Fake Social Media

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Fake Social Media

Since we have a long thread on Fake News here on OL, I believe, given recent events, that here in the persuasion section we need a thread on Fake Social Media.

There will be long analyses coming, but for now, I want to use a transcript of something Rush Limbaugh said earlier today to kick this off. 

Xi Jinping Sends Message to Apple

From the transcript (my bold at the end):

Quote

Apple just became the first company with a trillion-dollar market cap. Now Chinese state media (which is pretty much Chinese media) is saying Apple “has benefited from cheap labor and a strong supply chain in China and needs to share more of its profit with the Chinese people…”

. . .

... I’ll guarantee you this is Xi Jinping sending a message to the executive suite to Apple, “You know what? You live and die on us, our cheap labor putting together your products. You ship ’em all outta here. We give you good rates at customs. We let you manufacture this stuff in droves and get it out of here and sell it to people in the world. But not enough of it’s coming back to us, and now your president’s putting us in this trade war, and the biggest bit of leverage we have is over you, Apple.

“So if you don’t step up and start redistributing more of your profits back to the Chinese people...”

. . .

You know iCloud, iCloud requires data centers. There are data centers in North Carolina. There are data centers in Texas, data centers in Oregon, which is where the iCloud servers are. The ChiComs demanded that every iCloud server be in China. They demanded that the Chinese government run them, and Apple said. “Okay. If that’s what it takes to do business in China, then we will follow local law.” That’s what they say.

So the Chinese government controls iCloud, meaning there isn’t any privacy per se. No, no, no. For Chinese users. Only Chinese users. In other words, the Chinese iCloud users data cannot be in data center in North Carolina or in Switzerland. It has to be in mainland China, and the Chinese government runs it! The Chinese government controls it.

Google is the same way. If Google wants to do business in China, they have to follow whatever the Chinese government censorship laws are. So the Chinese citizens are not allowed to search for anything they want. There are severe censorship limits on what Chinese citizens — and Google said, “Fine, if that’s what it takes to do business.” It’s too big a market to start a political fight. 

. . .

I don’t want to let this just flitter by. Google — we have a story on this from the website Intercept. Google has just caved to the ChiComs and they have now returned, they’ve gone back to letting the ChiComs censor their search engine for China. Google.com.cn. That’s the Google search engine for China, and the ChiCom government is in charge of it.

Google initially tried to resist it but they caved because otherwise they wouldn’t be in China, they wouldn’t be allowed to make any money in China running ads there; so they had to cave. And they did.

. . .

... I’m thinking they sound so much like today’s modern-day Democrats and what today’s modern-day Democrats are demanding from the social media sites in this country.

The Democrats are demanding control. In fact, there were congressional hearings where elected Democrats told Zuckerberg and some of these other people to start banning these various conservative sites! In congressional hearings Zuckerberg and these people were told you’ve gotta do it! Well, I’ll guarantee you, these companies do not want to run afoul of the federal government ’cause no matter how big they are, the federal government can hassle ’em and harangue ’em and cause ’em a lot of trouble.

. . .

... if you have these caterwauling, left-wing Democrats demanding of Zuckerberg and Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google that you guys, you need to get this hate, you need to get this hate off of your sites and off of your programs.

Now, they may be inclined to do it anyway because, you know, the tech titans are all liberal left-wingers themselves. But still, I was struck by the similarity between the ChiCom government and its demands of Apple and what elected Democrats are demanding of Facebook and Twitter here.

Add this to the fact that all of these big tech companies were absolutely sure Hillary Clinton was going to win the presidency and thus, the, would be privy to massive influence in the government and lots of juicy government contracts. So they stuffed their employee staffs with thousands and thousands of hardcore Clinton supporters. 

And you get the mess we have today.

I think the Fake Social Media sites are going to go down the tubes before too long. They banked hard on the globalist model where they outsourced their costs for slave-level labor (and other inputs) in developing countries and kept the profits from markets in richer countries. So now they are trying to save themselves by acting like authoritarians. This will not end well.

I want to discuss this further and many other things, but there are too many issues for this opening post. So I will save them for later in the thread.

Enjoy, because this is going to be an eye-opener if you don't grok just how bad the Fake Social Media has gotten. I'm going to give you some of the addiction algorithms and everything.

Meanwhile, think about US companies becoming Chinese, including vast parts of the US government, and see if that feels like a good idea to you.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I have some things I am preparing, but I want to talk about one aspect of Alex Jones being banned from different social media platforms (Facebook, YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, etc.) all at once. 

