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seanbrock

Google & Facebook Censoring News

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https://www.buzzfeed.com/craigsilverman/facebook-promises-improvements-after-removing-conservative-p?utm_term=.hq6jzDPjPZ#.tew5eA353L

 

This and the attack on Net Neutrality are serious, serious threats to our country. We're living in some scary Orwellian times now. At this point we all need to get involved or come up with another search engine. Holy Shit man.

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Yup. Google got caught filtering search results and recommendations in favor of Hillary in the past election.

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I am actually glad shit like this is happening. It has been a long time coming and we deserve. Americans have to be a combination of the most ungrateful ,forgetful ,stupid, and pussys that have ever collected in one spot. WE are a country that had the power to do literally anything and we sold ourselves down the river for the almighty dollar. And then we did it again, and again, and then again. We have allowed it go on for too long and now it is to the point where we will never realize the promise as a nation that we had. We do this all the time, and we never put our money where our mouth is....ever.

 

Do you want to stop big corporations like Wal-Mart from gutting the American economy. Don't shop there. If everyone in America stopped shopping there for a month they would go out of business, they could not support their supply chains and overhead without a single dollar in revenue for a month they would lose 40B with a net cost of goods and payroll estimated 462 billion dollars and and revenue of 485 the American public can make them take an L every year. Just one month. Do it for 6 months they lose hundreds of billions and they close up stores to cover costs which means they wont generate the revenue anywhere close to that 485 figure. One year they take an L for half a trillion dollars and declare bankruptcy. The American public has the power to take out the largest corporation in the world, but will we...no. WE would rather save the 20 bucks on our shopping trip by not shopping at stores that pay a decent wage and offer benefit packages.

 

You want to stop google, dont buy their phones, use their browsers, and dont go on youtube for a month, they will fall also. Same with every company in the US. We all bitch about corruption but nobody will put their literal and figurative money where their mouth is because it is to convenient to have that new app, or see that god damn youtube video. Kids these days say,"Fuck going to a library, I will watch a video" I mean I went ballistic on my son because he took my tablet and was watching some chode with a foul mouth play video games. Seriously watching people play video games, instead of you know, playing them himself. I mean kids are so fucking lazy and stupid these days they would rather watch someone do it than do it themselves.

 

And who do we have to blame ? All of us, every single man woman and child over the age of 14 it is all of our faults. We deserve every bit of shit like this for spending money foolishly, instead of connecting with people around us we use facebook. People dont even know how to address letters anymore, phone calls are not made, and we wonder why we have become disconnected as a society and will fall for anything.

 

Take yourself Sean. You live in philly, how many people do you see exploring the city considering what a rich history Philly has. I mean the "Rocky Steps." We have immortalized pop culture instead guys like Monet, Chagall, Toulouse, Picasso, and Van Goh. It reminds me of that scene in Good Will Hunting where Robing Williams character tells Will that he can give him the skinny on every painting in the renaissance but cant tell him what the sistine chapel smells like. That is our society in a nutshell. We have made ourselves slaves to the censors and we beg them for more. We are getting what we have sown and I love it. I am just waiting for something big to happen to thin the ol' herd and maybe lost about 80% of our population. I truly am disgusted with this country at the moment.

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Yup. Google got caught filtering search results and recommendations in favor of Hillary in the past election.

It's because facts were in favor of Hillary :troll:

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Bring forth the revolution and fill the streets with the blood of our capitalist overlords!

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Bring forth the revolution and fill the streets with the blood of our capitalist overlords!

 

Socialist revolution is the opiate of the masses :smug:

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Did any of you guys actually read the "article" Sean posted? It's typical Buzzfeed clickbait.

 

Some dude who runs a website called "Mr. Conservative" got upset because 3 posts of his disappeared.

 

Guess what? So did some posts on a leftist website "The Alt National Parks."

 

The Mr. Conservative site was false-flagged by Facebook's algorithm for having copyrighted content. There was an error in their system. It wasn't malicious, it wasn't censoring, it was an malfunction in code.

 

He also claims some "conservative posts about Muslims" were removed by Facebook because they claimed they were hatespeech. I'm willing to bet they were, lol, given everything else this guy says, but without him saying what was actually in the posts there's no way to know.

 

The Alt National Parks was hit with a flood of complaints which triggered facebook's algorithm to remove the ability to like the page for a short while. Probably Trump trolls given the content of the site. Regardless, functionality has also been restored there.

 

People jump straight to "IM BEING CENSORED OMG" because its the fastest way to get someone to pay attention to you, even if you're full of shit.

 

As far as Google goes, they are removing fake news sites from search results. They did an internal review of 550 sites that were getting front page results and removed 340 of them because they are fake sites masquerading as real ones- like Alex Jones-ish bullcrap. I've got no problem with not having "Vaccines cause autism and here's a study that shows it" on the front page of Google results. We have too many people that seriously believe anything they read on the internet.

 

So perhaps before you claim "facebook and google are censoring things" sean, and thus contribute to the problem, you need a source that's a little better than the National Enquirer. Or even just read the article you link instead of just the headline.

Edited by Thanatos

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People only think news is being censored because they think they decide what news and reputable sources are, as opposed to what the facts say is accurate.

