Battling The Excesses Of An Authoritarian Demagogue? Don't Look To FaceBook's Mark Zuckerberg

"You did GOOD, Mark! Defending my lies from those nannies at Twitter!"

"This order is a reactionary and politicized approach to a landmark law. It threatens the future of online speech and internet freedoms"
 - Twitter response to Trump's executive order designed to regulate existing law toward authoritarian ends

"President Trump  said Twitter is trying to censor him and he wants to use his presidential  power to crack down on them.":  - CBS reporter Paula Reid this morning

"I see this order as just a distraction intended to divert attention from the devastation of Covid 19"- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi


What is Trump's game and why is he really so furious at the prospect of mail voting?  It is because he's been exposed as the shameless con man he is for trying to manage perceptions about the virus and he knows a majority of citizens aren't buying his act. Hence, with the economy cratering too (40 million now unemployed) he has nowhere to go but down - and certainly will be blown out in November. That is, unless he can get enough states to back off mail ballots using his fulminations and "terrible twos" -style  of  tantrums

In his latest con, Trump issued an "executive order" yesterday in retaliation for Twitter putting flags on his lying tweets about  voting, e.g.

.

The flag simply read:  'Get the facts about mail voting'  

Simply a heads up to those who gobble Trump's tweets with zero discrimination.  Certainly not "censorship" as the Right's crybabies are trying to portray.  But leave it to Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook honcho, to try to offer his absurd two cents.  Likely terrified of Trump's twitter fulminations, Zuckerberg and his other spokesmen tried to defend their own cowardly stance by saying (WSJ yesterday,  p. A4):

"We prefer not to be an arbiter of truth"

But given Trump's outrageous lies about mail voting, it's clear Zuckerberg has no problem being an enabler of lies.   What else could he be? Because if you're not prepared to at least flag lies when they appear - irrespective of the source- then you and your platform are useless. Worse,  you're contributing to the ongoing national polarization.

Zuckerberg and his ilk have always taken the position of laissez faire social media speech and they just assume FB users are grown up enough to engage in "robust debate" and recognize falsehoods when and where they appear. But that is a helluva ask, especially after Russian bots overloaded Facebook's boards back in 2016, playing no small part in Hillary's narrow electoral college loss. Oh, and seeing a record for retweets of the bots' anti- HRC balderdash.   As per a WSJ piece from Oct. 17, 2017 (p. B2):

 "470 Russia-backed Facebook accounts including Blacktivist and Secured Borders quietly infiltrated communities on social media. The issues they targeted spanned the U.S. political and social spectrum, including religion, race, immigration, gun rights, and gay rights. "

Adding:

"Facebook said the accounts were created by Russian entities to exploit tensions among Americans and interfere with U.S. elections

 Yep, Markie, there's a lot of insight for truth there! 

According to one FB spokesperson quoted in the WSJ piece:

"We have crafted our policies to focus on misrepresentations that would interfere with the vote."

Well, if Trump's deranged tweets against mail ballots aren't doing that, I don't know what would qualify.  The scumball is blatant and aggressive in his  single-minded campaign and even had the temerity to screech Wednesday:

"Clean up your act NOW!"

This from a Turd  whose own act has been one prolonged exercise in authoritarian depravity and irresponsibility. This is the same president who on Thursday Tweeted out a video of a supporter saying, “The only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.”  A  classless degenerate who's hurled the office of  the presidency further  into the gutter in the last week with his attacks on Joe Scarborough  for allegedly killing a woman.(Lori Klausutis)  when she worked as part of Scarborough's staff when he was a FLA congressman.   This despite a medical examiner's report that Lori had a heart condition which caused her to lose consciousness,  fall and hit her head.  

Thus, Trump is using her as his own political football  against perceived enemies as he causes the family no end of grief and pain.   But why be surprised when he's directly responsible for tens of thousands of  COVID 19 deaths for not acting in a competent and responsible manner? For initially calling the virus a hoax, wasting a valuable 2 weeks before acting,  which a Columbia University study disclosed probably resulted in 54,000 more deaths.

As for his executive order to try to punish Twitter, don't make me laugh.  Incredibly before signing his order yesterday the fool blabbed (WSJ, p. A1 today) :

"We're here today to defend free speech from  one of its greatest dangers."

Failing to have the self-awareness or intellect to grasp that HE   - as an autocratic demagogue -  is the singular greatest danger to liberty and that his lies are a perversion of  free speech.

