One of the reason's the Democrats lost the last election was that certain supporters of the nominee's primary opponent held resentments that prevented them from voting for her.
These resentments were fanned on social media by groups that opposed her election.
Some of that was probably done by the Russians, but I'm fairly convinced that other right wing groups also contributed.
Now Americans criticizing a candidate is fine, we have free speech, but people have to understand these items for what they are.
Groups dedicated to right wing issues want to suppress or diminish the democratic vote.
They have used various tactics like making voting more difficult, gerrymandering and negative ads.
Perhaps the idea of making the divisions seem so great that progressive voters stay home allowing their ideals to be squashed is the most insidious.
There are some real differences in the candidates that need to be explored and debated so the best candidate can emerge. However if the discussion turns bitter and acrimonious it could lead to some supporters of the losing candidate staying home.
Of course that is their right but they do have to realize that such actions can lead to a regressive regime threatening progressive ideal such as choice, equality for all, universal health care and the cementing of a Supreme Court that will prevent future progress for years.
Understand that whoever the candidate turns out to be in the process, the failure to support him/her is in fact support for the republican candidate.
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Showing posts with label social media. Show all posts
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Friday, April 5, 2019
Unsocial Media
An issue from the 2016 election which will be an issue again is the amount of fake and slanderous information on social media.
In 2016 we saw a concerted effort by at least one foreign player to influence the public. To what extent it succeeded is hard to gauge, but much of it was pretty obvious at the time, unless of course you believed it.
Social media has become for any the on-line place they visit. They see messages from family and friends and suddenly, perhaps even forwarded by one of them they see an outrageous claim about a candidate or candidates in general.
You can't salute the flag, they have sex slaves, they are denying veterans health care, they want to promote (add any abhorrent activity here).
You of course shouldn't believe these things, and many don't, but like a message that a judge tells a jury to disregard you still saw it.
And you may see it over and over again, until it just seems like it must be true.
There are places where you can check the veracity of these statement but most don't.
The repetition is pervasive and you are encouraged to forward the outrageous claim, if you are a patriot or care about (enter cause here).
The more people do that, the more credibility it takes on.
There is pressure on social media to control some of this and some steps have been taken. However they can't act until its been sent and by then it already doing its damage.
It up to us to recognize the bad messaging but that's not likely.
I don't have high hopes that social media can fix this without doing something even worse.
Well have to see.
Sunday, March 31, 2019
Media Invasion
I'm frequently mystified by how some of us react to certain news articles about things which have almost no importance.
I'm never sure though if the outrage is real or just the reaction of a small number of "influencers" on social media.
We used to cite the adage that everyone was going to get 15 minutes of fame. I think the question now is can people get 15 minutes of privacy?
What is even more troubling is how many people react so strongly to how they perceive other people's behavior. If you draw the ire of the social media crowd, you are likely to be harassed and possibly threatened beyond your ability to withstand it. Further, via all sorts of apps that help identify you, this harassment may jump from the virtual world to the real world.
It has always been a feature of the internet that the privacy emboldened some to say things they wouldn't dare say to your face. It was a place that encouraged the worst of human behavior, but in those early days it was confined to the "nerd" crowd and went unnoticed by most.
Now of course social media is everywhere and many news stories I read cite reaction on one of them as some sort of indicator.
Of course we do also like our polls.
Still on any given day we can get all the outrage we need simply by reading trending events on our favorite social media site. A lot of the outrage is about things we never would have even heard about in the past.
Progress?
I'm never sure though if the outrage is real or just the reaction of a small number of "influencers" on social media.
We used to cite the adage that everyone was going to get 15 minutes of fame. I think the question now is can people get 15 minutes of privacy?
What is even more troubling is how many people react so strongly to how they perceive other people's behavior. If you draw the ire of the social media crowd, you are likely to be harassed and possibly threatened beyond your ability to withstand it. Further, via all sorts of apps that help identify you, this harassment may jump from the virtual world to the real world.
