“A good cause makes a lie easier to buy”. This is why many propaganda campaigns use themes such as “for the children” – even though their claims are exaggerated or not true. The target buys the propaganda message since its for a good cause.
Social media is the new battleground. It’s being used to push people over the edge, to threaten violence against others, and in some cases, leading to actual violence. A controversial video clip that spread online in the past day was pushed by what appears to have been a fake account.
The surprising observation that “medium confidence” in a scientific finding means we have no confidence at all and high confidence means we have only moderate evidence and medium consensus.
Facebook’s head of PR admits to developing a program to slime others with negative propaganda messaging. He had already submitted his resignation.
Log in to Instagram in a browser. Click on your profile icon at upper right. Click on the round, slightly gear shaped icon next to your channel name and “Edit Profile” button. Click on Privacy and Security option on the pop up menu. Page down and click on View Account Data. Here you can see that they record – forever – any current and former phone numbers and email addresses you have provided. They also record – forever – any…
Boeing has planted an opinion column in multiple newspapers around the country – a column intended to cast doubt on SpaceX, a competitor. Are you feeling manipulated yet?
An interesting inside look at how political propaganda operations function.
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.
Much of the online criticism about the Star Wars movie, The Last Jedi, was driven by Russian troll farms and bots as a form of information warfare intended – successfully – to tear our society apart. It’s pretty ugly.
A new way that individuals – or groups – are manipulating social media to indirectly trash organizations and businesses on social media. Clever and very mean.
What happens when employers require that you may only have a clean, moral, “fit lifestyle”, free of politics and political controversy and require you give them access to your social media to prove it?
What if your employer believes that a lack of a public social media presence means you are hiding something (like you are not on social media)?
What happens when public sector workers are protected by law from similar rules and can freely express their political beliefs free of employer repercussions?
“A question that has a presupposition built in, which implies something but protects the one asking the question from accusations of false claims. It is a form of misleading discourse, and it is a fallacy when the audience does not detect the assumed information implicit in the question, and accepts it as a fact.” Examples Have you stopped beating your wife? Is (well known personality) an arrogant jerk? Do you still believe we should kill all the stray dogs? Source:…
Why is liberalism under particular threat from big data? Liberalism is based on the assumption that you have privileged access to your own inner world of feelings and thoughts and choices, and nobody outside you can really understand you. This is why your feelings are the highest authority in your life and also in politics and economics – the voter knows best, the customer is always right. Even though neuroscience shows us that there is no such thing as free…
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…