 Here it is useful to go to the Wikipedia entry:

"There is no constitutional provision nor statute that explicitly permits executive orders. The term executive power in Article II, Section 1, Clause 1 of the Constitution refers to the office of President as the executive. They are instructed therein by the declaration "take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed" made in Article II, Section 3, Clause 5 or face impeachment. Most executive orders use these Constitutional reasonings as the authorization allowing for their issuance to be justified as part of the President's sworn duties, the intent being to help direct officers of the U.S. Executive carry out their delegated duties as well as the normal operations of the federal government: the consequence of failing to comply possibly being removal from office"

In other words, these more comport with a wish list based on appeals or pleas from a president to the legislative branch to formalize into law what he seeks to do. In Trump's case, most legal experts note his scribbles on fancy paper are "essentially toothless" - they don't change existing federal law- nor can they without formal legislative input. Hence, only congress has the power to curtail Twitter's legal protections.

As Mike Masnick of Techdirt explained:

To be clear: the executive order is nonsense. You can’t overrule the law by executive order, nor can you ignore the Constitution. This executive order attempts to do both. It’s also blatantly anti-free speech, anti-private property, pro-big government — which is only mildly amusing, given that Trump and his sycophantic followers like to insist they’re the opposite of all of those things.

As for Zuckerberg's act and the insipid claims of supporting "free speech" I was gratified to see one professor (Bridget Barrett) call  it out in the WSJ piece.  As she aptly noted:

"To give a less kind reading of that, they (Facebook) want to stay friends with the folks who are regulating them."

As for the two Trump tweets that were flagged, they were:

"There is NO WAY (ZERO!) that Mail-In Ballots will be anything less than substantially fraudulent"

And then: "This will be a Rigged Election!"   

Both hysterical expulsions I'd more expect from a high school sophomore who flunked his Government class.  And as Ms. Barrett of UNC Chapel Hill pointed out:

  "The posts appeared to violate two of Facebook's own rules around voter interference which bar posts that  misrepresent methods for voting and whether votes will be counted."

Again, that makes Zuckerberg a liar enabler, as well as a punk for Trump, to help spread his bunkum.   In the meantime, kudos to Twitter for continuing to courageously flag Trump's most outrageous tweets - including beckoning "shooters"  to fire at the "thugs"  in Minneapolis.   While  Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has taken some heat for being too mild in response to Trump's flagrant speech crimes, he is at least doing something!  That's more than can be said for Mark Zuckerberg and his "clown car" of Trump enablers and sycophants at Facebook.

See Also:
Anything to get reelected: Trump once more stokes violence 

And:

• White supremacists are thriving on Facebook, despite its promises to crack down 

And:

Donald Trump

Twitter Put up a Fact-check — so Trump Threw a Tantrum

by Cody Fenwick | May 29, 2020 - 7:11am | permalink

— from Alternet

The Fake Video Of Pelosi Isn't Just About The Morons Who Believed It- But The Media That Covered It

Trump has lied more than any other President in history. Americans need to process that.

Nancy Pelosi's rebuke of Facebook on account of being a willing party to a clearly manipulated video of her was more than justified (WSJ, yesterday, p. A2). Facebook's line at the time was that its members ought to be free to "decide for themselves" the veracity of media content, including an obviously doctored youtube video.  Alas, fifty years ago when the bulk of Americans were well -read and not chained to screens which lowered their IQs that may have been so. But no longer. We now must depend again on responsible media gate keepers to save 'Muricans from their own worst instincts and idiocy.

I first saw the fake Pelosi video on Chris Hayes' 'All In' show last Friday.  Like other mainstream media outlets, it was presented  side-by-side with the un-doctored footage of the House speaker.  This was in an effort to debunk the viral clips which had been created and circulated by Right wing Agitprop specialists to snooker and distract the lower IQ segment of our nation. 

Neither Janice or I would have been fooled even if we'd only been shown the doctored footage, of what has now become known in techie parlance as “deepfake” videos .   In the case of  the one circulated and touted on FAUX News as if real,  Pelosi's speech had been subtly slowed down and then pitch-corrected to make it appear as if the House speaker was drunk or incapacitated .   It was an obvious fake to anyone who's seen Pelosi, thus Janice and I concluded only an imbecile would be fooled by it.

Facebook did not remove the video but eventually added “fact check” links to the clips, which most users likely ignored or didn't see. Journalists and pundits debated the social networks’ decisions to leave the video up, while others lamented the rise of political misinformation, filter bubbles, the future of “deepfake” videos and the internet’s penchant to warp reality.

But what is needed here is a larger context examination of how the corporate media itself is being outplayed by the liars, propagandists and pro-Trump fifth columnists (such as embedded at FOX News) in our midst. It has even gone beyond millions of citizens accepting the fake video at face value, to whether too many in the so-called "serious" media are themselves being played like puppets.

