerberg going so far as to claim he didn’t even know his company was working with Definers, or who had hired them.18 Facebook reportedly severed ties with the PR firm shortly after the publication of The New York Times article.

This call for an investigation into Facebook’s PR activities came on the heels of a call for a privacy audit by the European parliament, following the revelation that Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica to misuse users’ data in an effort to influence the U.S. presidential election. November 16, 2018, Wired added to the ongoing story, stating:19

“Freedom From Facebook has garnered renewed attention this week, after The New York Times revealed that Facebook employed an opposition firm called Definers to fight the group Definers reportedly urged journalists to find links between Freedom From Facebook and billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a frequent target of far-right, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

That direct connection didn’t materialize. But where Freedom From Facebook did come from — and how Facebook countered it — does illustrate how seemingly grassroots movements in Washington aren’t always what they first appear.”

According to Wired, Freedom From Facebook was the idea of former hedge fund executive David Magerman, who approached the Open Markets Institute, a think tank headed by Barry Lynn, an outspoken critic of monopolies such as Google and Facebook.

The group has also formed coalitions with other progressive groups, including Citizens Against Monopoly (a nonprofit founded by Open Markets Institute), Jewish Voice for Peace and the Communications Workers of America. In all, the Freedom From Facebook coalition now includes a dozen groups, all of which, according to Open Markets Institute director Sarah Miller, “organize around this fundamental principle that Facebook is too powerful.”

Facebook Fact-Checkers Charged With Protecting Views of Advertisers

According to Binkowski, Facebook was also “pushing reporters to prioritize debunking misinformation that affected Facebook advertisers.”20 This comes as no surprise to me, seeing how my site has been on the receiving end of that agenda.

Below is a screenshot of a Facebook post for one of my Splenda articles, which based on “fact-checking” by Snopes was classified as “False,”21 thereby reducing its potential views by an average of 80 percent.22 This despite the fact that I’m reporting published, peer-reviewed science.

NewsGuard — Another Biased Arbiter of Truth

Another fact-checking site that is positioning itself as a global arbiter of credibility is NewsGuard. A recent article23 in Slate highlights the ramifications of getting a poor NewsGuard rating, as the company has partnered with Microsoft to incorporate its ratings as a feature in Microsoft’s Edge browser.

If a user has the setting enabled, each and every search result, plus all media posts in their Facebook and Twitter feeds, will display NewsGuard’s credibility rating of the site in question. NewsGuard has also partnered with the public library system, so that all library computers will display the ratings.

The Daily Mail Online — one of the world’s largest online newspapers — scored just 3 out of 9 possible criteria, earning them a “red” NewsGuard label, which warns readers that “This website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability.”

A spokesman for the Daily Mail said, “We have only very recently become aware of the NewsGuard startup and are in discussions with them to have this egregiously erroneous classification resolved as soon as possible.” As noted by Slate:

“[W]hat does it mean if NewsGuard, or another fledgling credibility-rating project, begins to wield outsize influence over which news organizations garner the most trust on the internet? …

[T]he Mail’s run-in with NewsGuard may presage a new phase: one in which the big tech platforms’ algorithms begin to incorporate measures of a news outlet’s trustworthiness, while a handful of startups and nonprofits vie to be the arbiters behind those ratings.

The trust industry is quietly taking shape. Should we trust it? … It’s … possible to imagine a nightmare scenario in which the ratings authorities become too powerful, their subjective decisions baked into every algorithm and profoundly shaping what people read.

Media companies would try to game the green shields the same way they gamed Facebook’s algorithm — or worse, curry favor or influence behind the scenes.”

The Credibility War — The Latest Attempt to Stifle Big Business Competition

Indeed, I would argue there’s simply no way one can trust any given organization or company to dictate credibility and preside over what’s true and what’s not. There are typically two or more sides to any story, and money can easily tip the scales on which side gets to be “true” and which is deemed “false.”

In the case of NewsGuard, one does not need to have prophetic vision to see the future writing on the wall. All you have to do is take a look at where its funding is coming from, and you’ll realize the organization is ripe with bias already.

Aside from internet giants Microsoft24 and Google — one of the largest monopolies in the world — NewsGuard is backed by companies that are involved in advertising and marketing of pharmaceutical products, cigarettes and unhealthy junk food to kids.25,26,27,28,29,30,31,32,33 (To learn more, see “The New Plan to Censor Health Websites.”)

Are we really to believe that the profit preferences of such entities will have no influence on NewsGuard’s ratings of individuals, organizations and companies that criticize the safety or effectiveness of those products?

In the final analysis, it appears NewsGuard is just another big business aimed at keeping the chemical, drug and food industries, as well as mainstream media, intact by discrediting and eliminating unwanted competition, which likely includes yours truly and many others who empower you with information that helps you take control of your health.

Is It Time to Forget Facebook? Take the Survey Below and Let Me Know.

Over time, I’ve become increasingly disenchanted with Facebook myself, and I wonder if perhaps I’m doing more harm than good by being a part of it. There’s no denying that by being on Facebook, you’re exposing yourself to privacy intrusions.

Then again, as described by Tech Crunch,34 these intrusions will continue to occur even after you close your Facebook account, and take place even if you never had one in the first place. In the end, it seems the very existence of Facebook is the problem. As Tech Crunch notes, “Essentially, Facebook’s founder is saying that the price for Facebook’s existence is pervasive surveillance of everyone, everywhere, with or without your permission.”

