#that isn’t false information specifically spread to troll people

[lusi-raul]

Are we gonna have another sibling duo atleast in rp? Lol I still don’t know if Bagi is related to Cellbit in anyway. People spreading so much misinformation I don’t know what to believe or what’s true anymore 😂

[anachrosims]

Apparently asking politely not to spread false information is worthy of being called spineless, and having false things said about me as well.

I’d also like to point out that it is well within EA’s EULA to share CC, period, as outlined in posts I have recently reblogged. I won’t bother linking, because anyone with this much time on their hands should be able to find the posts since I reblogged several of them last night.

I don’t need to make a callout post for @mack3030​ and one doesn’t need to exist, as they have made themselves abundantly clear on their issues. Go check their blog, it’s not hard to read.

Additionally, it isn’t spineless or rude to block someone who has a clear intent of: 

Doxxing others (Someone attempted to doxx me just because I asked politely not to su*cide bait)

Harassment 

Sudden escalation of issues (this entire incident is a perfect example)

Spreading false information (such as the post above, I specifically do not frequent those forums)

Gaslighting (Framing sharing CC to be worthy of “punishing” others by way of the above, under the guise of rationality and deluded “justice”)

Compulsive lying (if you think your response to a polite request not to be an asshole is a rational one, you are under some serious delusions, or you in fact don’t actually care about being rational or holding rational discussions, you just want to make yourself look persecuted.)

In fact, blocking someone preemptively who shows clear evidence of toxic behavior is called “setting boundaries.” Look it up.

Remember y’all, all I did was politely ask that these people not spread false information, and I knew from past experience they’d likely flood my activity and inbox with vitriol just for disagreeing, so I blocked them.

These people are absolutely toxic and vile and imo, have no place in the Sims community, because they can’t be bothered NOT to doxx, harass, lie, and froth until they get what they want.

If someone wants to actually have a REAL rational discussion with me, feel free to DM me.

If you think this post or posts of similar length are a New York Times-esque article, that... is actually a compliment, so... thanks? I know you didn’t mean it as one, but you’re still comparing my and @mack3030​‘s posts to a published and respected institution of writing.

At any rate, these rules apply to me, and everyone else in this community. That’s the whole ass point. I’m not trying to doxx anyone, or harass anyone, and if you’re going to bother holding someone accountable for hypocrisy I suggest you either focus on the people in those forum posts, or just look in a fucking mirror.

That’s all I have to say on this matter. I don’t intend to feed the trolls, I just felt it would be wise to set this record straight as a standard.

Have a nice weekend.

[rametarin]

I didn’t want to reblog another long post, so I’ll just say my own thing here.

Gatekeeping fandom is good, ackshully.

Especially since we have a certain pattern of person, call them, “SJWs” if you want, that deliberately creep into a fandom with their values and shamelessly, deliberately, use it as a platform. They CONSCIOUSLY do this. They DELIBERATELY do this.

And then they have the audacity to see false positives and imagine dog whistles everywhere of things outside THEIR orthodoxy in the fandom being -isms, or -gnies. Accusing the people already there of being “out of date” and “toxic”, when it’s neither toxic nor uninclusive- it just isn’t rearranging itself to accommodate Intersectional Feminism or giving Intersectional Feminists voluntary control over everything from how something works to how it’s defined.

That to them is tantamount to being Nazis. And that’s kind of how you can tell they’re the same sort of daft, disingenuous fucks that wrap up socialist or ancom shit in supposed social progress. And if they could they’re reshape EVERYTHING to match their sensibilities, because their sensibilities are, “our way or you die.”

If you spend enough time peeking through academic papers and colleges you even learn there’s a thing many of them do. Which is, “Queering,” characters on purpose, to make them unpalatable or untouchable to cis/het people. That’s culturally like raising a flag on something to annex it and landgrab it.

And if you say, “hands off, this character isn’t gay?” They pivot and declare you’re just a homophobe whom is afraid of change, tell other people that and then talk in the broad bruckstroke about, “society is really so homophobic/afraid of new ideas. :c”

These people don’t even want to be part of that fandom for the sake of being in the fandom. They just want it because they want the fandom to perpetuate their values and parrot their beliefs and spread it to everybody else that wants to participate in that fandom. Do you like this popular thing? Okay, you can have popular thing, but only if you hug this Courtney Love doll and buy it and pet it and love it as part of the package deal!

And as part and parcel of the demanding to not just define the fundamentals and parameters of a fandom, they also demand to reinterpret the history of said fandom based on how out of orthodoxy to their values they find it to their own beliefs. So, was the hobby primarily done by white men in the past? Then naturally they’ll automatically paint it with a broad brush and say, “this hobby was very unwelcoming to non-whites and women in the past because of icky homophobic and misogynistic men!” Regardless of how many authors were beloved by the fandom that were female, regardless of how many women were equal fandom members before- they weren’t the Intersectional Feminist types of fans, so clearly they were “closer to the Daughters of the Confederacy than real people,” right? That’s how that works, apparently.

So yes. We had a taste of this in the 90s, but the feminists/radfems at the time weren’t trying to infiltrate the fandom and take it over to be about feminism. They were shaming boys and other girls for liking the big booby comic book girls as sexist and objectification and trying to get comic fans to abandon comics in order to pressure the companies economically into changing.

“These comics are written and drawn by MEN! MAAAAALE GAAAAAAAAAZE!!! Sexualized girls are only okay when WOMEN are drawing them and writing them for the authenticity!” And there were not many women that either liked comic books or wanted to BE in them, so they’d maintain that impossible standard to try and coerce the boys to FIND women for the sake of having a woman on staff, just to assauge their, “icky boys aren’t allowed to do this without me declaring it wrong” qualm.

And true to form for Progressives, give an inch and within a short period of time they just want more, and declare what was offered before was just to mollify or patronize them. “Oh so women can tidy up and do the low work. Why no female CEOs in the company yet? Why not Editor in Chief?”

But the way the Intersectionals do it is new. Rather than just stay outside the fandom because “yuck it offends my sensibilities, it shouldn’t exist,” they try and appropriate the fandom and then contribute rules and policies for it.

We saw this in the years leading up to Gamergate. The Subverters infiltrated video game journos, got incestuous and buddy-buddy with both Triple A industry people and independent game creators and traded favors, financial, sexual and other, for good reviews. Folks like Anita Sarkesian trying to make a name for themselves by already being insiders and getting plugged by the conspirators to LOOK like she was anything more than a plant for that cause, using other peoples video game playing footage in her critique videos, styling herself a holistic “girl gamer” and waxing poetic about “those awful neckbearded dudebros questioning my gamer cred! Tch!”

And so that romantic boogyman became a thing that they perpetuated. “The gatekeeping, woman hating, manbaby Gamer.” Where they then added in racism and male chauvinism and traditionalism and transphobia because you know you can’t just leave it at “misogynist.” Not, “in this society.”

Gamers protesting and demanding that game journalist magazines state their relationships to the creators for full disclosure got them retaliating asymmetrically, though. The FBI investigated all those, “threatening and trolling social media messages” that supposedly got Zoe Quinn and Sarkesian to leave their houses, “for fear of an attack,” and they got nothing. A few of them were caught doxxing themselves on purpose on 4chan. Quinn herself being part of the SomethingAwful’s Crash Override forums, where they’d do shit like this to troll and harass people for fun. They KNOW how to false flag and make it look like a bunch of angry dudebros did it.

Statistically the number of harassing egg names was far lower than the messages either girl received that was NOT harassment or threats, merely replies they didn’t agree with or didn’t appreciate. And yet they still ran around screaming about “all those misogynistic dudebro gamers” that were “harassing and doxing them.” And that boogyman became the party line. That Gaming and Gamers were full of toxic, misogynistic, racist manbabies SOooOoOooOO intimidated by, “women finally in what they feel are THEIR spaces,” that they’d try to run them out.

That’s how they interpreted it and that’s how the history books they write will repeat it.

They try and make a great big public show about “entering this toxic space” to flip it and civilize it, but what they’re really trying to do is officially own it. As a fandom, as a space and as a culture. And that entails being able to say what goes, what’s acceptable and what’s not, and set the tone and culture for that space. Meaning, to be able to gatekeep the product.

Rather than just decry the product, they decide they’re just going to mutate the product by slow assimilation, until the product doesn’t even resemble the original product anymore. They do this shit with comic books, videogames, and now they’re working on doing it to beloeved novels and their fandoms. It’s like forcibly marrying them to terrible people, so you can never have a fandom WITHOUT those people in your space trying to insist their interpretations of things are original canon, ever again.

And the sickest part is, these people DO NOT stop at fiction. That’s why this shit is called Cultural Marxism. Because it’s not much different from the way communists and socialist guerillas act and operate when it comes to land, resources and industry. They take over public spaces and forums and use a combination of instittional corruption, terrorism and violence and vandalism in order to destroy or silence competition.

They’ve even infiltrated the Linux community and taken over most of that, via Linus Torvalds’ daughter. You can’t have ANYTHING around these people, because they just sit and wait and conspire to come in and make even a simple community mural to revolve around whatever social issue and specifically their philosophy’s take on it being THE only valid take on it that everybody else must now interact with, good or bad, but they can’t ignore it anymore.

This is, also, partially why they hate it when fandoms are gatekept by singularly powerful individuals. Like say, authors of their own works. They don’t like singular owners of enterprise and property, because it prevents the mob from taking them and then dictating TO the creator, “this is the PEOPLES property now. WE decide, as the most powerful clique, what is true and real with it and what isn’t.”

Because like what happened with Frank Oz of Jim Henson Studios. An activist gay writer declared that Bert and Ernie’s relationship was “canon gay,” because he wrote them as canon gay lovers. There was a great big information cascade as all these affiliated journo companies published articles about how “happy they were to see Sesame Street and the Children’s Television Workshop as representing LGBT people in public!”

Frank Oz spoke up, set the record straight, “These characters were made by me and a friend and were meant to depict a platonic male-male relationship. They aren’t gay but I’m glad you could identify with them.”

That poor old man caught so much shit. They called him a homophobe, said he was, “stealing Bert and Ernie from them,” that he should just shut up and “let people have this.”

No. Fucking no. These people are fucking conspirators, believe wholly in dominating and taking shit over by moving their people into a thing until they have the warm bodies and the institutional authority to crowd out oppositional voices, then have the audacity to SCREEEAAAAAAM bloody murder about the dangers of anybody else organizing to contest them because, “The Nazis are gathering to attack us poor innocent minorities!!” Counting on the ignorance and unsuspecting nature of people to not know such a thing is fake or the totality of the situation.

That’s why they’ll keep this shit on the downlow and call anybody that accuses them of doing shit like this a liar or a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy theorist. Demanding evidence, in bad faith, knowing there’s little to no way to PROVE any of this UNTIL they’ve done it, and then declaring you to be invalid since you can’t prove the conspiracy.

Because if you can’t prove it with evidence, they’ll simply say you’re a Nazi trying to smear “good people.”

[myles2m-blog]

Junk news spreads fast

When first reading this article I was kind of thrown back a little bit. I actually read the article a few times because each line was so intriguing and informational. New information that I had never thought about or even realized. 

The most interesting idea to me was the algorithms. The fact that social media comes down to math deciding what we see and what we don't see easily on the web. It is almost sickening that these algorithms decide what news I get to see. The worst part of it all comes down to the fact that some of the information that goes viral and pops up on our feed isn't accurate. False information can spread so quickly on the web, which is the fault of the algorithms. These are mathematical calculations, this isn't real people deciding what news is spread. 

Second item to discuss is advertising. The first item that almost made me laugh was clickbait. This happens to me CONSTANTLY! I am drawn to these items in social that reveal some type of secret or funny video. Clickbait is a smart way to advertise and get people to stray away from the original social media they are on and onto random links on the web. The second reason, micro-targeting, is also very true. We as people seriously allow the media to control our feelings, actions and opinions daily. 