Eric Alterman, writing in a piece ('Lord of the Lies') appearing in a recent issue of The Nation (June 5-10, p. 10) notes, for example:

"Daniel Dale of The Toronto Star, who tracks Trump's deceptions, says that most journalists rarely bother to mention that Trump's statements are filled with falsehoods. 'If you watched a network news segment, read an Associated Press article, or glanced at the front page of the city that hosted him, you'd typically have no idea that he was wholly inaccurate'.  Most coverage, Dale points out, reads something like 'Trump speaks to big, excited crowd, insults X and Y, talks policy Z'"

Which is a sorry, cartoonish template that - if Walter Cronkite were alive today - he'd laugh at. He'd wonder what school of journalism the perpetrators had attended - if they did at all.  Incredibly too, Trump often lies about the lies and the media almost never really hone in on it.  Well a few did when Trump blurted out in a tweet several days ago: "I had nothing to do with Russia helping to get me elected!"  Huh?  The detestable toad then denied it, insisting to the yapping press corps that he never said any such thing. A Freudian slip then?

Another egregious example cited by Alterman occurred when he addressed the U.N. General Assembly in September last year and trotted out of his favorites, i.e. he had "accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country."

Caught out by hundreds with IQs far superior to his - "the assembled audience burst into laughter".  He was "briefly left speechless"  before realizing he needed another lie to cover his humiliation, i.e. "he didn't expect that reaction".  So then  he ad-libbed the lie that "he meant to get some laughs."

But while this one was good for yucks, others have had more real world consequences, such as at a Green Bay rally  on April 27.  There he related this wholesale whopper to a crowd of drooling MAGA goons who accepted it without question (ibid.):

"The baby is born. The mother meets with the doctor. They take care of the baby. They wrap the baby beautifully.  And then the doctor and the mother determine whether to execute the baby."

Did any of the local papers or media expose this claptrap? Nope, not even The Green Bay Press -Gazette, so perhaps it was outside their  reporting wheelhouse. But that lies at the heart of how our nation is getting mind-fucked day in and day out. The press repeatedly being left sucking air and unable to catch up with all the lies, because Trump is treated with excess respect instead of plain contempt - in the futile effort to appear "objective'".  And so, with little or no blowback from the 4th estate (bloggers like me with lesser audiences having to call out the crap)   such atrocious lies continue to make abortion providers targets of domestic terrorists  - even as assorted backward states pass abortion banning laws.

Another example that rivals the preceding in vileness was Trump on Memorial Day, siding with the most bestial, bloodthirsty tyrant on the planet - Kim Jong Un.  Asked a question by the ever somnolent mainstream Washington press corps, Trump responded he had to believe Kim,  who told him "Biden is a low IQ individual".  This degeneracy did get a reply from Biden's campaign manager Kate Bedingfield the day after, i.e. in The Denver Post (May 29, p. 17A):

"For anyone to appear on Memorial Day and to side with a murderous dictator against a fellow American and former vice-president speaks for itself."

Only mentioned near the very end of the piece was that a half imbecile member of the press corps had actually asked Trump about "the North Korean leader's (earlier) description of the Democrat's intelligence level."

WTF?! Why is this even in the question mix?  Only an ignorant buffoon would ask that knowing full well how Dotard would respond given his ongoing bromance with the N. Korean swine.  But it gets to the heart of how much of the media itself is responsible for the mess we're in. I mean if we can't depend on the press to be critical thinkers how can we expect the ordinary citizen to be?

Alterman near the end of his piece writes "thankfully most Americans don't believe Trump" - citing fewer than 3 in 10 according to a WaPO Fact Checker. However he also writes:

"What worries me, however, is that people don't realize how much more dishonest Trump is than any of his predecessors. Only about 50 percent of Americans think he is 'less honest' than any previous president".

Which thereby conflates most presidents as liars in some form and worse, fails to hurl Trump into the depths to which he belongs.  Much of this again, is because of the media and mainstream press which often repeats his idiotic tweets without criticizing them properly - merely assuming (as in the case of the Pelosi fake video) most Americans have the intelligence and sense to separate what's factual from rubbish. Well, they don't!

How to respond?  In particular how should the media treat them: as official communications with all the gravitas of a presidential official statement or announcement - through the orthodox, standard channels? Or as disruptive refuse no better than environmental toxic waste?

Some (e.g. Journalism prof Indira Lakshmanan)  have proposed repeating the tweets, but then doing a fact check. The problem with that is twofold: first, most people will have already seen the tweets say on the morning or evening news. Doing a follow-up fact check will then be too late and of minimal impact. Thus, Trumpers' erroneous beliefs and fables are merely reinforced in a kind of confirmation bias. (As manifested in a recent Justin Amash town hall, with one of  his conservo constituents, see e.g. the lead off link below.)

Second, the very act of repeating the offending tweet has the effect of dignifying it - even if unintentionally.  (The same, obviously, applied to the treatment of the Pelosi fake video).


