Biggest Opportunity Ever For Foreign Election Meddling; Social Media...

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  • Ingomike

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    As we look at all the accusations of meddling flying around they mostly seem to have a common denominator; social media. This is truly a Pandora's box of trouble and figuring out how to combat it constitutionally is very difficult. I generally believe that more speech is the answer to bad speech but with all the mind control that social media possesses it is just as damaging as it is difficult to stop.

    That Google and FB employees say that they can manipulate voters it is in the realm of possibility that they could affect our elections to gain favors in China, for example.

    What should we do?
     

    jwamplerusa

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    Apply common carrier status to the social media platforms, and make the monetization of user data prohibitively expensive through data privacy laws.
     

    jsx1043

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    I remember when the whole "Russians stole the election" thing was happening after Trump won. Every time I heard someone talk about it, I would ask them, "Woah; Russians hacked our voting machines and changed votes? Or had Russian citizens standing in line to vote? That's wild; we should totally do something about it!"

    "No, no...[some vague version of "they posted things on social media"].

    "Oh. That's way less exciting. I mean, if you decide your vote based on a Facebook ad, you're an idiot, so I don't really see the problem here."
     

    Ingomike

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    I remember when the whole "Russians stole the election" thing was happening after Trump won. Every time I heard someone talk about it, I would ask them, "Woah; Russians hacked our voting machines and changed votes? Or had Russian citizens standing in line to vote? That's wild; we should totally do something about it!"

    "No, no...[some vague version of "they posted things on social media"].

    "Oh. That's way less exciting. I mean, if you decide your vote based on a Facebook ad, you're an idiot, so I don't really see the problem here."

    I recomend you watch Social Dilemma and think on it. High level former social media employees share how they can manipulate what the public thinks. Google employees recently were bragging that by the results they show to searches they can change the votes of the public. We are almost all information diggers on here, diligently searching for accurate info, not so with the majority of the voters, they just do a search and expect it to be an accurate representation of the truth.
     

    jwamplerusa

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    The most chilling comment in The Social Dilemma was probably the last PhD who stated that during the 2016 elections one of the social media companies used subliminal techniques to affect the election. Think about that for a little bit.
     

    jsx1043

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    The Social Dilemma was very good.

    My comment was more in tune with how stupid Americans have become in the face of the massive amounts of information available. Understanding that social media has an important role in that influence, dumbing-down and polarization, it seems that most have lost the ability to think critically and make up their own mind.
     

    TangoFoxtrot

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    As we look at all the accusations of meddling flying around they mostly seem to have a common denominator; social media. This is truly a Pandora's box of trouble and figuring out how to combat it constitutionally is very difficult. I generally believe that more speech is the answer to bad speech but with all the mind control that social media possesses it is just as damaging as it is difficult to stop.

    That Google and FB employees say that they can manipulate voters it is in the realm of possibility that they could affect our elections to gain favors in China, for example.

    What should we do?
    Russians and other have been interfering with the elections since the 40s. USA interferes with foreign elections all the time. Look into Netanyahu got elected,.look at dictators we've toppled... it happens all the time.. all we can do is speak truth and hope hearing ears listen

    Sent from my SM-N975U using Tapatalk
     

    snorko

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    So a commonly used tool is being misused by a relatively small number of users for bad or illegal purposes. Time for Common Sense Social Media Control. I mean, if it saves just one vote.
     

    Keith_Indy

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    So a commonly used tool is being misused by a relatively small number of users for bad or illegal purposes. Time for Common Sense Social Media Control. I mean, if it saves just one vote.

    Social media has been designed to be more addictive than heroin...

    That's one of the problems with social media, not that some bad actors can buy ads.

    If it were merely political advertisements, some clarity as to who is actually pushing the message would help clear things up. The problem with that is the number of cut-outs anyone can use to hide their spending and affiliation.

    It is also that the companies themselves can skew public opinion, not the users, the owners of the tool. You are not in control of the tool, the companies are.

    https://www.breitbart.com/politics/...illary-clinton-with-latino-outreach-campaign/

    An email chain among senior Google executives from the day after the 2016 presidential election reveals the company tried to influence the 2016 United States presidential election on behalf of one candidate, Democrat Hillary Rodham Clinton.

