Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

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Facebook editors display their ignorance and “promote stupidity”

September 9, 2016

Probably the Facebook editors involved are just ignorant. Blaming the algorithm for their own shortcomings is rather pathetic.

This story in the Guardian about Facebook censoring this iconic Vietnam photograph:

vietnam-napalm-girl-photo-nick-ut-ap

photo Nick Ut /AP

The Guardian:

Norway’s largest newspaper has published a front-page open letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, lambasting the company’s decision to censor a historic photograph of the Vietnam war and calling on Zuckerberg to recognize and live up to his role as “the world’s most powerful editor”.

Espen Egil Hansen, the editor-in-chief and CEO of Aftenposten, accused Zuckerberg of thoughtlessly “abusing your power” over the social media site that has become a lynchpin of the distribution of news and information around the world, writing, “I am upset, disappointed – well, in fact even afraid – of what you are about to do to a mainstay of our democratic society.”

…… The controversy stems from Facebook’s decision to delete a post by Norwegian writer Tom Egeland that featured The Terror of War, a Pulitzer prize-winning photograph by Nick Ut that showed children – including the naked 9-year-old Kim Phúc – running away from a napalm attack during the Vietnam war. Egeland’s post discussed “seven photographs that changed the history of warfare” – a group to which the “napalm girl” image certainly belongs.

Egeland was subsequently suspended from Facebook. When Aftenposten reported on the suspension – using the same photograph in its article, which was then shared on the publication’s Facebook page – the newspaper received a message from Facebook asking it to “either remove or pixelize” the photograph. ……. 

Before Aftenposten could respond, Hansen writes, Facebook deleted the article and image from the newspaper’s Facebook page.

In his open letter, Hansen points out that Facebook’s decision to delete the photograph reveals a troubling inability to “distinguish between child pornography and famous war photographs”, as well as an unwillingness to “allow[ing] space for good judgement”.

“Even though I am editor-in-chief of Norway’s largest newspaper, I have to realize that you are restricting my room for exercising my editorial responsibility,” he wrote. “I think you are abusing your power, and I find it hard to believe that you have thought it through thoroughly.”

Hansen goes on to argue that rather than fulfill its mission statement to “make the world more open and connected”, such editorial decisions “will simply promote stupidity and fail to bring human beings closer to each other”.

Facebook is a publisher whether it wants to admit it or not. Just the act of censorship makes it a publisher. The world may well be dumbing down since the time of hunter-gatherers. And Facebook probably contributes to accelerating the glorification of stupidity.

aftenposten-facebook

 

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Is President of Mexico scenting a Trump victory?

August 31, 2016

If the mainstream media are to be believed Donald Trump is already dead and buried. They have gone to unprecedented lengths to vilify and castigate him – and I suspect have gone so far in their vendetta as to now damage their own credibility.

Why then has the President of Mexico invited Trump for private talks?

Trump Mexico

They are going to be meeting today.

Washington Post: Donald Trump is considering jetting to Mexico City on Wednesday for a meeting with Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, just hours before he delivers a high-stakes speech in Arizona to clarify his views on immigration policy, according to people in the United States and Mexico familiar with the discussions.

It could be that President Peña Nieto is just playing safe and making sure that channels to a President Trump – however unlikely – are not completely closed. But, I don’t buy that. If Trump’s case is as hopeless as the media claim it to be, Nieto does not need all the negative publicity and certainly not from Hispanics within the US.

Or could it be that the media does not represent the reality among the US electorate and President Nieto is anticipating something that the US media are in denial about?

 

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I’m rooting for Adblocker against Facebook

August 17, 2016

Ultimately it is the consumer who pays for ads. I strongly dislike being forced to “consume” unsolicited advertisements. I resent TV channels and their commercial breaks and the inane, predatory advertising I am compelled to watch. Though, I note that these days I only partly watch TV programs – upto the first commercial break – after which I surf away. Sometimes – but not always – I return to complete watching some program. I have no alternative to suggest but the business models based on advertising are fundamentally flawed. They all rely on “forcing” a large number of uninterested viewers or readers to “consume” ads they don’t want to be exposed to by dangling “free content” as the bait.