Back to the fake Pelosi video which the FOX News trolls  (e.g. Laura Ingraham,  Tucker Carlson et al) actually broadcast and integrated into their newscasts as evidence she was unfit to be House Speaker.  That above all revived for me the danger of propaganda and its effects on the brain as shown in the excellent PBS documentary series, ''The Brain'.  The series  featured neuroscientist David Eagleman who explored the role of that organ in social connections, as well as genocide and propaganda.  His key finding? 

"A basic, single word label is enough to change your brain's pre-conscious response to a person in pain, in other words, how much you care about them."   

In this context, the impact on the brains of those who watched the Pelosi video -  and didn't detect the obvious distortions - would have interjected a virulent anti -Pelosi bias.  Even in the more benign media treatments, whether repeating the lie or attempting to knock it down, the predominant political narrative suddenly became squarely on Pelosi’s health, not her competence.

As the video views continued to climb, I had to concur with Charlie Warzel in a recent Times piece that our attention was successfully hijacked by a remedial iMovie trick.  It’s easy to fall back on the notion that the Pelosi viral videos are an example of a broken system. But that’s not exactly true. Many of the forces that led this particular doctored video to become news are part of an efficient machine designed to do exactly this. Our media distribution systems are working just as intended. They just weren’t designed for our current political moment. 

Alterman and other media critics like Robert McChesney and Norman Solomon estimate it may take the U.S. media ecosystem years, decades to adapt. But we don't have that time while a pathological liar and criminal Vulgarian fouls the nation and the presidency every moment he tweets or talks.

As Warzel also notes: Facebook, by virtue of the fact that it made $16.6 billion in advertising revenue last quarter, is a media company. But Facebook wasn’t designed to be a media company, especially not one in the middle of an information war. As a platform, Facebook has no real responsibility for the veracity of its content; as a media company, it most certainly does.

Similarly, the press has few answers for how to cover propaganda in an online environment that is designed to spread hoaxes. The heart of the reporting process breaks down when your adversaries’ only goal is to hijack attention.   (See David Brooks' recent column in the NY Times on how much of the net is ideally adapted to infiltration by pathological, psychopathic trolls. The type who traffic in wacko conspiracy theories  like Pizzagate and the QAnon deep state B.S.)

And then there’s the political reality; the media has even fewer answers for how to deal with a president and his associates who are as prone to trafficking in these wacko conspiracies as they are to breathe. The media  then becomes trapped in a vicious cycle of newsworthiness, diverting attention and outrage to false claims and viral hoaxes. After all, the Pelosi fakes weren’t newsworthy because they were high-tech, but because the lie was so blatant and spread by powerful individuals.

In other words, it’s not only our systems that our broken,  and being degraded by the day, but our whole political landscape. And it’s only going to get worse. We need a new handbook. And quick. We definitely need a more advanced form of journalism that can better adapt to compulsive liar leaders - especially those who cozy up to bloodthirsty tyrants.

See also:

Donald Trump

This Quote from a Trump Voter on the Mueller Report Shows How Deeply Right-wing Media Has Warped Its Viewers’ Reality

by Cody Fenwick | May 31, 2019 - 6:48am | permalink

And:

Media

The Mass Media Is Poisoning Us With Hate

by Chris Hedges | May 27, 2019 - 5:27am | permalink

Facebook Follies - Yep, The Russkies Used Fake News To Toss The 2016 Election To Dotard

The conclusion in the front page story of the WSJ Business and Investing section ('Russian Accounts Scored on Facebook' Oct. 17) makes it clear the Russkies did indeed wreak havoc in our election - and manipulate just enough gullible brains to toss the election to Trump.  As the article by Georgia Wells and Deepa Seetharaman puts it:

"Two accounts that Facebook Inc. said have ties to Russian operatives amassed more than a half million followers in the past couple of years with posts, ads and events that stoked strong emotions over such issues as race and immigration.  Most followers never suspected that people with possible Russian ties were behind the accounts."

Of course, the ignorance of the recipients or followers rendered the texts, messages and fake news perfectly weaponized vehicles for brainwashing and propaganda.

Most ominously the piece goes on to note that "most users said the content seemed like something their peers would share."

In other words the Russians on troll farms like the Internet Research Agency were able to get right inside the heads of the targets. We now know, thanks to research published in the Atlantic, these mind manipulators were mainly elite Russian college students specializing in linguistics, journalism and psychology trained at a central troll farm in St. Petersburg.

These were savvy kids who mastered their "Americana" politics by watching cynical, Machiavellian fare like "House of Cards".   By also using emotions and reading Americans' own emotional responses to race, Trump and immigration they were able to jack up their messages and twist them into fake news to mindfuck millions. How so? By using specially manipulated videos guaranteed to be shared by the gullible.

