The Facebook strategy: From Fake News to Paid “News” and to Paid Fake News

April 5, 2019

It is nothing new.

Many newspapers carry advertising which looks like a “news article” or as editorial comment. In the last decade even the once most “reputable” outlets (NYT, The Times, WaPo, Der Spiegel, El Pais, The Guardian……..) have indulged in “Fake News”, both by omission and by commission. Some have become little more than lobbying outfits where the actual news content is always secondary to promoting a particular political line. In India, the idea of paying for “news articles” is an old tradition. It is the life-blood for the print media especially at election time.

(On a personal note, when I was heading an engineering company in India I found it remarkably easy, and quite inexpensive, to place favourable articles in local and national newspapers when we were bidding for important projects. Of course, our competitors did the same. “Journalists” were quite ready to repeat our press releases with no changes, provided of course they were given some special dinner or a free night or two at one of our guest houses.)

The more competent newspapers (I hesitate to say “better”) manage not only to get paid by both sides of opposing arguments, but more importantly, they manage to get paid for presenting themselves as “balanced” and objective.

So now The Telegraph will be publishing a series of paid articles for Facebook, identified as being advertising but still looking like editorial content.

From Fake News to Paid News and now to Fake, Paid News.

Business Insider:

  • Facebook is paying The Daily Telegraph to run a series of positive sponsored stories about it.
  • The British newspaper is running dozens of stories that defend Facebook on controversial subjects like terrorism, hate speech, and cyber-bullying.
  • It shows how Facebook is attempting to sidestep the often-critical media by buying positive coverage of itself.
  • A spokesperson said it is part of a UK marketing campaign to drive “awareness” of Facebook’s investments “that have a positive impact on people’s lives.”

 

Facebook has found a novel solution to the never-ending deluge of negative headlines and news articles criticizing the company: Simply paying a British newspaper to run laudatory stories about it.

Facebook has partnered with The Daily Telegraph, a broadsheet British newspaper, to run a series of features about the company, Business Insider has found – including stories that defend it on hot-button issues it has been criticised over like terrorist content, online safety, cyberbullying, fake accounts, and hate speech.

The series – called “Being human in the information age” – has published 26 stories over the last month, to run in print and online, and is produced by Telegraph Spark, the newspaper’s sponsored content unit.

“Fake news, cyberbullying, artificial intelligence – it seems like life in the internet age can be a scary place,” the articles say. “That’s why Telegraph Spark and Facebook have teamed up to show how Facebook and other social media platforms are harnessing the power of the internet to protect your personal data.”

Sponsored native content, in which companies pay for media organizations to produce positive articles that appear similar to traditional news stories, are an increasingly popular method of monetization for many publications, including Business Insider. Some studies have been critical of the ad format, arguing they can mislead news consumers. ….

The stories dismiss ‘technofears’ about the impact of technology on society. …….

Facebook’s go-to talking points are all here. ………

…….. Facebook has paid for sponsored content with British newspapers before – but on far less politically charged issues. In 2016 and 2017, before its current wave of scandals, it ran a number of stories in left-leaning The Guardian on subjects like growing your business with video, understanding customers, and case studies of succesful companies. The Guardian articles are now offline, but remain accessible via the Internet Archive.

 

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Middle class demographics will cause Indian stock market capitalisation to grow by a factor of 20 till 2050

April 4, 2019

The underlying Indian stock market growth is fueled by a burgeoning middle class with a voracious appetite for owning stocks.

The BSE Sensex is India¨s primary stock index. The Bombay Stock Market has been going for some 140 years (formed 1875) but the Sensex Index of 30 shares was established in 1986 and set its reference value of 100 on a base date chosen to be 1st April 1979.  It is now 40 years since the base date and the index stands at over 39,000. For stock investors this represents an annual rate of growth over the 40 years of over 17%.

Rather than a measure of – except indirectly – of the economy or industrialisation, I see the BSE Sensex as primarily a measure of the appetite for investing in stocks. As such, it is a phenomenon of, and by, and for, the “middle class”. Much of the growth of the index is thus due to new owners of stocks entering the market.

