Trump Wants To Regulate Google

[Magox]

1 minute ago, reddogblitz said:

 

Why does anyone?

 

Use common sense on when things sound too outlandish to be true. Couple that with filtering technology to allow you to filter out the crap you don't want.    Then it's up the consumer to determine what is true or not as opposed to someone spoon feeding to them what is true. 

 

That's a lot of power to give to anyone.

 

That's my personal view.  But if Big Tech is going to get in the business of censorship, fact checking and algorithmic prioritizations of how content is displayed, then there has to be oversight.

[B-Man]

Democrats Paying ‘Non-Political’ Social Media Influencers to Covertly Push Anti-Trump, Anti-GOP Agenda

 

The liberal Los Angeles Times came out with an odd article this week and you really had to read down into it to get to the real story.

 

It was titled “Democrats plot a counterattack on disinformation in hopes of taking back the White House.”

 

Basically, it was an article trying to blame Republicans for “disinformation,” asserting that “conservative conspiracy theories and “deep fake” videos race through the internet,” therefore justifying the Democratic reaction back to them. They falsely cited President Donald Trump being given hydroxychloroquine by his doctor and his tweets about mail-in voting fraud as stoking conspiracy theories.

 

Now, of course, it’s hard to get a bigger “conspiracy theory” and attempt to undermine an election and the whole presidency of President Donald Trump than the Russia collusion, paid for and spread by the Democrats.

 

Then they got down to it, although it was still a little couched.

A network of trustworthy messengers is essential, the experts say, to slowing the spread of debunked material. [….]

As Democrats draft their counteroffensive, they are looking beyond the traditional tools — paid advertisements, media fact-checkers and unevenly enforced social-media platform rules. They are rethinking who needs to be drafted into this fight, when to engage these messengers, and how to advance their own narratives.

The emphasis is on empowering diverse voices online who may only be loosely affiliated with the Biden campaign. How to best enlist those people is a point of tension.

Craig, who has worked for foreign clients in emerging democracies, is skeptical of the Main Street One model of hiring influencers with appeal in various targeted communities — for example, one group for older African Americans, another for single moms, another for devout churchgoers.

“I don’t want our country to move campaigning to this transactional pay-to-play system,” she said. “It then becomes the expectation of voters that we are paying for our support. I see this happen in my work abroad in places that are not functional democracies. It is not an effective way to organize and will have long-term consequences.”

The executives at Main Street One, though, say they are seeing results in state and local campaigns by mobilizing influencers who have common cause with the candidate or ballot issue. They point to Kentucky, where an influencer they engaged to help undermine support for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was a mom with the social media tagline “bourbon, basketball and God,” who wasn’t a political activist but drew their attention for posting her disgust over McConnell’s push to dismantle Obamacare.

Did you catch that? They’re paying social media influencers to promote Democrats/Democratic issues. So that person whom a young person may be following for fashion is now going to be covertly pushing Democrats.

“If you want a more credible messenger, you don’t want them to be as explicit in their political views,” said Hougland, who has launched an anti-Trump political action committee called Defeat Disinfo. “These are all people who make a part of their livelihood by being approached by brands or organizations to express their passions. They are comfortable with this ecosystem. While they are somewhat new to politics, we are comfortable with that.”

Translation: we’re paying them to be covert propagandists for us and trick people that they aren’t obvious political stooges.

 

 

More at the link: https://www.redstate.com/nick-arama/2020/05/28/dems-paying-social-media-influencers-to-covertly-push-candidates-agenda/

 

 

[B-Man]

 

 

HERE’S A COPY OF PRESIDENT TRUMP’S Draft Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship.

 

 

And here are some comments by Eugene Volokh on what Section 230 does and doesn’t do.

 

 

 

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[Doc Brown]

14 minutes ago, Magox said:

No guarantee’s but at least there would be oversight.  And a more conscience entity that could lead to a better product.  
 

 

And if not congress, then who?   Congress represents the people (Am I gonna get fact checked by One of the resident libertarians?) And I think it’s appropriate that Congress is involved in the oversight because that would mean there would be accountability via the ballot box.