The last item is exposure. Which is something we do daily as we troll our social medias; selecting which content we like and want to see more of, and denying or blocking content we don't want to see. For example, I love to watch Americans got Talent videos, these are items my social media have filtered and relaxed I enjoy based on my views and clicks. Another perfect aspect of exposure is the ability to privacy, having a private account to avoid others from digging into your personal life. Within exposure comes “preferred content.” These are items that will pop up because you have either recently searched it or hit a ton of likes and shares on that specific item. For example, I recently was searching cedar point and Kalahari on google; the next day ads for those places were popping up on my social media feeds. It amazes me that this exposure comes mainly from an algorithm realizing I was interested in a specific item and so the advertisement came from that. 

Overall, this article was very eye opening and showed me just how much social media can sink into our lives. It has a way of digging us into our screens and keeping us hooked, even if its on things such as fake news. 

[andorknuckles]

An analysis of the 3 Smash Brothers Leaks and their credibility.

First, I wanna share this image

This is a simplified version of my initial analysis of the leaks, with the claims broken down, and ordered from when they were first posted. Of these three leaks, only the first came from before Joker’s reveal, with the second one coming mere days after the fact, while the third one came a little over a week later. I do want to stress that even if I make a perfect case for destroying a rumor’s credibility, that doesn’t mean I 100% believe it will be false. Credibility doesn’t equal probability.

4Chan Leak

This one won’t take long. I don’t think this one has any real credibility, and it’s really only getting attention because they happened to get a lucky guess. That doesn’t mean it’s necessarily wrong, but there’s almost nothing one can use to gauge its veracity. On top of that, all of the choices are rooted heavily in pre-existing speculation.

Joker is the most out-there of the five listed here, but Sakurai did state an enjoyment of Persona 5. Realistically, though, if enough people make fake leaks, then at least one person is going to get one thing right, so I’m chalking this up to coincidence.

Infamous leaker Vergeben frequently discussed how Square was getting a character in the Fighter Pass. I’ll be discussing this more down the line.

Microsoft had some suspect things to say, describing themselves as ‘third parties’ at E3 2018, leading to considerable discussion regarding a number of their characters.

Edelgard has been speculated as an obvious choice for a cross-promotion.

Sylux has been built up as an upcoming villain/chaotic-neutral in the Metroid series for some time, and so cross-promotion with a theoretical appearance in Metroid Prime 4 would seem logical.

As such, these five characters really just seem like safe picks, with Joker as the possible exception. Other than listing the names of the characters, they do say one other interesting thing, that incomplete character models exist, which I think segues into an important bit of speculation I have regarding the Fighter Pass and how it’s being developed.

Intermission: Important Speculation

Smash 4′s DLC development cycle seemed a little improvised and unstructured, with each phase of development seemingly existing as a self-contained run through 3 or 4 characters, with one of those characters receiving a bit of a head start. In Smash Ultimate’s case, however, I have little doubt that the entire run of characters has at least entered the planning stages, and that the development model is something far more graceful than Smash 4′s.

The (presumed) process model used for Smash 4 was to create characters in batches, spreading the team out across a small number of characters, making sure that there’s enough for everyone to be working on something. In many ways this model seemed to work, but there are certain problems it must have created. Namely, balance testers can’t adjust attack properties until designers are done working on hitboxes. Designers can’t work on hitbox and hurtbox placement until the animators are done animating. Animators can’t animate until the Modelers are done modelling and rigging, etc.

This is why, for the Fighters Pass, a pipeline style of development is ideal. A pipeline model would consist of something like Team A, Team B, Team C, etc.

Team A finishes the first parts of Character 1′s development, then passes them on to Team B as they start on Character 2. Now Team B can finish that part of Character 1, and pass that on to Team C. This continues, until you eventually have Team A working on Character 3, Team B working on Character 2, Team C on Character 1, etc. This way no one’s time is ever wasted, and character releases can happen on a near constant basis.

I may go into further detail on why I think this is the case at a later date, but for now the evidence largely comes from how the two characters have been released so close together, and yet always one at a time.

5Channel Leak 1

So, here it is, the big one. The leak that seems to have gained the most traction. It’s a common misconception that it and the second 5Channel leak are one-and-the-same, but the two contain very different levels of information, with very different levels of credibility. Erdrick, Hayabusa, Steve?, and Doomslayer. A mix of a character from a series hugely popular in Japan, an NES character who had a brief resurgence in the 00s, a rep from arguably the most popular game of all time, and a character from the most influential and most ported FPS of all time.

This one also gets some points for predicting P5R would be coming in 2019, but then loses them again for getting the specifics wrong, neither mentioning its full title, nor getting the general time frame of its release right. Normally just getting the official abbreviation of an announced game right gives a lot of credibility, but that information had already leaked from an official website registration.

So, the character this and the next leak both include, as well as the one the former leak has a Square Enix-shaped opening for... Erdrick.

This is the character that tends to grant a lot of credibility to these leaks, as the character was rumored here well before a certain datamining incident occurred. In the code of Smash Ultimate, there previously existed data for three then-unreleased characters. However, the data for two of those characters did not reference those characters by name, but instead gave them codenames. Specifically, Joker was referenced as ‘Jack’, while the other character was given the name ‘Brave’.

While speculation is open as to what the name ‘Brave’ could mean, such as an equivalent to NATO code, where a word sharing the first letter of the character’s name is used, or perhaps a reference to the game Bravely Default, the most common interpretation is that this refers to the Japanese name of the Dragon Quest main character’s title, which literally translates to brave.

The fact that all three leaks match the datamine in implying the character after Joker is Erdrick is part of what makes them so credible. However, in the case of this leak, it all comes crumbling down thanks to what it says about E3.

“Doom Guy and Steve? will be announced at E3 2019.”

Hoo nelly, I smell a contradiction, or at the very least, a bit of an unlikely scenario.

So, a part of me thinks this person expected Erdrick to be out before E3. That Joker and Erdrick (and maybe Piranha Plant) would be released at roughly the same time, just because of how Smash 4′s DLC went down.

But that rides on the assumption that this leaker actually meant the characters would be coming in the order they posted, and that Erdrick isn’t coming in May or something. But let’s go with that, let’s run with those premises.

Premise 1) Erdrick isn’t next

This Premise is a bit dead-on-arrival, since it means that ‘Brave’ has to either refer to a different character, or that data from the fourth or fifth character slipped in next to the first one. But for the sake of argument, we’ll say that ‘Brave’ actually means ‘Steve?’ due to the similar lettering.

In this scenario, we get both classic and relatively modern reps for Smash, both of which are very well known globally and, while a bit too ‘obvious’ for some, are definitely worthy of inclusion. If there’s ever going to be a time when the Fighters Pass reveals more than one character at a time, it’s going to be E3. If that does happen, I’d assume one would be released on the day, while the other would be for release down the line. Either way, we’re left with one big problem:

The only two characters left to reveal are incredibly Japan-centric. Japanese fans are pretty fond of these characters, but the global appeal of Dragon Quest, while not terrible has never been particularly high, while Ninja Gaiden’s declining sales in the US are part of why the franchise’s brief resurgence in the 00s eventually died off.

All-in-all, these are just two characters that wouldn’t really bring much fanfare if they were all that July 2019-February 2020 had to offer. While Erdrick might work as the final curtain call, it would ultimately mean ending Smash Ultimate off on a spark, rather than a bang. 8 months is a long time to announce nothing but a pair of niche characters.

Premise 2) Erdrick is next

After that last breakdown, having THREE at E3 would really just push the problem even further. Unless Nintendo is secretly publishing a Ninja Gaiden game that’s intended to be the next Breath of the Wild in terms of its magnitude, Ryu Hayabusa simply cannot work as the only character to be announced in all of the second half of 2019.

Unless you want to believe that there’s a second Fighters Pass coming (and that it will be filling out the rest of the space before February 2020), this is a scenario of different factors pushing at each other until something has to give, and that something is the announcement of Doomslayer and Steve? at E3, and if that’s breaking, then this leak breaks down even further.

Oh, and the idea that Steve? was moved from base game to DLC? I find that idea rather suspect. You can’t really change something like that so late in development without making a footprint on your game. Perhaps they scrubbed the files very effectively, with the only remnants being the Microsoft/Rare Spirit data people found, and the extra development time the removal of Steve? created going to Echo Fighter development. Maybe that’s why Isabelle is half-derivative, half-original? Probably not, though.

5Channel Leak 2

When you actually leak something that couldn’t have been reasonably guessed beforehand, you immediately start off on the right foot. Of course, some people have leaked things like this before, and had the other parts of their leak turn out false. In those scenarios, it can be because a person had inside information, and added their own made up information to it for one reason or another (trolling, not wanting to be caught, etc.), and in other scenarios, it’s because they get their information from multiple sources, and one or more of them turn out to be wrong.

However, most of the rest of their Smash leaks have proven to be correct, or are thus-far indeterminate. Joker’s stage was Mementos, and Nintendo has been making a suspiciously big push for the new Dragon Quest games. The only mistake in the leak was that of Jack Frost’s appearance ‘as a skill’ on the Mementos stage.

The details regarding Joker are things I would consider a safe assumption. Mementos just makes sense as a Persona 5 stage, while Jack Frost is a mascot for the superseries, as well as Atlus in general. That he would appear as a stage Easter Egg or in Joker’s moveset is a reasonable expectation. It’s possible that the Leaker (or their source) saw Morgana and thought he was Jack Frost due to a lack of familiarity, or that a Jack Frost cameo was planned but eventually removed.

Another possibility is that this person knew of the datamine information ahead of the general public, learning of the Mementos stage, and used the codename Jack to further spurn on their expectations regarding a Jack Frost appearance.

But that’s a narrative that really can’t be proven, and requires further narrative to explain why they know what they know about the Dragon Quest promotion, or the Granblue game.

So... this leak passes the test. The Erdrick stuff lines up with Vergeben’s generally accurate Smash leak portfolio, Mementos was accurate, and Brave definitely lines up with Erdrick. Personally, I’d rather almost any other character to Erdrick, but I’ll at least take having the remaining three characters still being a mystery.

[undercover-ghost]

Jillian Mercer- WEEK 1

1. How would you define social media?

I would define social media as a very important product of our society today. Social media is the means by which we interact with one another, whether it be on Snapchat, Instagram, etc. Social media is a huge platform that allows all of society to interact with one another. Most people today use social media to interact with others, follow lifestyles, entertain themselves, etc. Some people use social media to become an influencer, where they post things about their life for other people to see and hopefully follow as well. Influencers can even become rich off of social media if they successfully advertise to the right group of people. While social media and the platforms that come along with access to the media can be influential and positive, they can also have negative impacts on some people. Unfair standards, hate speech, false information, and trolls are scattered across forms of social media.

2. How would you characterize yourself as a social media user? 

I use social media only to watch. I do not post on social media or attempt to make an impact. I am more of a visual social media user. I like to listen to specific people talk and view some influencers and what they post. I am a silent user of social media. I normally do not try and exemplify myself on social media. I would rather not be known to people as much as others might be. I frequently use Instagram and look through photos. Some of my interests and hobbies, like cars, are what I look at through social media. Inspiration is one of the main things I look for on social media. I look for posts that motivate me, or speeches that give me the strength to do something I might not have otherwise done. Social media can be beneficial if you know how to use it. 

3. What do you consider to be your strengths in your understanding of social media? What are your challenges?

I would say that some of my strengths in my understanding of social media is how I understand it. Whether it be a news article online, a post on Instagram, or anything else that might go viral or be posted to the public, I often have an easy time reading or interpreting it. I’ve been a user of social media for a while now so I know how to navigate between the bad side and the good side that can actually be influential to someone. Being able to communicate through social media is important to us as a society because news gets around a lot quicker than it would if social media didn’t exist. This means that social media does tend to spread. The spreading of news that might not be real is what comes from this, which can make it hard for one to understand what is happening. Social media comes with a challenge for everybody. There are ways to look at social media and they could all be different. Social media isn’t bound to just Instagram, Snapchat, and apps. Online news sources, shows and television on the internet, google, the web, are all parts of social media. The sharing of information itself is social media. Being such a large communication platform, it can be hard to fully understand. 

4. What is it that YOU want to get out of this class and beyond (related to social media)?

I want to get a better understanding of the impact of social media on our lives and how we interact with one another. Social media can be useful and good to have, but it also comes with unrealistic standards and things that could hurt feelings and make people upset with themselves. 