It is thought that India has around 25 million owners of stocks. There are many definitions of the “middle-class”. I find defining the middle-class by the number of households with a disposable, annual income of over $10,000 is probably the best indicator of the number of stock investors. By this measure the number of stock investors is about half the number of such households. Currently – 2019 – the number of such households is about 50 million and covers 120 – 150 million of the total population of 1,300 million.

The Indian population will probably reach around 1,500 million and start declining after 2050. It can be expected that the growth of the stock-owning middle-class will keep increasing till then and even for a decade or two after population decline begins. A not-unreasonable projection would be that the underlying growth of the stock index will follow the appetite for owning stocks.

The total number of shares available, the number of investors available and the price of the shares are inextricably linked with the state of the economy. An increasing appetite for a fixed number of available shares will follow the number of investors available. This would increase both share price and market capitalisation. However the number of shares available will, given even a modest growth in the economy, probably track the growth in total population.  However, the underlying growth over the next 30 years is unlikely to reach the heights of the last 40 years. A saturation law applies and my expectation would be a growth in the index of between 2 and 3 times the current value. Since the number of investors would have grown by a factor of 8 this implies that the total capitalisation of Indian companies on the stock market could be closer to 20 times higher than now.

 

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Without ignorance there are no questions (or knowledge is always finite in an infinity of ignorance)

April 2, 2019

The natural laws are not amenable to change.

Our minds and our thoughts and our actions may distinguish us from inert rocks and lifeless blobs of matter, but they are just as impotent in effecting any change to the laws we perceive applying in the universe around us.

And because we have minds and thoughts, questions arise. It is an empirical observation that minds are finite and a reasonable conjecture that omniscience – and therefore determinism – cannot exist. If we were omniscient we would have no questions. Without questions the human condition would be one of stasis. Without questions there would be no room for philosophy. If we had no questions the process of science would be meaningless. Ignorance by itself does not give rise to questions. Ignorance together with an awareness of being ignorant is necessary, but even that is not sufficient. Questions will not arise in an ignorant mind, aware of its own ignorance, unless there is also a desire to reduce the level of prevailing ignorance. A rational motivation for such a desire would be the belief that reducing ignorance would lead to an “improved” state of existence for the desirous mind.

All of philosophy and all of language and mathematics and art and all of science then proceed from non-omniscient minds formulating questions. Ignorance it would seem is the primary driving force for human endeavor.

Ignorance is infinite. Ignorance begets questions. Questions – through the application of philosophy and art and science – beget answers. Answers increase knowledge which is finite. But answers also beget further questions and so on, ad infinitum.

When we get to the correct formulation of the ultimate question about life, the universe and everything for which the answer is 42, we shall reach omniscience. Then, the stars will go out and the universe will cease to exist.

 

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US Democrats have just lost the 2020 election

March 25, 2019

The entire Trump/Russia conspiracy theory was always a little far-fetched. But now as a major part of what turns out to have been a “spoiling exercise” has run out of fuel, the emphasis will shift to how the formal investigation into a nonsense theory first began. It certainly dates back to the campaign and long before Trump was elected. I suspect it was the Clinton e-mail flap which started it all. I am not convinced that the Clinton campaign was itself clever enough to have thought this up. “Deep State” Clinton supporters at the FBI probably started the whole thing as a way of both diverting from Clinton’s criminal incompetence (in which they succeeded) and of attacking their most hated candidate.

Of course they were aided and abetted by other Trump-haters (John McCain was a willing accomplice in spreading the fake dossier). The pro-Clinton media with CNN in the forefront and followed by WaPo and the NYT took Fake News to new heights.

It is unlikely that anybody will be held accountable for starting the Fake News conspiracy theory.