It is a myth to think that a person forced to “consume” unsolicited ads is not also paying a price. My contention is that the “free” content is never actually free. It is paid for by the “psychological stress and suffering” the ad causes to the non-consumer. Effectively I pay for the “free” content on a site by having to suffer the slings and arrows of their rubbishy ads for things and services I will never buy. I pay in time and stress. I use “Adblocker”. Some sites get upset and don’t wish to grant me access. That’s OK. It’s a mutually acceptable parting of ways. There are a very few sites whose content is so good that I am willing to turn off my adblocker to put up with their intrusions into my personal space and consciousness. The really good sites are those where I am willing to pay a subscription – and there are only a very few of those.

So, in the battle between Facebook and Adblocker, I am firmly in the Adblocker camp. And I am perfectly aware that Adblocker’s business model, which is to “blackmail” advertisers into paying to be whitelisted, is morally equivalent and just as low as the advertisers bombarding non-consumers with unsolicited advertising.

The MIT Technology Review writes:

Facebook Can’t Win Against Ad Blockers, and Here’s the Proof

Facebook can’t win the war it started on ad blockers last week.

So say Princeton assistant professor Arvind Narayanan and undergraduate Grant Storey, who have created an experimental ad “highlighter” for the Chrome browser to prove it. When you have Facebook Ad Highlighter installed, ads in the News Feed are grayed out and written over with the words “THIS IS AN AD.”

Facebook announced that it was taking measures to prevent ad blockers from working on Tuesday last week. On Thursday the largest ad blocker out there, Adblock Plus, informed users of a simple tweak to their settings that would defeat Facebook’s blocker blockade.

Princeton researchers say Facebook can’t prevent their experimental add-on for the Chrome browser graying out ads in your News Feed.

We’re still waiting for Facebook to fire back, as the executive leading its ad technology has promised it will. But Narayanan argues in a blog post introducing his ad highlighter that Facebook simply can’t win.

The ad blockers in use today work by looking at the HTML code that tells your Web browser how to render a page and where to get the images and other files embedded into it. Facebook’s initial move against ad blockers removed clues in its HTML that gave away which parts of a page were ad content.

The Princeton duo’s ad highlighter works differently. It looks at the parts of the Web page that are visible to humans. Facebook Ad Highlighter simply looks for and blocks any posts with a giveaway “Sponsored” tag. It appears to be quite effective. Facebook must clearly label ads to stay within Federal Trade Commission rules on transparency and its own commitments to its users.

Narayanan concludes in his post that Facebook’s anti-ad-blocking campaign is doomed, at least if it continues in the current vein of acting as if the social network can somehow neutralize ad blockers completely.

Narayanan’s blogpost is here:

Can Facebook really make ads unblockable?

Facebook announced two days ago that it would make its ads indistinguishable from regular posts, and hence impossible to block. But within hours, the developers of Adblock Plus released an update which enabled the tool to continue blocking Facebook ads. The ball is now back in Facebook’s court. So far, all it’s done is issue a rather petulant statement. The burning question is this: can Facebook really make ads indistinguishable from content? Who ultimately has the upper hand in the ad blocking wars?

There are two reasons — one technical, one legal — why we don’t think Facebook will succeed in making its ads unblockable, if a user really wants to block them.

The technical reason is that the web is an open platform. When you visit facebook.com, Facebook’s server sends your browser the page content along with instructions on how to render them on the screen, but it is entirely up to your browser to follow those instructions. The browser ultimately acts on behalf of the user, and gives you — through extensions — an extraordinary degree of control over its behavior, and in particular, over what gets displayed on the screen. This is what enables the ecosystem of ad-blocking and tracker-blocking extensions to exist, along with extensions for customizing web pages in various other interesting ways.

I wish there was a business model which would save me from these pernicious ads.

 

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Can Trump withstand the all-out media onslaught?

August 10, 2016

If the media reports on Trump (starting in the US and then carried all over the world) are taken at face value, the Trump campaign has imploded and Trump is dead as a Presidential candidate. The November election is already being declared a walk-over for Hillary. The current media onslaught on Trump appears to be a “no holds barred” thing where the most tenuous arguments are used to support sensational conclusions (the latest being that Trump is encouraging violence against Clinton by gun owners).