[shirlleycoyle]

Facebook’s Ivermectin Groups Are Unhinged and Out of Control

"Help!" a person posted to a Facebook Group, laying out the particulars of how a family member hospitalized with COVID-19 was being treated with oxygen, antibiotics, steroids, and expectorants. "He's going downhill fast. They're not willing to give him ivermectin."

"Why do hospitals not allow treatment of ivermectin? I still can't wrap my mind around it," another distressed person, who described their father being hospitalized with COVID, posted to a Facebook Group. "Is it straight up $?" Later, this person updated their post.

"I just talked to the doctor with all the bad news," they wrote. "I asked him about ivermectin and he said words that will haunt me forever. 'Ivermectin is a quack.' This fucking doctor trolled me as he's telling me my dad is dying."

Facebook's detailed COVID-19 policy specifically proscribes "false claims about how to cure or prevent COVID-19," and claims it will "remove misinformation when public health authorities conclude that the information is false and likely to contribute to imminent violence or physical harm." None of this appears to have been applied to ivermectin, an anti-parasitic which is not scientifically proven to have any usefulness as a treatment or preventative measure for COVID. (While it has uses in humans when prescribed by a doctor, it's mainly used as a livestock dewormer.) The FDA has resorted to begging the public not to use it as a COVID treatment even as public-health officials in Mississippi and Florida report citizens being hospitalized due to overdosing on it; Facebook Groups, both public and private, are nonetheless overrun with bleak, harrowing posts from ivermectin advocates, as well as specific, misguided advice about how to use the drug, and lots of advice on how to obtain it.

Are you a Facebook worker who’s confused by, or has insight on, the platform’s policies on ivermectin and medical misinformation? Contact our reporters by email at tim.marchman@vice.com or anna.merlan@vice.com, or by Signal at 267-713-9832.

In one Group with 4,000 members dedicated to testimonials about the usefulness of ivermectin for treating COVID, for example, a woman posted, "Just new to this group and I’m in Canada. How can we get Ivermectin here? I have a son with Down syndrome and have heard that they might have a harder time with it and want to have some on hand just in case. Thank you!" Several posters offered links to online pharmacies, including one requiring no prescription. "Thank you so much!" the original poster replied to someone offering a list of doctors willing to offer prescriptions. "I just sent an email. With the fact that the vaccinated are carrying 250 times the viral load if they get sick we really need to use precautions." (This latter claim is false, but in this Group as others, it is a near article of faith that vaccinated people are vectors of disease against whom protection is needed.)

"Hi all," wrote a user in a different group with more than 5,000 members. "We bought these from Ukraine. Are they good? 3mg per tablet. Kind regards." Below their post was a photograph of bottles of ivermectin with dogs on the labels; in replies, Facebook users gave advice on how many milligrams of ivermectin to use per kilogram of body weight, and one asked where the poster had gotten the pills.

Detail from a Groups user's post. Image via Facebook.

In the same Group, a user posted an image of a bottle of a 1 percent sterile solution injection for cattle and swine, explaining that she'd had it since December and was concerned it could go bad. Several replies assured her it would be perfectly fine. One user wrote, "not good for you … at all," but perhaps had a conflict of interest, as they themselves sell ivermectin via courier in South Africa. On Wednesday, they posted an advertisement for their product, claiming the combination of vitamins, antihistamines, and ivermectin could cure COVID symptoms and offering a phone number to prospective clients. "Also suitable," they noted, "for Children."

In another Group, with more than 2,000 members, an administrator focused Wednesday on updated "protocols" from the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance, or FLCCC, a group of doctors and their allies who promote ivermectin use and celebrate discredited science. (Dr. Pierre Kory, head of the group, has become prominent over the last year, spreading the gospel of ivermectin everywhere from the Senate to Joe Rogan's podcast.) The FLCCC, the administrator wrote, is, as of this week, advising people to take two to three times as much ivermectin as it had previously recommended for early treatment of COVID; members of the group studied charts in an attempt to find out just how much they would need to squirrel away.

In yet another Group, which has 26,000 members and promotes itself as a medical team, a user who had just tested positive for COVID asked for help. "I tested positive this afternoon (day 2 of symptoms)," she wrote, "and I literally cleaned out my pharmacy’s supply of ivermectin and I only have enough for 2 doses until Friday. I’m one pill short of each dose for my weight. Basically I have to skip a day and I can only have one dose accurately weight based until I get more on Friday. Should I take one full 'weight based' dose and one less than weight based, or 2 equal doses both the same amount? Either way I have to skip a whole day which is disappointing." Users advised her to frontload her dosing for maximum efficacy.

Across these and other groups, users offer reviews of business selling ivermectin online, discuss the effects of using the drug—eye pain is often mentioned, which some users believe is a result of ivermectin killing brain parasites or flushing toxins—and offer standard, if false, theories on the dangers of vaccination. They also offer a lot of earnest responses to trolls, like one who asked if there is a way to vape ivermectin, claiming he dislikes pills because of the ease with which they can be microchipped.

Facebook famously has a variety of rules and policies, and a great deal of trouble enforcing them at scale. What it has to say about ivermectin doesn't make clear exactly what the problem is here.

In response to a request for comment, a Facebook spokesperson asked Motherboard to append the following statement to two stories we published earlier this week showing that Facebook has sold ads promoting the use of ivermectin for the treatment of COVID and allowed the sale of ivermectin on its platform: "We do not allow ads promoting the use of Ivermectin for the treatment of COVID-19 and have rejected these ads. We also do not allow the sale of pharmaceutical drugs on Facebook and will remove posts and ads that violate our rules.” When told this was demonstrably untrue, the spokesperson said, "We retroactively have rejected the ads that you sent us." Ads—including one about which Motherboard had written—promoting the use of ivermectin to treat COVID appeared to still be live the day after the spokesperson issued this statement, though, and Groups are rife with dealers selling the drug. 

The Facebook spokesperson asked Motherboard to send them specific examples of activities in Groups that violated Facebook policy; when told that Motherboard reporters don't work for Facebook but that the content in question could be found by searching for "ivermectin" using Facebook's search tool and joining Groups that came up, the spokesperson sent the following general statement, the first two sentences of which are plainly untrue given that many ivermectin groups operate in the open and can be trivially found on the platform:

“We remove content that attempts to buy, sell, donate or ask for Ivermectin. We also enforce against any account or group that violates our COVID-19 and vaccine policies, including claims that Ivermectin is a guaranteed cure or guaranteed prevention, and we don’t allow ads promoting Ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19. Since the beginning of the pandemic, we have removed 20 million pieces of COVID misinformation, labeled more than 190 million pieces of COVID content rated by our fact-checking partners, and connected over 2 billion people with authoritative information through tools like our COVID information center.”

They also pointed to a new Facebook policy about the advertising of prescription drugs that they said went into effect Wednesday. They declined to answer questions about what brought this new policy about, why it wasn't the policy previously, and why it isn't being enforced.

Facebook’s Ivermectin Groups Are Unhinged and Out of Control syndicated from https://triviaqaweb.wordpress.com/feed/

[mybreadlover]

What is cyberbullying and what are the warning signs?

Online socializing has good and bad sides to it. The Internet and social media platforms continue to evolve how we communicate and have added certain conveniences to our lifestyles, but they can also expose us to new risks, as well.

Cyberbullying is one example that can have devastating effects on young people. Cyberbullying occurs when a bully targets a victim using online communication methods such as texting or social media posts to threaten, abuse, or degrade someone. With its use of technology, cyberbullying has gained more attention and notoriety in recent years. It’s a crime that doesn’t restrict itself to school or the playground.

What fuels cyberbullying? Unlike traditional bullying, it doesn’t require physical strength or a face-to-face meeting. Anyone with an Internet connection and a digital device like a smartphone, computer or tablet can be a cyberbully. There are no specific hours, and it can happen around the clock, whether through social networking sites or instant messaging.

Since many platforms don’t make an effort to verify people’s real identities, a cyberbully can choose an alias and remain anonymous. Cyberbullying is fueled by this cloak of anonymity, which often serves to heighten the extent of a cyberbully’s cruel and damaging behavior. It can target anyone, including young kids and middle school and high school students.

According to the 2020 Norton.com/Setup Cyber Security Insights Report, 48 percent of parents believe their children are more likely to be bullied online than on a playground. Finding solutions to combat online bullying should be a priority for parents and school officials. But bullying prevention is a difficult challenge.

The experience of cyberbullying can leave lifelong scars and be harmful a child’s development and self-esteem. Children often have a hard time knowing how to respond when they are harassed. And when they do react, they often don’t completely understand the consequences of their actions.

Cyberbullying can leave some youth depressed or withdrawn, and in some extreme cases has led victims to suicide.

There are many different types of cyberbullying out there, and all of them can be damaging to children and teens.

8 types of cyberbullying

Here are eight types of online bullying:

1. Outing

The outing is a deliberate act to embarrass or publicly humiliate an individual by posting their private, sensitive, or embarrassing information online. The information revealed can be minor or serious but can have a severe and lasting impact on the victim.

2. Fraping

Fraping is a serious offense where a person gains access to the victim’s social media account and impersonates them in an attempt to be funny or to ruin their reputation. Fraping can have serious consequences, especially because once a social post is out there, it may be hard to delete it and mend the victim’s digital reputation.

3. Dissing

Dissing is when people share or post cruel information about an individual online to ruin their reputation or friendships with others. This includes posting personal photos, videos, and screenshots. The person sharing this information may be a friend or acquaintance of the victim. Some cyberbullies go to great lengths to hurt their victims, even creating webpages designed to spread hurtful information and lies about their victims.

4. Trolling

Trolling is a form of cyberbullying done by insulting an individual online to provoke them enough to get a response. Usually, these attacks are personal and instigate anger in the victim, making them lash out and behave badly.

5. Trickery

Trickery is the act of gaining a victim’s trust so that they reveal secrets or embarrassing information, which the cyberbully posts on the Internet for everyone to see. The person pretends to be a close friend and confidant and gives the victim a false sense of security before breaking his or her trust.

6. Sockpuppets or catfishing

A “sockpuppet” is a form of deception that uses a fake social media account. The creator of the fake account gains their victim’s trust by pretending to be someone they’re not. When their victim divulges private information, the puppeteer shares that personal information with others who may bully the victim. Catfishing similarly involves setting up a fake online profile, but with the purpose of luring its victim into a deceptive online romance.

7. Doxing

Doxing is derived from the word “documents” and occurs when a cyberbully harasses and threatens a victim online for revenge and to destroy their victims’ privacy. Doxing shares private information — such as Social Security numbers, credit cards, phone numbers, and other personal data — with the public.

8. Encouraging self-harm

Some cyberbullies threaten to hurt their victims or convince them to hurt themselves. It can be the worst type of cyberbullying because it can lead its victims to take their lives by suicide.

Cyberbullying warning signs

Cyberbullying comes in many forms and can affect its victims in many ways. It’s smart to watch for common warning signs that your child is a victim of cyberbullying, as well as bullying in general.

Depression

A huge warning sign that your child may be the victim of cyberbullying or bullying is if they become withdrawn or seem depressed and sad. Are they losing interest in people or activities they used to enjoy? Are they sleeping in when they usually don’t?

Avoidance of social situations

Does your child or teen seem to be avoiding social situations or friends whom they enjoyed spending time with in the past? Are they spending an inordinate amount of time alone? This could be a signal that something greater, such as cyberbullying, is going on.

Changed frequency of device use

Have you noticed that your child suddenly is always on social media or Snapchat, or texting on their cell phones? This could signal they are the target of cyberbullying — or are doing the bullying. A marked decrease in device use could also be a warning sign. Paying attention to any changes in your child’s online behavior could help you detect trouble.

Secrecy

Does your child hide their devices whenever you’re around or dodge questions about their online activity? They could be hiding the possibility that they are being bullied online. This is an important opportunity for you to intervene, help them sort out their emotions, and put a stop to the harmful behavior.

Heightened emotions

Another warning sign of cyberbullying is if your child seems to get upset or angry when they’re online. Crying is a warning sign. While laughing isn’t a bad thing, it might be if they’re the ones doing or witnessing cyberbullying.