You may want to consider taking a sabbatical from Facebook. According to a recent study35 by researchers at New York University and Stanford, Facebook users report feeling happier and more satisfied with life after leaving the platform for a month. They were also less likely to report feelings of anxiety, depression and loneliness — a finding that supports the idea that social media is a poor substitute for actual face-to-face interactions.

Still, I’m seriously considering leaving the platform, and devising other ways to stay in touch with readers. Before I do that, however, I am conducting a survey below to get a feel for what you think about my presence there. Take the survey now to let me know your thoughts.

from Articles http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/02/13/is-it-time-to-forget-facebook.aspx source https://niapurenaturecom.tumblr.com/post/182775738621

0 notes

jerrytackettca · 6 years ago

Text

Is It Time to Forget Facebook?

This does include an estimated 83 million fake profiles,3 though, which is just one of the many hazards of Facebook. It should come as no surprise at this point that Facebook is monetizing your involvement with the site.4 As the saying goes, "There's no free lunch," and this certainly applies here.

Facebook Primary 'Product' Is You

In it, Frontline PBS correspondent James Jacoby investigates Facebook's influence over the democracy of nations, and the lax privacy parameters that allowed for tens of millions of users' data to be siphoned off and used in an effort to influence the U.S. elections.

The problem is, Facebook has repeatedly been caught mishandling users' data and/or lying about its collection practices, and it seems precious little is being done to really correct these shortcomings.

Facebook even has the ability to access your computer or smartphone's microphone without your knowledge.6 If you suddenly find yourself on the receiving end of ads for products or services you just spoke about out loud, chances are one or more apps are linked into your microphone and are eavesdropping.

The Origin of Facebook Speaks Volumes

While Zuckerberg insists that Facebook was created "to make the world more open and connected," and "give people the power to build community,"7 his early foray into social media could hardly be called altruistic.

A front-runner to Facebook was a "hot or not" site called FaceMash,8 where people voted on the attractiveness of Harvard students' photos — photos which, according to Tech Crunch, were obtained and used without permission.9 As noted in Tech Crunch:10

"Blogging about what you were doing as you did it, you wrote:11 'I almost want to put some of these faces next to pictures of some farm animals and have people vote on which is more attractive.' Just in case there was any doubt as to the ugly nature of your intention.

The seeds of Facebook's global business were thus sown in a crude and consentless game of clickbait whose idea titillated you so much you thought nothing of breaching security, privacy, copyright and decency norms just to grab a few eyeballs …

[T]he core DNA of Facebook's business sits in that frat boy discovery where your eureka internet moment was finding you could win the attention jackpot by pitting people against each other."

The video also shows Zuckerberg giving an early Harvard lecture, in which he states that it's "more useful to make things happen and apologize later than it is to make sure you dot all your i's now, and not get stuff done." As noted by Roger McNamee, an early Facebook investor, it was Zuckerberg's "renegade philosophy and disrespect for authority that led to the Facebook motto, 'Move fast and break things.'"

While that motto speaks volumes today, "It wasn't that they intended to do harm, as much as they were unconcerned about the possibility that harm would result," McNamee says. Today, one has to wonder whether lack of concern is truly the core problem. Increasingly, it appears Facebook's leadership know exactly what they're doing, and the harm — especially the harm they expose users to — appears intentional.

Facebook Fact-Checkers Have Lost Trust in the Site

In a December 2018 article in The Guardian,12 Sam Levin reported that a number of journalists hired as fact-checkers for the site have quit, saying "the company has ignored their concerns and failed to use their expertise to combat misinformation."

One of them, Brooke Binkowski, told Levin that Facebook is "not taking anything seriously," and "are more interested in making themselves look good and passing the buck."13 She also said she "strongly believe[s] that they are spreading fake news on behalf of hostile foreign powers and authoritarian governments as part of their business model."

Binkowski used to be the managing editor of Snopes, a fact-checking site partnered with Facebook for two years. She has since quit Snopes and started her own fact-checking site. Another Snopes content manager also left the company due to frustrations over Snopes dealings with Facebook, saying she thought Facebook was trying to give the "appearance of trying to prevent damage without actually doing anything."

She also discovered Snopes was being paid by Facebook, which she felt was "really gross," as the two companies "have completely different missions." The fact that Snopes employees are disgusted over Facebook's apparent disinterest in the facts seems ironic in and of itself, considering Snopes itself has repeatedly come under fire for being ill-equipped to discern facts from lies due to apparent biases.

Most recently, Snopes' fact-checking of a vaccine injury report by former CBS correspondent Sharyl Attkisson got an "F," as they were clearly going to great lengths to simply discredit the report and not actually looking at the factual basis behind it.

According to Attkisson, "[T]he Snopes article debunks claims that were never made and uses one-sided references as its sources — other propagandists — without disclosing their vaccine industry ties."14 The fact of the matter is, Snopes engages in massive censorship of natural health, and promotes industry talking points regardless of what the scientific reality is.

Facebook Accused of Creating Propaganda

Facebook is also accused of hiring Definers Public Affairs, a PR firm whose use of "anti-Semitic narrative to discredit critics" — in this case a group of protesters called Freedom From Facebook — created "the same kind of propaganda fact-checkers regularly debunk."15

According to The Guardian,16 Facebook's media partners (about 40 in all, located across the globe) are split in their views about their fact-checking relationship with Facebook. While some believe it's a positive step, others claim to have:

" … [G]rown increasingly resentful of Facebook, especially following revelations that the company had paid a consulting firm to go after opponents by publicizing their association with billionaire Jewish philanthropist George Soros.