But there is a fundamental disconnect somewhere. If Trump’s chance is already as dead as the media say it is, then they should be returning to the ridicule they showered on Trump a year ago when his campaign started. But the media “reporting” is, instead, getting increasingly strident, increasingly vituperative, increasingly vicious. It suggests to me that rather than being a reaction to Trump’s declining chance of being President, it is a reaction dominated by the fear that he might win.

The ingredient that the media are most scared of it seems is the US electorate. They are in fact terrified of what is my hypothesis – that the anti-establishment wave that has put Trump where he is, will turn into an anti-establishment tsunami come November. The media are trying, with their increasingly wild attacks, to get to an audience they normally cannot reach.

Get Trump

Right now the media are still living in the hope that they can pre-empt a Trump candidacy. I suspect they might be too late. Some of the more liberal media are enaged in such “over-the-top” attacks on Trump which reminds me of the desperate, crazed, suicidal tactics of berserkers or kamikaze. If Trump can withstand the onslaught and is still around in the middle of September, then, I think, the media’s survival instinct will kick in. If, with 6 weeks to go, Trump is still a potential President, the media will have to look to how they remain alive under a President Trump who might turn out to be quite vindictive.

The mentality driving some of the most extreme attacks on Trump is not so very different to the desperate, crazed, suicide attacks of an embattled terrorist group.

 

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Trump nominated, as the clown trounces the media

July 20, 2016

I never thought he would actually get this far. I took him for a clown to begin with. Later, I remembered that clowns can have hidden depths. There are times in any show when it is time for the clown to come on, and when only a clown will do. He reminded me, from my own experiences, of my first impressions of Laloo Prasad Yadav and my later realisation of the shrewdness and native cunning that Laloo had (still has I suppose). I remembered that Trump was born rich but had indeed made himself much richer. Donald Trump hit a nerve and was perfectly placed – but not I think by design –  to catch and ride an anti-establishment wave. The wave is turning out to be a global phenomenon and may turn into a tsunami.

For 12 months now, he has faced the massed opposition and vilification of the media not only in the US, but globally. The media have been scathing and openly slanderous about Trump. The liberal-left media have been frothing at the mouth in their indignation and have been hard put to find the words to describe their revulsion and disgust (Washington Post, Boston Globe, Huff Post, The Guardian, Der Spiegel …..). The New York Times has been openly hostile but has tried to keep one foot on the fence. Some of the right-wing media have been vitriolic in their opposition (Fox, Red State) while others have pointedly refrained from total opposition and remained neutral (Drudge, Washington Times). Every TV channel in the US has been opposed to Trump.

media vs trump

And yet, Donald Trump is now the official Republican candidate for the Presidency of the US. He was expected to be the first hopeful to drop out. Instead the rivals he has trounced (Bush, Kasich, Carson, Rubio, Cruz, ….) were the cream of the establishment, Republican, heavyweights. Two years ago I though it would be a Clinton-Bush fight. But Jeb Bush was pulverised early on in the competition (and the Bush family are still sulking). It has been a remarkable triumph for Trump considering the unprecedented level of opposition from the media and the political establishment (including the Republican establishment). I have never in my lifetime seen the media so united in their opposition to a candidate. And yet, they have all failed, and failed quite miserably, in their objective to “stop Trump”. The dismal failure of the media is all the more pronounced considering their almost unanimous opposition. Trump has reached and touched and ridden something above and beyond the control of the media. perhaps even beyond their understanding. He has connected with support which actually feeds and grows on the media opposition to him. Every time an establishment figure has castigated Trump, his support has grown. He backtracks on previous statements but never apologises. He makes gaffes which are quickly forgotten. He makes outrageous statements about ridiculous policies and his support does not desert him. It is mood – not issues – that seems to be controlling.

Those who have been particularly outspoken against him are now realising that it might not be such a good idea to completely alienate somebody who could be President in November. President Trump? It still sounds like a fantasy.

The wrong person? Or another Reagan? A catastrophe? Or an inspired choice? But, in the unfolding drama that is the US, it does begin to look like he could be the right clown with the right mood, for the right audience, in the right place, at the right time.

Quick, send in the clowns.
Don’t bother, they’re here.