The platform owners are treating their platforms as if they own the growth results that long-term independent content creators have created for them. They are looking at effects (the audience) and treating them as causes (the content creators).

Here's the proper sequence: Content creators that grew massive audiences created the popularity of the platforms. Since the creators and the audience are the same much of the time, when you damage one, you damage the other. This is the nature of platform popularity, not the spectacular awesomeness of the platform owners and their insider buds.

So here is just one result of their attempt. Mind you, this is just one result among many:

JUST IN: Alex Jones says nearly 6 million people have subscribed to Infowars newsletter in the 48 hours following social media purge

— Wired Sources (@WiredSources) August 8, 2018

What this means is that someone(s) out there with deep pockets is going to look at that audience and think it would be a good idea to create a competitor to the dorks who essentially threw that audience off their platforms. So this person(s) will either make an arrangement with an alt platform that already exists or they will bring into existence a new one and get in touch with the newly homeless.

The principle is not hard to understand. When social media users are disrespected to the extent they recently were, they will go elsewhere where they are respected.

Duh...

These social media giant dorks just jump-started their own replacements.

Especially BitChute, which runs on torrent technology, which means very small overhead costs. (Hosting video costs is the problem with video sites.)

YouTube is trying to become a hybrid of independent content creators and a slick TV station, and their model is very expensive. I wonder what the future will be now that YouTube is pissing on the content creators that made their site so big and BitChute is welcoming those same content creators? Does anybody need a degree in Informatics to guess?

Here's my guess. YouTube will not go anywhere soon, but once BitChute (or some other video site or sites) starts taking a huge chomp out of their user-base, YouTube go in decline until it settles to a much smaller ceiling than it now has.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Alex Jones discusses several ideas concerning the direction of social media with Vox Day (famous comic book author).

At the beginning, Alex said he is being flooded with offers from top lawyers, deals of law schools, etc., to work for him, many for free, on bringing charges of racketeering against the major social media platforms. From what I know of the law, they have a case. I don't know how it would pan out, but they have a case.

And Alex is both crazy, wickedly intelligent, and has nonstop energy.

That's not an enemy I would like to face in court.

Michael

[william.scherk]

On 8/7/2018 at 4:02 PM, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

the Fake Social Media

Needs a definition? 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On 8/9/2018 at 12:46 PM, william.scherk said:

Needs a definition? 

William,

I don't want to get into nitpicking semantics, so let's just say that the word "fake" in this context means a large distance between the appearance on (and by) social media platforms versus reality.

I don't mean this in the sense of entertainment, satire, stage name or things like that. I mean it in the sense where presentations of fact are provided on social media platforms as true, but the reality of such facts is different.

Here's a good recent article from the NYT to give you an idea of what I mean:

The Flourishing Business of Fake YouTube Views

You can buy fake popularity on YouTube and keep doing it until the bandwagon effect kicks in.

People fake all kinds of things on the giant social media platforms both with and without the collusion of the owners, including user adhesion to ideas, owner reasons for deplatforming major accounts, algorithm functioning (read manipulation), and so on.

I will have a crapload to say about all this--how it works, and the intents and effects--over time since I have studied it a lot.

Michael

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Now comes the price.

Here's how to beat the fake news media and the fake social media.

These tactics are almost out of Rules for Radicals by Alinsky.

Styx's idea is that the current deplatforming and forced news control are happening due to fake moral outrage.

He likens this to the fake implanted memories moral outrage and scare of the end of the century. In fact, he has a previous video where he gives a series of moral hysteria movements that gave way to reality.

The interesting thing is that the Internet's instant communication and interactivity in public has caused an super rapidity (as compared to before) in the unfolding of world events, including giant social media companies springing up almost overnight.

I'm pretty sure the current exaggerated moral outrage movement over phoney issues will topple several giant social media companies much faster than the megachurches of pastors who have been toppled by scandals.

In fact, James Corbett drives this home in a very wise video about the current social media landscape.

Problem --> Reaction --> Solution

This means those in power create a problem but make it look like they are not the ones who did it, the Public reacts negatively to the problem, and those in power provide the solution, usually by restricting the public more and accruing more power and money for themselves.

But in social media, for this to work, there has to be an underlying premise: that Google, Twitter, Facebook, and other tech giants ARE the Internet. They are not. But they are doing the hard sell on the idea that they are.

The truth is they are merely big companies with big audiences. Corbett doesn't say it, but one of the most visited sites on the Internet is The Drudge Report. This is a private website with a butt-ugly web design and organization-wise is not connected with any news company, social media company or communications company, much less the giants.