    In the emails, a Google executive describes efforts to pay for free rides for a certain sect of the population to the polls–a get-out-the-vote for Hispanic voters operation–and how these efforts were because she thought it would help Hillary Clinton win the general election in 2016. She also used the term “silent donation” to describe Google’s contribution to the effort to elect Clinton president.

    The main email, headlined, “Election results and the Latino vote,” was sent on Nov. 9, 2016—the day after Clinton’s loss to Trump in the 2016 presidential election—by Eliana Murillo, Google’s Multicultural Marketing department head.

    The four page email begins with Murillo claiming she and others at Google were engaged in non-partisan activities not designed to help any one candidate or another—only to undercut her own commentary in later passages in the emails by openly admitting the entire effort to boost Latino turnout using Google products with official company resources was to elect Clinton over Trump.

    When a social media company can decide to suppress news, viewpoints, and comments from one side of the political spectrum, it's not the tools fault, but it is the fault of the tools makers.
     

    Keith_Indy

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    The whole ban "hate speech" thing is ridiculous for an American company. And using Chinese nationals to help build it?!?

    Censorship that stifles free speech shouldn't be acceptable by either the government, the media or corporations that run so called neutral platforms.

    https://nypost.com/2020/10/20/meet-your-chinese-facebook-censors/

    There are at least half a dozen “Chinese nationals who are working on censorship,” a former Facebook insider told me last week. “So at some point, they [Facebook bosses] thought, ‘Hey, we’re going to get them H-1B visas so they can do this work.’ ”


    The insider shared an internal directory of the team that does much of this work. It’s called Hate-Speech Engineering (George Orwell, call your office), and most of its members are based at Facebook’s offices in Seattle. Many have Ph.D.s, and their work is extremely complex, involving machine learning — teaching “computers how to learn and act without being explicitly programmed,” as the techy website DeepAI.org puts it.


    When it comes to censorship on social media, that means “teaching” the Facebook code so certain content ends up at the top of your newsfeed, a feat that earns the firm’s software wizards discretionary bonuses, per the ex-insider. It also means making sure other content “shows up dead-last.”


    Like, say, a New York Post report on the Biden dynasty’s dealings with Chinese companies.


    To illustrate the mechanics, the insider took me as his typical Facebook user: “They take what Sohrab sees, and then they throw the newsfeed list into a machine-learning algorithm and neural networks that determine the ranking of the items.”


    Facebook engineers test hundreds of different iterations of the rankings to shape an optimal outcome — and root out what bosses call “borderline content.”

    It all makes for perhaps the most chillingly sophisticated censorship mechanism in human history. “What they don’t do is ban a specific pro-Trump hashtag,” says the ex-insider. Instead, “content that is a little too conservative, they will down-rank. You can’t tell it’s censored.”


    I won’t share the names of the Facebook employees in question. The point isn’t to spotlight individuals, but to show how foreign nationals from a state that still bans Facebook have their hands on the levers of social media censorship here in America.
     

    Redhorse

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    The Social Dilemma was very good.

    My comment was more in tune with how stupid Americans have become in the face of the massive amounts of information available. Understanding that social media has an important role in that influence, dumbing-down and polarization, it seems that most have lost the ability to think critically and make up their own mind.

    Any article is true as long as it supports whatever bias a person has. People are so lazy they won’t even think for themselves; they’d rather have someone else write some crap article or make some crap YouTube video to tell them what to believe. The best part? Anyone who questions these (unfounded) beliefs are wrong and the enemy.
     

    Ingomike

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    Social media has been designed to be more addictive than heroin...

    Any article is true as long as it supports whatever bias a person has. People are so lazy they won’t even think for themselves; they’d rather have someone else write some crap article or make some crap YouTube video to tell them what to believe. The best part? Anyone who questions these (unfounded) beliefs are wrong and the enemy.