 

 

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Obama, Clinton, media slam Trump, and Trump support will probably rise

June 2, 2016

This week has seen a concerted, seemingly coordinated, attack by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton and the establishment press on Trump and Trump University. If my theory, that Trump is riding an anti-establishment wave which feeds on attacks from the establishment, is correct, this will lead to an increase in Trump’s numbers. This will show up in next week’s polls.

The anti-establishment wave could, if fed enough energy by the media attacks on Trump, turn into an anti-establishment tsunami. I find it amazing that the NYT, WaPo, LA Times, HuffPo …. have not picked up on the reality that it is their “over the top” attacks on Trump which are energising and feeding his support. The content of their attacks has become irrelevant. It is their contempt which is creating a magnified reaction. The more the establishment seem to be “ganging up” on him, the greater the reaction. I see an analogy with the vibrational collapse of a bridge when troops march across in step and cause a resonance failure. As media attacks on Trump seem more coordinated, the anti-establishment reaction could reach resonance and become an uncontrollable tsunami.

Obama’s stuttering attack was particularly unconvincing and gives some backing to the suggestion that “Barack Obama as your enemy is equivalent to having a thousand friends”. 

(ISIS might agree. I note that the Iraqi (with US air support) assault on Fallujah has stalled. Massive advance publicity was released about the assault but it has been somewhat less effective than when Syria (with Russian air support) has taken back ISIS strongholds.)

In the meantime Clinton does not seem able to finally kill off Sanders. In line-ups against Trump, Sanders consistently does much better than Clinton. I take this as being consistent with the angry, anti-establishment wave which transcends “left” or “right”.

 

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How come Facebook’s tracking never gets my preferences correctly?

June 1, 2016

I don’t much care that Facebook is tracking me – and now “on and off Facebook through cookies”. But their analysis of whatever tracking they do is suspect. At least in my case, the tracking analysis does not seem to be very effective (or even intelligent).

Facebook cookie monster

Facebook’s choice of “top stories” – which seems to be their enforced default condition – never matches what I would consider top stories on my news feed. I keep switching back to “most recent” and what I get is something close to – but not exactly – the most recent posts (or comments). Some posts are suppressed and some are elevated. In this age where they are supposedly tracking my every move, why cannot they manage something as simple as just following a time stamp? It is pretty clear that their over-complicated, over-sophisticated algorithms cannot leave well alone. Why must they always try to “add value” (and fail) by revising time?

For the last 5 days Facebook has been showing this irritating message

To help personalize content, tailor and measure ads, and provide a safer experience, we use cookies. By clicking or navigating the site, you agree to allow our collection of information on and off Facebook through cookies. Learn more, including about available controls: Cookies Policy.

As the WSJ points out, Facebook is trying to show an increased “value” to its advertisers (presumably to fool them into paying higher rates). Personally I thin the advertisers would be throwing their money away. The pages that Facebook suggests for me are very, very rarely of any relevance – or even of interest – for me. I cannot remember ever having clicked on an advertisement on Facebook. I don’t suppose I am in the main target group for Facebook advertisers, but surely the much-touted sophistication of their algorithms can do better. I am not especially impressed by the quality of the selections made for me.

I find Google ads are much more closely aligned to my interests. In any search for news stories, I always ignore the first few paid-for references. They are invariably low quality stories. But I have been known to click – not very often but a few times – on their ads. Ads on WordPress sites are generally very relevant to the main story (interspersed with regular ads for porn sites but these are easy to ignore).

I suspect that Facebook are claiming far more for their algorithms and their capability of selection of target audiences than they can actually achieve. (That they do suppress news they don’t like is now pretty well proven).

WSJ:

Facebook has set out to power all advertising across the Internet.

To that end, the social network and online advertising company said Thursday it will now help marketers show ads to all users who visit websites and applications in its Audience Network ad network. Previously Facebook only showed ads to members of its social network when they visited those third-party properties.

The change is a subtle one, but it could mean Facebook will soon help to sell and place a much larger portion of the video and display ads that appear across the Internet. The change will also intensify competition with Alphabet Inc. subsidiary Google, which dominates the global digital-advertising market, and a wide range of other online ad specialists.