The attacks fed into a well-known conspiracy theory about Soros being the hidden hand behind all manner of liberal causes and global events. It was later revealed that Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, had directed her staff to research Soros' financial interests after he publicly criticized the company.

'Why should we trust Facebook when it's pushing the same rumors that its own fact-checkers are calling fake news?' said a current Facebook fact-checker … 'It's worth asking how do they treat stories about George Soros on the platform knowing they specifically pay people to try to link political enemies to him?'"

A November 15, 2018, article in Tech Crunch reported on the PR scandal, saying:17

"Facebook is facing calls to conduct an external investigation into its own lobbying and PR activities by an aide to billionaire George Soros …

The call follows an explosive investigation, published yesterday by the New York Times based on interviews with more than 50 sources on the company, which paints an ugly picture of how Facebook's leadership team responded to growing pressure over election interference … including by engaging an external firm to lobby aggressively on its behalf."

Facebook leaders deny the allegations — Zuckerberg going so far as to claim he didn't even know his company was working with Definers, or who had hired them.18 Facebook reportedly severed ties with the PR firm shortly after the publication of The New York Times article.

This call for an investigation into Facebook's PR activities came on the heels of a call for a privacy audit by the European parliament, following the revelation that Facebook allowed Cambridge Analytica to misuse users' data in an effort to influence the U.S. presidential election. November 16, 2018, Wired added to the ongoing story, stating:19

"Freedom From Facebook has garnered renewed attention this week, after The New York Times revealed that Facebook employed an opposition firm called Definers to fight the group Definers reportedly urged journalists to find links between Freedom From Facebook and billionaire philanthropist George Soros, a frequent target of far-right, anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

That direct connection didn't materialize. But where Freedom From Facebook did come from — and how Facebook countered it — does illustrate how seemingly grassroots movements in Washington aren't always what they first appear."

The group has also formed coalitions with other progressive groups, including Citizens Against Monopoly (a nonprofit founded by Open Markets Institute), Jewish Voice for Peace and the Communications Workers of America. In all, the Freedom From Facebook coalition now includes a dozen groups, all of which, according to Open Markets Institute director Sarah Miller, "organize around this fundamental principle that Facebook is too powerful."

Facebook Fact-Checkers Charged With Protecting Views of Advertisers

According to Binkowski, Facebook was also "pushing reporters to prioritize debunking misinformation that affected Facebook advertisers."20 This comes as no surprise to me, seeing how my site has been on the receiving end of that agenda.

Below is a screenshot of a Facebook post for one of my Splenda articles, which based on "fact-checking" by Snopes was classified as "False,"21 thereby reducing its potential views by an average of 80 percent.22 This despite the fact that I'm reporting published, peer-reviewed science.

NewsGuard — Another Biased Arbiter of Truth

If a user has the setting enabled, each and every search result, plus all media posts in their Facebook and Twitter feeds, will display NewsGuard's credibility rating of the site in question. NewsGuard has also partnered with the public library system, so that all library computers will display the ratings.

The Daily Mail Online — one of the world's largest online newspapers — scored just 3 out of 9 possible criteria, earning them a "red" NewsGuard label, which warns readers that "This website generally fails to maintain basic standards of accuracy and accountability."

A spokesman for the Daily Mail said, "We have only very recently become aware of the NewsGuard startup and are in discussions with them to have this egregiously erroneous classification resolved as soon as possible." As noted by Slate:

"[W]hat does it mean if NewsGuard, or another fledgling credibility-rating project, begins to wield outsize influence over which news organizations garner the most trust on the internet? …

[T]he Mail's run-in with NewsGuard may presage a new phase: one in which the big tech platforms' algorithms begin to incorporate measures of a news outlet's trustworthiness, while a handful of startups and nonprofits vie to be the arbiters behind those ratings.

The trust industry is quietly taking shape. Should we trust it? … It's … possible to imagine a nightmare scenario in which the ratings authorities become too powerful, their subjective decisions baked into every algorithm and profoundly shaping what people read.

Media companies would try to game the green shields the same way they gamed Facebook's algorithm — or worse, curry favor or influence behind the scenes."

The Credibility War — The Latest Attempt to Stifle Big Business Competition

Indeed, I would argue there's simply no way one can trust any given organization or company to dictate credibility and preside over what's true and what's not. There are typically two or more sides to any story, and money can easily tip the scales on which side gets to be "true" and which is deemed "false."

In the case of NewsGuard, one does not need to have prophetic vision to see the future writing on the wall. All you have to do is take a look at where its funding is coming from, and you'll realize the organization is ripe with bias already.

Are we really to believe that the profit preferences of such entities will have no influence on NewsGuard's ratings of individuals, organizations and companies that criticize the safety or effectiveness of those products?

Is It Time to Forget Facebook? Take the Survey Below and Let Me Know.

Over time, I've become increasingly disenchanted with Facebook myself, and I wonder if perhaps I'm doing more harm than good by being a part of it. There's no denying that by being on Facebook, you're exposing yourself to privacy intrusions.

Then again, as described by Tech Crunch,34 these intrusions will continue to occur even after you close your Facebook account, and take place even if you never had one in the first place. In the end, it seems the very existence of Facebook is the problem. As Tech Crunch notes, "Essentially, Facebook's founder is saying that the price for Facebook's existence is pervasive surveillance of everyone, everywhere, with or without your permission."