I don't hate the idea but there would need to be clearly defined standards about the purpose and limitations of such congressional committees.  They'd also have to address whether oversight is constricted to just the major social media platforms that are publicly traded or all social media platforms.

[Magox]

1 minute ago, Doc Brown said:

I don't hate the idea but there would need to be clearly defined standards about the purpose and limitations of such congressional committees.  They'd also have to address whether oversight is constricted to just the major social media platforms that are publicly traded or all social media platforms.

 

 

Personally, I'd rather not have it regulated.  That is provided of course that they stay out of the censorship, fact checking business.

 

I alluded to this earlier, but Google/Bing - search engines and social media platforms  should be open to examination on how their algorithms prioritize what is shown.  Sometimes I look up things and it's impossible to find it, you have to go through 2-3 pages of left wing views on something before a right leaning view is presented.  I don't think it's a conspiracy per se, but I do think they weight mainstream media outlets over others, which of course drives even more traffic to those sights which then gives it higher prioritization and it just snowballs. To me, this is something that is even more impacting and doesn't get nearly the attention that it should.

[B-Man]

 

Twitter Is Digging Its Own Grave

by Jazz Shaw,

 

FTA:

 

 

The real bottom line is that Twitter could have avoided all of this by remaining a platform, as I’ve been saying for years. As long as Twitter simply provided users with accounts and let them tweet what they wish without comment, they would be acting essentially as the 21st century equivalent of a corkboard in a college dormitory. If someone posts something offensive, the fault lies with the person pinning up the offending material, not the manufacturer of the corkboard.

 

Yes, there would be exceptions. Users violating the law by either posting child pornography, clearly slanderous or libelous defamations or similar offenses would probably place the legal burden on the company to quickly delete the offending content and cancel accounts to the best of their ability. But beyond that, they should be in the clear.

 

Now, however, they have claimed the title of “content provider” by providing editing services to tweets based on their own judgment. And that means they’re responsible for every single tweet that sees the light of day. They are no longer the innocent providers of access to a popular social media outlet. They are publishers, determining what viewers will or won’t see and how the message will be shaped. There are literally hundreds of millions of tweets far “worse” than Donald Trump’s that go up every day and they won’t be able to police them all. And that opens them up to a full range of possible legal problems.

 

Twitter could have stayed on the sideline and avoided this trap. If they really think that the President’s tweets are so misleading or terrible, they could have let the community make that decision and essentially leave Trump free to hoist himself on his own petard. But now that they’ve put on their editor’s hat, a new game is afoot. And I doubt they’re going to enjoy it.

 

More at the link: https://hotair.com/archives/jazz-shaw/2020/05/28/twitter-digging-grave/

 

 

 

 

 

[Doc Brown]

2 minutes ago, Magox said:

Personally, I'd rather not have it regulated.  That is provided of course that they stay out of the censorship, fact checking business.

 

I alluded to this earlier, but Google/Bing - search engines and social media platforms  should be open to examination on how their algorithms prioritize what is shown.  Sometimes I look up things and it's impossible to find it, you have to go through 2-3 pages of left wing views on something before a right leaning view is presented.  I don't think it's a conspiracy per se, but I do think they weight mainstream media outlets over others, which of course drives even more traffic to those sights which then gives it higher prioritization and it just snowballs. To me, this is something that is even more impacting and doesn't get nearly the attention that it should.

I read through google's explanation of their algorithm and am still confused.  Particularly their PageRank system.  It's not just traffic but also strength of the domain name along with how long the site has existed.  There's no denying the designers could easily manipulate the algorithm to fit their political points of view.  

[Magox]

Just now, Doc Brown said:

I read through google's explanation of their algorithm and am still confused.  Particularly their PageRank system.  It's not just traffic but also strength of the domain name along with how long the site has existed.  There's no denying the designers could easily manipulate the algorithm to fit their political points of view.  