These included (ibid.): videos of two Baltimore homies ("Blacktivists") supporting causes in the black community while skewering Hillary Clinton as a "witch" at the same time usng hashtags such as #BlacklLives Matter.  The fake videos included police allegedly shooting unarmed black men.

Another memetic infection compliments of these trolls was named "Secure Borders" which railed against illegal immigration.  Their weaponized shtick was to publish "material such as a photoshopped image of a woman holding a sign reading 'Give me more free shit!'"

Such an image alone was worth about a million and a half shares - say on Facebook, or a half million retweets- multiplying the mindfuck effect.  The reason? It deliberately embodied sentiments already felt by millions in key states, descendants of those who used to riff on about "welfare queens" in the Reagan era.

The primary social media platforms used for memetic infection were: Facebook, its Messenger and Instagram services, Twitter and YouTube. In other words, any medium that could easily be mounted for use as a memetic weapon to burrow inside suspectible brains - already amenable to the necessary predispositions.

The WSJ piece noted that "470 Russia-backed Facebook accounts including Blacktivist and Secured Borders quietly infiltrated communities on social media. The issues they targeted spanned the U.S. political and social spectrum, including religion, race, immigration, gun rights, and gay rights. "

Adding:

"Facebook said the accounts were created by Russian entities to exploit tensions among Americans and interfere with U.S. elections".

To now take the time to quantify things a bit, the Columbia University Center for Digital Journalism found that 6 of the 470 Russkie fake accounts had reached 340 million people. That is a helluva lot of bang for the buck.  Further, that tiny fraction "elicited 19.1 million interactions including likes, shares, and comments."    Here the shares are the most crucial aspect because of the meme multiplier effect.  One emotionally charged fake video shared with ten initial people who then share it with 10 others each, has enhanced the memetic infection power by 100.  The magic of memetic compounding at work!

We may further inquire as to the extent of direct interference? In a separate WSJ article ('Russia-Tied Ads Set For Release', Oct. 12, p. A8) we learn:

"U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that a campaign authorized by the highest levels of the Russian government hacked into state election board systems and the email networks of political organizations to damage the candidacy of Democratic presidential nominess Hillary Clinton."

It is important to grasp here that the election board hacking and social media fake news strategies were not mutually exclusive The hacking attacks in fact complemented the initial propaganda, or information warfare attacks. The latter rendered hundreds of thousands of brains more averse to Hillary while the election hacking delivered dozens of vulnerable systems that might be useful - if compromised-  to reinforce the scale of interference.  If 1000 names in each precinct of the "Brexit" states (MI, WI, PA) could have the names or voter attributes altered, then overturning the election could became a real possibility since their electoral votes  ultimately determined the winner.

Despite the facts of the case, and the fact the effects of subtle and not so subtle propoaganda are well known,  there remain hardheads that don't accept it. For example, WSJ op-ed writer Mark Penn ('You Can't Buy The Presidency For $100,000') claims that "56 % of the ads ran after the election" meaning that only about "$44,000 was available to influence the result".   But he mistakes money value for influence potential. Anyone who's really familiar with Russian tactics knows they are perfectionists in doing things on the cheap. What may seem like cheap to us, is gravy train status for them

Take the St. Petersburg troll farm, with its IRA contingent of elite university students - maybe a thousand of them. $44,000 could buy their talents for months - and at rate 2 or more times what they'd earn (in rubles) in any normal Russian job.  Clearly, Penn is not au fait with different economies of scale and the impact differences.

Penn is also blinded by the "media tidal wave" trope.  He writes:

"Every day, Americans see hundreds of ads on TV, in newspapers and magazines, on bill boards and smart phones. North Americans post to Facebook something like a billion times a day, and during the election many of those messages were about politics."

I brought this up with my psychologist niece Shayl (now completing a doctotate on the adverse effects of social media) and she saw through Penn's argument immediately.  As she put it:

"People are bombarded by so many ads, so much stimuli daily that they simply tune out most as noise. It's kind of like a fly buzing in the background, very little notice is taken. It's only when a message strikes a particular emotional chord that it has any chance of actual psychological effect or influence. "

The thing is the weaponized Russkie Facebook stimuli - whether from Blacktivists or Secure Borders, were superbly designed to send hooks into millions of emotionally susceptible brains. If even a hundredth of them were influenced - say in the "Brexit" states (WI, MI, PA) - it could have tossed the 2016 election to Trump.  I and many others, including Shayl, believe it did.  The current media narrative is "that never happened" but to quote the late astronomer Carl Sagan: "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Penn in the remainder of his op-ed repetitively discloses how mesmerized he is by money and numbers, e.g. "even a full $100,000 of Russian ads would have erased just 0.025% of Hillary's financial advantage" - still failing to process the power of one viral meme.  He really needs to read biochemist Jacque Monod's final chapter of 'Chance and Necessity' - articulating the sheer infection power of a meme prepared just right - i.e. to parasitize a brain.

