US Election

Some folk have dismissed mainstream news as being propaganda, so instead have replaced it with opinion based propaganda on the internet.

 

Just a reminder. Who won the peoples vote? Hillary. Who kicked her in the rear to finance their wallets? The Judicial College asylum!!! Wonder if they are kicking themselves now?

 

I think the massive problem with the internet, people will either be drawn by left wing or right wing views, there is no moderate (Liberal). They will tend to go down one wormhole or the other. The thing is with Twitter and Facebook, you will see the feed you want to see and most of that feed, will be supporting your view and mocking the opposition.

I saw a typical example today on the news how easily people are influenced by what they want to see. They were discussing today on SKY News about the 'illegal' channel crossings, and someone in support of the asylum seekers, raised the point how in 1914 16,000 refugee's came to this country.

Well as it happens, I knew about this story, and I knew the original story was referring to the War when the Belgians flocked here to avoid the Germans, it had been reported in the paper (Kentonline) the previous day.

My point being within 24 hours of that news being raised in the media, it was then being used as a defence for the current crossings. Yet the fact it was during wartime was not even mentioned, albeit conclusion should have been drawn by the date (1914). I accept some of the crossings may have been Syrians etc, but not once, was that mentioned in defence.

It just goes to show, people will use anything they read to fit their narratives. Not saying the narrative was inaccurate, I'm suggesting the 'fact' was being exploited to win an argument - but it didn't really have any relevance to cover the questions and answers of what was being discussed and nor did it suggest, how the problem should be resolved.

 

Yep the algorithms of the internet will literally feed people more of the same stuff they have been looking at, thereby reinforcing their views.

Folk will actively seek out views that reflect their own too, so that they feel justified in holding those views.

We’re all guilty of it to a certain degree. I do try my best though to read the opposing view when I think I’ve made my mind up. It’s not easy, because there is SO much stuff out there and it’s extremely time consuming to read it all.

We’re living in a strange age where ‘facts’ don’t work (Arron Banks) and many of the batshit mental right wing trump conspiracists know this. As long as they can communicate their agenda and draw in supporters, then it’s job done regardless of the truth or reality of what they are saying

 

If anyone who has a Bookface account & hasn’t yet seen the detail behind the Ch4 story about the Trump campaign and how they used Cambridge Analytica in the 2016 election, then I suggest you should.

The level of data that has been mined and how Ai is being used in conjunction with this data to target and influence you is truly frightening. If I had a FB account I’d have definitely deleted it after seeing what is going on. I knew it was bad, but not that bad.

 

Have you seen ‘the social contract’ ?

I haven’t watched it yet. But people who have say it’s a frightening insight into the nefarious world that you’re taking about.

 

It's a bit like someone following Trump on Twitter to see what is going on in America, but unless you follow Biden or others (enter name) you will virtually end up with a right wing view, maybe not intentionally, but it will start to feed you just that.

 

The worrying part of social media, is you have young kids accessing it on a daily basis, so their little minds will be fed bullshitte from the right or the left, dependent on their primary followers (who they are following). That's why when extremism occurs, I often suggest they were groomed, probably via those very same social media tools, unwittingly. But people will not accept the grooming argument, again because they generally have a hatred of a certain view, but atrocities are not based on just one side, which is how a lot of narratives generally try to play it out.

 

No mate.

I knew data had been mined about Facebook users likes and dislikes, what car they drive, or would like to drive, food choices that kind of shizzle.

However, it goes way beyond that, they literally have your detailed personality traits scored and then use Ai to mimic how a person with your precise character traits might react to specific messages, even down to the most appropriate time to serve you them for your specific circumstances. They used this technique to focus on targeted voters who were likely to persuadable or undecided in 2016, the same was done here in the referendum. Mad ****. Zuckerberg is a ****, a greedy bowl headed ****. Humanity would be done a huge favour if someone nuked his servers.

 

Yep, and folk just end up in an echo chamber with people who are all agreeing and reinforcing each other's views.

It's amazing how few people actually realise how this works and blindly allow themselves to get sucked into these narratives without checking whether they are accurate.

Facebook is classic for this. A good example of this is the meme that does the rounds that goes along the lines of 'Muslim shopkeeper refuses to sell Poppies in case they offend'. It's complete bullshit, but folk share it without checking whether it's bullshit or not. Before you know it, the algorithms are filling people's feeds with more and more of the same right wing ****e

 

My daughter is 7, so she's too young for Facebook. But she plays apps and watches youtube, so she's exposed to world of social media indirectly. I don't let her sit there alone with any of it though, because you never know what rabbit hole she might go down.