Suspicious social media account activity

Has your child suddenly canceled their social media accounts? Or do they seem to have multiple accounts? These could be warning signs that something isn’t right.

Suspicious photos

Have you seen images of your child on their cell phone or others’ social media accounts that are demeaning and inappropriate? Or have you found images of someone else on one of your child’s devices that you know the other person wouldn’t want to be shared? These are warning signs that either your child is the target or source of cyberbullying.

Hurtful comments

Are there mean comments harassing or embarrassing your child on their social media accounts or in their text messages? Keeping up with their online activity is important, especially so you can spot cyberbullying behavior — such as hurtful comments — before they are deleted. Even if deleted, those comments may inflict emotional damage on your child.

How to protect your child from cyberbullying

How can you help protect a child from cyberbullying? One of the first things parents should do when their child is being cyberbullied is to remember to stay aware and calm. Children may not like to tell their parents when they are being cyberbullied because they feel embarrassed or they’re afraid they might lose their internet privileges.

Talk to your kids about cyberbullying. Let them know cyberbullying can be common — that they aren’t the only victims. Teach your kids the basics of Norton.com/setup online security and stay connected with them daily and digitally.

Another option to keep children safe online is to install reliable online security on all of the devices they access. For instance, Norton.com/Setup Family Premier lets your kids explore the web freely while keeping you in the know about which sites they visit. It comes with parental controls that block unsuitable content for kids and provides insight into your child’s social media activity when they login to social media sites from their PC.

The Norton.com/Setup security software also helps protect your child from accidentally giving out sensitive personal information from their computer. This includes phone numbers, addresses, email, and the school they attend. It also alerts you when your child attempts to visit a blocked site.

Cyberbullying is a problem that’s not easy to solve. But awareness and knowledge are the first steps to help keep your children safe online.

from WordPress https://quicksolvo939231001.wordpress.com/2020/07/02/what-is-cyberbullying-and-what-are-the-warning-signs/

[goldenoutlander]

A long rambling post to us from ObsessiveSassenach. I copied and pasted her letter to us....

What the ever loving fuck is wrong with you people You people  You Antis, NST, Truthers, Haters, wtfer name you want to be called or are called. You people. You know I’m talking to you @noshippingallowed @contemplatingoutlander @goldenoutlander @adhara112 @aliceinoutlanerland (oops you forgot the d in outlander. get a d.) @whylimewhyanything (put the lime in the coconut) @whoreallyknowswho (it’s whom! whom! unless you just forgot to finish your sentence) @prodigiousreblogger @bestof60 (are you 60?) @vividdreamer318 (your imagination is certainly leading you astray) @breezylouisey (is that you weezy?) @momofmusa (i thought you were mom of USA lol)  @alittlebitmasss (oops your s key got stuck) Anyway, there are more of you and I’m sorry I didn’t give you a moment of thrill by acknowledging you by name but I mentioned the Tumblr accounts that I’ve seen making horrendously wild, hateful, fictional, hurtful accusations against other Outlander fans with no speck of proof - accusations meant to inspire others to emulate you and spread hate to those people as well. Let me get this straight. From what I can tell, you are super hopping mad about the content of certain Twitter and Instagram accounts. Fine. Totally fine. You are entitled to your opinions. I can see why those accounts might make some people mad. I mean, irrelevant to my life but maybe not yours.  You are mad that certain Twitter and Instagram accounts have been created for the sole purpose of throwing shade and mocking a certain celebrity you hold in high esteem. I get that. Fine. Be outraged! Express yourselves!! Speaking of fine I know you will go through this post with a fine toothed comb for anything you can argue with and attack me over because god forbid you actually read the message, digest the information, thoughtfully consider the content and then share your thoughts and opinions and maybe answer some of my questions. Nope that’s not your style. Attack attack attack half-cocked and don’t put any thought or concern for reality into it. Yes you are the borg of Antis as the foil to the Shippers. I didn’t create that world, you did. You wanted to be the anti-shippers. You are gathered on Tumblr together to be this Anti-Shipper fighting army. Go forth and fight uhh I guess? WHY???? See, shippers are motivated by love. That’s really obvious. There are all types of shippers just as there are all types of people (and even all types of antis), but what brings them together is not just their love of Outlander (and you guys love Outlander too! Whee we have something in common) but their love of the LOVE parts of Outlander and all the LOVE associated with Outlander in promos, BTS, interviews, Q&As, social media banter between the cast and crew, etc. LOVE is LOVE is LOVE is LOVE is LOVE is LOVE is LOVE is LOVE. So you generally don’t see shippers on social media attacking people with hatred and lies and accusations of criminal activity. Wait wait wait. Correction! YOU see shippers doing those things but no one else does. You mostly see shippers doing those things with accounts that aren’t even recognized shipper names. They are basically troll accounts that you have deduced are shipper accounts. You do have these long convoluted narratives of what certain shippers are alleged to have done and you bandy them about so frequently that your telephone game grows legs and walks it’s own marathon and becomes some weird beast-mode attack shipper who does horrible things. You say you SAW these things but you haven’t. Show me a tweet, a facebook post, an instagram post from an Outlander fan who identifies herself as a shipper and has a known persona in the fandom and is attacking, hating, committing these horrendous crimes you claim. What I mean is, SHOW ME THE MONEY! SHOW ME PROOF to back up your narrative. You have specifically named a number of Outlander fans and made outrageous claims as to their character, behavior, beliefs, actions, off-line actions and more. YOU HAVE NO PROOF BECAUSE THESE STORIES ARE FICTION. I’ll give you an example of how your lies have grown wings, run a marathon and turned into beast-mode: So a certain blue check account posts that a certain object of your hatred and hate-mongering did something so illegal that she would have been arrested and would still be in jail. You all headnod, mouth breath, feel righteous for having attacked her because you were soooo right, bang away at your keyboards and continue the lies and hatred and stoke the fires for uhhh fun? Yet you all know that she isn’t in jail and couldn’t have done this highly illegal thing because you watch her every move and you saw her posting pics of herself just last weekend participating in a fitness event. Hmmmm. Are you collectively dumbing each other down with your groupthink or all you all that stupid? YOU KNOW IT’S A LIE. But you’ve all convinced each other it’s ok to lie about it, malign, spread hatred and misinformation about certain fans and tarnish their reputation in the fandom because… because? because why??? Help me out here. So it’s because someone has said rude bad things to an actress you believe is Sam Heughan’s girlfriend even though he has never once said so. You BELIEVE it so it’s your reality. And the fans that you malign? You do that because they believe something else. But the weirdest thing is that you do malign them by tossing out totally unfounded and false accusations about their behavior and ascribe all kinds of unsavory activities, motives, and behaviors to these fans you have chosen to malign. You do the thing to them that you so claim to hate they are doing to the objects of your admiration. I’m still working on this and I still need your help. So because you BELIEVE that two actors are dating and BELIEVE that it’s wrong that internet trolls make claims that they are not and some internet trolls say really rude things and tag them, you feel fully justified in making claims that the trolls are not just trolls but actual recognizable Outlander fans. Are you like shippers of trollworld or something? I’ll just come right out and say it. Kim Hickey is not behind any of those trolls accounts you claim she is. I know this and you know this. You know which accounts are legitimately hers because she identifies herself. You are even attacking her My Peak Challenge account that she posts inspirational memes and encourages people to donate to Bloodwise. Are you for fucking real? You’re attacking a charity endeavor in your blind hatred of…. hatred of who fucking knows.  Even if you didn’t know she wasn’t behind the troll accounts, you absolutely have no basis for claiming she is. You are making shit up and publicly proclaiming it as truth just like that thing that Shippers do that you claim to hate.  Also, let’s talk about me:  I am a public person online. I don’t hide behind cutesy names. You can look me up and it won’t even be doxing me because it’s all right there, isn’t it? I have no sock accounts. I put my name on all my accounts because I own what I say and share. This tumblr account was created in the middle of last summer as a parody of Starz Obsessable campaign therefore it did not need my name on it. I never had a Tumblr account before that and I have never even sent anons on Tumblr. I never pretended I was anyone else or made any attempt to be anyone else. I posted freely about myself and my life when it was topical, including photos of myself. If you were like BINGO I’m such a supersleuth I figured out who is behind that blog!! you’re not smart or observant. It was obvious. The thing is, though, shippers didn’t know who I was. Not because they didn’t know who was behind “Obsessive Sassenach” but because they didn’t know who Nipuna was. Isn’t that funny? One of the Outlander fans on the top of your BAD SHIPPER LIST WHO MUST BE EXTERMINATED list isn’t even known by other shippers. What makes me a shipper? Just that I have heart eyes for Sam and Cait and think they have chemistry and oh wait, whoah, ZOMG, Arthur Kade thinks that too. Josh Horowitz does too! and ummmm ummmm that one lady at TCA that one year and that one book author who was on the NYT best seller list and you know I could go on. It’s not a crime to be fully happy to enjoy Sam and Caitriona’s chemistry. And if that makes me a shipper, yay. But the only reason I’m actually a known component of the shipper community now is because you guys have dragged my name around and created ridiculous lies about me. It’s like I’m some sort of Shipper Legend (to you, not shippers) who does these super crazy Shipper things in AntiLand. Remember the grave story that was created by one of you weirdos because a family friend of mine who is a caretaker for a military graveyard in the USA was friends with Sam’s father? You guys turned it into: That Crazy Shipper Nipuna stalks Sam’s father’s grave in hopes of running into him and Caitriona making a baby on his dad’s grave in Scotland. Or something like that. Anyway, tour bus guides in Scotland think there are crazy Outlander fans who stalk Sam at his father’s grave but if they stop to think they realize they don’t even know if he has a grave or if it’s even in Scotland. You’re maligning the whole fucking fandom you freaks! You’re creating these outrageous, convoluted piece of fiction because you are all worked up about uhh something and then you tag other nasty people and get them to repeat the stories and then the stories get embellished and repeated and you sit back and watch the telephone game continue. But don’t you realize that you’re fucking the whole thing up for yourselves too? I mean, I guess not if you like chaos and mayhem. But most of you profess to care about people being nice and kind and cry out that bullying is bad and wrong. But then you do just that when you pick an Outlander fan and create detailed and convoluted lies about her behavior.  The people you lie about know they are lies, sure. And lots of other people know they are lies and ignore you, but you repeat the lies over and over and you know that saying about how if you repeat a lie often enough people will start to believe you. So you repeat and repeat and then sit back and with self satisfied smiles. Or maybe it’s just that your mouth is open because you’re breathing through it. Whatever. I don’t know your motives. I don’t know what attracts you to fan the way you do. I don’t know what fulfills you. I know it’s not LOVE. But do you even know? Are you just running around half-cocked and brainless and letting yourselves be lied to? What gives? Can you help me understand why you are constantly naming and targeting certain people and pointing others to attack them and if that doesn’t work creating stories that will hopefully motivate them to attack? WHY???2 notes Mar 27th, 2017 ng post from ObsessiveSassenach to us all.

[louiseblue1]

Gail Simone doesn't even watch Arrow and I am genuinely so confused as to why Arrow fans hate her so much. Arrow fans send her hate mail and spread weird lies (like she called them nazis) and it just seems so inexplicable. You seem to be in the Arrow fandom, can you maybe explain this? People being hateful trolls on the internet isn't unusual, but again this seems so inexplicable. It's almost surreal. Thanks in advance if you have any answers.

You’re possibly asking the wrong person, Nonnie. I have no idea as to who GS is, other than what the couple of comments about her has told me. I haven’t read any of her work to make up my own mind and am completely unaware of any feud between some Olicity people and her. I intentionally avoid that kind of thing because it’s hurtful, depressing and achieves exactly nothing other than more negativity. 

I don’t require everyone to be aboard with my shipping of Arrow. People having differing opinions to me - whether they’re based in fact or not - doesn’t invalidate my enjoyment of Arrow. I don’t seek out people with differing opinions to me and argue my point. I’ll give my POV if asked, but foisting my opinion upon others when it’s not solicited achieves exactly nothing, so why bother?