“Publishers and app developers have some users who aren’t Facebook users. We think we can do a better job powering those ads,” said Andrew Bosworth, vice president of Facebook’s ads and business platform.

But my advice to Facebook advertisers would be to double check any claims Facebook makes about how well they are able to select their target audiences. From the little I have seen, they are not particularly good.

All I really want is that my news feed follow the fundamental time-stamp and that “most recent” gives me the most recent posts – without suppression of some and elevation of others. Google seems to know my mind better than Facebook does.

 

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Swedish church under attack from sanctimonious journalism

May 31, 2016

Ekot (“The echo”) is the news service of Swedish national radio, Sveriges Radio. But some of their “journalists” often amaze by their triviality. They are self-righteous, sanctimonious and politically correct to an extraordinary degree. They – more even than any extreme teetotal organisation – see any kind of “public money” spent on any kind of alcohol as the Mother of all Original Sin. They are so convinced of their own reserved places in heaven that their self-righteous reporting is almost embarrassing to listen to.

This morning they were particularly pathetic.

They released a so-called “investigative report” into the sinful travels of the Swedish Church (financed partly from tax money). Horror of horrors! Some of the travel costs included meals. And even worse – some of the meals were accompanied by the devil ALCOHOL. The breathless report of their intrepid journalist was in hushed tones commensurate with the moral decrepitude now taking over the Swedish Church.

Swedish Radio:

Politicians and church employees in the Swedish church go on expensive trips abroad, often to well-known tourist resorts and cities, an investigation by Ekot has found. For example, in 2014 traveled a total of 99 people from Huddinge went on a five-day conference at a hotel on the shores of Malta.  …… The Huddinge parish conference, which also featured instance pool-side meetings, medieval fencing and a city walk, cost 800 000 kronor. By comparison, the trip cost more than twice as much as the parish received from collections that year.

The Huddinge conference in Malta is one of many similar staff travel trips within the Swedish Church. ……

6.2 million Swedes are members of the Swedish Church. It is their money, the so-called church fees – that are charged automatically on their taxes – which for the most part finance the activities of the Church.

Oh Dear!

Less than $1000 per person for 5 days in Malta (including travel and hotels and meals and ALCOHOL) and – if one were to pay attention to Ekot – the Swedish Church was on a slippery slope to hell.

I note that Swedish Radio is financed entirely by public money. Generally Ekot does a good job. Their relatively few foreign correspondents are particularly good. But their domestic and trainee reporters have a fairly low standard. Some of them are little better than parasitic copy-cats who merely repeat stories from larger press institutions. And far too many have a smarmy political correctness which makes one cringe.

One of our local churches. St Maria Church Risinge from the second half of the 12th century

One of our local churches. St Maria Church Risinge from the second half of the 12th century

 

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Guardian writer fabricated his stories

May 28, 2016

The Guardian is blatantly biased – but that’s perfectly OK. They tend to be quite selective in choosing which stories to report and which to ignore and that, too, is perfectly OK, since they make no secret of the agendas they pursue. Their opinion pieces nearly always cherry pick information to suit their point of view and I have no problem with that. Their spelling mistakes are legendary (perhaps they need to have an Indian-American with the spelling bee gene as a spell checker). But they do not make up the “facts” they do report.

Except, it seems, they sometimes do.

The Guardian has retracted 13 articles by a freelance writer Joseph Mayton who has been writing for them since 2009. They have also deleted extracts from his other articles which could not be verified. Mayton denies he has fabricated his stories – but his protests which claim unprofessionalism as a defence – are not very convincing.

Guardian Retractions

Guardian editor Lee Glendinning writes:

…. we acted immediately to investigate when sources claimed that they had not spoken with the writer of the piece they were quoted in.

The article in question, from February, was by a freelance journalist, Joseph Mayton, who began writing opinion pieces for the Guardian in London in 2009, while based in Egypt. He contributed several opinion pieces before starting to write occasional US news stories, on a freelance basis, in May 2015 from California. These stories ranged from coverage of wildfires to issues related to marijuana farms, urban vineyards and whale deaths on the coast.

