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@Kirwan said in US Politics:
They wield enourmous influence and deserve all the criticism they get.
which fierce criticism is right though?
The criticism from the Right that Facebook is trying to influence everyone to the left, and censoring everything that paints the Left in a bad light?
Or the criticism from the Left that Facebook has become a Right Wing echo chamber (in response to calls it is biased to the left)?
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/26/facebook-conservatives-2020-421146
There are articles like this one all over, from a bunch of different outlets. From this article
"In the final stretch of the 2020 campaign, the Facebook posts with the most engagement in the United States most days — measured by likes, comments, shares and reactions — are from conservative voices outside the mainstream media: Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, David Harris, Jr., Franklin Graham and “Blue Lives Matter,” according to the Facebook-owned tool Crowdtangle. Trump’s personal page also regularly makes the top of the list, in effect allowing him to become a publisher in his own right and navigate around the traditional media.
Left-wing posts make the daily top-25 much less frequently. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and the Facebook savvy Occupy Democrats are among the pages that occasionally hit such levels of engagement".
As far as i can tell, Facebook gives zero fucks what colour hat you are wearing, the only colour they see is green. They don't give a fuck if you share some shady shit because you agree, or because it pisses you off. They only care that you clicked the button.
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@mariner4life I saw few minutes of an article on Sunday TV show. It was about cyber bullying and featured some woman who fronts an NRL news show and Anthony Sebold. They had an interview with a guy who used to work high up for FB who said they purposely don't censor content because stuff that enrages users makes them use the platform more than not. As you say they are profit driven not politically driven
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@Kirwan I get that. But don't those hundreds of millions of people have any agency in this? I know that in practice many of them are unlikely to seek out anything beyond their narrow worldview, but it's not our role to protect them from themselves and frankly I wouldn't presume to be that patronising. Their ignorance may be a pain in the arse for me to negotiate my life around, but it is their prerogative to be ignorant.
Ask yourself though whether it's better that they are poorly informed or completely uninformed, because my bet is that left to their own devices if you added in complexity and nuance to their feeds a great many of the poorly informed would opt out completely. They are choosing a degree of ignorance. This isn't new BTW, even as far back as Plato it was recognised that voters act irrationally (which is why he suggested the fundamentally undemocratic idea of noocracy, rule by "the wise") but we let every adult vote nevertheless, without any requirement that they inform themselves fully, engage in good faith or even be able to think clearly.
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@mariner4life said in US Politics:
@Kirwan said in US Politics:
They wield enourmous influence and deserve all the criticism they get.
which fierce criticism is right though?
The criticism from the Right that Facebook is trying to influence everyone to the left, and censoring everything that paints the Left in a bad light?
Or the criticism from the Left that Facebook has become a Right Wing echo chamber (in response to calls it is biased to the left)?
https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/26/facebook-conservatives-2020-421146
There are articles like this one all over, from a bunch of different outlets. From this article
"In the final stretch of the 2020 campaign, the Facebook posts with the most engagement in the United States most days — measured by likes, comments, shares and reactions — are from conservative voices outside the mainstream media: Dan Bongino, Ben Shapiro, David Harris, Jr., Franklin Graham and “Blue Lives Matter,” according to the Facebook-owned tool Crowdtangle. Trump’s personal page also regularly makes the top of the list, in effect allowing him to become a publisher in his own right and navigate around the traditional media.
Left-wing posts make the daily top-25 much less frequently. Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich and the Facebook savvy Occupy Democrats are among the pages that occasionally hit such levels of engagement".
As far as i can tell, Facebook gives zero fucks what colour hat you are wearing, the only colour they see is green. They don't give a fuck if you share some shady shit because you agree, or because it pisses you off. They only care that you clicked the button.
Facebook's influence is how they can target content to very specific audiences, and that influence can be bought by advertising. We've seen that sort of targeting before, but never on this scale.