The Democrats are too heavily invested in the conspiracy theory to give it up easily. I suspect that continuing to beat this horse will only make it more likely that the investigation will turn to who started the fake collusion theory and make it more difficult for the Democrats to dig themselves out of their ever deepening hole. They already have the debilitating baggage of taking over the mantle of being the socialist, anti-Semitic, soft-on-crime, Big Government party.

Trump may not have won yet, but the Democrats could well have lost the 2020 election with the Mueller Report. Of course it doesn’t hurt Trump that

  • ISIS were beaten on his watch,
  • N Korea are a much reduced threat,
  • the Chinese tsunami is being contained,
  • that unemployment is low,
  • that the economy is booming,
  • that black and Latino employment has never been higher and
  • that legal immigrants don’t much care for illegal immigrants

 

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Tell me again, why are Breivik and Tarrant still alive?

March 23, 2019

The arguments against capital punishment can generally be classified under the following headings.

  1. Intrinsic value of any human life
  2. Right to life
  3. Wrongful execution of the innocent
  4. Retribution is barbaric
  5. No deterrent
  6. Stooping to the level of the perpetrator
  7. Cruel and inhumane
  8. Unnecessary

They are not convincing in the face of evil.

ktwop:

There have always been situations where killing of some humans has been considered, not just not immoral, but actually a moral duty. To kill people of opposing faiths was justifiable for a long time. To put enemies or sufficiently “bad” people to death was once a moral duty. Even something to be proud of.

It is no different today.

For ISIS and other “terrorist” organisations killing the enemy in particularly brutal ways is something which is not only something to be proud of but also something which opens the gates to Paradise. Armies are trained to, and assessed, by their ability to kill the enemy – in bulk. Collateral damage is regrettable but allowed. It is never immoral. Many states allow individuals to kill when their own survival is threatened. Many other states do not. Many states exercise capital punishment for really “bad” people. Many other states do not and many of these mollycoddle the cancerous humans among them. In more “liberal” quarters the number of euthanasia deaths and abortions carried out have become something to be proud of. Paradoxically, the states which are most opposed to capital punishment are also the states which are most in favour of abortion and the “mercy” killings of the aged or the terminally ill.

There is no such thing as a “human right” to life. Any individual’s life is “cabined, cribbed, confined” by his genes, the privileges accorded by the surrounding society and the quirks of random events.

As with all so-called “human rights”  living is just another privilege.

 

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5 years on: MH370 needs to be revisited in the light of Boeing equipment malfunction

March 18, 2019

A week ago (8th March) it was 5 years since Malaysian flight MH370 – a Boeing 777-200ER – vanished without trace, taking 239 passengers and crew to their deaths. The disappearance is still a complete mystery but all the various theories include a sudden steep, fast climb to about 45,000 feet followed by a very sharp dive down to about 23,000 feet. Such an uncontrolled ascent would have caused a very rapid decompression (explosive or rapid) which, in turn, would have incapacitated all aboard.

The altitude excursion about 1 hour into the flight up to 45,000 feet could have rendered everybody on board unconscious. If it was done deliberately or otherwise is still the burning question. – ktwop

The disappearance of Flight 370 has been dubbed one of the greatest aviation mysteries of all time. Relying mostly on analysis of data from the Inmarsat satellite with which the aircraft last communicated, the Australian Transport Safety Bureau proposed initially that a hypoxia event was the most likely cause given the available evidence, although there has not been any consensus concerning this theory among investigators. – Wikipedia

It now looks increasingly likely that both the Lion Air crash in Indonesia (189 dead) and the Ethiopian Air crash (157 dead) were caused by equipment/software faults which ultimately caused rapid, uncontrollable descents.

It seems to me that Boeing’s liability for the deaths on Ethiopian Air is very likely. Boeing may well have liability also for the Lion Air deaths, especially if the unpreparedness of the pilots for sudden malfunction was due to incomplete manuals and/or a deficiency in the training provided.

It is the uncontrolled nature of descents which link the two latest crashes. In both cases the pilots tried to correct for the faulty equipment trying to push the nose down by climbing very rapidly. It begs the question whether this fault of the automatics pushing the nose of the aircraft down – by whatever combination of software and equipment – was what also caused MH370 to change altitude rapidly.