Still, I'm seriously considering leaving the platform, and devising other ways to stay in touch with readers. Before I do that, however, I am conducting a survey below to get a feel for what you think about my presence there. Take the survey now to let me know your thoughts.

from http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/02/13/is-it-time-to-forget-facebook.aspx

source http://niapurenaturecom.weebly.com/blog/is-it-time-to-forget-facebook

0 notes

jakehglover · 6 years ago

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Is It Time to Forget Facebook?

youtube

This does include an estimated 83 million fake profiles,3 though, which is just one of the many hazards of Facebook. It should come as no surprise at this point that Facebook is monetizing your involvement with the site.4 As the saying goes, "There's no free lunch," and this certainly applies here.

Facebook Primary 'Product' Is You

The Origin of Facebook Speaks Volumes

[T]he core DNA of Facebook's business sits in that frat boy discovery where your eureka internet moment was finding you could win the attention jackpot by pitting people against each other."

Facebook Fact-Checkers Have Lost Trust in the Site

Binkowski used to be the managing editor of Snopes, a fact-checking site partnered with Facebook for two years. She has since quit Snopes and started her own fact-checking site. Another Snopes content manager also left the company due to frustrations over Snopes dealings with Facebook, saying she thought Facebook was trying to give the "appearance of trying to prevent damage without actually doing anything."

Facebook Accused of Creating Propaganda

The attacks fed into a well-known conspiracy theory about Soros being the hidden hand behind all manner of liberal causes and global events. It was later revealed that Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, had directed her staff to research Soros' financial interests after he publicly criticized the company.

A November 15, 2018, article in Tech Crunch reported on the PR scandal, saying:17

"Facebook is facing calls to conduct an external investigation into its own lobbying and PR activities by an aide to billionaire George Soros …

The call follows an explosive investigation, published yesterday by the New York Times based on interviews with more than 50 sources on the company, which paints an ugly picture of how Facebook's leadership team responded to growing pressure over election interference … including by engaging an external firm to lobby aggressively on its behalf."

The group has also formed coalitions with other progressive groups, including Citizens Against Monopoly (a nonprofit founded by Open Markets Institute), Jewish Voice for Peace and the Communications Workers of America. In all, the Freedom From Facebook coalition now includes a dozen groups, all of which, according to Open Markets Institute director Sarah Miller, "organize around this fundamental principle that Facebook is too powerful."

Facebook Fact-Checkers Charged With Protecting Views of Advertisers

NewsGuard — Another Biased Arbiter of Truth

"[W]hat does it mean if NewsGuard, or another fledgling credibility-rating project, begins to wield outsize influence over which news organizations garner the most trust on the internet? …

Media companies would try to game the green shields the same way they gamed Facebook's algorithm — or worse, curry favor or influence behind the scenes."

The Credibility War — The Latest Attempt to Stifle Big Business Competition

Is It Time to Forget Facebook? Take the Survey Below and Let Me Know.

Then again, as described by Tech Crunch,34 these intrusions will continue to occur even after you close your Facebook account, and take place even if you never had one in the first place. In the end, it seems the very existence of Facebook is the problem. As Tech Crunch notes, "Essentially, Facebook's founder is saying that the price for Facebook's existence is pervasive surveillance of everyone, everywhere, with or without your permission."

from HealthyLife via Jake Glover on Inoreader http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2019/02/13/is-it-time-to-forget-facebook.aspx

0 notes

un-enfant-immature · 6 years ago

Text

Former Facebook security chief Alex Stamos: Being a CSO can be a ‘crappy job’

Alex Stamos has been at the helm of some of the world’s most powerful companies for the past half-decade and is widely regarded as one of the smartest people working in the security space.

Now, just a month into his new gig as an academic, he can look back at his time with a dose of brutal honesty.

“It’s kinda a crappy job to be a chief security officer,” said Stamos, Facebook’s former security chief, in an interview with TechCrunch at Disrupt SF on Thursday.

“It’s like being a [chief financial officer] before accounting was invented,” he said.

“When you decide to take on the [chief security officer] title, you decide that you’re going to run the risk of having decisions made above you or issues created by tens of thousands of people making decisions that will be stapled to your resume,” he said.

Stamos, who recently joined Stanford University after three years as Facebook’s security chief. Before then, he was Yahoo’s chief information security officer for less than a year before he departed the company, reportedly in conflict with then-Yahoo chief executive Marissa Meyer over the company’s complicity with a secret government surveillance program.

His name is synonymous to many as a fierce defender of user security and rights, but he was at at the helm when both his former employers were hit by security scandals. Yahoo had a a three billion user data breach, and Facebook with the Cambridge Analytica voter profiling incident. Although inherited, he said it wasn’t going to “shirk” the blame.

“I was the CSO when all this stuff happened — it was my responsibility,” he said.

“I also hope I was able to make things better,” he said. “If you’re making individual decisions that you believe are ethical and moral that are pushing the ball in the right direction, in the end if things are imperfect, you have to live with yourself and continue to do good things.”

Alex Stamos says being a CSO today is like being a CFO before accounting was invented #TCDisrupt pic.twitter.com/ryKIKZySUp

— TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) September 6, 2018

He said most companies have to navigate security, but also privacy and misuse of their products.

Stamos admits that while he came from a “traditional CSO” background, he quickly learned that the the vast majority of harm caused by technology “does not have any interesting technical component.”

