Category Archives: Lies

Political misinformation is harder to correct than health misinformation – especially among the educated

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We have covered this phenomena before. The first information people receive, even if subsequently proven to be incorrect, is what stays in people’s minds. This is one of the reasons that propaganda based on lies is often successful. It is very hard to refute erroneous propaganda statements.

New research indicates that corrections have a moderate influence on belief in misinformation. ….“The alarming growth of misinformation and the limited repercussions for non-institutional actors for knowingly or unknowingly misleading the public turned misinformation and its correction to one of the most pressing issues in the social sciences,” said study author Nathan Walter, a Ph.D. Candidate in the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern California.

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Walter found evidence that corrections had a moderate effect on counteracting misinformation. However, misinformation about politics was harder to correct than misinformation about health, particularly among participants who were well-educated political partisans.

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“Realistically speaking, however, the results are also somewhat alarming because scientific and political misinformation is much harder to debunk, interventions outside the laboratory tend to produce weak effects and, as time passes, people seem to forget about the correction and remember the misinformation,” Walter explained.

Source: Political misinformation is harder to correct than health misinformation – especially among the educated

“#Facebook Gave Some Companies Special Access to Additional Data About Users’ Friends – WSJ”

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This is separate from the apps that had access to friends of friends data such as those affiliated with Cambridge Analytica, and many others.

This is separate from the 60 hardware partners like Chinese phone maker Huawei, that were given access to private data on Facebook.

This is new – Facebook gave secret access to many additional partners too:

Facebook Inc. FB 0.49% struck customized data-sharing deals with a select group of companies, some of which had special access to user records well after the point in 2015 that the social-media giant has said it cut off all developers from that information, according to court documents, company officials and people familiar with the matter.

Source: Facebook Gave Some Companies Special Access to Additional Data About Users’ Friends – WSJ

Facebook did announce this week that it has cut off Huawei’s data sharing agreement as of this week. But that is not relevant to anyone who has owned a Huawei product the past year or two or three. What happened to our data? Is the data sharing burned into the existing phone’s firmware – hence, ending the agreement is irrelevant?

Facebook has been reckless in its disregard for privacy and continues to steadily obfuscate its tall tales about how they have shared our private data with everyone on the planet – and presumably well beyond the planet, at this point.

Zuckerberg and Sandberg are liars.

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

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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 claims that are not true.

The purpose of the poster seems to be to deliver a message that

  • Reeves is humble
  • He donates all his money to charity and lives a life of poverty (or something)
  • We should all be like this
  • Those who share or like this poster are virtue signaling their commitment to this ideal (or rather, they like it when other people choose this hypothetical life style)
  • The poster makes several assertions, most of which are not true (lies).
  • The poster uses celebrity endorsement.
  • The poster uses cherry picking of the available information.
  • The poster may be suggesting that we should “get on the bandwagon” too.

Why people are compelled to share items like this on social media is bewildering.

‘Looks like #Zuckerberg lied to  Congress’ – Congressman #Facebook #DeleteFacebook

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As I posted yesterday, it appears that Facebook executives have been routinely lying to everyone about their massive surveillance network and data sharing systems. Congress takes notice:

“This needs to be investigated and the people responsible need to be held accountable.”

Source: Dem lawmaker: ‘Looks like Zuckerberg lied to Congress’ | TheHill

The New York Times (see earlier post) found that Facebook had signed private agreements with 60 companies who made use of Facebook data. The New York Times demonstrated this by using a 2013 Blackberry device, and starting with a FB account having 550 friends, was able to gather personal data on 295,000 Facebook users.

#Facebook ad sales team told politicians that FB can “hand them the election” #DeleteFacebook

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Until literally a few days before, this entire ad sales team at Facebook was literally telling every politician with any budget that Facebook can actually hand them the election. It is incredibly disingenuous and strange for an exec to get up and say that there’s no way Facebook could have potentially impacted the election.

Source: Antonio Garcia Martinez, former Facebook Employee Interview

One of many Zuckerberg lies. It blew my mind when when the CEO of an advertising company (FB) said they had no influence on the election. In other words, advertising on the Facebook network does not work?

#Facebook reads everything you send to other people on #Messenger #DeleteFacebook

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Facebook Inc. scans the chats and images that people send each other on Facebook Messenger, making sure it all abides by the company’s rules governing content. If it doesn’t, it gets blocked.