This was used very cannily by Trump's team in the last election. They also let overseas entities buy controversail ads that seem to be designed to encourage division in the US, so for Facebook you have a point, but their influence is still important and we need to work out the best way for them to operate. They have a policy of trying bullshit them aplogising, and doing it again when people forget.
Twitter is where you see the left/right censorship. They suppress news they don't like, and as Crucial points out they are completely within their rights to do that. The problem is when new companies try to address that balance and air views on the right (to counter Twitter's left bias) they get deplatformed from other services, such as the payment method companies.
There very much is colusion frommany of these left leaning tech companies.
I don't want to see too much regulation, because that just increases the burden for compnaies that want to enter these spaces (only the big companies will be able to afford the compliance) but something has to be done, as it's definitely skewing the conversation - with all the impacts on democracy that entails. Not to mention fostering resentment and anger on the "other side".
When you don't have a voice (or feel like you don't) then the alternatives tend to be violent.
USA is a shit show.
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@JC said in US Politics:
@Kirwan I get that. But don't those hundreds of millions of people have any agency in this? I know that in practice many of them are unlikely to seek out anything beyond their narrow worldview, but it's not our role to protect them from themselves and frankly I wouldn't presume to be that patronising. Their ignorance may be a pain in the arse for me to negotiate my life around, but it is their prerogative to be ignorant.
Ask yourself though whether it's better that they are poorly informed or completely uninformed, because my bet is that left to their own devices if you added in complexity and nuance to their feeds a great many of the poorly informed would opt out completely. They are choosing a degree of ignorance. This isn't new BTW, even as far back as Plato it was recognised that voters act irrationally (which is why he suggested the fundamentally undemocratic idea of noocracy, rule by "the wise") but we let every adult vote nevertheless, without any requirement that they inform themselves fully, engage in good faith or even be able to think clearly.
Facebook were caught a few years back tweaking their feed agorithim to try and influence their user's moods (they measured it by subsequent posts by those users).
Being informed or uninformed isn't the point. Both Twitter and Facebook get caught actively trying to manipulate their users. That's something that should be investigated and criticised regularly.
In effect, we are letting a small group with Facebook and Twitter act as "the wise" you mention above. Ignoring personalities for a minute, there is a group in Twitter that is fact checking the President and basically stamp "lie" on tweets they don't like.
That's not something I'm comfortable with those compnaies being able to do based on their track record.
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I think this current situation is a reflection of those figures - the left sees Facebook as being a hidden Trump supporter (I don't think they are, I agree they just want green), so by getting out on these emails they might be sending a signal that they expect Biden to be elected and want to have some points in the bank when Warren starts looking around for tech firms to break up. It's a reasonable risk hedge anyway.
I think that breaking these firms up is needed too - @Kirwan essentially referred to this before, as FB has monopolized social media, so breaking them up (Facebook. Messenger, Insta, Whatsapp) would reduce their network effects and force some oxygen into social media as different platforms would then expand their offerings. The US government will have to reinterpret anti trust a bit to do it, but it has started already. It is likely to happen to google who it looks like may be forced to spin Chrome soon, and in the future, under Biden I cold see then being forced to spin Youtube. Amazon is the big one - at some point AWS will be spun.
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@gt12 said in US Politics:
I think this current situation is a reflection of those figures - the left sees Facebook as being a hidden Trump supporter (I don't think they are, I agree they just want green), so by getting out on these emails they might be sending a signal that they expect Biden to be elected and want to have some points in the bank when Warren starts looking around for tech firms to break up. It's a reasonable risk hedge anyway.
I think that breaking these firms up is needed too - @Kirwan essentially referred to this before, as FB has monopolized social media, so breaking them up (Facebook. Messenger, Insta, Whatsapp) would reduce their network effects and force some oxygen into social media as different platforms would then expand their offerings. The US government will have to reinterpret anti trust a bit to do it, but it has started already. It is likely to happen to google who it looks like may be forced to spin Chrome soon, and in the future, under Biden I cold see then being forced to spin Youtube. Amazon is the big one - at some point AWS will be spun.