As for your question, you’re kind of making it sound like this focusing on a person by a fandom in a seemingly unreasonable and irrational/hateful manner is somehow specific to Arrow fans while admitting there are always hateful trolls on the internet. I wish I could tell you that this behaviour was only limited to certain elements of the Arrow fandom, that nowhere else on the internet that groups of people don’t latch onto someone else on the internet and amass there, being hateful and hurtful. But we both know it’s happening thousands of times in every minute of every day, be it centered around a TV show, politics, religion, sexuality, sport et al.

Why do people do that? 

It’s a complex question that doesn’t have a pat answer. Let me just qualify the next things that I’m going to say. These don’t apply to out and out violations of people’s rights. As in, if you see someone promoting pedophilia as a valid alternate life style, then you shouldn’t remain silent. Arguing with them online would seem to be a pointless endeavour, but it should be railed against and worked to be shut down. I’m more focusing on opinions about things no society will ever agree upon - like what constitutes a good story and yes, even politics, sexuality and religion. 

Trying to force your opinions of what you think the ‘right’ way is for any of those things onto others will never work. History has shown us that. With the explosion of social media, we suddenly have this forum to give our opinion and give it freely, often where it is not required. How many times have you read through YouTube comments after having watched a cute puppy video and seen it dissolve into name calling and hate on politics/religion/sexual preferences. 

Why do people do that? 

Why is there this burning need to give your opinion of every single thing, and then expect everyone to agree with you and rage against them if they don’t? If you’re a Republican and you go to a Democratic convention, it’s pretty much a given you’re going to hear things you don’t agree with. You must have been cognizant of that fact before buying a ticket. If you seek out others who are diametrically opposed to your way of thinking, then yes, you’re going to get upset, but you had to know that going in, so it’s not like you’re anyone’s victim here.

That’s how I look at this whole GS thing, whatever it is/was. GS has her opinions about Arrow. I haven’t read them, and I don’t care enough to google it and find out what they are for myself. All I know is she’s entitled to them. And people are entitled to disagree with her, but I see no point in people arguing with her. It’s her opinion, she owns it and that’s enough. Those people reading her articles have their opinions and they own it and that should be enough. For some people it isn’t though. And this is on both sides of the fence I’m talking about. Some people can’t accept that other people have different opinions to you and the world isn’t going to end. Yes, sometimes you might feel that those other opinions aren’t valid because it’s based on false information, or poor comprehension, but you being combative isn’t going to make anyone reconsider their position. It’s more likely to make them double down. So, knowing that, what’s your endgame in trying to enforce the validity of your opinion on others by being horrible? 

Again, this isn’t me taking sides in whatever the thing with GS was. Wasn’t there. Don’t have a horse in that race. I just know that people as a whole have a tendency to gang up on other people who don’t share their opinions and try and enforce them on others. Since the dawn of time. This isn’t a new thing. It’s just that social media documents it in real time for all to see. People don’t like being disagreed with because it makes them feel afraid or anxious or invalidated or frustrated or insecure or dismissed… and a lot of other emotions. It’s why the struggle for true diversity is still so real today. I’m not talking about who is right or wrong, I’m talking about the human response when presented with someone with a different POV about things. People are naturally threatened by other people who think/see things differently to them. And people, some people, sometimes, can react in negative ways. We’ve all done it. No one in this life gets out of this life without having negative reactions to someone we don’t agree with. 

I like to believe that as you mature, you become more accepting of the differences between people and choose to focus on the ways we’re the same, rather than how we’re different. That’s why I can’t hate on people who give their opinion on the internet if they disagree with me. Yes, we might disagree about this one thing, but there are so many other things we share - a desire to feel loved and safe, to be understood, to be appreciated and accepted for who we are, with no masks. Our fear of the unknown, of loss, of death. We all share these huge commonalities, and in the light of that, someone thinking that a TV show I like sucks seems like nothing to get worked up about. Certainly not enough to set out to cause distress to another human being over. To get combative over a TV show, over fictional characters and to intentionally try to inflict pain and anxiety on real people… well, that is never going to be something I will agree with or be involved with. It means you’ve lost perspective on what life is all about to me. 

Now, I’m sure I’ll get people responding to this and getting specific about ‘but they said this’ and ‘they accused us of that and it was all lies’, and I have no doubt that kind of stuff happened. I’m not being specific to one scenario of fandom life or just life in general. We can feel justified in our opinions and feel free to express them, but I always try and remember there is a real person on the other side of the conversation who deserves to be treated as such… and that has nothing to do with how they treat me. I don’t subscribe to the ‘he/she was mean to me, so I get to be mean to them’ way of thinking to excuse bad behaviour. That wasn’t how I was raised. Someone else’s poor behaviour doesn’t excuse my own. If I want respect and civility, then I should give it out, regardless of how I’m being treated. Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you. You can’t lose then. If you’re always respectful and polite, your opinion will always have more weight then someone being abusive and disrespectful. And you’re done the right thing, even if the other person never acknowledges it. Goodness is it’s own reward. 

Well, that got all big and philosophical, didn’t it, Nonnie? Sorry about that. lol 

Basically I protect my bubble. There will always be people out there in all walks of life who behave in ways I don’t want to be associated with, so I don’t. It’s that simple. I can’t control their behaviour, only my own. :)

[kieracesareo]

Blog 20

Theory of Social Media II

Before diving into social media and everything that comes along with that, it is important to understand how social media is defined. Social media can be defined “as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (Boyd and Ellison, pg. 211, 2008). However, these interactions are not limited to digital communication, but that is what the increasingly popular medium used is, and will continue to be as we advance. When thinking about social media, the first thing that will pop into most people’s heads are traditional websites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Technically, radio show calls, letters to editors, and journalism are forms of social media, just not the kind that would pop into someone’s head originally. Citizen’s journalism is something that has been around for a long time and is where “nonprofessional journalists produce and disseminate journalistic knowledge, has been vastly enabled by social media platforms” (Humphreys, 2016, pg. 70).  This type of communication can be online, but is not limited to, where users can build off each other's stories. 

A lot of people see stuff in the news and overlook it because it doesn’t seem to pertain to them on a daily basis. However, I personally believe social media is something everyone should pay attention to because whether we want it to or not, it is ingrained in the way society works. Social media is becoming something no one can ignore; especially in the younger, more digital generations. On a college campus, it can be assumed that more than 90% of a group of students are active on social media in some way. What likely happens in these situations is the concept of status is created. This concept is the relative place someone fits into within a social grouping (Weber, 1978). This deals with the petty, immature stuff that is associated with social media, like the amount of “likes” someone receives, followers, reposts, and attention their media created. In this instance, someone that has a lot of followers and receives a lot of likes is going to feel that they are superior and have a higher social status over someone who is less popular on social media. 

With the rise of social media, this tool is used on an individual basis and in groups. Collaboration is a common tool that can be found when looking online and through media. Collaborative production is a type of co-creation that happens when fans or community members collaborate on a product” (Humphreys, 2016, pg. 71). This type of production usually lures people in by them having an intrinsic interest to contribute to whatever task that may be, but there are downsides that come along with it. Two of the main ones are the fact that people’s motivations will wane if there is no sort of reward, and it is likely to fail without the proper organization and cooperation. A lot comes along with these types of collaborations, including the good and the bad. Most people are more likely to have some sort of social media account which gives them access to online groups that vary in range. On a positive note, a lot of social reform and change is pioneered through social media as a place to collect followers and establish a plan, whether that be a rally, informative messages, etc. These groups promote positively by being able to reach a large number of people, and can recruit others to join them. On the other hand, big groups of people can have negative effects too. Anger and rage are two issues that are commonly seen on the dark side of social media. This usually consists of online groups or communities that have some sort of toxic group mindset, which is increased through the filter bubble, and translates to real life events. The Incel Community is a great example of an online community gone wrong.

The name Incel comes from "involuntary celibates" and are members of an online subculture. The men who associate with this group think of themselves as unable to find a partner, whether that be sexual or romantic, despite all their efforts to do so; this state is described as inceldom. This community is easy to research and investigate as there are many online forums, Facebook groups, and YouTube videos openly describing their beliefs and the reasons behind them. Discussions in incel forums generally are fueled by resentment, misogyny, misanthropy, self-pity, self-hatred, racism, a sense of entitlement to sex, and violence against people that are sexual active. I believe that Incel user’s opinions are amplified through the “filter bubble” which is where people are exposed to limited information, often that is biased to their own views, that may result in political and cultural consequences. This holds true as there has been violence within the community that is supported by others, in turn creating a community of monsters. Engagement in this community can be measured through attention, engagement, and conversion. Attention is how much a site is visited and how many views it has, engagement can be seen through retweets, shares, and likes, and conversion is how many votes, downloads, purchases, and donations made to the specific organization. Although engagement can be vague, online content in communities often translates to real life behavior. Like a lot of online subcultures, incel communities have an extensive amount of trolling. These forums are mainly consistent with provocative comments to get a rise out of people, but despite that, experts on mass violence express concern by what they see from the incel community.

This is the type of community that uses social media to form mass hysteria. By taking a group of like-minded individuals and putting them together creates a monster. This relates back to the psychology concept of “groupthink” where in a group where everyone is participating in something, the individual loses sense of self and responsibility, and is more likely to participate in the activity. Unfortunately, this behavior is not specific to the Incel community, or just one community at all. The downsides of social media are shown through some communities like this. 

In today’s social media culture, a current big issue is not the coronavirus specifically, but the fake news that comes along with coronavirus. Fake news is a type of yellow journalism or propaganda that consists of intentional disinformation or hoaxes spread via traditional news media or online social media. This problem is everywhere and has been blurring the lines between fact and fiction. Fake news isn’t entirely new and has been a tactic used by the media to publish stories that have turned out to be untrue. A big concern about fake news is its ability to create an environment of distrust between Americans and their government and turning neighbor against neighbor. Regarding fake news, director-general of the World Health Organization said that “we’re not just fighting an epidemic; we’re fighting an infodemic. Fake news spreads faster and more easily than this virus, and is just as dangerous. And if we don’t tackle this, we are headed down a dark path that leads nowhere but division and disharmony” (Naughton, 2020, pg. 1). Not only is a war being fought against an invisible enemy, but also against fake news which is spreading as quickly as the virus. In any other situation, the dangers of fake news lean towards the political side and bashing candidates, but in this specific case with the coronavirus, fake news can cause actual deaths. Correct information that is published about this disease is crucial because people understand more about its effects, and precautions they can take to prevent getting infected. On the other hand, if this information is false, people don’t have an outlet to get current information which can be deadly, as new information about the virus comes out everyday. 

As time passes, I believe the human race will become even more immersed in social media, if possible, and leading us down the oath of becoming even more and more like a cyborg. This is significant as it changes everything; the way people communicate, process feelings, collect and process information, and operate on a day to day basis. As this sounds like it comes with a negative connotation, I do believe there can be pros in all this. Communication can be quicker than ever, information can be accessed even more than it has been resulting in a world that is run simultaneously by humans and by bots. 

  References

Boyd, D., & Ellison, N. (2010). Social network sites: definition, history, and scholarship. IEEE Engineering Management Review, 38(3), 16–31. doi: 10.1109/emr.2010.5559139

Humphreys, A. (2016). Social media: enduring principles. New York: Oxford University Press.

[theconservativebrief]

On September 13, danah boyd took the stage at the Online News Association’s annual conference in Austin. She is the founder and president of Data and Society, a research institute dedicated to “the thorny issues at the intersection of technology and society.” The topic she had come to address, and the audience before which she had chosen to address it, was among the thorniest. boyd was in Austin to tell the media they were getting played.

“I’m hoping that you can hear what I’m saying,” she told the assembled journalists. “Because our democracy depends on you recognizing that you are being manipulated.”

The manipulators boyd was talking about were mostly alt-right and alt-light trolls, conspiracy theorists, and provocateurs. They would do or say something offensive or outrageous, bathe in the flood of negative publicity, and use the media’s coverage — particularly its storm of outraged, fact-checking, oppositional coverage — to whip up their base, generate interest in their ideas, and stoke the belief that the MSM was against them.

boyd was warning the journalists that the strategies of modern media manipulators were different — they had learned to thrive on negative coverage, and had discovered they could popularize ideas and recruit sympathizers by provoking the media into trying to discredit their noxious ideas.

