Revisiting the old Occupy Democrats propaganda poster from 2016, where nearly every item on the poster was an outright lie. I recently updated the “free childcare” section and added Parts 7 and 8 to this popular series. Seriously, it is the most searched for item on this blog!
In light of the survey finding most voters are badly misinformed on well known and popular public policy issues the same is likely true about social media posts. It is likely that more than half of political or policy oriented social media posts are incorrect. But depending on who makes the posts, and how many followers they have, their incorrect posts can be influential – and plant non factual and illogical constructions in the minds of their targets.
The Oregonian falsely reports a poll showing one candidate ahead of the other when they are in an indistinguishable statistical tie. Sloppy reporting like this is inexcusable.
Code.org is a lobbying organization funded by high tech industrial giants. They are lobbying to have more kids K-12 studying computer science and less time spent studying other subjects in school. One of their methods is to straight up lie about the size of the job market, as you’ll see on the attached post. And its not a little lie, but being off by a factor of ten. This is a great example of corporate funded propaganda that turns into “facts” quoted in media news stories and then likely gets quoted by politicians.
Facebook uses your security questions and security data such as your two-factor authentication phone number as yet another way to scoop up data about you, including using the phone number to link you to data stored in friend’s contact lists, over which you have no control.
This image does not show what people think it shows. CNN’s Anderson Cooper was moving around in the water to illustrate the dangers of unseen drop offs in flood waters. I’ve seen clips of the original that show this is what he was doing and this was not “fake news”. The original broadcast occurred after Hurricane Ike. This Internet meme illustrates how an instantaneous, moment in time still image loses all context – and can be readily repurposed into a propaganda message.
Weather Channel actor Mike Siedel, who plays the role of a journalist and meteorologist, is shown faking a live TV shot. Former NBC News actress Michelle Kosinski, who played the role of a journalist on NBC News is caught canoeing in a flooded street – having just inches of water. Journalism is dead due to death by self inflicted wounds. Sadly, there is no way for a news consumer to know if their news source is reliable or trustworthy as all major news outlets have been caught making significant errors.
UK Commercial drone pilot Matthew Greaves spots the absurdity of YouTubers claiming quadcopter near miss collisions with airliners in order to get more views on their YouTube videos. The YouTuber is claiming he flew his quadcopter in violation of UK laws and regulations and nearly collided with an airliner. Except that did not happen. It’s just a click-bait video title. In fact, the thumbnail image is a bad PhotoShop creation. The video shows no aircraft what so ever. It is…
Advertising is messaging intended to persuade you to adopt someone’ agenda, specifically, to buy a product or service. Advertising is a subset of propaganda and uses many of the same methods of persuasion, including fakes and lies.
Huawei released a video for their Huawei Nova 3i phone with selfies supposedly shot on the phone. Except – it was shot on professional DSLR camera gear.
Google admits they spy on you always – you cannot turn off Location History. Even if you turn it off, they still track you.
Click on the title for more …
Researchers have discovered that Android tracks your location even when Location Services is disabled on the menu. You cannot escape Google’s tracking – they constantly record your location and use that to target you with advertising and almost certainly to discern attributes about you.
“Faithfully executed, as the Constitution requires, the ACA was working and insurance markets were stable” – Andy Slavitt, former head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2015-2016. During the period from 2014 to 2016, the average premium went up by 106% according to the CMMS, and in 3 states average premiums went up by over 200%. This, he says, is a “stable” market. And he was in charge during most of that time frame. Prices continued to rise…
CNBC illustrates their story about Apple Computer achieving a market capitalization of $1 Trillion with this photo – Tim Cook must be happy about achieving $1 Trillion market cap, right? The photo, however, is from at least December 2017, is probably from the Fifth Ave Apple Store opening in September 2017, and has nothing to do with today’s achievement. CNBC never mentions that this photo is unrelated to today or the news story. Later, CNBC swapped out that photo and replaced…
This blog has commented in the past on the problem of fake reviews all over the Internet. Fake reviews are used to make a product sound better or sometimes to make a competitor’s product sound awful. It is difficult to rely on Amazon product reviews, for example, because for many products, an overwhelming number of reviews are fake. Web sites like fakespot.com help people identify products that are flooded with fake reviews. I rarely look at YouTube comments but just…