Speaking to disinformation, child abuse, and harassment, he said that it’s the “technically correct use of the things we build that cause harm.”

He said that the industry needs to vastly expand how companies deal with issues that encompass but don’t fall within the strict realm of cybersecurity. “There’s not really a field around it,” he said, talking to the need to redefine “cybersecurity” to also include issues of trust, safety, and privacy — three things that are important for companies are working to ensure, but don’t necessarily fit into the traditional security model.

“There’s not a tech company starting up right now that is not going to have to worry about these trust, safety and privacy issues,” he said. “And hopefully we can take some of those lessons and spread them out a bit more.”

“I’ve learned a lot of things from the failures I’ve seen up close and I want other people to learn about them,” he said. That, he said, is one of the things he wants to help teach at Stanford, where he’s likely to stay for some time.

Asked if he would ever go back to a previous role as a chief security officer, “not for quite a long time,” he said.

#TechCrunch

0 notes

anexplanationofunfortunateevents · 7 years ago

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things Americans should know about Brexit

To put concerns about Russian election interference in context, travel back with me to a simpler, more innocent time, and a chillier, rainier place: the Brexit vote in July of 2016, where the UK narrowly voted to pull out of the European Union.

The public face of Brexit is Nigel Farage, associate of both Donald Trump and Julian Assange, a buffoonish bigot who makes wildly implausible promises of short-term economic gains. He and his movement have been appeased by the establishment right, which fears both the wrath of Farage’s racist enthusiasts and the general public disapproval they would receive if their own economic agenda came into clear focus for voters. The far left is represented by a cantankerous ‘70s holdover who begrudgingly pays lip service to opposing the nativist right, but refuses to embrace the interests of the center-left-dominated reality-based community. The polls suggest that Farage and his movement will lose, but as time goes on, it becomes more and more of a nailbiter…..

Uncanny, right?

Unlike in America, the reality-based community didn’t have a point person, which may be why the short-sighted nativists squeaked out a narrow majority of the votes, despite the polling which gave the edge to Remain. Also unlike in America, the rules of a UK referendum are that if your side gets more votes you win. (Those wacky Brits, with their “maths!”)

Foreign policy experts, at the time, were pointing out that Brexit was a win for Putin’s long-term hopes of smashing apart the alliances which keep the western world strong and that the tide of disinformation which swayed squish voters toward the nativists was his MO.

Later, journalists would start uncovering the extent of Russian interference in the Brexit vote. Propaganda wasn’t dumped indiscriminately. It was targeted at the most susceptible voters, at least some of whom seem to have been identified through abuses of Facebook data by Cambridge Analytica, a shady data analysis firm financed by a capo of the American hard right.

Eventually, members of parliament, intelligence officers, and journalists would start openly questioning whether Russian intelligence had focused exclusively on the minds of voters. More sinister in hindsight than it was at the time, the UK’s voter registration website crashed in the last few minutes before the registration deadline. This may have been due to a DDoS attack or due to more voters trying to register than expected. In turn, that higher traffic may have been driven by disinformation on Facebook that registered voters would have to register again to vote on the referendum, which was not true.

The effect of this was unclear. The deadline was extended for a couple of days, so this may or may not have kept people from registering. Most who wanted to probably did, but people might not have heard about the extension, or might have thought they finished the form but the data didn’t save properly. This certainly could have been an unintentional tech failure. But if you were a cyber criminal who wanted to disenfranchise a statistically significant number of those people most likely to vote Remain - say, young people and new citizens - a last-minute attack on the voter registration website would be a good way to do it.

Regardless of how the damage was done, or who was responsible for it, the nativists got their way and now their lies are falling apart.

These blockbuster reports in the British press didn’t start happening right after the Brexit vote, or even after the US election. The issue starts gaining traction outside of foreign policy circles after the American intelligence community started putting out reports on the 2016 election. So, after the US shared details on what happened to us, people in the UK got a better grasp on what specifically had happened to them. This is a pattern which people who aren’t Democrats or even Americans have noticed, and it’s a hell of a lot more concrete than “people feel hostile dissatisfaction with the establishment because something something neoliberalism.”

UK politics, at least, have taken a moderately less discouraging turn. In 2017, after this narrative of the propaganda campaign had some time to sink in for the public, the UK had a parliamentary election. Labour did better than expected, which is great, but what’s better is that the nativist know-nothings just got creamed. That’s unsurprising. As we know thanks to science, when you explain to people that a disinformation campaign is happening, they’re better at resisting it. (So if you’re tempted to let the Obama administration entirely off the hook by claiming their choices last year were inconsequential….do what you gotta do to get through the day, just, stay open to, like, scientific reality if/when we come out the other side of this.)

These parallels don’t add up to one tidy intentional conspiracy. I mean, Cambridge Analytica is creepy and the Kremlin is a real problem. But some of them are more about the conditions which are necessary for this kind of operation to succeed: a critical mass of extremists who are willing to validate and spread propaganda, a general population which is susceptible to that propaganda, and a voting infrastructure which a) isn’t committed enough to making it easy for all citizens to vote and b) is somewhat digitized and not entirely secure.

That’s depressing, sure, but it’s also encouraging because we can do something about it. A couple of concrete things you can do right now:

Take a minute to read up on how to spot fake news so you don’t pass it on.

Start reminding people you know to register to vote now, so that we can avoid the traditional last-minute frenzy before next fall’s midterms.