“Their goal is to get the news media to negate [their] frame  —  and negate the conspirators who are propagating that frame,” she warned. For some people, having the media turn en masse to say something is vicious and untrue makes them think: Huh, I wonder if that’s true. I wonder what they’re trying to hide?

The approach had become predictable, but the media seemed unable or unwilling to stop falling for it, boyd said. She even laid it out in a clean, bulleted list:

Media manipulators have developed a strategy with three parts that rely on how the current media ecosystem is structured:

1. Create spectacle, using social media to get news media coverage.

2. Frame the spectacle through phrases that drive new audiences to find your frames through search engines.

3. Become a “digital martyr” to help radicalize others.

boyd suggested there was a simple way to shut down the manipulations of these trolls. “Ignore their attention games and focus your reporting on the wide range of non-hateful political views in this country that aren’t screaming loudly to get your attention,” she advised.

I’ve been thinking a lot about boyd’s speech lately, but the particular media manipulator who has me thinking about it presents unique problems, and the dynamics surrounding him defy her solutions.

I’m talking, of course, about the president of the United States.

Last week, law enforcement apprehended a pro-Trump obsessive who was mailing bombs to the president’s political opponents. Over the weekend, an anti-Semite entered a synagogue in Philadelphia and murdered 11 Jewish worshippers on the grounds that Jews were behind the caravan of migrants that Trump keeps hyping as an existential threat to American safety.

On Monday morning, Trump logged on to Twitter to change the subject:

There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018

It’s easy to read Trump’s tweets, with their quasi-random capitalization, and miss the care with which they’re crafted. But there’s a phrase in this one that Trump knows elicits more media outrage than any other: “the true Enemy of the People.” The media doesn’t much care when the president calls them fake news anymore. But calling them the enemy of the people mere days after a mentally imbalanced MAGA obsessive sent them bombs in the mail? The media isn’t going to ignore that. And Trump knew it.

But this wasn’t just a morning missive from Trump. This was a coordinated message from his White House.

On Monday afternoon, press secretary Sarah Sanders held her first press briefing since September 10 to reiterate Trump’s sentiments. The rare briefing was held for one reason, and one reason only: Sanders wanted an on-camera confrontation with the media, and she got it.

JIM ACOSTA: Can you state for the record which outlets that you and the president regard as the enemy of the people?

SANDERS: I’m not going to walk through a list, but I think those individuals probably know who they are.

As the briefing wrapped up, Sanders delivered the message she wanted the country to hear. “You guys have a huge responsibility to play in the divisive nature of this country, when 90 percent of the coverage of everything this president does is negative, despite the fact that the country is doing extremely well, despite the fact that the president is delivering on exactly what he said he was going to do if elected,” she said. “And he got elected by an overwhelming majority of 63 million Americans who came out and supported him, and wanted to see his policies enacted.”

It was a perfect statement. It combined an outrageously timed attack on the media with a complaint that Trump just can’t get fair coverage and wrapped it in the kind of easily proven lie the press can’t resist covering (far from being elected by an “overwhelming majority,” Trump lost the popular vote).

Hours later, this was the Fox News homepage:

Days after Trump’s inauguration, then-chief strategist Steve Bannon gave an interview to the New York Times.

“I want you to quote this,” Bannon said. “The media here is the opposition party.”

Just in case his point was missed, he said it again. “You’re the opposition party. Not the Democratic Party. You’re the opposition party. The media’s the opposition party.”

Trump has always treated his presidency as a reality show, and every good reality show needs a villain. From day one, Trump wanted his villain to be the media. With Democrats basically powerless, the media was the only force powerful enough to make continuing sense of Trump’s aggrieved, oppositional political style.

The problem was the media didn’t want to be Trump’s opposition party. The media wanted to cover his presidency. Early on, the media wanted more than anything else to normalize his presidency, and their coverage of it; there was a constant hunt for the moments when Trump appeared presidential or seemed to be changing his behavior to better match the burdens of his office.

Trump’s solution to that problem has been to provoke the media into looking like his opposition by lying in more absurd ways and directly attacking them in more outrageous ways at more and more outrageous times. Remember, for instance, “The FAKE NEWS awards,” which Trump hyped on Twitter for weeks?

Trump leverages the trollish formulas boyd outlined to perfection: He uses Twitter to create spectacle on social media, deploys catchy and unusual frames (“FAKE NEWS!” “the true Enemy of the People”) that sympathizers can search for to find supporting evidence or fellow loyalists, and then uses the media’s aggrieved or simply truth-telling reaction to paints himself as a victim of endless media bias (“90 percent of the coverage of everything this president does is negative”).

The media then reacts in the only way that makes any sense given the situation: We cover Trump’s statements as outrageous and aberrant; we make clear where he’s lied or given succor to violent paranoiacs; we fret over the future of the free press. And then Trump and his loyalists point to our overwhelmingly negative coverage and say, “See? Told you they were the opposition party.”

Trump, in other words, manipulates the media using the same tactics as a run-of-the-mill alt-right troll, and for much the same reason: He wants the media to fight with him so he gets more coverage and shows how biased they are against him. He wants the media to fight him because that drives attention to the things he’s saying, to the conspiracies he’s popularizing, and to himself. Going to war with the media nets Trump much more coverage than giving a speech on manufacturing policy or tax cuts.

The problem is Donald Trump isn’t your run-of-the-mill troll. He’s the president of the United States of America.

In her important report on the way trolls manipulate the media into amplifying their messages, communications scholar Whitney Phillips summed up the media’s lose-lose choice well. “It is problematic enough when everyday citizens help spread false, malicious, or manipulative information across social media,” she writes. “It is infinitely more problematic when journalists, whose work can reach millions, do the same. At least, it can be infinitely more problematic. It can also be a critical contribution to public discourse.”

Phillips was talking about the difficult questions involved in covering online neo-Nazis and alt-right provocateurs, but the bind applies with vastly more force to Trump himself. Constantly covering Trump’s endless attacks on the press, his lies, his violations of basic decency and norms, crowds out coverage of arguably more consequential questions, like his baldfaced lying about the GOP’s health care plan or the specifics of Democrats’ agenda if they retake Congress.

But covering a US president’s proto-fascist language about the free press is also a critical contribution to public discourse. The term “newsworthy” may be abused and opaque, but that’s newsworthy under any definition.

What do you do, though, when coverage of that proto-fascist language is actually the point of the language in the first place? Trump wants to bait the media into looking like his opposition. He wants us to make the dominant and constant topic of political conversation his war with, well, us.

As press critic Jay Rosen put it, the media has no idea what to cover when “the erosion of democratic institutions — not just the press, but all of them — is part of how the political movement [the president] leads is powered.”

The media used to have a stick here: negative coverage. Sure, you could get us to cover you by being outrageous or offensive, but you wouldn’t want that kind of coverage. That kind of coverage could destroy your career.

But Trump does want that kind of coverage. That kind of coverage is how he built his political career. That kind of coverage is how he shows that we’re his opposition, that he’s an underdog at war with the Washington “deep state.” Even better, that kind of coverage lets him crowd out the kind of coverage he really doesn’t want — coverage of his actual agenda, which trends toward plutocracy rather than populism; of other politicians, who have ideas and messages that could threaten Trump’s presidency if only they could get heard.

“Journalists have become more savvy in how they deal with lower-level trolls,” Phillips told me by phone. “They figured out how to not engage with them on Twitter. But no one has quite figured out what to do when the president is engaging in similar behaviors. You can’t just ignore him, can you?” Then I heard her tone change. “That’s a genuine question. Can we ignore him? Does it make sense? Is it ethical to look at something the president of the United States says and decide we won’t report that?”

Nor is it obvious that if the mainstream media ignored Trump’s provocations, stunts, and obsessions in favor of focusing on more substantive parts of his agenda, it would much matter. Trump has his own communication channels. This is a point Sanders has made defending her decision to rarely hold press briefings (a decision she defended, naturally, on Fox News). “The day that the briefing was initially created, the atmosphere was incredibly different and you didn’t have the same access and ways to communicate with the American public,” she said.

Social media and propagandistic outlets like Fox News let Trump drive the story before any independent editorial judgment comes into play. Mainstream publications that ignore the controversies he creates would make themselves look like the opposition in a totally different way, and would likely lose market share to outlets that swarmed around Trump’s provocations and reaped the social and search traffic that came with it.

Trump often winks at this relationship he has with the media, the way his attacks are good politics for him and good business for us. In December, he told the New York Times:

Another reason that I’m going to win another four years is because newspapers, television, all forms of media will tank if I’m not there because without me, their ratings are going down the tubes. Without me, the New York Times will indeed be not the failing New York Times, but the failed New York Times. So they basically have to let me win. And eventually, probably six months before the election, they’ll be loving me because they’re saying, “Please, please, don’t lose Donald Trump.

This is the part of the piece where I’m supposed to offer solutions, I think. But I don’t have good ones. I think media outlets need to develop a clearer rubric for newsworthiness as a way of making coverage decisions less reactive to Trump tweets. At Vox, for instance, we weight policy stories more heavily, which gives a different mix to our news, but of course, we cover Trump’s tweets and provocations as well — hell, this whole piece is, in a sense, me covering Trump’s tweets and provocations.

“You can starve lower-level manipulators of oxygen,” says Phillips. “How do you starve the president of oxygen? He creates his own oxygen.”

The first step to solving a problem is admitting you have one. And we have one. Trump has shown you can build a whole presidency around provocation. He has shown that you can always manipulate the media into swarming you with negative coverage and looking like your enemy, and then you can run against the media at the same time you’re discrediting it to your followers. He has shown that you can shut down your competitors, challengers, and opponents by being so outrageous that you simply deny them the oxygen of media coverage.

This strategy is dangerous for the country, but it’s worked for Trump, and it could work for others if nothing changes. “He has established a coherent behavioral template for others to borrow from,” says Phillips. “When something is done and it succeeds, it sends a message to anyone who might want to take a similar behavior down the road that they should press those exact same buttons.”

Original Source -> “Enemy of the People”: how Trump makes the media into the opposition

via The Conservative Brief

[annbrighthaus-blog]

Internet trolling fast became a hobby for those amused by the discomfort and annoyance of others. Made easy by the mask of anonymity that online posting provides, trolling involves the posting of comments or topics which bother others simply for the amusement of the “troll”. While trolling began as a form of causing amusing disruptions in otherwise normal conversations, it has grown into a way to harass others, sometimes including sexual comments.

Trolling has been a problem for social media platforms due to the ability to create multiple accounts under various personas. In the case of Twitter, the user handle has little to do with a person’s actual identity. Unlike other social media outlets, such as Facebook, which uses real life photographs and identities to share pictures and information with friends online, twitter is a more public forum, through which there is no need to ever define oneself. In fact, there have been many counts of fraudulent activity, identity theft, and made up personas through Twitter.

Twitter Takes Action

There’s always been discontent with Twitter users over the amount of spam, fraud, and trolling which takes place on the platform, and it seems that Twitter has now taken a step toward eradicating the issue. Twitter announced that they will be removing harmful and annoying content from their platform, beginning with accounts which are considered negative or disruptive.

The social media giant has made it known that they will begin “cleaning house” by reducing the visibility of accounts which are thought to be bots, rather than people. These bot driven accounts spread spam by auto-commenting on a variety of real user posts passing on links to products and services or providing false or negative feedback. Most bots of this kind are designed to promote the visibility of a website, hoping to boost search engine optimization through the addition of keywords of links to the website in question.

Rather than banning these users completely, which would create a huge drop in the Twitter follower numbers, the social media company has decided to reduce the visibility of these users. By making bots and fraudulent users less visible, the desired outcome of spreading links and keywords will be diminished, and less legitimate users will be affected.

How Will Twitter Decide Who Stays and Who Goes?

Unlike Google bots which are designed to seek out content that is considered offensive, irrelevant, or rife with spam, Twitter won’t be finding trolls by monitoring content and comments. Instead, the tech giant is choosing to monitor the way that Twitter accounts are created, watching for specific algorithms which may suggest a bot is behind the account creation. For human spammers, Twitter will monitor interactions between users, checking accounts which have been blocked by others or muted regularly from being followed. Users which are being purposely ignored by others are thought to be at the root of the trolling issue and will be limited in their post visibility the same as bots.

Why Take a Stand Now?