Yep, you want competition within the space to avoid the sort of behaviour we are seeing now. Sort of like a Fox News, CNN pick your bias approach.
You want the door open for the next Google too, at the moment five compnaies have pulled up the ladder behind them (Apple, M$, Facebook, Google and Amazon).
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Some good adverts
One example
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@Kirwan Yeah, the monopoly through acquisition is a problem. Much more so than the bias I think. The bias may change depending on the political weather, but if they have taken out all the alternative competitors, or worse still, brought them in house and subjected them to the same biases, it’s harder to argue that people should just move.
I still maintain though that they are not essential. People should log off.
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@pakman said in US Politics:
Latest polls for Ohio suggest the fat lady hasn't made up her mind.
There's quite a few that fall into that category.
Ohio and Georgia are on a knife edge. Both have swung well toward Biden compared to the 2016 result but not enough to call either way.
Florida, Iowa, Maine, NC all within the margins as well. Arizona and Texas not conclusive either.Thing to know though is that all of these are polling slightly in favour of Biden and all have swung away from Trump.
Biggest take though? Trump can overturn the polls for these states and still be short of a win.
Ideally he would like to have more surety on these and then be free to go after the likes of Penn, Wisconson, Minn and Mich without looking over his shoulder.
I know the polls can be wrong but he needs to win about 10 of the states polling Biden. That's a big ask and a much different prop than last time.
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@canefan said in US Politics:
@Crucial last time around the polls were wrong. It will be interesting to see if history repeats
They won't get everything right but as pointed out above they need to be getting a hell of a lot wrong this time for Trump to win.
Too much is made (from media soundbites) about the 'popularity margin' as well. That's what surprised everyone last time because Hillary was ahed in the popularity stakes. That turned out true on the day as well, just the electoral college breakdown didn't go her way.
I might try and find some comparitive state by state polls from the same period and see how they went.
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@canefan said in US Politics:
@Crucial last time around the polls were wrong. It will be interesting to see if history repeats
Can’t find the link but some guy in the states who predicted Trumps win in 2016 has come out and said his data points to another win this time as well.
Made the good point you can’t always trust polls, people don’t always give the true answer.
Where as he goes off social media etc, comments and posts where people tend to be more upfront and speak their minds ( only have to see the replies in a Trump tweet to see that) -
@Virgil said in US Politics:
@canefan said in US Politics:
@Crucial last time around the polls were wrong. It will be interesting to see if history repeats
Can’t find the link but some guy in the states who predicted Trumps win in 2016 has come out and said his data points to another win this time as well.
Made the good point you can’t always trust polls, people don’t always give the true answer.
Where as he goes off social media etc, comments and posts where people tend to be more upfront and speak their minds ( only have to see the replies in a Trump tweet to see that)That guy's theories were coincidentally correct rather than scientific IIRC.
I'm interested in following the tracking of the polls this time just to see what actually happens.
I have found some 2016 data. It isn't as stable as the FT rolling RealClear one I have been using but yes, if you look at 2016 Trump took the toss up (within margin of error) states but also took a key one that was polling over 5% for Clinton. That was the clincher.
Same number of toss up votes available going into election and similar margins.
So he will be banking on the 'silent supporter' theory on those plus at least one stolen from looking Biden 'safe'.HIstory has shown that it is possible.
One other aspect this time around though is that the 'popularity' poll difference is much bigger. More than double the advantage for Biden than it was for Hillary. That should translate into some effect and make it more difficult to take these states.
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@Virgil said in US Politics:
@canefan said in US Politics:
@Crucial last time around the polls were wrong. It will be interesting to see if history repeats
Can’t find the link but some guy in the states who predicted Trumps win in 2016 has come out and said his data points to another win this time as well.
Made the good point you can’t always trust polls, people don’t always give the true answer.
Where as he goes off social media etc, comments and posts where people tend to be more upfront and speak their minds ( only have to see the replies in a Trump tweet to see that)There was another guy, a history professor i think, that I posted ages ago who has predicted every president since Reagan and he says Biden will win. So someone is going to be wrong
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