#brexit #russia #democracy #trump russia

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dilaracathy · 4 years ago

Link

To kick off ConsenSys’ Ethereal Summit on Thursday, Unchained Podcast host Laura Shin held a cozy fireside chat with Zhao who, to mark the occasion, was wearing a personalized football shirt emblazoned with the COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER ☎️+1(845).(217).(1340) brand.

Scheduled for 45 minutes, Zhao spent most of it explaining how libra and China’s digital yuan were unlikely to be competitors to existing stablecoin providers; how COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER 1844-907-0583’s smart chain wouldn’t tread on Ethereum’s toes – “that depends on the definition of competing,” he said – and how COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER 1844-907-0583had an incentive to keep its newly acquired CoinMarketCap independent from the exchange.

There were only five minutes left on the clock. Zhao was looking confident; he had just batted away a thorny question about an ongoing lawsuit. It was looking like the home stretch.

Then it hit. Shin asked the one question Zhao really didn’t want to have to answer, but many want to know: Where is COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBERr 1844-907-0583’s headquarters?

This seemingly simple question is actually more complex. Until February, COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER1844-907-0583was considered to be based in Malta. That changed when the island European nation announced that, no, COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER 1844-907-0583is not under its jurisdiction. Since then COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER 1844-907-0583has not said just where, exactly, it is now headquartered.

Little wonder that when asked Zhao reddened; he stammered. He looked off-camera, possibly to an aide. “Well, I think what this is is the beauty of the blockchain, right, so you don’t have to … like where’s the Bitcoin office, because Bitcoin doesn’t have an office,” he said.

COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER { ☎️+1(845).(217).(1340) } |COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER

The line trailed off, then inspiration hit. “What kind of horse is a car?” Zhao asked. COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER 1844-907-0583 has loads of offices, he continued, with staff in 50 countries. It was a new type of organization that doesn’t need registered bank accounts and postal addresses.

“Wherever I sit, is going to be the COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER ☎️+1(845).(217).(1340) office. Wherever I need somebody, is going to be the COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER 1844-907-0583 office,” he said.

Zhao may have been hoping the host would move onto something easier. But Shin wasn’t finished: “But even to do things like to handle, you know, taxes for your employees, like, I think you need a registered business entity, so like why are you obfuscating it, why not just be open about it like, you know, the headquarters is registered in this place, why not just say that?”

Zhao glanced away again, possibly at the person behind the camera. Their program had less than two minutes remaining. “It’s not that we don’t want to admit it, it’s not that we want to obfuscate it or we want to kind of hide it. We’re not hiding, we’re in the open,” he said.

Shin interjected: “What are you saying that you’re already some kind of DAO [decentralized autonomous organization]? I mean what are you saying? Because it’s not the old way [having a headquarters], it’s actually the current way … I actually don’t know what you are or what you’re claiming to be.”

Zhao said COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER 1844-907-0583isn’t a traditional company, more a large team of people “that works together for a common goal.” He added: “To be honest, if we classified as a DAO, then there’s going to be a lot of debate about why we’re not a DAO. So I don’t want to go there, either.”

“I mean nobody would call you guys a DAO,” Shin said, likely disappointed that this wasn’t the interview where Zhao made his big reveal.

Time was up. For an easy question to close, Shin asked where Zhao was working from during the coronavirus pandemic.

“I’m in Asia,” Zhao said. The blank white wall behind him didn’t provide any clues about where in Asia he might be. Shin asked if he could say which country – after all, it’s the Earth’s largest continent.

“I prefer not to disclose that. I think that’s my own privacy,” he cut in, ending the interview.

It was a provocative way to start the biggest cryptocurrency and blockchain event of the year.

In the opening session of Consensus: Distributed this week, Lawrence Summers was asked by my co-host Naomi Brockwell about protecting people’s privacy once currencies go digital. His answer: “I think the problems we have now with money involve too much privacy.”

President Clinton’s former Treasury secretary, now President Emeritus at Harvard, referenced the 500-euro note, which bore the nickname “The Bin Laden,” to argue the un-traceability of cash empowers wealthy criminals to finance themselves. “Of all the important freedoms,” he continued, “the ability to possess, transfer and do business with multi-million dollar sums of money anonymously seems to me to be one of the least important.” Summers ended the segment by saying that “if I have provoked others, I will have served my purpose.”

You’re reading Money Reimagined, a weekly look at the technological, economic and social events and trends that are redefining our relationship with money and transforming the global financial system. You can subscribe to this and all of CoinDesk’s newsletters here.

That he did. Among the more than 20,000 registered for the weeklong virtual experience was a large contingent of libertarian-minded folks who see state-backed monitoring of their money as an affront to their property rights.

But with due respect to a man who has had prodigious influence on international economic policymaking, it’s not wealthy bitcoiners for whom privacy matters. It matters for all humanity and, most importantly, for the poor.

Now, as the world grapples with how to collect and disseminate public health information in a way that both saves lives and preserves civil liberties, the principle of privacy deserves to be elevated in importance.

Just this week, the U.S. Senate voted to extend the 9/11-era Patriot Act and failed to pass a proposed amendment to prevent the Federal Bureau of Investigation from monitoring our online browsing without a warrant. Meanwhile, our heightened dependence on online social connections during COVID-19 isolation has further empowered a handful of internet platforms that are incorporating troves of our personal data into sophisticated predictive behavior models. This process of hidden control is happening right now, not in some future “Westworld”-like existence.