He confirms his memetic cluelessness by asserting:

"It takes tens of millions of dollars to deliver meaningful messages to the contested portion of the electorate."

In fact, as Shayl points out, given the "contested portion" is usually more emotionally volatile and  vulnerable it only takes a few powerful meme- laden videos . If these are then shared by perhaps ten thousand followers, then it's feasible to alter an election outcome. This would be based on targeting three or so swing states with enough electoral votes to put Dotard over the top.

But don't wait for the media narrative to change. It's more important to get 'Muricans' to accept their elections are sacrosanct and totally secure - even if a few ads, fake news and hacks manifest. "Sure, we had some problems, yuh know, but none of them changed the outcome!"

Yeah, right! And I have two square miles of beach front in Barbados to sell you for a buck. A Bajan buck.

Another Damned Irritating Aspect Of Facebook

The slim options for dealing with Facebook notifications, none of which entail direct deletions. What the hell is the big deal?

I use FB infrequently: first, because the odds are high I'm liable to run into comments or images I don't like - so I won't be compelled to "like" them or be outraged by them enough to respond, and second, there's too little dimension for more complex expression of thought, which a blog post allows. Truth be told, for communication purposes - especially on important issues-  I actually find email much superior.

I originally signed on to Facebook some 6 years ago to keep in touch with far flung family including in Barbados, Trinidad and also Canada. I also signed on to keep up with the daily goings on to do with my mother - who I last visited in 2009 (and who already showed signs of dementia).   For a while the connections proved worthwhile and then I suddenly realized one's "friend" universe is often populated by radically different people and types. So, for example, how do you navigate your FB world if one half is made up of religious or very conservative family members, and the other half made up of very liberal and non-religious (other) family members, and friends?  Well, you have to tread carefully because it can be a literal minefield, especially when a hyper-liberal friend happens to see what s/he regards as an offensive comment from a conservative family member.  So you're constantly having to steer clear of 'oil mixing with water' situations or whatever.

The other aspect noticed were the major differences in political perspective, and how these could lead to conflicts. For this reason, and after getting into one brouhaha with my now deceased middle brother (which I now regret) I have avoided further political commentary or altercations.

But none of this relates to my present gripe about Facebook, which in a manner of speaking - is kind of like being stalked by a scad of digital "zombies" and not being able to kill them  I am referring, of course, to the constantly increasing supply of Facebook "notifications" - which now total 52. (If I had more "friends" the total would likely be 520, or 5200,  but because I've kept the maximum number to 15 I at least have them relatively limited).

Incredibly, when one opens up the notifications settings menu the most you get is the ability to turn "on" or "off" specific types, but you can't simply delete all of  them.  As I explored a number of sites before writing this post, I repeatedly beheld the same refrain  and complaint, usually posed as a question: "Why the fuck can't we just delete these notifications without a lot of fuss?"

Which is a good question indeed! Sure, you can "mark all read" but what is it about the damned notifications that causes them to approach the level of the sacrosanct? Why can't you just kill them as easily as deleting emails?

If one googles further one finds assorted "methods" claimed to do the job but most are arcane and one - at least- entails going into "inspect element". This delivers a page of code from which you are then supposed to select a line and do a backspace. This is to be done separately for each freaking notification.  Sorry, it's too damned much trouble!  I'd rather just let them pile up until the genii running Facebook get off their butts and incorporate a  simple delete mechanism.

What have they got against it? I'd be interested in seeing others' opinions of why Zuckerberg has this fetish about preventing  users from directly deleting notifications. (Don't bother to give me "tips". If it can't be done in less than a minute, I am not interested.)

Pokemon 'GO' - Another Dumbass "Game" For Digital Zombies

I first became aware of the latest app craze, Pokemon GO, on a CBS evening news segment which showed obsessed people staring into tiny screens with moronic grins, and running into traffic, sign posts and other (self-directed) pedestrians on their way to real jobs, appointments etc. Some of them were shown, including a girl, with bruises in the aftermath. In the latter part of the segment one group of these digital zombies had been lured (by a specific feature of the app) into a park where their money and cell phones were taken.

It's bad enough we have the usual gang of texting idiots working their tiny screens as they march distractedly down sidewalks and often into street traffic and walls,  jeopardizing their safety and that of others. Now we behold a new league of Pokemon GO zombies, captivated by "augmented reality" (it isn't truly virtual)  ready to join them.

Of course, the corporate entities who crafted this  idiocy are jumping for joy. Melanie Hobson, CBS financial contributor, practically climaxed in one interview on Wednesday morning gushing about the "cash cow" the app will introduce, as "all the Pokemon GO characters go for sale on app stores and elsewhere".  Even as she spoke you could hear the underlying rhythms of 'ka-ching!' - the corporate capitalist's favorite sound.  She estimated sales will go into the "hundreds of millions"  rivaling the previous Pokemon character craze a generation earlier.

