Collusion between the media, Democrats, and social media

The Director of Live Action talked about how big tech has undercut her anti-abortion, pro-life organization while permitting Planned Parenthood the freedom to speak freely and fundraise on their platforms.

Trump has met with the heads of Twitter and Google recently one on one. They seem sincere when they say they believe in freedom of speech. But Trump has formed a White House affiliated group to look at social media and in a short time over 16,000 people have communicated to the White House about anti-free speech practices on social media that have negatively affected them personally.

This new technology is so powerful and it has to be used fairly!

Trump welcomes Diamond and Silk! Melania told Trump about them.

Within the next couple of weeks, the executives of Silicon Valley will be invited to the White House to listen to complaints about their unfairness.

The problems with social media

Robert Tracinski writes at The Federalist,

...So the blogs were mostly outcompeted. A few of the best and most interesting blogs became full-fledged online publications, but a lot of the small, quirky, one-person amateur bloggers moved onto social media. That turned out to be a big mistake, because the era of social media has recentralized the media. Instead of a million blogs—what Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit fame called an “Army of Davids“—we now have a social media economy mostly controlled by three big companies: Twitter, Facebook, and Google.

So we get shadowbanning, arbitrary Twitter suspensions, and Twitter throttling the traffic of people they don’t like and controlling what articles you can tweet links to. We traded the old mainstream media gatekeepers for new, worse, less publicly accountable gatekeepers in Silicon Valley—a new breed of pinch-nosed Puritans with pink hair, piercings, and tattoos, who will shut us down if we don’t use the right pronouns.

The point is not that this is censorship and they should be regulated. The only thing worse than social media controlled by petty tyrants in Silicon Valley is social media controlled by petty tyrants in Washington DC. In any case, regulation is unnecessary. These platforms have power and influence because we gave them power and influence. The moment enough of us stop doing it, they turn into MySpace.

The role of social media as the new ideological gatekeepers is just part, although the leading part, of our overall dissatisfaction with their product. There is the damage they are doing to the attention spans and social lives of teens who are growing up on them. There is the phenomenon of the Twitter mob and the way social media is responsible for gamifying moral outrage, where readers score points and level up by getting people fired, often based on nothing more than rumors and mass hysteria.

Then there are the awful economics for actual producers of content. Social media companies are designed to profit off our free labor while they treat us like garbage. For example, I have 11,000 Twitter followers, but I don’t know who they are or have any independent way of contacting them. In effect, I have spent years building up a mailing list for Twitter, not myself. What kind of raw deal is that?

So, what is Robert planning to do about this social media problem? Go here to see.

Cascading waves of hysteria

Mark Steyn writes today, "~I commented recently on Tucker that I preferred the Internet of a decade ago to the increasingly totalitarian social-media cartel of today: Facebook, YouTube, Twitter. Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit, feels the same way:"

I think that the old blogosphere was superior to "social media" like Twitter and Facebook for a number of reasons. First, as a loosely-coupled system, instead of the tightly-coupled systems built by retweets and shares, it was less prone to cascading failure in the form of waves of hysteria. Second, because there was no central point of control, there was no way to ban people. And you didn't need one, since bloggers had only the audience that deliberately chose to visit their blogs.

Mark continues, "The Internet of the post-9/11 years already seems like a lost Golden Age. Twitter in particular seems to have no purpose other than cascading "waves of hysteria". I mentioned on air both Facebook's viral snuff videos, and the suicide of a Canadian porn actress after a Tweetstorm of homophobia accusations from LGBTQWERTY types who subsequently gloated over her passing. "Social media" plays a role in more deaths than, say, America's supposedly all-powerful "white supremacist" movement. But, unlike the latter, nobody seems bothered about the former."
Read more here.

Mind control technology

Scott Adams writes,

We’re connected to social media like a great hive mind. And thanks to scientific advances in datametrics, the social media companies now have almost perfect mind control technology. We connect to the hive mind, the social media giants decide who sees what messages, and they program us individually. You get different persuasion than I do.

Read more here.

"Manufacturing consensus and controlling the narrative"

hat tip Hawaiian Libertarian, who discusses the impact of porn, social media, multi-national corporations, the media, their role in manufacturing consensus and controlling the narrative, and the pretense of the profit motive here.

The echo chamber

David Goldman writes at PJ Media,

"We created an echo chamber. They were saying things that validated what we had given them to say. In the absence of rational discourse, we are going to discourse the [expletive] out of this....The average reporter we talk to is 27 years old, and their only reporting experience is being around political campaigns. That's a sea change. They literally know nothing."