Digital currencies will only worsen this situation. If they are added to this comprehensive surveillance infrastructure, it could well spell the end of the civil liberties that underpin Western civilization.

Yes, freedom matters

Please don’t read this, Secretary Summers, as some privileged anti-taxation take or a self-interested what’s-mine-is-mine demand that “the government stay away from my money.”

Money is just the instrument here. What matters is whether our transactions, our exchanges of goods and services and the source of our economic and social value, should be monitored and manipulated by government and corporate owners of centralized databases. It’s why critics of China’s digital currency plans rightly worry about a “panopticon” and why, in the wake of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, there was an initial backlash against Facebook launching its libra currency.

Writers such as Shoshana Zuboff and Jared Lanier have passionately argued that our subservience to the hidden algorithms of what I like to call “GoogAzonBook” is diminishing our free will. Resisting that is important, not just to preserve the ideal of “the self” but also to protect the very functioning of society.

Markets, for one, are pointless without free will. In optimizing resource allocation, they presume autonomy among those who make up the market. Free will, which I’ll define as the ability to lawfully transact on my own terms without knowingly or unknowingly acting in someone else’s interests to my detriment, is a bedrock of market democracies. Without a sufficient right to privacy, it disintegrates – and in the digital age, that can happen very rapidly.

Also, as I’ve argued elsewhere, losing privacy undermines the fungibility of money. Each digital dollar should be substitutable for another. If our transactions carry a history and authorities can target specific notes or tokens for seizure because of their past involvement in illicit activity, then some dollars become less valuable than other dollars.

The excluded

But to fully comprehend the harm done by encroachments into financial privacy, look to the world’s poor.

An estimated 1.7 billion adults are denied a bank account because they can’t furnish the information that banks’ anti-money laundering (AML) officers need, either because their government’s identity infrastructure is untrusted or because of the danger to them of furnishing such information to kleptocratic regimes. Unable to let banks monitor them, they’re excluded from the global economy’s dominant payment and savings system – victims of a system that prioritizes surveillance over privacy.

Misplaced priorities also contribute to the “derisking” problem faced by Caribbean and Latin American countries, where investment inflows have slowed and financial costs have risen in the past decade. America’s gatekeeping correspondent banks, fearful of heavy fines like the one imposed on HSBC for its involvement in a money laundering scandal, have raised the bar on the kind of personal information that regional banks must obtain from their local clients.

And where’s the payoff? Despite this surveillance system, the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime estimates that between $800 billion and $2 trillion, or 2%-5% of global gross domestic product, is laundered annually worldwide. The Panama Papers case shows how the rich and powerful easily use lawyers, shell companies, tax havens and transaction obfuscation to get around surveillance. The poor are just excluded from the system.

Caring about privacy

Solutions are coming that wouldn’t require abandoning law enforcement efforts. Self-sovereign identity models and zero-knowledge proofs, for example, grant control over data to the individuals who generate it, allowing them to provide sufficient proof of a clean record without revealing sensitive personal information. But such innovations aren’t getting nearly enough attention.

Few officials inside developed country regulatory agencies seem to acknowledge the cost of cutting off 1.7 billion poor from the financial system. Yet, their actions foster poverty and create fertile conditions for terrorism and drug-running, the very crimes they seek to contain. The reaction to evidence of persistent money laundering is nearly always to make bank secrecy laws even more demanding. Exhibit A: Europe’s new AML 5 directive.

To be sure, in the Consensus discussion that followed the Summers interview, it was pleasing to hear another former U.S. official take a more accommodative view of privacy. Former Commodities and Futures Trading Commission Chairman Christopher Giancarlo said that “getting the privacy balance right” is a “design imperative” for the digital dollar concept he is actively promoting.

But to hold both governments and corporations to account on that design, we need an aware, informed public that recognizes the risks of ceding their civil liberties to governments or to GoogAzonBook.

Let’s talk about this, people.

A missing asterisk

Control for all variables. At the end of the day, the dollar’s standing as the world’s reserve currency ultimately comes down to how much the rest of the world trusts the United States to continue its de facto leadership of the world economy. In the past, that assessment was based on how well the U.S. militarily or otherwise dealt with human- and state-led threats to international commerce such as Soviet expansionism or terrorism. But in the COVID-19 era only one thing matters: how well it is leading the fight against the pandemic.

So if you’ve already seen the charts below and you’re wondering what they’re doing in a newsletter about the battle for the future of money, that’s why. They were inspired by a staged White House lawn photo-op Tuesday, where President Trump was flanked by a huge banner that dealt quite literally with a question of American leadership. It read, “America Leads the World in Testing.” That’s a claim that’s technically correct, but one that surely demands a big red asterisk. When you’re the third-largest country by population – not to mention the richest – having the highest number of tests is not itself much of an achievement. The claim demands a per capita adjustment. Here’s how things look, first in absolute terms, then adjusted for tests per million inhabitants.

COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER ☎️+1(845).(217).(1340) has frozen funds linked to Upbit’s prior $50 million data breach after the hackers tried to liquidate a part of the gains. In a recent tweet, Whale Alert warned COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER ☎️+1(845).(217).(1340) that a transaction of 137 ETH (about $28,000) had moved from an address linked to the Upbit hacker group to its wallets.