In other words, we--meaning us Internet users--don't need the audiences of the giants to be successful. We can accumulate an enormous Internet audience just by hard work and intelligence. So, to use Corbett's rationale (and Styx's), if you are disgusted by one social media giant, stop using it, at least stop using it as your main site and for your main traffic. Use an alt site or build your own site and grow your main audience there.

Corbett and Styx have some disagreements (like about an Internet bill of rights--Styx favors this and Corbett thinks it's an awful idea), but on the points about the nature of the tech giants, they agree.

And I agree with them.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I want to make a comment on why I believe the tech giants are doing their best to commit suicide right now.

Let's start at the beginning. The main Internet giants were founded by nerds and dorks. These were not the cool boys in school. These were geeky marginalized dudes who were mocked for their awkwardness and couldn't get dates to save their lives.

Then, being in the right time, at the right place and bearing the right ideas, they generated a massive amount of wealth. Suddenly these dorks vested the coolness of billionaires and women threw themselves at them. People sucked up to them. Their gawdawful jokes became hilarious for some reason. And so on. What could possibly go wrong? 

Do you know that Ayn Rand is one of the favorite authors among Silicon Valley nerds? And do you want to see why this happens for the wrong reasons? The new nerd magnates are lefties. 

How did this happen? Well, Rand helps them justify their own focus on their egos, but I believe President Obama spoiled them with temptation. he was not just an author of books. He was the goddam President of the United States of America, the most powerful man on earth. And here we was courting them and flatteriung them. He used them to create the holy mess we now have in the Middle East. At the time it did not look like a holy mess. It looked to the new masters of the universe like they were toppling dictators, spreading rationality and science, and on and on and on. They were saving the world. Saving the world... saving the world...

This is heady stuff for dorks. And their heads went straight up their asses where all they could see was themselves, and worse, not from the best angle.

They became prophets in their own eyes. President Obama even called on them to save his own ass with the health.gov website debacle. They could do no wrong with feedback like that, so they walked among the stars and comets in the heavens.

The effects of power are powerful, especially on nerds where enormous vanity grows when fertilized by the former insecurities and resentments of school years. The result is that, now, these powerful dorks want to engineer what people think and believe and do through censorship and propaganda. They use different jargon, but they basically want to be the puppet-masters of the world. The real puppet-masters who have been doing puppet-mastering for a long time (like Soros) are now starting to feed off them and they don't see it. Soon they will see themselves under heavy attacks from their former flatterers. This is already starting and they have no idea why. They are showing perplexity. (Look what happened to Google in Europe, for example.)

From what I see, the nerds think sucking up will work and to please the real puppet-masters, the evil elitist cutthroat fucks who have real power, the nerds, like the dorks they are, are starting to abuse the users of their own companies. They are offering ritual sacrifices to their kings. And, as they are learning, nothing they do any longer pleases the real puppet-masters, who demand more and more and more and will keep demanding until there is nothing left for them to to do or give. 

For the time being, though, the nerds walk among the real puppet-masters with the appearance of equals. Watch what happens when the Democrats suffer a wipe-out in November. These dorks will be blamed. This already started with "muh Russians" on Facebook being given as one of the main reasons for Hillary Clinton's loss. 

After the midterms, it's anyone's guess what will happen. But I predict President Trump will keep moving toward a free market for real, so good old garden variety competition will eat the current power-nerds alive. And my prediction is right. Wait and see.

Incidentally, as gravy, the MeToo movement has not caught up with them. But that's because they are the hope of the elitist bastards who have power. When the puppet-masters lose the elections and blow the dog-whistle, though, I expect the women-folk to attack. I expect to see the same things happen to these dorks as are happening in the legacy media, especially Hollywood.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

25 minutes ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

For the time being, though, the nerds walk among the real puppet-masters with the appearance of equals. Watch what happens when the Democrats suffer a wipe-out in November. These dorks will be blamed.

Here's a visual showing the current stage of the problem.

After November, there will be a different stage.

Michael

[Jonathan]

17 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Incidentally, as gravy, the MeToo movement has not caught up with them.

Zuck has the very public history of Facemash waiting to be brought up as evidence again, and proof of his abusive treatment of women. He'd better behave himself!

 

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, Jonathan said:

Zuck has the very public history of Facemash waiting to be brought up as evidence again, and proof of his abusive treatment of women. He'd better behave himself!

Jonathan,

I wonder what will happen when the left realizes these nerds fit--and fit to a tee--their made-up propaganda term to bash young dorky white dudes: Incel.