It has always been a feature of the internet that the privacy emboldened some to say things they wouldn't dare say to your face. It was a place that encouraged the worst of human behavior, but in those early days it was confined to the "nerd" crowd and went unnoticed by most.
Now of course social media is everywhere and many news stories I read cite reaction on one of them as some sort of indicator.
Of course we do also like our polls.
Still on any given day we can get all the outrage we need simply by reading trending events on our favorite social media site. A lot of the outrage is about things we never would have even heard about in the past.
Progress?
Wednesday, February 20, 2019
News?
Sometimes we give coverage to stories that really don't deserve any.
Often assumptions are made about the motivations that are purely speculative and usually wrong.
For example there was a short to do in some papers over a picture of Prom going boys, some of whom looked like they were giving a NAZI salute. Of course it was also a good interpretation that they froze their arms in the picture when they were just waving.
Looking for the worst in things has become a universal occupation, as people hunt and hope to find something that gets them a few minutes of fame on social media.
Once in a while they find something legitimate but much of the time it is simply a misinterpretation.
Must of what you see on the Internet is simply wrong.
It is simply not held up to any particular standards unless of course it is published by one of the traditional media sources.
Its not much different than it always was, when rumors would get circulated that had little or no basis in fact, sometimes to promote a cause, except that with social media, word of mouth is so much faster.
Its basically how the Russians influenced the last election by posting purely fictitious items and having them spread rapidly without any verification.
This does create a lot of fake news, but not the fake news that the President talks about, he wants to categorize legitimate news as fake news.
In fact, he spreads a lot of fake news himself as much as he lies.
Unfortunately determining what is and what isn't fake becomes our responsibility and we are simply not very good at it.
There are real facts out there, just might be hard to find them.
Often assumptions are made about the motivations that are purely speculative and usually wrong.
For example there was a short to do in some papers over a picture of Prom going boys, some of whom looked like they were giving a NAZI salute. Of course it was also a good interpretation that they froze their arms in the picture when they were just waving.
Looking for the worst in things has become a universal occupation, as people hunt and hope to find something that gets them a few minutes of fame on social media.
Once in a while they find something legitimate but much of the time it is simply a misinterpretation.
Must of what you see on the Internet is simply wrong.
It is simply not held up to any particular standards unless of course it is published by one of the traditional media sources.
Its not much different than it always was, when rumors would get circulated that had little or no basis in fact, sometimes to promote a cause, except that with social media, word of mouth is so much faster.
Its basically how the Russians influenced the last election by posting purely fictitious items and having them spread rapidly without any verification.
This does create a lot of fake news, but not the fake news that the President talks about, he wants to categorize legitimate news as fake news.
In fact, he spreads a lot of fake news himself as much as he lies.
Unfortunately determining what is and what isn't fake becomes our responsibility and we are simply not very good at it.
There are real facts out there, just might be hard to find them.
Thursday, October 4, 2018
Social Media
When you look at social media, or at least when I do, you see a lot of things posted multiple times by different people. This is because they shared the item.
A recent study showed that certain foreign entities to include Russia, created bogus web sites and targeted certain people who they knew would tend to share stories without verifying them.
In fact the more outrageous the story, the faster it tended to get shared.
These bogus sites would have very American sounding names and while it turns out the more successful ones tended to be far right ones, they also created far left ones.
This study showed that much of the acrimony we see on social media is in fact manufactured by these entities with the general objective of disrupting Americans.
The idea being, I gather, that the more we got entangled in domestic disputes the less likely we were to intervene in things like the Crimea invasion or China's activities in the South China Seas.
They would much prefer we get outraged over gun rights, or abortion, or immigration than over international items.
It was also aimed at discrediting certain politicians who were likely to oppose these actions in favor of ones who wouldn't.
In order words we were played and are still being played.