Less than an hour after the transaction was flagged, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER1844-907-0583 announced that the exchange had frozen the funds. He also added that COINBASE CUSTOMER CARE NUMBER 1844-907-0583is getting in touch with Upbit to investigate the transaction. In November 2019, Upbit suffered an attack in which hackers stole 342,000 ETH, accounting for approximately $50 million. The hackers managed to take the funds by transferring the ETH from Upbit’s hot wallet to an anonymous crypto address.

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binancecustomercarenumber · 5 years ago

Text

Binance support Number☎+1844*𝟗𝟏𝟖𝟎𝟓𝟖𝟏

18449180581 Binance.us recognizes Customer importances care of Number Awareness within m To kick off ConsenSys' Ethereal Summit on Thursday, Unchained Podcast host Laura Shin held a cozy fireside chat with Zhao who, to mark the occasion, was wearing a personalized football shirt emblazoned with the Binance support number 1844-918-0581 brand. 𝟏𝟖𝟒𝟒 𝟗𝟏𝟖𝟎 𝟓𝟖𝟏

Scheduled for 45 minutes, Zhao spent most of it explaining how libra and China's digital yuan were unlikely to be competitors to existing stablecoin providers; how Binance support number 1800-561-8025's smart chain wouldn't tread on Ethereum's toes – "that depends on the definition of competing," he said – and how Binance support number 1800-561-8025had an incentive to keep its newly acquired CoinMarketCap independent from the exchange.

There were only five minutes left on the clock. Zhao was looking confident; he had just batted away a thorny question about an ongoing lawsuit. It was looking like the home stretch.

Then it hit. Shin asked the one question Zhao really didn't want to have to answer, but many want to know: Where is Binance support number 1888-310-7194's headquarters?

This seemingly simple question is actually more complex. Until February, Binance support number 1800-561-8025was considered to be based in Malta. That changed when the island European nation announced that, no, Binance support number 1800-561-8025is not under its jurisdiction. Since then Binance support number 1800-561-8025has not said just where, exactly, it is now headquartered.

Little wonder that when asked Zhao reddened; he stammered. He looked off-camera, possibly to an aide. "Well, I think what this is is the beauty of the blockchain, right, so you don't have to ... like where's the Bitcoin office, because Bitcoin doesn't have an office," he said.

The line trailed off, then inspiration hit. "What kind of horse is a car?" Zhao asked. Binance support number 1800-561-8025has loads of offices, he continued, with staff in 50 countries. It was a new type of organization that doesn't need registered bank accounts and postal addresses.

"Wherever I sit, is going to be the Binance support number 1800-561-8025office. Wherever I need somebody, is going to be the Binance support number 1800-561-8025office," he said.

Zhao may have been hoping the host would move onto something easier. But Shin wasn't finished: "But even to do things like to handle, you know, taxes for your employees, like, I think you need a registered business entity, so like why are you obfuscating it, why not just be open about it like, you know, the headquarters is registered in this place, why not just say that?"

Zhao glanced away again, possibly at the person behind the camera. Their program had less than two minutes remaining. "It's not that we don't want to admit it, it's not that we want to obfuscate it or we want to kind of hide it. We're not hiding, we're in the open," he said.

Shin interjected: "What are you saying that you're already some kind of DAO [decentralized autonomous organization]? I mean what are you saying? Because it's not the old way [having a headquarters], it's actually the current way ... I actually don't know what you are or what you're claiming to be."

Zhao said Binance support number 1800-561-8025isn't a traditional company, more a large team of people "that works together for a common goal." He added: "To be honest, if we classified as a DAO, then there's going to be a lot of debate about why we're not a DAO. So I don't want to go there, either."

"I mean nobody would call you guys a DAO," Shin said, likely disappointed that this wasn't the interview where Zhao made his big reveal.

Time was up. For an easy question to close, Shin asked where Zhao was working from during the coronavirus pandemic.

"I'm in Asia," Zhao said. The blank white wall behind him didn't provide any clues about where in Asia he might be. Shin asked if he could say which country – after all, it's the Earth's largest continent.

"I prefer not to disclose that. I think that's my own privacy," he cut in, ending the interview.

It was a provocative way to start the biggest cryptocurrency and blockchain event of the year.

Yes, freedom matters

Please don’t read this, Secretary Summers, as some privileged anti-taxation take or a self-interested what’s-mine-is-mine demand that “the government stay away from my money.”

The excluded

But to fully comprehend the harm done by encroachments into financial privacy, look to the world’s poor.

Caring about privacy

But to hold both governments and corporations to account on that design, we need an aware, informed public that recognizes the risks of ceding their civil liberties to governments or to GoogAzonBook.

Let’s talk about this, people.

A missing asterisk

Binance support number 1800-561-8025has frozen funds linked to Upbit’s prior $50 million data breach after the hackers tried to liquidate a part of the gains. In a recent tweet, Whale Alert warned Binance support number 1800-561-8025that a transaction of 137 ETH (about $28,000) had moved from an address linked to the Upbit hacker group to its wallets.

Less than an hour after the transaction was flagged, Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance support number 1800-561-8025 announced that the exchange had frozen the funds. He also added that Binance support number 1800-561-8025is getting in touch with Upbit to investigate the transaction. In November 2019, Upbit suffered an attack in which hackers stole 342,000 ETH, accounting for approximately $50 million. The hackers managed to take the funds by transferring the ETH from Upbit’s hot wallet to an anonymous crypto address.

0 notes