Ever notice that blacks and Latinos are never Incels to the left?  

But OK. Let's stay with white. Only white:

Zuck isn't a cuck.

Zuck is an Incel.

 

Just like the All White Stars, Jack, Larry, Sergey, Steve, Bill, Reid, Kevin, ... hell, even Tom of MySpace who now travels the world taking pictures of plants for excitement.  

I think there's a good chance the Incel bomb will hit if President Trump holds and increases congressional power in November. The elitists will point their lefty useful idiots at the New Reason For The Election Loss and say, "Go get the Incels!" And off they will go with Incel this and Incel that at the now greedy grabby dirty rotten social media capitalist enemies, spinning like a battery-run top.

I just thought of something. Trump is also white. Definitely not Incel material, though.  But skin color is about as deep as the left can see identification-wise, so I wouldn't put it past them to call him an Incel during their press spin just for good measure.

Here's the Inconvenient Truth about Pigment Change. (Man, am I on a roll...)

White guys run Silicon Valley. Period.  Oh, there are other pigments who get to be Geek Babylon Gazillionaires, and maybe you can find That Other Gender sniffing around where they are normally not welcome except for That (these are nerds and dorks after all), but they are all tokens. The real playa's 're male and white.  

It would be funny as hell if it comes out like that.

 

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Styx has a very good take on what happens when a new technology that is doing well allies itself to legacy technology that does not want to give up its market share. Throw in the crony aspect, too.

The fake social media is going into overdrive with a fake "war on the press" that the fake news media is promoting.

Meanwhile, the real news (along with a chaotic mess) is being served up on alt tech social media sites.

The legacy idiots are serving up pure propaganda with staged opposing views and, maybe, cat videos. The alt side is serving up the truth mixed with the chaos of different messages (substantive and garbage) that comes with freedom.

Guess who is going to win this thing?

I know I'm going to where freedom rings...

Michael

[Jonathan]

Two trends on lefty fake social media: 

1) It's "settled science" which nevertheless immediately excludes potential causes without even looking at them: "OMG, have you heard these people on the right trying to blame the fires on bad forestry management policies?!!! How ridiculous! That's totally not true at all, and everyone knows it. It's not even worth considering. The cause of the fires is global warming/climate change, and nothing else, and we have to increase controls and regulations, reduce production, and punish everyone. All of the smartest people agree."

2) Creating the illusion of a scary giant monster enemy to justify commie solutions: "White supremacism is on the rise like a tsunami, and we have to do something about it right now, or else America will be over with. It's a massive wave, and it's everywhere now. The only way to stop it is with Antifa. Yes, violent Socialism/Communism is the only way to stop the overwhelmingly huge and scary movement of neo-Nazi white nationalism."

J

[Jonathan]

Sacha Baron Cohen posed as a white nationalist in trying to trick and trap Corey Lewandowski. He failed, but notice that he phrased the lie in the leftist frame that is popular today: 

"With Charlottesville, where people attacked our president, why should the president pick a side between anti-fascists and fascists?"

Yup, if we call them "anti-fascists," and pretend that we don't know that they are also violent pro-solicalist/communists, then, duh, it's a no-brainer that any good person would oppose fascism and not side with it!!! If you don't support our violence against anyone that we've decided to call a fascist, then you're a fascist-lover and deserve to be beaten too!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 hours ago, Jonathan said:

Sacha Baron Cohen

Jonathan,

Sacha who?

The guy who used to be a comedian?

 

Michael

[Jonathan]

16 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Jonathan,

Sacha who?

The guy who used to be a comedian?

So, you're saying that comedy should be banned, and all comedians should be killed? Hitler!

J

[william.scherk]

I had a momentous week on [Fake] Social Media. (Background Zzzzz:  A lady who gained a BA in broadcast journalism from a nice school, formerly working with Project Veritas and later the "Rebel Media" outfit, was doing her sort of reporting on two other ladies who are running for office.  The remarkable-to-some aspect of their candidacies is not that they are women, ho hum, but that they are Muslim.  

So, the US Congress may have a Muslim woman or two elected this fall -- for the first time.

Ms Loomer has been attending events for the two ladies, and had a bit of a contretemps at one such event. Shortly thereafter she posted a funny kind of tweet:  the two ladies were not mere "Muslim" -- and not merely "Islamic" (Styxhexenhammer666's appelation)  -- they were "jihadi candidates."

The power of [Fake Social] Twitter is awesome, within its limits.  My response to Laura Loomer blew up into the most-read tweet I have ever made in my long years on the [Fake] platform ...)