There was never a sex ring in a DC pizza parlor or never a plan to seize Americans guns. Our outrage over political correctness was manipulated and there wasn't a tremendous increase in disrespect for our flag.
There were and always will be some isolated events but the concept that there is a concerted conspiracy to erode our values is in fact a foreign agents attempt to do just that.
Don't just share things you see on the Internet, especially the ones that are most outrageous, unless you know they are true. Most aren't.
A recent study showed that certain foreign entities to include Russia, created bogus web sites and targeted certain people who they knew would tend to share stories without verifying them.
In fact the more outrageous the story, the faster it tended to get shared.
These bogus sites would have very American sounding names and while it turns out the more successful ones tended to be far right ones, they also created far left ones.
This study showed that much of the acrimony we see on social media is in fact manufactured by these entities with the general objective of disrupting Americans.
The idea being, I gather, that the more we got entangled in domestic disputes the less likely we were to intervene in things like the Crimea invasion or China's activities in the South China Seas.
They would much prefer we get outraged over gun rights, or abortion, or immigration than over international items.
It was also aimed at discrediting certain politicians who were likely to oppose these actions in favor of ones who wouldn't.
In order words we were played and are still being played.
There was never a sex ring in a DC pizza parlor or never a plan to seize Americans guns. Our outrage over political correctness was manipulated and there wasn't a tremendous increase in disrespect for our flag.
There were and always will be some isolated events but the concept that there is a concerted conspiracy to erode our values is in fact a foreign agents attempt to do just that.
Don't just share things you see on the Internet, especially the ones that are most outrageous, unless you know they are true. Most aren't.
Thursday, August 2, 2018
Digging up the Past
We live in a world where people are eager to dig up anything they can about certain people, or rather targets.
We always did this sort of thing on political candidates, its called vetting, but now we find a more random sort of research, although the amount of work required usually involves picking targets.
If you are in the public spotlight and for any number of reasons someone targets you, every thing you ever said on social media is likely to be scrutinized looking for anything that could be construed negatively.
Now, suppose someone has been somewhat active on social media and has posted hundreds or maybe even thousands of times. If 99.99% of those are non-offensive but that .01% is bad enough, you can face a public scandal and have to explain yourself, even if the yourself your explaining was years ago.
There is no consideration of the fact that this person may have posted something when he was angry, tired, inebriated, or any other factor, there is the post, standing alone accusing the poster of inappropriate behavior.
Of course everyone has become more aware of social media now but years ago people treated it a little bit like private chat, or didn't consider long term consequences.
Of course some posts are worse than others, but we are don't seem to be particularly discriminating when we see these posts exposed.
We live in a world where digging up dirt can get rewarded, or at least get some attention, and everybody is under a movable spotlight.
There are actual bad people out there saying and doing bad things without trying to condemn someone for that one tweet sent out when they were pissed off years ago.
We always did this sort of thing on political candidates, its called vetting, but now we find a more random sort of research, although the amount of work required usually involves picking targets.
If you are in the public spotlight and for any number of reasons someone targets you, every thing you ever said on social media is likely to be scrutinized looking for anything that could be construed negatively.
Now, suppose someone has been somewhat active on social media and has posted hundreds or maybe even thousands of times. If 99.99% of those are non-offensive but that .01% is bad enough, you can face a public scandal and have to explain yourself, even if the yourself your explaining was years ago.
There is no consideration of the fact that this person may have posted something when he was angry, tired, inebriated, or any other factor, there is the post, standing alone accusing the poster of inappropriate behavior.
Of course everyone has become more aware of social media now but years ago people treated it a little bit like private chat, or didn't consider long term consequences.
Of course some posts are worse than others, but we are don't seem to be particularly discriminating when we see these posts exposed.
We live in a world where digging up dirt can get rewarded, or at least get some attention, and everybody is under a movable spotlight.
There are actual bad people out there saying and doing bad things without trying to condemn someone for that one tweet sent out when they were pissed off years ago.
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