What we do watch together though is a channel called Bill's Channel on youtube. It's very American and a bit cheesy, but it's basically a bloke who gets loads of videos sent into him of things on the internet that could either be real or fake. He goes through all of the reasons why it might be either and then invites the audience to decide before revealing the results. It's all quite tame, but it's a good device for a young mind like my daughter's to help her develop a critical mind and question whether what she is seeing is real or not.

There are a lot of adults who simply don't bother or don't have the capacity to differentiate !

 

The one about the Lisbon treaty is one that sticks in the memory for me. A completely fabricated list of supposed items in the Lisbon treaty that were coming into effect in 21/22. It had not one iota of truth in it, not least because the treaty had been in effect for over a decade.

But anyway, it went viral on FB, and literally within days people were ringing in stations like LBC quoting this list as if it was factual. I still saw it being quoted about 9 months later.

It was traced back to a completely fake FB profile created by god knows who, who then spread this list to hundreds of echo chamber users, and off it went. It’s for exactly this reason why I get so fed up with people not checking the veracity of what they’re trying to put forward as being fact based.

 

I think some of the people who peddle this **** know that too. It doesn't actually matter to them about facts, as they know any old tosh can gain traction if enough people share it.

That was literally Arron Bank's strategy in the Leave EU campaign. He actually came out and said that 'facts don't work' and it was more about appealing to an emotive agenda. He admitted that he was inspired by Trump's campaign, i.e. the narrative is more important than the facts.

Dangerous stuff, as it's fairly easy to whip dumb ****s up into a frenzy.

 

You are both making a valid point but missing the problem.

How do you "fact check" if you only believe the sites you read?

Surely to some (like Aber and HIAG) they are getting told the facts by their "real sources" and anything else is false (fake news).

 

If it’s just people sharing ****e in echo chambers that merely reinforce their existing views, then as ridiculous as it is, it doesn’t really impact anything. But it doesn’t end there, as someone with moderate views reads a lie like your Poppy example, fumes a bit, and then starts reading other similar piles of horseshit from the same cesspit, and before you know it, they’ve had their views altered, then the algorithms kick in and they’re fully immersed.

 

Once you’ve gone down that rabbit hole then I’ve no idea what the answer is, but I wasn’t really referring to the full blown QAnon types tbh, they speak about the ‘real’ truth but will literally dismiss peer reviewed papers from actual scientists whilst accepting without question the utterances of a pig farmer called Jim, who they don’t even know is a pig farmer called Jim.

Beyond help I’m afraid.

 

There are some fairly reputable fact checking sites. Fullfact is one. Also if you investigate the person who's making the claim in the first place, it can be quite revealing.

The Covidiots have latched onto this now, and are wheeling out Doctors and Medical practitioners to back up their claims. Only that most of them have either been dismissed by their peers, or don't actually have the credentials they claim.

The problem I have with a lot of the conspiracy stuff is that a little bit of info is a dangerous thing. Many of them will latch onto a little bit of truth, and then extrapolate a whole raft of bullshine from it, because the first part had some truth to it.

Also we know there are conspiracies out there, that's not news. HSBC conspired to funnel £bns of dodgy russian money through their bank. JP Morgan conspired to launder $$$ from a person who turned out to be a mobster on the FBI wanted list. The UK govt conspire with the Saudis to sell bombs to drop on Yemenis despite it being unlawful.

If people want to talk about conspiracies, then look for conspiracy facts, not conspiracy theories.

 

I always look at conspiracies and ask "what's the end game"
Gates want's to in ject us with nanobots, why, for more money? the man has more money than he could ever spend in the life he has left,
Power? there are a few country's leaders that might just cut that one down.

The Government are forcing us to wear face masks and locking us down pretending people are dying from a made up virus, why?
To well, well, reasons

If you are told something weird is happening always ask why.

 

That’s where it all falls to ****, at the point of the why?

They’ve created the illuminati theory as a cover all for it, but in their desperation to tie it all back to this conspiracy theory they’ll do literally anything to avoid any inconvenient facts that hole it.

The worst part is, that we all know the entire capitalist system is corrupt ffs, from undermining democracy to power and money having influence over policy and politics. It’s always been thus, it’s merely the players that change. From the days where land owners were the feudal Lords, through to today where billionaires and corrupt States buy influence and power through the puppets that are paid to represent us. But Sheeple or something.