 

[Jonathan]

22 hours ago, william.scherk said:

I had a momentous week on [Fake] Social Media. (Background Zzzzz:  A lady who gained a BA in broadcast journalism from a nice school, formerly working with Project Veritas and later the "Rebel Media" outfit, was doing her sort of reporting on two other ladies who are running for office.  The remarkable-to-some aspect of their candidacies is not that they are women, ho hum, but that they are Muslim.  

So, the US Congress may have a Muslim woman or two elected this fall -- for the first time.

Ms Loomer has been attending events for the two ladies, and had a bit of a contretemps at one such event. Shortly thereafter she posted a funny kind of tweet:  the two ladies were not mere "Muslim" -- and not merely "Islamic" (Styxhexenhammer666's appelation)  -- they were "jihadi candidates."

The power of [Fake Social] Twitter is awesome, within its limits.  My response to Laura Loomer blew up into the most-read tweet I have ever made in my long years on the [Fake] platform ...)

 

Yay! They're Muslims and have vaginas! That's all that I need to know! Yay!

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This looks like a lot of fun. From Rush Limbaugh:

ChiComs and Facebook Are Secretly Scoring People

Wait until this catches on. If you are a good and reliable person according to the Chinese government (or Zuckerberg--so far--here in America), all kinds of doors open for you out in society. If you are not a good person according to the social media platform, the doors close. That means loans, acceptance at schools, jobs, all kinds of things.

And if this idea doesn't catch on here in America, Zuckerberg is collecting this data on you and scoring it anyway. He'll end up selling it to the ChiComs for a hell of a lot of money.

That's all he does.

Michael

[Jules Troy]

Glad I don’t use Facebook...

[william.scherk]

Facebook is always asking me "What's on your mind, Bill?"  and I usually don't tell them.

In other news of faked social media ... a fresh "Mass Removal" of false-fronted pages and accounts.

 

Some more takeaways from yesterday's mass removal of fake Facebook pages:

1. Iran was behind "Free Scotland 2014," one of the most popular pro-Scottish independence Facebook pages. https://t.co/yTSC2dIQpy pic.twitter.com/mHGnN4qVcM

— Casey Michel ???? (@cjcmichel) August 22, 2018

Spoiler

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

This video is from three months ago. It shows and discusses a video Google made for internal use only.

Look at the production values of Google's video. Does it look like inhouse training or brainstorming?

Not unless you like to throw gobs of money for useless glitter at inhouse training and brainstorming , which nobody does. When they spend big bucks on inhouse activities, it goes for celebrities, trips, and things like that. Not on brainstorming videos.

Google even admitted this was an "uncomfortable conversation."

Of course, nobody at Google would ever, ever, ever think of using this approach for molding political outcomes, now would they? Of course not, dear Red Riding Hood. Come closer...

Now imagine all of this data being sold to the ChiComs, who are willing to pay top dollar for it. Zuck is the one who is big on selling data to the ChiComs. But Google is building search engine-friendly censorship for the ChiComs right now. Don't believe me? Google's body of employees, who have been kept in the dark about it, are now having a shitfit. See here from The Intercept a couple of weeks ago:

Google Struggles To Contain Employee Uproar Over China Censorship Plans

Michael

[william.scherk]

Twitter also made some moves about Faked Social Media accounts ...

 

[caroljane]

14 minutes ago, william.scherk said:

Twitter also made some moves about Faked Social Media accounts ...

 

I read an article about the booming business of selling fake UTube views, which doesn't seem to be illegal but a variant of "old wine in new bottles" vanity publishing promises.

Is there any connection there with the  fake Twitter and Facebook accounts? Do things "go viral" solely because of goosed-juiced views by nobody?

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I just did an interesting experiment on Facebook.

Once I learned that the main moneymaker for Facebook was selling user data, especially to China, and that included my own data, I lost all interest in posting there. However, I still look because of the news feed and a few people.

After about a week of not posting, my news feed became far, far more objective than before. There are groups I joined that I would have loved to keep up with (like Dragon Naturally Speaking, a few writing groups, one on Moho cartoon making since I own that damn program and haven't even learned it yet, sundry Internet marketing groups, etc.) but I have not received notices from them for a long, long time. Suddenly they are reappearing.

Facebook has become way more useful to me now that I don't write on it.

Michael

[william.scherk]

This item could go in under the Rigging thread rubric, but it also kind of glances off the idea of 'faked voices,' in the sense of an 'artificially intelligent' chat bot interacting with a human being.