 

Our team has got SEO guys always working on it.  It's complicated as hell, there is no real rhyme or reason.  But, certain kinds of traffic is weighted more than others, the volume of traffic, backlinking, referral/direct users etc etc.

 

 

[Doc Brown]

5 minutes ago, Magox said:

 

Our team has got SEO guys always working on it.  It's complicated as hell, there is no real rhyme or reason.  But, certain kinds of traffic is weighted more than others, the volume of traffic, backlinking, referral/direct users etc etc.

I can see how complicated it is as just reading what goes into it gives me a headache.  It does seem to favor mainstream media sources which slant left so you're pry correct right that they unintentionally favor left wing viewpoints.  Given about a third of the people click the first link that seems significant to me when shaping public discourse.

[Deranged Rhino]

 

 

 

[OldTimeAFLGuy]

1 hour ago, Magox said:

 

That's my personal view.  But if Big Tech is going to get in the business of censorship, fact checking and algorithmic prioritizations of how content is displayed, then there has to be oversight.

 

.....and the objectively fair and balanced Bezos bought WaPo to get the facts out......

[Doc Brown]

3 minutes ago, OldTimeAFLGuy said:

 

.....and the objectively fair and balanced Bezos bought WaPo to get the facts out......

God.  Don't get Trump started on him.  Amazon's made me a lot of money over the years.

[Pine Barrens Mafia]

1 minute ago, Doc Brown said:

God.  Don't get Trump started on him.  Amazon's made me a lot of money over the years.

 

Capitalist-imperialist pig! How dare you profit on the backs of the proletariat?
 

[Buffalo_Gal]

48 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

I read through google's explanation of their algorithm and am still confused.  Particularly their PageRank system.  It's not just traffic but also strength of the domain name along with how long the site has existed.  There's no denying the designers could easily manipulate the algorithm to fit their political points of view.  

The core updates are supposed to keep ahead of the bots and black hat techniques. Doesn't always work.  If you want to see the Google updates, MOZ keeps a list.

 

[OldTimeAFLGuy]

16 minutes ago, Doc Brown said:

God.  Don't get Trump started on him.  Amazon's made me a lot of money over the years.

 

..marry his ex and make even MORE.......

[Deranged Rhino]

 

[OldTimeAFLGuy]

1 minute ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

 

...think I have to wait for Al Gore to weigh in first....he would know........

[Buffalo_Gal]

1 minute ago, Deranged Rhino said:

 

"Bait and switch" - good way to put it.
 

[Koko78]

4 hours ago, reddogblitz said:

 

Are you OK with Jack Dorsey and Mark Zuckerberg as the arbiters of truth for the rest of us know nothings?  May be good for you now cuz they're "fact checking"  what you like.  What if say 5 years from now things change and the person at Twitter turns out to be a Republican plant and he/she starts "fact checking" the current seated D prez?

 

I find this an odd strategy by Twitter.  For years they and FakeBook and Instagram etc have said they are not a publisher responsible for content, they are only the pipes that carry the information.  Now they seem to be doing the opposite.  So does this open the door for categorizing them as publishers who can sued for libel etc.?

 

What? It's almost like you don't trust the honest and unbiased opinion of the fact checkers who think that Trump is an "Orange Nazi". I can almost say, with certainty, that these fine, upstanding people would never allow their work to be tainted by any hint of bias, as they fact check the actual literal super mecha-Hitler currently usurping power in the White House.

[Warren Zevon]

On 8/29/2018 at 11:10 PM, B-Man said:

 

 

Are Conservatives Going To Ask Government For A Social Media ‘Fairness Doctrine’ Or Learn To Take Risks And Compete?

https://www.redstate.com/jimjamitis/2018/08/29/conservatives-going-ask-government-social-media-fairness-doctrine-learn-take-risks-compete/

 

 

All the hubbub about anti-conservative bias in social media and search engine results is starting to remind me of those days when the left was complaining about conservatives dominating talk radio. That was before social media was even a thing, or at least before it was being used by anyone with a job.

 

The answer to the perceived unfairness we gave then is the same one we should give now: Let the market work.

 

Much more at the link:

 

 

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