This take of Ms. Hobson clearly shows that, contrary to corporate propaganda, the benefit of this new mutation of Pokemon isn't to "get kids outside in fresh air to exercise" or  "encourage family togetherness", it's to make tons of money!  No corporate honcho ever passed up a new iteration of the money-making shtick, and certainly not on behalf of positive contributions to society. As one cynical CEO put it, "We give people what they want, not what they need."

Let's take the nonsense that this stupid game, which is what it is, "promotes health and exercise". Well, not when so many kids are so obsessed with following non-existent creatures on mini-screens that they shuffle into traffic, bang into walls, street signs and each other - not to mention thieves who might do more than snatch their precious phones from them.

As other critics of this latest consumer fad have pointed out, it's not exercise when most of those tracking the Pokemon entities are "moving at glacial speed". After all, they have to often stop, get their bearings and ensure they have the various characters  positions' (especially in what's called a 'lure') and they're in the right location before ambling on. By contrast, real exercise would be speed walking or jogging, or even playing a game of pick up softball or hard ball (like we used to do when 12, 13) in a sandlot or park.

In addition, no health bonus redounds to the benefit of anyone - no matter what the "exercise" (pseudo or real) - unless diet is a part of it. But I warrant that when these Pokemon GO zombies aren't following their imaginary critters they are in front of TVs at home,  wolfing down Fritos, cheese dogs, Ho-Hos, chips and cokes - and not the diet kind either.

Another trope being spread as a benefit, which I actually heard come out of the mouth of an Asian guy on the same CBS segment was "I am now discovering new areas of the town where I live! It's almost magical!"  Hey, Sherlock, you could have "discovered" those places, including museums, parks before if you hadn't had your nose buried in a laptop screen or cell phone mini-screen wasting time playing useless app games or surfing cliphunter.

As another Chicago blogger noted, this ridiculous app adds to the existing problem of too many teens and younger kids being glued to their phones. Is it better than eye-gorging on porno? Of course! But that's like saying amoebic dysentery is preferable to cholera. The problem is the digital obsession which is dumbing down these kids, teens (even too many adults) when they could be using their precious time on Earth to learn something.

Author Mark Bauerlein (The Dumbest Generation), originally pinpointed the problem and I did a post about it 6 years ago, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/04/are-we-enabling-generation-of-uber.html

Bauerlein  focused on the over use of social media, especially Facebook. He documented how the under-30 crowd were foregoing knowledge-based maturity to wallow in a self-confected, solipsistic, social mirror world of their own egos and selves. The fallout included their not even meeting basic standards of knowledge for employment.

To make his case, Bauerlein cited Northwestern University communications professor Esther Hargatti (op. cit., p. 135) who complained  students’ choices were all too predictable. As Bauerlein put it in terms of the attention of young people:

“At number one stood Facebook (78.1%) followed by MySpace (50.7%). Only 5% checked a blog or forum on politics, economics, law or policy”

As he added, the “acclaimed empowerment” of the Web has gone entirely to “social stuff”.

Well now, evidently, it's gone to  literally generating digital zombies obsessively tracking non-existent ("augmented reality")  entities.  It merely compounds the tiny screen scene where almost every human these days seems to be living his or her life in miniature domains as opposed to real life.

In a way this is understandable as the real world is a scary place, again reinforced with the scenes last night from the truck terror attack in Nice, France. But in the end, one cannot hide from the real world by chasing imaginary beings in an augmented reality app.

Further, it merely adds to the psychological weight of citizen distraction and compounds the false consciousness already well entrenched  -  a fact that must inspire the Neoliberal elites to new heights of undermining the social, civic space. After all, who's paying attention? They're all chasing imaginary creatures and risking life and limb in the process.

See also:

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/10/newsflash-your-kids-are-digital-zombies.html

And:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/07/15/all-around-the-world-authorities-are-worrying-about-pokemon-go/

The Case of the Disappearing Blog Images

At first I when I encountered several examples, I thought that somehow I mucked up the original images in assorted blog posts. So I patiently recovered the lost images in several blog posts to do with  mathematics: complex series, e.g. Laurent series, and residues. All the diagrams had been patiently drawn for each particular blog entry by yours truly. None were 'hijacked' from any copyrighted material. Having replaced each blog image I thought I'd done 'God's service', to use the Bajan parlance - when I then encountered yet more removed images - including photos wifey and I had taken in Austria and Germany last year (to do with the mendicants in Salzburg and Innsbruck as well as engravings in Oberammagau, and Garmisch -Partenkirchen Germany - representing the plague's ravages in the 1400s)

Again, all these were meticulously replaced until a week later - all were again mysteriously gone - with only an empty box left in its wake with a small bit of wording to the effect it was my photo. Really? Then why knock the images out and replace them with empty boxes?