  1. Was an uncontrolled ascent due to the pilots trying to correct the automatics pushing the nose down?
  2. Did hypoxia then incapacitate the crew?

Could it be that the satellite evidence of the flight continuing (which is all interpretations of satellite data rather than clear physical evidence) is a red herring? Did MH370 actually go down soon after the final radar contact (Butterworth Air Base) was lost? Are the remains of MH370 actually lying at the bottom of the Indian Ocean a little to the west of Malaysia.

The Lion Air and Ethiopian crashes make it necessary to re-examine the disappearance of MH370 and including equipment failure possibilities which were considered impossible.

MH370 – Looking in the wrong place?

 

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Values embedded in language

March 16, 2019

The most fundamental value there is, is the distinction between “good” and “bad”. It is a characteristic of every individual. For humans this value surely originated from long before we were anatomically modern humans. Within the world of living things, and whether the individual living thing is aware of the value or not, all that aids survival is “good” and all that does not is “bad”.

The fundamental value scale of goodness therefore precedes language. Awareness of the value scale may need consciousness, but what is “good” or “bad” applies to every living thing whether it is conscious or not. Language, of course, is a means of “quantifying” thought. It is language which allows the past and the future and the abstract and the unreal to be described.

Language has allowed us to describe many other value scales. Each scale seems to be independent though it is clear that many of the scales are related. (Length can be related to weight and thickness, beauty can be related to cleverness or to complexity, …….). I cannot find any value scale though, which does not always map – even if sometimes indirectly – to the value scale of goodness.

It is as if “good” and “bad” are embedded in the framework of language, such that every other value scale we may describe always leaves a shadow on the scale of “good” and “bad”. It is therefore we tend to associate certain values with others and, I suspect, it is because of their underlying projection onto the good-bad scale. Beauty is good, noise is bad. Sweet is good, bitter is bad. Tall is good, short is bad. Thin is good and fat is bad. Certain combinations of values feel “right” and others feel very “wrong”. “Tall, slim and beautiful” feels right, but “short, fat and beautiful” is discordant in composition.

Logic and – it would seem – fundamental valuations of good and bad are embedded in language. They make up the framework for language and non-compliance with the inbuilt logic or the values creates discomfort and a discordance.

 

 

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Lion Air / Ethiopian Air similarity (updated)

March 15, 2019

If

  1. the Ethiopian Air crash was due to the same problem which caused the Lion Air crash, and
  2. Boeing was aware of the problem, and
  3. Boeing had not ensured that Ethiopian could handle the problem,

Then

Boeing has to answer for 157 deaths.

Update 1: Reuters reports that “The trim position of the stabilizer, which moves the jet’s horizontal tail, could help determine whether or not it was set nose down for a steep dive. …. …… part of a stabilizer found in the Ethiopian wreckage was in a unusual position similar to the Lion Air plane”.

Zero Hedge:

Boeing put MCAS in its planes as a protection against an aerodynamic stall, but in the case of the October flight, a sensor malfunction signaled that the plane was in danger when it wasn’t, causing it to dive automatically. Rather than switch off the motor triggering the dives, the pilots tried to counteract it with their controls until it dove into the sea.

The Ethiopian flight showed similar “highly unusual descents followed by climbs”. 

Peter Goelz, a former managing director at the NTSB said: “It certainly puts a magnifying glass on the MCAS system. There’s an implication that there were two similar accidents and that it likely involved the interaction of the MCAS system with the flight of the aircraft.”

Kevin Durkin, an aviation lawyer, said: “If you have a defective product and it turns out Boeing knew about it, this could easily expose them to punitive damages. The standard is whether the company engaged in conduct with a ‘conscious indifference to the safety of others’.”