Thus spake a certain Ben Rhodes, literary dabbler and Don DeLillo wannabe, in a stunning interview-essay by David Samuels in the New York Times last May. Rhodes was describing the sale of the Iran nuclear deal to America's body politic, fed by media ignoramuses who dutifully repeated the echoes of the administration's stable of putatively independent experts. But the "echo chamber" principle applies just as well to anything that the Establishment media wants to sell to the public. The trouble with echo chambers, of course, is that positive feedback can blow the roof off. That is what is happening in American politics right now.

... We have had so many iterations of lies, cover-up, cover-up malfunction, new lies, new cover-up and new cover-up malfunction that the experts are in information overload. What is going on in the head of an ordinary voter with a passing interest in politics and ten or fifteen minutes a day to devote to news?

The answer is: Almost anything you might imagine. Sixty-two percent of Americans get at least some of their news via social media according to a Pew Research survey and the proportion is growing fast. Facebook and other social media allow individuals to customize their news consumption on the basis of recommendations and re-posting by friends, and news consumers increasingly depend on their networks rather than the media.

That's how Steve Bannon's Breitbart news organization, with its edgy mix of salacious gossip and right-wing politics, morphed almost overnight into a major media player. That's why the Drudge Report got 1.47 billion page views in July. There is no way of knowing what Americans believe. Only one in nine Americans believes that Hillary Clinton is "honest and trustworthy." They don't trust the media's cover-up of her misdeeds, and the cover-up of the cover-up of the cover-up.

There's no way to tell what people think. It's impossible for most Americans to form a judgment with which they feel comfortable, because they do not have sources of information they can trust. Fox News is in a civil war between the pro- and anti-Trump Republicans. The other networks are with Hillary. The major media outlets have lost credibility. Only 32% of Americans said they had "a great deal" or "a fair amount" of confidence in the news media in a September Gallup poll survey. That's the lowest level in history, and should be no surprise: the major media has to spin a new cover-up every couple of days, before it is finished putting the previous set of lies to bed.

That's why Americans don't simply watch the nightly news and go to bed. They read the rumors on the Internet and circulate them to their friends. They create networks of people they trust in the hope of obtaining an accurate account of what is happening around them.

That's why I'm still calling this election for Donald J. Trump. The polls are meaningless. Perceptions are morphing as rapidly as the new-model Terminator in the molten steel vat at the end of the movie. The election will be won and lost a dozen times between now and Election Day. And when Americans finally go into the voting booth, they will not be able to think of any reasons to vote for Hillary Clinton--only reasons to vote against Donald Trump. There are far more compelling reasons to vote against Clinton. And that's how the election will go.

Pathetic

Chris Perez and Joe Tacopino report in the New York Post,

The woman who caused a massive panic on a crowded subway train by releasing a swarm of crickets admitted to The Post on Friday that she orchestrated the disgusting stunt in an attempt to go viral on social media.

“I have been doing these pranks for four years now,” self-promoting actress Zaida Pugh said.

... But things got even worse when an innocent passenger pulled the emergency brake as the D train was crossing the Manhattan Bridge. Riders were stuck in the cricket-filled car — with no air conditioning — for 30 minutes.

“The emergency brake was pulled,” Pugh said. “We were not expecting that to happen at all.”

Another unplanned aspect was Pugh urinating on the floor of the subway car.

“I did [urinate] but didn’t purposely mean to,” Pugh said. “It was very hot and I was holding my bladder. When I realized we weren’t going anywhere, I said, ‘I’m gonna just let it out.’ ”

She stayed in character as a homeless person trying to sell crickets, thinking that would help her avoid arrest.

But a police source told The Post that Pugh could be charged in connection with the chaos.

She stayed in character as a homeless person trying to sell crickets, thinking that would help her avoid arrest.

But a police source told The Post that Pugh could be charged in connection with the chaos.


Zaida PughPhoto: Facebook
Straphangers were appalled to learn it was the work of a publicity hound.

“My father works for transit and he’s gonna have to be the person who cleans that car covered in urine and crickets and worms,” said Brooklyn resident Eddie ­Going.

“And you know what’s worse, the emergency brake was pulled. So essentially, one little gag caused thousands upon thousands of people their time, when they were trying to get home.”

Pugh defended the videos as way to draw attention to the plight of the homeless.

“Not everybody is gonna like my pranks,” she said. “This was to show what homeless people go through and how people treat them. People get mad, of course, but I will continue to do it until they wake up.”

She has posted several ­attention-grabbing online videos in the past — some more disturbing than others.

