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Category: Cherry Picking

The headline: “Over half of Americans delay or don’t get health care because they can’t afford it”

The headline: “Over half of Americans delay or don’t get health care because they can’t afford it”

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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.

Staged photos used to illustrate a “news” story

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.

Did Vox advocate censoring social media? No.

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…

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Journalists and Academics seek special privileges on Facebook

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…

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Part 7: We should all be like Denmark, remember?

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…

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It may be virtue signalling, but at least its not actually true

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…

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"There is nothing wrong with your social media feed. We are controlling transmission"

"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…

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Proof that #Facebook censored the political posts and ads we saw #DeleteFacebook

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…

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Tesla really did say this in 1926

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…

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India finds Google manipulated search results; EU had already reached that conclusion

India finds Google manipulated search results; EU had already reached that conclusion

In its ruling, India’s competition watchdog said the internet giant has “abused its dominant position” that “enables it to operate independently of competitive forces.” Source: India Fines Google $21 Million for “Search Bias” | Hollywood Reporter Google, the overwhelmingly dominant search service, was found to favor its own online services and web sites in search results. This illustrates the power that large online services potentially exert in propaganda messaging.

Polar bears, social media, and how our emotional response may have helped a PR stunt

Polar bears, social media, and how our emotional response may have helped a PR stunt

(This item – featuring a polar bear – emotionally hooked many people – and for some, any discussion is controversial. However, this post is not about polar bears or climate change but about successful propaganda messaging.) Here is the original dying polar bear photo and post from photographer Paul Nicklen. Read carefully. He – and his associate – never say this polar bear is dying due to climate change but he does link climate change to polar bear habitat and…

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Social media companies really do read your posts, emails and documents

Social media companies really do read your posts, emails and documents

Google’s GMail service “scans” your emails and Google Docs to serve you ads. The word “scans” implies scanning for keywords but that is a false assumption about what is actually being done. Natural language processing technology has advanced to where these algorithms are the equivalent of someone reading all of your emails and taking notes. Literally, online services are reading all of your email and building dossiers on what they think they know about you, ostensibly to better target advertising…

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