When asked about the new goals to reduce spam and trolling, Twitter responded that they want to cut down on reported abuse on the site and make Twitter a safer place for users. The Vice President of Twitter’s Trust and Safety department suggested that this change isn’t meant to detract from controversy and disagreements on the site, but rather, to make it a more positive site to share on. In other words, users can still disagree, argue, or debate, but respectfully.

When testing this new play for reduced trolling visibility, Twitter saw a reduction of 4% in search query responses and a reduction of 8% in comments and replies. This new change will roll out to the rejoicing of Twitter users who have made it known that they disagree with the constant disruptions which fraudulent Twitter activity brings to the site.

Changing Twitter

This is a small change for Twitter, but it could mean big changes in the future. Research has shown that it takes very little to create controversy on the site, which in turn promotes these accounts and creates large following bases. This has been detrimental to the running of many political campaigns and advertising platforms, which is part of the issue, and is the cause for Twitter considering changing site policies surrounding trolling and fraudulent profiles to be so important.

Much of the controversy surrounding the buying of Twitter followers and fake accounts has grown over the past months as Facebook and Google began battling security policies which have toed the line on disregard for privacy. In fact, Facebook lost several followers, including celebrity followers after the news came out that much of the private information shared over these social media and search engine sites is saved and stored. The idea of being documented without knowledge spooked most site users; although the overall following for Facebook remains strong.

Twitter and other social media sites, such as Snapchat and Instagram have also come under scrutiny recently, as users realize that if one social media platform is collecting data, there’s the possibility that they all are. Twitter has been working to remove these fears and doubts from the minds of users, and this new anti-trolling policy is one of the steps being taken to reduce fallout from the mass privacy scandals going on across the internet.

So, will Twitter once and for all ban trolling on their platform? Probably not, but they are monitoring it more closely, and wishing all of their users a safe and happy experience with the site.

[usviraltrends-blog]

New Post has been published on https://usviraltrends.com/cnn-interview-read-mark-zuckerbergs-remarks-2/

CNN interview: Read Mark Zuckerberg's remarks

Mark Zuckerberg sat down for an exclusive interview with CNN’s Laurie Segall on Wednesday, days after news broke that Cambridge Analytica, a data firm with ties to President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, accessed information from 50 million Facebook users without their knowledge.

Zuckerberg apologized for the scandal, discussed Facebook’s efforts to prevent bad actors for meddling in the 2018 midterm elections and shared his regrets. Read excerpts from the emotional interview below.

What went wrong

Laurie Segall: I’m gonna start with just a basic question, Mark, what happened? What went wrong?

Mark Zuckerberg: So this was a major breach of trust and I’m really sorry that this happened. You know we have a basic responsibility to protect people’s data and if we can’t do that then we don’t deserve to have the opportunity to serve people. So our responsibility now is to make sure that this doesn’t happen again. And there are a few basic things that I think we need to do to ensure that. One is making sure that developers like Aleksandr Kogan, who got access to a lot of information and then improperly used it, just don’t get access to as much information going forward. So we are doing a set of things to restrict the amount of access that developers can get going forward. But the other is we need to make sure that there aren’t any other Cambridge Analyticas out there. Right, or folks who have improperly accessed data. So we’re gonna go now and investigate every app that has access to a large amount of information from before we locked down our platform. And if we detect any suspicious activity we’re gonna do a full forensic audit.

What Facebook’s doing now

Zuckerberg: We’re going to review thousands of apps. So, this is gonna be an intensive process, but this is important. I mean this is something that in retrospect we clearly should have done, upfront, with Cambridge Analytica. We should not have trusted the certification that they gave us. And we’re not gonna make that mistake again. I mean this is our responsibility to our community, is to make sure that we secure the data that they’re sharing with us.

Segall: Will you take legal action against Cambridge Analytica?

Zuckerberg: Well the first thing that we need to do is actually understand what happened. So, you know, right now we have the report from the Times and the Guardian and Channel 4 that said that they thought that Cambridge Analytica might have access to data still. But the first thing that we need to do is complete our audit there… the short answer is that if we go in and find that Cambridge Analytica still has access to the data, we’re gonna take all legal steps that we can to make that the data of people in our community is protected.

What he regrets

Segall: Respond to the users who say you didn’t get in front of it because we’re here talking about it today.

Zuckerberg: Well, clearly I wish we’d taken those steps earlier. I mean, that, that I think is probably the biggest mistake that we made here … the feedback from the community and the world has overwhelmingly been, that, if you balance these two values of being able to take your data and some data from friends to be able to have social experiences on other apps on the one hand, this ideal of kind of data portability. And on the other hand, making sure that your data’s always locked down. Guaranteeing that it never goes anywhere. You know I think we’ve started off a little bit on the idealistic, and maybe naive side, right, of thinking that that vision around data portability and enabling social apps was gonna be what our community preferred, and I think what we’ve learned over time very clearly is that the most important thing always is making sure that people’s data is locked down. And that’s a mistake that … we fixed a few years back and I don’t expect us to make again.

On ‘selling data’

Segall: Is your business model on trial here?

Zuckerberg: You know, one of the big misconceptions about Facebook is this idea that we somehow sell data. We don’t sell any data to anyone and that’s actually a really key part of the model. Both for protecting people’s personal data and privacy, but also because, you know the competitive advantage of a lot of our services, whether that’s ranking News Feed or ranking search or even ranking ads is that people do share a lot of information on Facebook and therefore we can build better services. So we don’t want data to be able to get out. When that happens, that’s not good for people in our community, that’s not good for our business. So, that’s not actually how ads work on the service and it actually has never been. An advertiser can come to us and say, “Hey, I’d like to reach women within this age range” and if we understand who is in that then we can show that ad but none of that information goes to the advertiser.

How Facebook is fighting election meddling

Zuckerberg: I think what’s clear is that in 2016, we were not as on top of a number of issues as we should have [been] whether it was Russian interference or fake news. But what we have seen since then is, a number of months later there was a major French election, and there we deployed some AI tools that did a much better job of identifying Russian bots and basically Russian potential interference and weeding that out of the platform ahead of the election. And we were much happier with how that went. In 2017, last year, during the special election, the senate seat in Alabama, we deployed some new AI tools that we built to detect fake accounts that were trying to spread false news and we found a lot of different accounts coming from Macedonia. So, I think the reality here is that this isn’t rocket science. Right? And there’s a lot of hard work that we need to do to make it harder for nation-states like Russia to do election interference, to make it so that trolls and other folks can’t spread fake news, but we can get in front of this. And we have a responsibility to do this, not only for the 2018 midterms in the U.S., which are going to be a huge deal this year and that’s just a huge focus for us but there’s a big election in India this year, there’s a big election in Brazil, there are big elections around the world, and you can bet that we are really committed to doing everything that we need to to make sure that the integrity of those elections on Facebook is secured.

Related: The fake news machine: Inside a Macedonian town gearing up for 2020

On attempts to manipulate the midterm elections

Segall: Do you think that bad actors are using Facebook at this moment to meddle with the U.S. midterm elections?

Zuckerberg: I’m sure someone’s trying. Right? I’m sure that there’s V2, version two of whatever the Russian effort was in 2016, I’m sure they’re working on that and there are going to be some new tactics that we need to make sure that we observe and get in front of —

Segall: Do you know what the — speaking of getting in front of them, do you know what they are?

Zuckerberg: Yes, and I think we have some sense of the different things that we need to get in front of and we have a lot of different folks in the company, both building technology and, a lot of this stuff requires people to review things and that’s one of the big commitments that we’ve made this year is to double the number of people working on security at the company. We’re going to have 20,000 people working on security and content review in this company by the end of this year. We have about 15,000 people working on security and content review now. So I think the combination of building the right tools to identify different patterns across all of our products and having people to review them at the scale and speed that we need is going to be a good formula, but you know, security isn’t a problem that you ever fully solve. You can get to the level where you’re better than your adversaries and they continue evolving, so we’re going to be working on this forever, as long as this community remains an important thing in the world.

Segall: Are you specifically seeing bad actors trying to meddle with the U.S. election now?

Zuckerberg: What we see are a lot of folks trying to sew division. Right? So that was a major tactic that we saw Russia try to use in the 2016 election. Actually most of what they did was not directly, as far as we can tell from the data that we’ve seen, was not directly about the election, but was more about just dividing people. You know, so they’d run a group for pro-immigration reform and they’d run another group against immigration reform to just try to pit people against each other. And a lot of this was done with fake accounts that we could do a better job of tracing and using AI tools to be able to scan and observe a lot of what is going on and I’m confident that we’re going to do a much better job. Now the reality is with a community of two billion people, I can’t promise that we’re going to find everything. But what I can commit to is that we’re going to make it as hard as possible for these adversaries to do that and I think that we’re going to do a much better job.

Related: ‘I’m sure someone’s trying’ to disrupt 2018 midterm elections

Testifying before Congress

Segall: Lawmakers in the United States and the UK are asking you to testify. Everybody wants you to show up. Will you testify before Congress?

Zuckerberg: So, the short answer is I’m happy to, if it’s the right thing to do. Facebook testifies in Congress regularly on a number of topics, some high profile and some not. And our objective is always to provide Congress, who does an extremely important job, to have the most information that they can. We see a small slice of activity on Facebook, but Congress gets to have access to the information across Facebook and all other companies and the intelligence community and everything. So what we try to do is send the person at Facebook who will have the most knowledge about what Congress is trying to learn. So if that’s me, then I am happy to go. What I think we’ve found so far is that typically there are people whose whole job is focused on an area, but I would imagine at some point that there would be a topic where I am the sole authority on and that would make sense for me to do and I’ll be happy to do it at that point.

Whether Facebook should be regulated

Segall: Given the stakes here, why shouldn’t Facebook be regulated?

Zuckerberg: I actually am not sure we shouldn’t be regulated. I think in general technology is an increasingly important trend in the world and I actually think the question is more, what is the right regulation rather than “Yes or no, should it be regulated?”

Segall: What’s the right regulation?

Zuckerberg: Well there’s some basic things, then I think there are some big intellectual debates. On the basic side, I think there are things like ads transparency regulation that I would love to see. If you look at how much regulation there is around advertising on TV and print, it’s just not clear why there should be less on the internet. We should have the same level of transparency required. And I don’t know if the bill is going to pass. I know a couple of senators are working really hard on this, but we’re committed and we’ve actually already started rolling out ad transparency tools that accomplish most of the things that are in all the bills that people are talking about today because this is an important thing. People should know who is buying the ads that they see on Facebook, and you should be able to go on any page and see all the ads that people are running to different audiences. So we actually already have this running in Canada as a test and our goal is to get this running here well before the 2018 midterms, so that way we’ll have that new, higher standard of transparency in place for the 2018 midterms in the U.S. There are broader regulation questions as well, but that’s actually an easy one.

Growing pains

Segall: So you’ve been the leader of Facebook for 14 years. Looking back on all your time, because we don’t get to hear Mark, personal Mark that often, do you have any moments that you look at that are regrets? If you could look at one moment as something you regretted that you really wish now you could have changed or you could have done, what would it be?

Zuckerberg: Oh, I don’t know. I mean, there are so many mistakes that I’ve made. I started this company when I was 19. I was a kid.

Segall: What do you say to your 19-year-old self in a dorm room?

Zuckerberg: I think a pretty common question is “What mistake do you wish you’d not made?” but the reality is you can make a ton of mistakes in your life, no matter what you do and you know, I’ve made, I’ve made every kind of mistake that you can make. I mean I started this when I was so young and inexperienced, right? I made technical errors and business errors. I hired the wrong people. I trusted the wrong people. I’ve probably launched more products that have failed than most people will in their lifetime. But you know I think the thing that makes Facebook work for people, is not that there weren’t mistakes; it’s that we learned from them. Right, and that’s the commitment that I try to have inside our company and for our community is that yeah, maybe you’re not gonna get everything right. The world changes. There are gonna be new challenges that come up.

Related: ‘I’m really sorry that this happened’

How being a father changed him

Segall: How has being a father changed your commitment to users, changed your commitment to their future and what a kinder Facebook looks like?

Zuckerberg: Well, I think, having kids changes a lot. And-

Segall: Like what?