In 2015, she posted a bloody video that purported to show a woman stabbing her baby to death in an insane revenge plot on her boyfriend.

Pugh defended the videos as way to draw attention to the plight of the homeless.

“Not everybody is gonna like my pranks,” she said. “This was to show what homeless people go through and how people treat them. People get mad, of course, but I will continue to do it until they wake up.”

Read more here.

How do you get your news?

Tali Arbel writes at Phys.Org,

TV remains the dominant news source, but smartphone-addicted younger people are spending less time with it. Some 84 percent of 18-to-29-year-olds get news from social media like Facebook, and increasingly on their phones, according to Pew Research Center. Research firm eMarketer has predicted that digital ad spending will surpass TV ad spending in the U.S. next year for the first time.

And even if they were watching TV, the young people advertisers identify more as Democrats than Republicans by a 54-30 margin, according to a GenForward poll.

While Fox has been the top-rated U.S. cable-news channel for 14 years, overall cable news audiences have been shrinking outside of presidential elections. More than half of Fox's viewers are over 65, says data tracker Nielsen, compared to just 15 percent of Americans as a whole.

"Fox News has been far more of a TV-centric business than a web or mobile business, if you compare it even to CNN," said BTIG analyst Rich Greenfield. He pointed out as one example CNN's spot on Snapchat's Discover page, which spools up video and quick-read articles from media companies. Snapchat, a messaging app, is a blockbuster hit with young adults and teenagers.

Fox has done some digital experiments, including a live Q&A on Facebook during the GOP debate it aired last August, which drew a startling 24 million viewers (just less than the Grammys). It's also streaming video on Facebook from this week's Republican National Convention.

While those may not be as ambitious as rival efforts, analysts like McCall suggest that may not matter much to Fox right now, given its older audience. Those viewers aren't "the kind of people who are going to be getting news off Twitter in same way as someone in their 30s or 40s," he said.

Read more here.

Thinking Can Only Damage the Righteousness and Morale of Our Cause

Ace of Spades made the mistake of ambling over to Twitter, and he found that the

that #NeverTrump was more than the dominant group norm -- it was the enforced group norm, with a cadre of Orthodoxy Defenders who responded to any questioning of it with the typical (dumb) means of Group Opinion Enforcement -- lame insults, drive-by demurrals, etc. My problem is with the people who seem to think that Thinking Can Only Damage the Righteousness and Morale of Our Cause, and seek to bully -- or at least ridicule -- discordant voices (neurons firing in stubborny contrary manners) and either marginalize them and delegitimize them or apply social pressure to re-align them to fire in a more socially acceptable direction.

As I've mentioned a thousand time, though I am (I think) naturally more inclined to the liberal side of things on many issues, I am so antagonistic to the group-think/social-pressure/tribal-loyalty signalling side of things that I broke angrily from not only that style of liberalism (which is really leftistm/progressivism) but liberalism itself, tossing out the baby with the befouled bathwater, out of pure pique.

Make any argument you like, my motto goes, but I must insist it actually be an argument, and not simply an attempt to bully someone into silence or coerced agreement by heaping abuse and denigration on them.

...Nevertheless, as with anything, it strikes me that we have our better selves and our worse selves, and while no one should curse his creation for having a worse self, one should strive to be one's better self, at least most of the time.

Every human being is more reasonable, civil, moral, virtuous, and intelligent in a one-on-one discussion than he is when he is speaking -- or howling -- as part of the pack. When one deems oneself to be speaking -- howling, hooting -- for the Pack, one not only begins resorting to more animalistic expressions (words become quite secondary to the emotional charge those words act as the mere carrier signal for) but one also begins justifying behavior one would never justify on one's own behalf.

That is, when you're acting to defend the privileges and rights of the group, one quickly finds oneself succumbing to Ends Justify the Means thinking -- I am not acting out of a selfish desire to champion myself, but out of an altruistic desire to champion a large group of beings who I am, at least temporarily, the advocate of.

Incivil behavior and anti-intellectual howls become not merely allowable, but nigh imperative -- after all, the pack is counting on you to vindicate them.

Were you just speaking for yourself, you wouldn't feel that sort of obligation to be cruel on behalf of the group, that license for incivility and, frankly, stupidity.

It is the imperative of defending the pack that justifies that.

Add into this the fact that 90% of political "communication" in the Age of Twitter is not chiefly expressive but instead chiefly performative.

It grows very hard to distinguish the things people really believe when they say them, and the things they merely say to declare loyalty to the pack.

...Is the man raging about Principles really talking about those principles, or is his major goal in talking about principles to convince the hearer that he is the sort of man deeply interested in Principles?