 

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Every EU country has a fertility rate below the replenishment level

March 14, 2019

Any group of people will eventually become extinct if its fertility rate stays below the replenishment level (2.1 births per woman).  The EU faces the parallel dilemmas of how to

  1. reconcile decreasing fertility rates with any growth strategy
  2. avoiding cultural fragmentation while increasing “non-European” immigration
  3. pay for pensions and the care of the ageing population with a declining “native-born” working population

Eurostat has released its “Birth and Fertility” statistics.

5.075 million babies were born in the EU in 2017, down from 5.148 million in 2016. The total fertility rate reduced to 1.59 births per woman, also down from 1.60 the year before. No country came anywhere near the 2.1 births per woman needed to replenish any population.

France had the highest fertility rate at 1.90 births per woman, followed by Sweden (1.78), Ireland (1.77), Denmark (1.75), and the United Kingdom (1.74). The lowest fertility rates were in Malta (1.26), Spain (1.31), Italy and Cyprus (both 1.32), Greece (1.35), Portugal (1.38), and Luxembourg (1.39).

The average age of first-time mothers is also increasing, at 29.1 compared to 29.0 years in 2016.

The politically correct belief in the EU is that getting a large number of migrants from Africa will boost the work-force and allow pensions and healthcare for the elderly to be maintained. However this has been shown to be a little naive. Many new downsides have been introduced by the new migrants since they have been – relatively – unschooled, unskilled, reluctant to integrate and often requiring a much greater degree of state support, and for a much longer time, than the politicians had hoped for. Many migrants have been slower to enter the work-place than hoped. New stresses are being introduced by the reluctance (or the inability) of the migrants to adapt.

Using immigration alone as an alternative to having children can never work. It only ensures the extinction of the “native population”. Having fewer children in all cases will always lead to the native population becoming extinct. Having fewer children and simultaneously having more immigration, only means that the native born population is swamped and suppressed before becoming extinct. EU politicians are often so enamoured of their pet theories that they are in denial about reality. Immigration can help to provide a demographic breathing space for a limited period and provided the number of migrants can be assimilated. But a permanent, continuous stream of immigration to keep a country alive, while the native population declines, is absurd.

The simple demographic reality (which a few of the Eastern European countries have started to realise) is that any population – if it wants to survive – needs to replenish its children.

The Hungarians have been criticised by the politically correct part of the EU for introducing incentives for having children. This criticism is particularly short-sighted (if not plain stupid). The EU needs fertility rates to increase and soon. Incentives for having children are inevitable and will become standard in almost every country.

 

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Boeing and the “manslaughter” of the 157 killed in the Ethiopian Air crash

March 14, 2019

A few days ago, I commented that:

If the Ethiopian Air crash is a repeat of the Lion Air crash then Boeing has blood on its hands

Well it now seems that Ethiopian crash was indeed a repeat.

And if that is so then there is clearly a case of “manslaughter” possible against Boeing for the 157 lives lost in the Ethiopian crash (though the deaths in the Lion Air crash would be due to “misadventure” rather than “manslaughter”).

BBC:

Dan Elwell, acting administrator at the FAA, said on Wednesday: “It became clear to all parties that the track of the Ethiopian Airlines [flight] was very close and behaved very similarly to the Lion Air flight.”

Up until Wednesday, the FAA position was that a review had showed “no systemic performance issues” and that there was no basis for grounding the aircraft.

Earlier in the day, Canada grounded the planes after its transport minister Marc Garneau said he had received new evidence about the crash.

He said that satellite data showed possible similarities between flight patterns of Boeing 737 Max planes operating in Canada and the Ethiopian Airlines plane that crashed.

The flight data is remarkably unstable.

Within the last 12 months I have replaced a phone, a pair of speakers and a router since replacement was cheaper than the diagnosis and repair of a fault. The sophistication of technology in a large number of human appliances (white goods, cars, phones and airplanes) is now such that faults can no longer be rectified by the user. The frequency of faults is declining but when the consequence is the loss of life, that provides no comfort. Specialists – and usually more than one – are needed. In many cases the fault cannot be diagnosed and the faulty appliance is just replaced — with another probably containing the same fault.

 

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