Source: Facebook Scans What You Send Other People on Messenger App – Bloomberg

I used the word “reads” because these are not simple keyword scans but machine-learning systems that are the machine equivalent of reading your emails and taking notes.

This further confirms that Facebook is a global surveillance platform spying on every one of us. #DELETEFACEBOOK

Old #Facebook apps can continue to steal your data #DeleteFacebook #Privacy

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  • The company has vowed that users are “in control” of their privacy on its service.
  • But when it comes to older apps, users still don’t have control. Many aren’t covered by Facebook’s more restrictive rules.
  • Older apps can continue to get access to your data even if you haven’t used them in years.

Source: Even after Cambridge Analytica, Facebook still can’t grasp privacy – Business Insider

This is why I have much of the weekend letting the Social Book Manager plug in for Chrome to whack away at delete all of my past content on Facebook, as well as now having selected maximum privacy and security settings.

Facebook continues to straight up lie saying ‘users are “in control” of their privacy”. As my post on selecting privacy options reveal, they are hidden deeply within the Facebook user interfac. Their default settings are maximum anti-privacy. It is quite a chore to set your privacy they way you actually want your privacy settings to be.

And you are not in control as it is nearly impossible and hugely difficult to delete past posts, comments or Likes.

The real reasons #Facebook is updating its privacy and data controls #DeleteFacebook

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This statement from Facebook is misleading, at best:

Last week showed how much more work we need to do to enforce our policies and help people understand how Facebook works and the choices they have over their data. We’ve heard loud and clear that privacy settings and other important tools are too hard to find and that we must do more to keep people informed. So in addition to Mark Zuckerberg’s announcements last week – cracking down on abuse of the Facebook platform, strengthening our policies, and making it easier for people to revoke apps’ ability to use your data – we’re taking additional steps in the coming weeks to put people more in control of their privacy. Most of these updates have been in the works for some time, but the events of the past several days underscore their importance.

It’s Time to Make Our Privacy Tools Easier to Find

Facebook is pretending its being responsive. In reality, Facebook has been working to comply with a major European Union law that takes effect on May 1 and has been building these changes to comply with EU law.

Facebook could readily provide these new tools to users all over the world, including the United States. They do not need to wait for the US to pass a similar law.

California has a proposed voter initiative to establish EU-like privacy protections in California – and Facebook is actively campaigning against this measure!

Facebook wants us to believe it suddenly found privacy religion – while simultaneously opposing California’s initiative. Facebook wants us to believe it is rapidly providing new tools because of recent events – when in reality, the new tools have been developed to comply with the EU law.

Facebook’s lies never end…

Meanwhile, Apple announced changes to comply with the EU law that will roll out in Europe and then in other countries in the months that follow.

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

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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 left wing posters. I did, at times, search for conservative propaganda to examine (but never could find that much). I was mystified as to why I saw only left wing propaganda while the news media was telling us that all social media propaganda was conservative.

Now we know how this occurred – here is the Facebook description of my politics in a single word:

Facebook was deliberately censoring conservative propaganda so I never saw it- and censoring based on a lie. Also, I do not own a Galaxy S6 and never have. Their data base model is garbage.

I posted my politics on the About page. I took an online survey of issues and policies and the survey concluded I should vote for Bernie Sanders or Rand Paul, with equal measure even though the two are nearly opposites!

Thereafter, the list alternated left/right/left/right down the list, showing that characterizing me as left or right was hardly a useful distinction. In fact, was not then a member of any political party and I had not been a party member for decades. However, in the spring of 2017, I joined my state’s Libertarian Party.

Because of this egregious error by Facebook, and my being perplexed by crazy left wing propaganda posters, I started this blog and ended up mostly analyzing (and demolishing) left wing propaganda posters.

This and so much more that we have learned during the past week illustrates that Facebook’s continued operation is dangerous for the safety of the world. Facebook is nothing more than a pure propaganda operation based on global surveillance. Facebook operated in a reckless manner, tearing our society apart and having no regard for what it was doing. I cannot think of a more vile and disgusting organization than Facebook nor a more vile and disgusting individual than the arrogant, narcissistic lying Mark Zuckerberg.