Media works to make you outraged, all the time
Social media promoters know that “outrage” leads to more views. That’s why conspiracy theories and other outrageous content flourish on social media – because they are watched.
Fear is a powerful motivator in propaganda messaging: How its used to sell third party solar
Third party companies offer to install solar PV arrays on your home and promise to save you money on your monthly electric utility costs. Bloomberg found they use a mix of false assertions, lies, cherry picking and fear as sales methods, to persuade homeowners to sign up and lease the solar PV system for decades. Over time, the lease costs increase such that the homeowner spends far more in the future, while the third party company collects large government subsidies. Few homeowners understand what they got in to. When they go to sell their home, the lease is transferred to the buyer – in effect, TPO solar PV arrays become a dead weight on the home’s future sales potential, particularly to informed buyers who understand the game.
The “cherry picking” method of propaganda
Simple example of “cherry picking” use in propaganda messaging.
The headline: “Over half of Americans delay or don’t get health care because they can’t afford it”
The survey appears to have found that over half of Americans postpone preventative checkups when they are not experiencing any health problems which is different than avoiding seeking care for an active health care problem.
The distinction is that in many health care visits, a patient is experiencing something wrong and visits a provider to hopefully find a solution.
In a preventative check up, a patient goes to a provider and asks the provider to find something wrong with them.
NBC acknowledges news story headline was fiction
NBC makes a major error in reporting on a Trump speech and then retracts its claim, on Twitter – but leaves the original incorrect headline and incorrect video online. NBC News had the story completely wrong.
Staged photos used to illustrate a “news” story
The way to respond to accusations of fictional news reporting is to double down on accuracy, objectivity and remaining calm. Unfortunately, the news industry continues to harm itself through self destructive behavior typical of middle school drama. Here, an online magazine staged their photos to accompany an interview, down to providing the clothing worn by the subject being interviewed.
Google search demonstrates political bias versus 6 other search engines?
An image search for the word “idiot” across 7 different search engines yields curious results.
Did Vox advocate censoring social media? No.
This propaganda poster is now spreading online. The original Vox Tweet is here. It contains a link to a video explaining their thinking. They are clear in their video that they are not advocating censoring these individuals. The video concludes with the problems that emerge when speech is censored and the practical problems of policing platforms like YouTube that see 400 hours of new video uploaded every minute. The Vox video does not encourage censorship. Commentary There is, though, a…
Journalists and Academics seek special privileges on Facebook
Facebook restricts certain conduct on its platform. However, journalists and academics are seeking to receive special privileges to do things that are prohibited for others. Journalists and academics, for example, would be permitted to set up fake accounts with fake or curated content, for the purpose of studying users. Individuals, however, would be banned from conducting the same research and thus, would be prohibited from verifying or evaluating the work of journalists and academics. Basically, the proposal is to have…
Part 7: We should all be like Denmark, remember?
Occupy Democrats is an online, social media-based, for profit publisher of emotion laden political propaganda posters targeting those who view themselves as left wing. In 2016, Occupy Democrats used social media to distribute this propaganda through shares and likes. Every claim on this widely distributed and shared poster is essentially false – or two that are highly misleading at best (see links below for excruciating details.) Note their last item: SHARE if America should follow their lead! Occupy Democrats wants…
It may be virtue signalling, but at least its not actually true
This propaganda poster came across my news feed. According to Snopes, He occasionally rides a subway but is more often driving one of his sports cars or classic motorcycles. He generously support several charities; however, his net worth is estimated at $350 million. He lives in a $4 million home (shack, not a mansion, in Hollywood Hills, which is in California, not New York City). Typical of propaganda, this poster extracts “bits” and extrapolates those to make broad or generalized…
"There is nothing wrong with your social media feed. We are controlling transmission"
A long time ago, in a generation far away from the present, there was a TV show called “The Outer Limits” famous for its opening sequence narration: There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will…
Proof that #Facebook censored the political posts and ads we saw #DeleteFacebook
Last Friday, I hypothesized that I saw only left wing political propaganda on Facebook in 2016 because Facebook had presumably identified me as “Liberal”. This hypothesis is now confirmed. This political attribute was used by Facebook as a filter – I saw left wing click bait ads, and due to Facebook’s news feed filtering, I only saw left wing propaganda posters shared by “friends”. As a consequence of that, most of the propaganda posters I evaluated on this blog were…
Tesla really did say this in 1926
This poster came across on Twitter – and surprise – the quote is authentic! Surprisingly (for social media memes!) Tesla really did say this in an interview published in Colliers on January 30th, 1926. This forecast for the future is intriguing and certainly his brilliance comes through. But … the same interview had a number of other predictions – some correct and some not so correct: All railroads will be electric Wireless energy will be used to power flying machines…