Facebook’s algorithms reward outrage
The algorithms lead to an increase in angry people and divisiveness, leading to a world of angry people, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Facebook’s own research finds Instagram causes harm to youth
Facebook’s own internal research, secret until now, found that Instagram and it’s addicting nature, and how it promotes certain types of posts to youth actively causes mental health problems among the young.
“Negative spin: “U.S. vaccination pace slows as average daily cases drop below 60,000”
Cases are dropping, but let’s focus on a drop in vaccinations in the headline – even though that is probably explained by the “pause” in the use of the J&J vaccine.
Media focuses on scary rises in Covid cases but ignores declines
Covid-19 cases have fallen dramatically in several states. The media, which gleefully reported the rising case counts, doing its best to create fear and hysteria, vanishes when cases start dropping. They move on to the next state to having rising case numbers. A consequence is readers only see constant bad, scary news – and never see the good news. This causes everyone to live in a constant state of anxiety.
“US Media coverage of covid 19 is WAY MORE negative than international media coverage……”
Study finds U.S. mass media coverage of Covid-19 is excessively negative (and scary) in tone compared to international media, science media, etc. This twisting everything into scary news is intentional – inducing fear creates more clicks and generates more ad views and return visits to keep appraised of what is happening. The fear mongering is intentional.
Munchausen by Internet
This is an Internet/social media phenomena that never occurred to me: “Munchausen by Internet occurs when medically well individuals fake recognized illnesses in virtual environments, such as online support groups.”
The culture of perpetual outrage: “The harmful ableist language you unknowingly use”
This is what happens when we constantly seek out reasons to be perpetually outraged. The world is overrun with individuals who every day, intentionally seek out things to be outraged about. Common speech is now perceived as intentional and hurtful sleight to someone, somewhere. There is nothing we can say anymore without offending someone, somewhere. I have referred to concepts as “brain dead”, which is likely offensive to those with brain injuries. Which, should be obvious by now, includes me.
Why Is All COVID-19 News Bad News? | NBER
Study confirms that U.S. news media turns all news, even positive news, into negative spin stories. In this case, a study looked a news reporting of Covid-19 and found that about 90% of U.S. news reports are negative in tone to the point that there were 5.5 times more stories about rising Covid cases – during periods when cases were actually in decline!
Media feeds public’s insatiable demand for bad news
Why the bad-news bias? The researchers say they are not sure what explains their findings, but they do have a leading contender: The U.S. media is giving the audience what it wants. — Show Me The Data (@txsalth2o) March 24, 2021
Begging the Question Fallacy: “This is not who we are” … again and again and again …
When an organization suffers an embarrassing fiasco of their own making, they often respond with the silly “This is not who we are” claim, just after they’ve demonstrated that this is indeed who they are. This is known as the “Begging the question fallacy”.
Today, a PBS legal counsel was caught advocating for fire bombing the White House and sending children of Trump supporters to re-education camps. PBS has apparently fired the counsel, and made the usual “This is not who we are”, just after their own counsel demonstrated that this might be who they are… begging the question once again.