With some businesses suing online review authors, even for completely factual reviews, should we even write online reviews? Further, many online reviews are “fake”, using paid authors and even competitors writing negative reviews on their competition.
It may be that the value of a journalist was that the journalist was integrated with a printing press or broadcast license. Today, that value proposition has blown up. The “old” journalist had power through the control of information via access to printing presses and broadcast facilities. Now that everyone has low cost access to distribution, do journalists still add as much value as they once did?
“Selection bias” is common in news reporting. In this example, the news report about investing in real estate interviews only those who have made much money in real estate, and mostly those who work in the real estate industry. We do not hear from anyone who lost money or had an unsatisfactory experience in real estate investing. This skews our perspective on the subject.
Nice illustration of how easy we can be fooled by numbers: to save gas, do you upgrade your 36 mpg car to a newer 46 mpg car, or do you upgrade your pickup truck from 15 mpg to 18 mpg? You drive both the same amount per year. Most people will select the 10 mpg fuel improvement – but they’ll save twice as much gas if they updated the pick up truck.
Some great examples of how people make decisions – and conclusions – based on marketing propaganda. Many now choose “almond milk” because production doesn’t produce as much green house gases (notably methane) as produced by dairy milk. Except it takes 6.098 liters (1,611 US gallons) to make 1 liter of almond milk, and most almonds are grown in California which has high variability (e.g. frequent drought) in rainfall. People make supposedly environmentally friendly choices based on incorrect information, limited information, or missing critical context.
Many studies have found that the “news” is mostly negative, and many studies have also found that news consumers seem to desire negative news. A new study found this is true across 17 countries and is not relegated just to the U.S. or certain European news outlets. A corollary hypothesis is that with the advent of online news and counting of clicks, news editors are aware that negative news sells and hence, choose to deliver more negative news today.
Google’s internal culture – to those of us outside the company – was looking like a free-for-all of political divisions and internal disarray. Google is now trying to halt these activities, which might lead to less outrage and more productivity 🙂
This item was shared into my FB feed today, claiming these two were killed in Afghanistan in June of 2019. In fact, the photo is copyrighted with all rights reserved, and is from 2011. The purpose is to emotionally hook viewers into sharing it, thereby getting exposure for their online business. The page appears to be maintained in Kosovo, and their organization’s address for their Pet Cemetery in New York City is that of a college student housing dormitory.
Only 8 left in stock? Bogus claim to urge you to “Buy now!” “Sale ends soon!” after which the sale continues forever. “25 people just viewed this hotel room” – nope, that’s a random number to get you to “jump on the bandwagon” and act quickly.
Twitter has been leaking personal information to 3rd parties for a year. Twitter has also been making “inferences” or assumptions about each of us to aid in targeted advertising. In my own case, Twitter and Facebook have both made false inferences – yet they use these false assumptions to target ads – and presumably to curate our news feeds. We only see what Twitter and Facebook wants us to see – which is literally machine driven propaganda.