5,062 posts
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Post by Phantom of London on Mar 21, 2018 16:09:17 GMT
I was thinking specifically in the terms of Facebook and Cambridge Analytica?
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2018 16:16:32 GMT
If I'm honest, I thought Cambridge Analytica was the name of the new Bond girl.
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494 posts
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Post by ellie1981 on Mar 21, 2018 16:18:06 GMT
It’s all very unsurprising. I deleted my Facebook account in 2011 as I found it utterly useless and rather annoying.
Whenever they would introduce some new feature, it would be up to you to go into your settings and turn it off, rather than opt in in the first place. This would be irritating for the population of users who didn’t log in and check their account every 10 minutes. One time I went away for Christmas and had no phone reception in the area I was staying in the mountains. Someone had inadvertently signed me up to some discussion group, and I received an email alert every time someone posted. Came back from Christmas with 3000+ emails!
I fully deleted it when the face recognition software was announced.
Also a friend of mine who had been in an abusive relationship got her account suspended when an unsavoury character from her past found her. She changed her account to put her middle name as her surname, and Facebook accused her of breaking the rules. The person would anonymously report all of her posts and pictures as inappropriate - none of which ever held up, but because she’s understandably quite sensitive it upset her a lot. Facebook had no means of contact to identify this anonymous person. She still however insists of keeping her Facebook account, although I don’t understand why.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2018 18:27:50 GMT
The extent to which shady political operators, regimes bent on disrupting liberal democracy and billionaires playing God have been interlinked is hardly surprising to anyone who has watched online discourse being perverted. It’s sadly true that ‘a lie is half the way around the world before the truth has got its boots on’ and the reason is that too many people are naive, credulous and craving something exciting or different to the boring truth. They are a great resource for the above who use and abuse their inability to accept what is, with impunity..
I don’t drive so take taxis regularly and drivers are keen on spreading their latest ideas with me (which I attempt to disabuse them of, probably to no effect). A couple recently have started talking about chemtrails (I had to look it up, apparently aircraft vapour trails are being used to control the weather/our minds). MMR vaccines still has a clear hold on one who occasionally turns up. That’s the anti establishment element, convinced that ‘they’, ‘the deep state’ are the reason their lives aren’t what they might be. Politically it is a cancer too, whether via jihadist, neo-nazi or anti-semitic conspiracies or watered down versions that a shocking number of people seem keen to latch onto. All of this is spread via links that they share on social media, they seemed genuinely surprised that I didn’t trust anything that I found on the internet.
All an unscrupulous individual or group has to do is to harness their fevered brains and the ability of society to function is hampered. The whole house of cards is starting to collapse very quickly, though, so maybe sanity has at least a foot in the door.
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Post by Jan on Mar 21, 2018 18:39:35 GMT
The extent to which shady political operators, regimes bent on disrupting liberal democracy and billionaires playing God have been interlinked is hardly surprising to anyone who has watched online discourse being perverted. However many of the people who are complaining about Facebook's activities now are the very same ones who lauded the Obama campaign as political geniuses in 2012 for developing a similar massive database based on (much more) harvested Facebook data. It seems that it is only when the data is used by their political opponents some people are bothered. |
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Post by Deleted on Mar 21, 2018 18:53:15 GMT
The extent to which shady political operators, regimes bent on disrupting liberal democracy and billionaires playing God have been interlinked is hardly surprising to anyone who has watched online discourse being perverted. However many of the people who are complaining about Facebook's activities now are the very same ones who lauded the Obama campaign as political geniuses in 2012 for developing a similar massive database based on (much more) harvested Facebook data. It seems that it is only when the data is used by their political opponents some people are bothered. One was legal, one wasn’t, the difference is pretty clear. Building your own network or stealing the private data of others is worlds apart. Trump is the tool anyway, the patsy. He let people do this to fuel his dreams of power and revenge and I doubt that he had a clue as to how he was being used. I use an assumed name on facebook (breaking their rules, but this pretty much explains why) and rarely use it. |
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Post by oxfordsimon on Mar 21, 2018 19:19:16 GMT
Slightly O/T - but I was listening to Edward Klein's Blood Feud about the relationship between the Obama and Clinton clans. There was a whole section relating to where Piers Morgan was off from his US talkshow and replaced by Harvey Weinstein - who then interviewed Bill Clinton. Weinstein was a major backer of both Obama and the Clintons.
That is a connection that is now so toxic that it is hard to believe it existed in the first place.
There is all sorts of tainted money in politics - and all sorts of tainted data.
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5,062 posts
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Post by Phantom of London on Mar 21, 2018 19:20:19 GMT
Oh I heard the one on Chemtrails on the wireless, didn’t know it was called Chemtrails though.
This has fallen in my lap quite well as I hate Trump/Putin and anti Brexit.
I had a Facebook account briefly over 10 years ago and was concerned how a social media platform could harvest a lot of personal information on us and be used for nefarious means, today that has seems to be realised. Even down to a potential employer being able to vet you before offering you potential employment.
Ironically the person who has been shouting and accusing foes of using fake news, we know exactly where that comes from now - Mr Steve Bannon, former chief strategiest for the White House (everyone employed by Trump seems former) and former Vice President oh you guessed it Cambridge Analytica. So the person that has accused anyone that crossed him of fake news, which was developed by his pal Steve Bannon, very smart (never thought I say that about Trump.)
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