So there's a mix of things going on in any political utterance, both a declaration of the sacredness of principles, and implicitly -- unavoidably -- a very strong suggestion about the sacredness of the being so unselfish as to declare his devotion to principles.

...Anyway, to sum up:

1. Social media is anti-social media. ...But I would say that it's no terrible thing to parade civility and reasonableness around like virtues from time to time.

...2.People telling other people to shut up, or people attempting to humiliate people into silence, should be told to shut up, and should be themselves humiliated into silence, so the rest of us can have an actual exchange of ideas without their mouth-breathing poop-flinging chest-beating Dominance Displays.

3. No one should forget that everyone is human. We should recognize our own human vanities and cruelties in ourselves, and we should recognize the human capacity to be hurt or to be made to feel excluded in others.

4. People need to think more and take longer to respond. They should react less, and react less quickly. #HotTakes are for the stupid and insecure. #CoolTakes are better.

5. People need to stop signalling which tribe they belong to. By this point, with everyone babbling, hooting, and howling online for years and years and years, we all know damn well which tribes we align with. There's really no need to further advertise one's tribal loyalty. It's as obvious as someone's height and weight.

6. People knock contrarianism too damn much. Contrarianism, sure, is often lodged as a performative, look-at-me thing. (For example -- Look at Me Now!!!!)

But without contrarians, you get smug conformity, and worse yet, smug conformity enforcement officers.

The moment you have something resembling a Received Wisdom, you will have self-appointed Inquisitors sniffing out any heretical rejection of that Received Wisdom. (I'm a believer in Jung's archetypes -- I think this archetype, the Priest archetype, will always exist, particularly in politics, which is just Religion By Other Means.)

People should be more contrarian just to make sure the conformity being created is being created honestly -- with all of the demerits of that conformity examined and acknowledged -- and especially to prevent the odious rise of the conformity enforcement officers, a group of intellectually useless people involved in the creation of zero ideas but the suppression of quite a number of them.

7. Anything worth saying is worth spending more than 140 characters on saying. If you find your contribution to the public debate seems to occur in 140 character bursts, you might want to consider starting a blog, where you can post more thought-out essays, or you might want to consider shutting the fuck up.

For the good of all.

Read more here.

Nasty

Will Stauff writes at Conservative Review,

IF YOU SPEND ANYTIME ON SOCIAL MEDIA THEN YOU SEE A TROUBLING TREND. THE MORE YOU ENCOUNTER TRUMP SUPPORTERS THE MORE NASTY THEY BECOME.

I'm not sure why he leads off his piece writing in all capital letters, but I do understand what he is saying, because I have experienced it myself.
Read more here.

How has our new social media technology improved productivity?

What technological changes are happening in our children's lifetime? Well, we have gone from personal computers to laptops, to tablets to iPhones. Joel Kotkin writes,

The new raft of minidevices are ingenious and much more powerful than even the high-end desktop computers of a decade ago. But this wave of technology is not doing much except, perhaps, to make us ever more distracted, disconnected and obsessed with trivia.

As one former Facebook employee put it succinctly: “The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads. That sucks.”

The prospect of the easy score in social media, notes longtime entrepreneur Steven Blank, “marks the beginning of the end of the era of venture capital-backed big ideas in science and technology.”

The new social-media technology has done very little for productivity.

Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy predicts that the mass of humanity “will have been reduced to the status of domestic animals.” Joel Kotkin writes that

firms like Amazon, Google, Apple and Microsoft are using their unfathomable riches to dominate a host of fields, from robotics and space travel to health care, even publishing.

Do you know about WhatsApp and Snapchat?

Did you know that young people are leaving Facebook in droves? That is what The Global Social Media Impact Study found when it surveyed 16 to 18-year-olds in eight countries for fifteen months. WhatsApp has overtaken Facebook as the number one way to send messages. Matthew Sparkes writes at The Telegraph that

Snapchat has gained in popularity in recent months by allowing users to send images which “self-destruct” after a short period on the recipients phone in order to maintain privacy.

Snapchat claims that 350 million images are sent every day, and reportedly recently turned down a $3 billion (£1.8 billion) acquisition offer from Facebook. Co-founder Evan Spiegel, who lives at home with his father despite an estimated net worth of $3 billion, last month told The Telegraph that “deleting should be the default”.

Researchers found that close friends were using Snapchat to communicate, while WhatsApp was used with acquaintances and Twitter broadcasted indiscriminately to anyone who chose to follow that person.

I'll stick to blogging.