    Keith raises what many sweep under the rug. It is not the ****ing news or misinformation alone, it is the exploitation of the people in ways they do not understand by mega companies using AI to evaluate their every move and give that user a hit to keep them engaged...

    This is a big deal. This is not just another news source.
     

    Dirtebiker

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    I remember when the whole "Russians stole the election" thing was happening after Trump won. Every time I heard someone talk about it, I would ask them, "Woah; Russians hacked our voting machines and changed votes? Or had Russian citizens standing in line to vote? That's wild; we should totally do something about it!"

    "No, no...[some vague version of "they posted things on social media"].

    "Oh. That's way less exciting. I mean, if you decide your vote based on a Facebook ad, you're an idiot, so I don't really see the problem here."
    I’m glad someone else says it too.
    i can’t believe that anyone would vote based on something they read on social media. I’m not on any of those platforms so maybe I’m missing something?
     

    Keith_Indy

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    I’m glad someone else says it too.
    i can’t believe that anyone would vote based on something they read on social media. I’m not on any of those platforms so maybe I’m missing something?


    1 in 5 people get their political news from social media...

    https://www.journalism.org/2020/07/...al-media-are-less-engaged-less-knowledgeable/

    As of late last year, 18% of U.S. adults say they turn most to social media for political and election news. That’s lower than the share who use news websites and apps (25%), but about on par with the percent who say their primary pathway is cable television (16%) or local television (16%), and higher than the shares who turn to three other pathways mentioned in the survey (network TV, radio and print).

    To further explore the influence of this relatively new entry into the news ecosystem, this report studies the characteristics of U.S. adults who rely on social media as their main pathway to political and election news, in comparison with the six other groups.

    Demographically, U.S. adults who rely most on social media for news tend to be younger, are less likely to be white and have lower levels of education than those who mainly use several other platforms.
     

    Keith_Indy

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    BTW I've been in the software industry for 30 years. My ex-wife worked at a local SaaS platform that was cobbled up by an even bigger SaaS platform. I've been paying attention to the developments on these platforms for years. It's why I no longer have facebook, and never really bothered with the rest of them.

    The whole point of their design is to drive "engagement," positive or negative. They want to capture your attention and behavior and monetize it.

    Add to that the disproportionate number of leftists who own or work for these companies and are willing to advance their cause "BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY" and who believe President Trump is the 2nd coming of Hitler (a distinction that all Republican Presidents and candidates have shared since Eisenhower)

    Add to that the high number of people who don't get past the click-bait headlines and actually read in-depth articles.

    Nothing in "The Social Dilemma" was news to me...

    I was talking with a recruiter a couple months back, and they asked what sort of company I wanted to work at. Haven't really thought of that, but I know what type of product I don't want to work on, anything that addicts its users. She was kind of taken aback by that answer.
     

    Ingomike

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    Keith raises what many sweep under the rug. It is not the ****ing news or misinformation alone, it is the exploitation of the people in ways they do not understand by mega companies using AI to evaluate their every move and give that user a hit to keep them engaged...

    This is a big deal. This is not just another news source.

    I’m glad someone else says it too.
    i can’t believe that anyone would vote based on something they read on social media. I’m not on any of those platforms so maybe I’m missing something?

    You Are missing the whole addictive angle and thinking like it is just another newspaper or tv news show. It is not...
     

    Keith_Indy

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    Heck, never mind foreign election interference, some of our fellow Americans are doing their best to tilt the scales...

    https://townhall.com/tipsheet/brons...n-links-to-republicans-but-not-democ-n2578539

    Twitter is doing everything it can to interfere in the election and help Joe Biden and the Democrats win in two weeks. The social media company was caught red-handed on Wednesday running interference on Republican fundraising efforts but not similar fundraising efforts on behalf of Democratic politicians.


    The National Republican Senatorial Committee is calling out Twitter for restricting the retweets of WinRed, the GOP's fundraising platform. WinRed is the Republican alternative to the Democrats' fundraising platform, ActBlue. Twitter is running interference on retweets of WinRed's links to donate to Republican candidates but not links by ActBlue to donate to Democrats.
     
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