Zuckerberg: Well, you know I used to think that the most important thing to me by far was, you know my having the greatest positive impact across the world that I can and, now I really just care about building something that my girls are gonna grow up and be proud of me for. And that’s what is kind of my guiding philosophy at this point is and you know I come and work on a lot of hard things during the day and I go home and just ask will my girls be proud of what I did today?

— CNN’s Rob McLean and Danielle Wiener-Bronner contributed.

CNNMoney (New York) First published March 21, 2018: 11:35 PM ET

!function(f,b,e,v,n,t,s)if(f.fbq)return;n=f.fbq=function()n.callMethod? n.callMethod.apply(n,arguments):n.queue.push(arguments);if(!f._fbq)f._fbq=n; n.push=n;n.loaded=!0;n.version='2.0';n.queue=[];t=b.createElement(e);t.async=!0; t.src=v;s=b.getElementsByTagName(e)[0];s.parentNode.insertBefore(t,s)(window, document,'script','//connect.facebook.net/en_US/fbevents.js');

fbq('init', '731697573629176'); fbq('track', "PageView");

[omcik-blog]

New Post has been published on OmCik

New Post has been published on http://omcik.com/instagram-rolls-out-comment-control-puts-onus-on-user-to-filter-trolls/

Instagram rolls out comment-control, puts onus on user to filter trolls

Can social media platforms be tamed?

Well, Instagram is trying to rein in the trolls in its corner of the internet.

The Facebook-owned photo sharing app introduced a comment-control tool this week in a bid to grapple with harassment on its platform and curb online vitriol.

Individuals with public Instagram accounts will now have a handful of filtering options for comments. They can allow comments from: Everyone, people you follow and your followers, just people you follow, or just your followers. Comments can also be blocked from specific users.

While it may seem like just another service update, it is important step in the broader context of social media’s big online harassment problem. And it is, in fact, a huge issue for internet users.

Pew Research Center recently reported online abuse is as rampant as ever, with four in 10 U.S. adults saying they’ve been harassed online. Meanwhile, 18% of that group said physical threats, stalking or sexual harassment were part of the harassment.

The ability to filter commenters on Instagram won’t eradicate the internet’s trolling problem. But some experts say it’s a step in the right direction.

“As lawyers for individuals targeted by trolls, perverts, as*****s, and psychos, we’ve known how rife the Instagram comment section is for our client base,” Carrie Goldberg, an attorney who specializes in sexual harassment crimes, told CNN Tech.

Related: One man’s approach to confront his online harassers: empathy

The new tool could stave off harassment before it starts, according to Goldberg. “The company does not have to spend its resources moderating abuse when users can curtail it before it happens in the first place.”

Zoe Quinn, a game developer who wrote about her personal experience being harassed online in a new book “Crash Override,” says she’ll take advantage of the feature.

“I’m relieved to know I can finally do something about a few bad actors on my own account,” she told CNN Tech, adding that giving people “granular and specific control over their privacy settings is great practice in general.”

Instagram’s tactic for helping users filter their feeds isn’t exactly groundbreaking.

The strategy is one parent company Facebook also uses.

Facebook users can filter who sees their profiles and posts, as well as who is able to comment. Facebook, as well as other platforms like Twitter, rely on users to report misbehavior. A team of moderators then investigates claims that have been submitted.

The comment-control tool isn’t a panacea. Experts say there are drawbacks because it places the onus too squarely on the user. Others say it could create a false sense of security.

Brianna Wu, another game developer who has been a frequent target of online harassment, including death threats, explained to CNN Tech that if an Instagram account is dedicated to “doxxing” women — a term that refers to publishing the private or identifying information about someone for malicious purposes — blocking that content doesn’t prevent it from existing and spreading.

“The danger is going to still exist. You have to have user oversight,” she said. “It’s also psychologically exhausting to curate death threats and rape threats yourself. You can block them, but new accounts spring up like weeds … It’s my experience when you draw a boundary with someone, they often double down.”

Related: Instagram’s new tools scrub nasty comments and spam

Soraya Chemaly, a writer and director of the Women’s Media Center Speech Project, agreed.

“I know that they try hard to make sure users have tools at their disposal that enable them to develop more privacy which I think is a net good,” said Chemaly, while adding that the tools themselves don’t really protect anyone. “It just makes the experience a little more pleasant.”

Instagram also provides the ability to filter comments in a few other languages. It added the ability to block select offensive comments in English in June. This week, the company said that’s now available in other languages, too: Arabic, French, German and Portuguese.

Chemaly said the issue of online harassment on social platforms is complicated.

“There’s a question of, what’s at the root of the hostility, that no one really addresses … It’s a larger issue of social and emotional learning.”

So, while Instagram may be sending a message to trolls that it’s platform is getting a little less friendly to their vitriol, “there’s really no stemming the firehose of awful human beings online,” added Chemaly. “It’s like playing whack-a-mole.”

Danielle Citron, a cyber-harassment expert and law professor at the University of Maryland, said the comment-control tool is similar to those used by some blogging platforms, where people can delete or block individuals who are abusive or off-topic.

If privacy and safety folks collaborate with engineers when building a product from the ground up, features like this might be available from the get-go “rather than trying to tack on privacy and security later,” Citron said.

CNNMoney (New York) First published September 27, 2017: 3:30 PM ET

[mybreadlover]

What is cyberbullying and what are the warning signs?

Online socializing has good and bad sides to it. The Internet and social media platforms continue to evolve how we communicate and have added certain conveniences to our lifestyles, but they can also expose us to new risks, as well.

Cyberbullying is one example that can have devastating effects on young people. Cyberbullying occurs when a bully targets a victim using online communication methods such as texting or social media posts to threaten, abuse, or degrade someone. With its use of technology, cyberbullying has gained more attention and notoriety in recent years. It’s a crime that doesn’t restrict itself to school or the playground.

What fuels cyberbullying? Unlike traditional bullying, it doesn’t require physical strength or a face-to-face meeting. Anyone with an Internet connection and a digital device like a smartphone, computer or tablet can be a cyberbully. There are no specific hours, and it can happen around the clock, whether through social networking sites or instant messaging.

Since many platforms don’t make an effort to verify people’s real identities, a cyberbully can choose an alias and remain anonymous. Cyberbullying is fueled by this cloak of anonymity, which often serves to heighten the extent of a cyberbully’s cruel and damaging behavior. It can target anyone, including young kids and middle school and high school students.

According to the 2020 Norton.com/Setup Cyber Security Insights Report, 48 percent of parents believe their children are more likely to be bullied online than on a playground. Finding solutions to combat online bullying should be a priority for parents and school officials. But bullying prevention is a difficult challenge.

The experience of cyberbullying can leave lifelong scars and be harmful a child’s development and self-esteem. Children often have a hard time knowing how to respond when they are harassed. And when they do react, they often don’t completely understand the consequences of their actions.

Cyberbullying can leave some youth depressed or withdrawn, and in some extreme cases has led victims to suicide.

There are many different types of cyberbullying out there, and all of them can be damaging to children and teens.

8 types of cyberbullying

Here are eight types of online bullying:

1. Outing

The outing is a deliberate act to embarrass or publicly humiliate an individual by posting their private, sensitive, or embarrassing information online. The information revealed can be minor or serious but can have a severe and lasting impact on the victim.

2. Fraping

Fraping is a serious offense where a person gains access to the victim’s social media account and impersonates them in an attempt to be funny or to ruin their reputation. Fraping can have serious consequences, especially because once a social post is out there, it may be hard to delete it and mend the victim’s digital reputation.

3. Dissing

Dissing is when people share or post cruel information about an individual online to ruin their reputation or friendships with others. This includes posting personal photos, videos, and screenshots. The person sharing this information may be a friend or acquaintance of the victim. Some cyberbullies go to great lengths to hurt their victims, even creating webpages designed to spread hurtful information and lies about their victims.

4. Trolling

Trolling is a form of cyberbullying done by insulting an individual online to provoke them enough to get a response. Usually, these attacks are personal and instigate anger in the victim, making them lash out and behave badly.

5. Trickery

Trickery is the act of gaining a victim’s trust so that they reveal secrets or embarrassing information, which the cyberbully posts on the Internet for everyone to see. The person pretends to be a close friend and confidant and gives the victim a false sense of security before breaking his or her trust.

6. Sockpuppets or catfishing

A “sockpuppet” is a form of deception that uses a fake social media account. The creator of the fake account gains their victim’s trust by pretending to be someone they’re not. When their victim divulges private information, the puppeteer shares that personal information with others who may bully the victim. Catfishing similarly involves setting up a fake online profile, but with the purpose of luring its victim into a deceptive online romance.

7. Doxing

Doxing is derived from the word “documents” and occurs when a cyberbully harasses and threatens a victim online for revenge and to destroy their victims’ privacy. Doxing shares private information — such as Social Security numbers, credit cards, phone numbers, and other personal data — with the public.

8. Encouraging self-harm

Some cyberbullies threaten to hurt their victims or convince them to hurt themselves. It can be the worst type of cyberbullying because it can lead its victims to take their lives by suicide.

Cyberbullying warning signs

Cyberbullying comes in many forms and can affect its victims in many ways. It’s smart to watch for common warning signs that your child is a victim of cyberbullying, as well as bullying in general.

Depression

A huge warning sign that your child may be the victim of cyberbullying or bullying is if they become withdrawn or seem depressed and sad. Are they losing interest in people or activities they used to enjoy? Are they sleeping in when they usually don’t?

Avoidance of social situations

Does your child or teen seem to be avoiding social situations or friends whom they enjoyed spending time with in the past? Are they spending an inordinate amount of time alone? This could be a signal that something greater, such as cyberbullying, is going on.

Changed frequency of device use

Have you noticed that your child suddenly is always on social media or Snapchat, or texting on their cell phones? This could signal they are the target of cyberbullying — or are doing the bullying. A marked decrease in device use could also be a warning sign. Paying attention to any changes in your child’s online behavior could help you detect trouble.

Secrecy

Does your child hide their devices whenever you’re around or dodge questions about their online activity? They could be hiding the possibility that they are being bullied online. This is an important opportunity for you to intervene, help them sort out their emotions, and put a stop to the harmful behavior.

Heightened emotions

Another warning sign of cyberbullying is if your child seems to get upset or angry when they’re online. Crying is a warning sign. While laughing isn’t a bad thing, it might be if they’re the ones doing or witnessing cyberbullying.

Suspicious social media account activity

Has your child suddenly canceled their social media accounts? Or do they seem to have multiple accounts? These could be warning signs that something isn’t right.

Suspicious photos

Have you seen images of your child on their cell phone or others’ social media accounts that are demeaning and inappropriate? Or have you found images of someone else on one of your child’s devices that you know the other person wouldn’t want to be shared? These are warning signs that either your child is the target or source of cyberbullying.

Hurtful comments

Are there mean comments harassing or embarrassing your child on their social media accounts or in their text messages? Keeping up with their online activity is important, especially so you can spot cyberbullying behavior — such as hurtful comments — before they are deleted. Even if deleted, those comments may inflict emotional damage on your child.

How to protect your child from cyberbullying

How can you help protect a child from cyberbullying? One of the first things parents should do when their child is being cyberbullied is to remember to stay aware and calm. Children may not like to tell their parents when they are being cyberbullied because they feel embarrassed or they’re afraid they might lose their internet privileges.

Talk to your kids about cyberbullying. Let them know cyberbullying can be common — that they aren’t the only victims. Teach your kids the basics of Norton.com/setup online security and stay connected with them daily and digitally.

Another option to keep children safe online is to install reliable online security on all of the devices they access. For instance, Norton.com/Setup Family Premier lets your kids explore the web freely while keeping you in the know about which sites they visit. It comes with parental controls that block unsuitable content for kids and provides insight into your child’s social media activity when they login to social media sites from their PC.

The Norton.com/Setup security software also helps protect your child from accidentally giving out sensitive personal information from their computer. This includes phone numbers, addresses, email, and the school they attend. It also alerts you when your child attempts to visit a blocked site.

Cyberbullying is a problem that’s not easy to solve. But awareness and knowledge are the first steps to help keep your children safe online.

via Blogger https://ift.tt/31D4LqQ