When Mayton was unable to provide convincing evidence that the interviews in question in the February article had taken place, we hired an independent fact-checker to investigate all of his prior work, which comprised 37 single-byline articles published between 2015 and 2016, seven shared byline stories from the same period, and 20 opinion pieces written from 2009 to 2015.

In an investigation that included approximately 50 interviews, our fact-checker found articles that contained likely or confirmed fabrication, including stories about two events that organizers said he didn’t attend. Dozens of sources could not be found – either they had no online presence or they were anonymous and could not be substantiated – and several people quoted in Mayton’s articles either denied speaking with him or giving the quotes attributed to them. …..

….. In light of the extent of the fabrication and the uncertainty surrounding many of the articles, we are removing 12 of the news stories, and one opinion piece from the Guardian website. In the articles that remain, quotes and information that could not be verified have been removed, and we have published footnotes on each article page to outline this. There were other stories which proved accurate, with no corrections needed, and have been left as is.

I use The Guardian as one of my key benchmarks for liberal-left opinions. I don’t expect objectivity from them and I hardly ever agree with their viewpoint but I do rely on their veracity.

And so I am very glad to see them take this action to protect, at least, their reputation for accuracy in the facts they do report.

h/t – Retraction Watch

 

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Facebook is just another disinformation source

May 13, 2016

That Facebook is biased and reflects the views of its owners/managers is neither a surprise or anything wrong. What I find reprehensible is the lie promoted by Facebook that ist is objective and unbiased. After the Gizmodo story this week, Facebook denied that it was spinning the news. But the latest revelations show that the allegations were fundamentally true. The simple truth is that Facebook promotes certain news stories and suppresses others. They don’t manufacture news. But what they do is to spread a skewed version of what is news. And that is disinformation. Again, nothing wrong with that. It is what every newspaper or TV channel does. But the prejudices and biases of, say, the Washington Post are not hidden under a false cloak of objectivity.

facebook disinformation

facebook disinformation

The shattering of the cloak of objectivity around Facebook and its subjective choice of news stories to promote or to suppress can no longer be ignored by Zuckerberg and he has initiated an “investigation”. A biased platform with a hidden, skewed agenda is fundamentally incompatible with selling advertising where the advertisers need to know, objectively, how well their messages are targeted.

BBC:

Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg has said the company is investigating claims it censored news reports with conservative viewpoints. It follows a week of allegations in the media and discussion in the US Senate.

The tech news website Gizmodo had said Facebook staff suppressed articles on conservative topics from the site’s “trending” news section and “injected” others, even if they were not trending. ….

….. Mr Zuckerberg said he was inviting leading conservatives to meet him to discuss their views.

…… Gizmodo’s original report alleged that staff tampered with trending topic stories and were told to include stories published by the BBC, CNN and other mainstream news organisations ahead of smaller news sites.

It said the trending topics section was run like a newsroom, with curators able to “blacklist” or “inject” topics.

The report was followed by a release of documents to The Guardian, which appeared to show editorial decision-making by Facebook staff, alongside the company’s algorithm, to determine what is trending.

The Guardian:

Leaked documents show how Facebook, now the biggest news distributor on the planet, relies on old-fashioned news values on top of its algorithms to determine what the hottest stories will be for the 1 billion people who visit the social network every day.

The documents, given to the Guardian, come amid growing concerns over how Facebook decides what is news for its users. This week the company was accused of an editorial bias against conservative news organizations, prompting calls for a congressional inquiry from the US Senate commerce committee chair, John Thune. ….

….. But the documents show that the company relies heavily on the intervention of a small editorial team to determine what makes its “trending module” headlines – the list of news topics that shows up on the side of the browser window on Facebook’s desktop version. The company backed away from a pure-algorithm approach in 2014 after criticism that it had not included enough coverage of unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, in users’ feeds.

The guidelines show human intervention – and therefore editorial decisions – at almost every stage of Facebook’s trending news operation, a team that at one time was as few as 12 people …… 

Facebook is in the business of skewed information dissemination and that skewing is effectively disinformation. Every entity involved in providing information must, by its selection of information to be distributed, also be involved in disinformation. But the additional problem for Facebook is that this disinformation and skewing of stories is not in the interests of the advertisers. Facebook is not just misleading its users, it is misleading its advertisers.

 

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