Googling the subject of missing images in blogger produced no really useful results, only some techie conjectures of maybe arising from a 'Share it' plug in on Facebook. But since I don't use FB other than rarely (mostly to read my few friends' posts), and certainly never the share it app, then I was left with more questions than answers. WHY are my blog images being knocked out and replaced with empty boxes?

Today, again, I spent nearly an hour replacing assorted images knocked out of my recent  blog series to do with atomic physics. Nearly eleven diagrams knocked out in all  - each one then replaced with an empty, irritating box with brief wording - again referencing my ownership.

Interestingly, none of this occurred prior to my hard drive crash described in my Oct.26 post. That was when I was still using IE - a very early version - on my Vista. After the crash, a new computer was needed and I got a new desk top outfitted with Google Chrome. Since using Chrome - which I agree is much faster- I have noted the case of the vanishing images and substituted empty boxes. Note that the maddening aspect is not all my images are being knocked out, only a relative few - perhaps 5-6 %, but in strategic places like math and physics posts - where the loss is guaranteed to leave most readers adrift. Thus, without a Davisson-Germer experiment diagram to refer to - only an empty useless box- they'll have no idea what I am all about.


Suffice it to say, if any tech-inclined readers can offer any insights I am more than willing to see them. Also, I'd appreciate any solutions on offer because I am not sure how much longer I am willing to play  "replace the empty boxes" whack-a-mole.

Is it something to do with Chrome? A perceived copyright violation that it detects and dispatches something to correct? Or is it some technical defect along the lines of the FB 'share it' plug in theory?

I am willing to read any kind of theories and entertain any reasonable suggestions at this point!

Bloggers Are More Opinionated Than FaceBook Users? They Have To Be!

As reinforced once more, we learn that those who use Facebook and Twitter are of a different species from those of us who blog. The latest research discloses they're "much less opinionated" - to which I respond,  'DUH!" Of course they are! Facebook as well as Twitter are venues for social schmoozing and sharing slices of life,  not providing political opinions that can be polarizing:  upsetting your virtual or real friends, as well as family. So people using Facebook would naturally tend to keep opinions to themselves as opposed to publicizing them,

Now a Pew Research Report released Tuesday validates this. The Report found that those who use Facebook and other social media sites are much less likely to share personal opinions, even offline. These findings run counter to how many view social media - which is basically as a bunch of self-opinionated, solipsistic blabbermouths. In truth, they are more likely to blab about minor social engagements, parties they went to or special trips - while posting photos and jokes  - as opposed to giving negative reviews of Obama or Obamacare or discussing Ferguson or Snowden..

In a specific case, to do with NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden, 1,800 social media users were asked their opinions.  Researchers noted a "spiral of silence" to do with any opinions - meaning the FB and Twitter users were more likely to "clam up", as well as shy away from going near any hot button issues. This in total contradistinction to those of us who blog and believe our mandate is to inform about critical issues - including government mass surveillance, fracking ravages and climate change - and not keep silent.

Those of us who blog then are born with opinions and let's face it, to blog you HAVE to be opinionated! If you don't have opinions about any and every thing then you will likely be a dead end blogger running out of ideas after ten posts. Also, a boring one at that - mainly posting accounts of the last turtle race you observed on a beach or another kitty - doggie boxing match.  All stuff that could easily go on FB.

The bottom line? For those who use Facebook and Twitter, there is a much greater social  comfort level with "ice bucket" challenges than political banter and exchanges. Which suits those of us who blog just fine, because the person who wants some spice with his or her information will seek out our virtual spaces rather than FB or Twitter. They will then see our (often) singular opinions about one issue or another and in addition, see how we reason our justifications, say on why we don't find the "ice bucket challenge" all that cool.

Another Pew finding: The typical Facebook user - say who logs onto the site a few times a day -  is half as likely to discuss Snowden's leaks as a non-FB user.  Twitter users, those who cut their communications to 140 characters or less, are one fourth as likely to discuss Snowden. In a way this ought to be obvious given that any dummy can see the space allotted to discuss topics at length - in FB or Twitter - is much reduced from what a blog provides - which is why we opinionated types don't use FB or Twitter to offer our takes.  Those who do use them are "hesitant to speak up for fear of starting an argument or losing a friend."  And they ought to be, because it's not the right venue!

One  communications professor, Keith Hampton, has this take:

"A society where people aren't able to share their opinions openly and gain from understanding alternative perspectives is a polarized society."

Maybe, prof, but there are also right and wrong venues to share those opinions, and maybe the FB and Twitter users get it. If they really want to share they can BLOG!