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Did any of you guys actually read the "article" Sean posted? It's typical Buzzfeed clickbait.

 

Some dude who runs a website called "Mr. Conservative" got upset because 3 posts of his disappeared.

 

Guess what? So did some posts on a leftist website "The Alt National Parks."

 

The Mr. Conservative site was false-flagged by Facebook's algorithm for having copyrighted content. There was an error in their system. It wasn't malicious, it wasn't censoring, it was an malfunction in code.

 

He also claims some "conservative posts about Muslims" were removed by Facebook because they claimed they were hatespeech. I'm willing to bet they were, lol, given everything else this guy says, but without him saying what was actually in the posts there's no way to know.

 

The Alt National Parks was hit with a flood of complaints which triggered facebook's algorithm to remove the ability to like the page for a short while. Probably Trump trolls given the content of the site. Regardless, functionality has also been restored there.

 

People jump straight to "IM BEING CENSORED OMG" because its the fastest way to get someone to pay attention to you, even if you're full of shit.

 

As far as Google goes, they are removing fake news sites from search results. They did an internal review of 550 sites that were getting front page results and removed 340 of them because they are fake sites masquerading as real ones- like Alex Jones-ish bullcrap. I've got no problem with not having "Vaccines cause autism and here's a study that shows it" on the front page of Google results. We have too many people that seriously believe anything they read on the internet.

 

So perhaps before you claim "facebook and google are censoring things" sean, and thus contribute to the problem, you need a source that's a little better than the National Enquirer. Or even just read the article you link instead of just the headline.

To be honest it was something I saw on ABC nightly news and searched real quick to find an article about on the topic. Personally, I'm a little leery of multinational, multibillion dollar corporations deciding what information is legitimate. We've already seen youtube defunding all sorts of people. We see the push to get rid of net neutrality. We've already seen the elimination of the telecommunications act. The writing has been on the wall for a very long time imo. There was a big controversy after the presidential election about fake news on Facebook. Originally Zuckerburg didn't want to do anything about it but caved to pressure later.

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I'd far rather have actual fake news taken off of google results so people don't think the ridiculous shit that people like Alex Jones push have any shred of legitimacy to them.

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It opens the door for a very very very dangerous precedent.

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Does it, though? I think it's dangerous that we allow things that aren't real to be presented as news/fact.

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Who's fault is that? A lot of older folks who haven't grown up in the age of social media are terrible at telling what is and isn't fake online. www.worldnewscentral.com may sound real to someone who has zero understanding of social media. That's the problem today. You don't censor the web as a result. You educate the people on it.

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I could care less about censorship to be honest because we are already slaves to media mills where critical thinking is not required. Most people I meet would not be a bit different if they were censored because all they do is regurgitate some bullshit they heard somewhere. America deserves to be censored seeing as we dont use our ability to think freely anymore anyway.

 

My post was not aimed at censorship or net neutrality. It was at the fact that mainstream staples of peoples daily lives are revealing themselves as bought and paid for, and they are catching it after it was time to act and do some good. There is nothing that can be done anymore as children are being indoctrinated that technology is the wave of the future so they must cling to their ipads and ipods and not respect how fast nature is changing. The kernel of seminal truth in that state is technology could be our future, in fact it could be our only future, but it wont be, it will destroy us.

 

I really believe the world was better without the internet. We had societal issued such as racism and intolerance, and I am not wishing that back, but that would have been reduced with or without the internet.

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See I honestly don't think that many people are fooled by fake news on social media. Anecdotally speaking nobody on my feed is. Cherry hit the nail on the head in my opinion. Who gets to decide what fake news is? Remember, it's not just fake news that's being shut out, it's anything deemed to be offensive too. That opens up the flood gates even more. People shouldn't be sheltered from different view points. The whole thing started because of all the corruption that was revealed by wikileaks about Hillary. People SHOULD know that and it SHOULD be reported. It's called journalism. If you want to live in an authoritarian country where the media is heavily censored I suggest moving to China. You might like it there.

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I think you're only looking at the bad side of technology, Ngata. And frankly, I think you're given to a ton of hyperbole regarding its usage.

 

Tech is a tool. With or without it, humans will still be humans.

 

Without the internet, a video I saw could never have happened.

A doctor used a tablet PC to operate on a patient in South Africa from Baltimore, MD. Obviously using someone else's hands, but he directed the entire operation. That person dies without that technology.

 

Making grand pronouncements like technology will destroy us just makes you sound, honestly, naive. Like my parents who just want the "good old days" back. The days before vaccines virtually eliminated polio and measles. The days when institutional racism was so much larger than it is now.

 

I encourage you to watch this T.E.D. talk by an ex-Westboro Baptist Church member. It was the internet that changed her views.

 

The internet has changed the world far more for the good than for the bad. You focus on all the bad, but its simply a product of the human race. The evil would still exist without the internet, you just wouldn't know about half of it. Unless you really believe that ignorance is bliss, your statement is completely untrue.

 

Without the internet, a lot of ills about the world would still be hidden. The Arabic summer never happens. North Korea and China and Russia are able to successfully hide a lot of their abuses and most world powers probably cooperate with them a lot more.

 

Without the internet, military operations are far more complex, result in more civilian casualties, and people don't even get to know about it.

 

Gotta strongly disagree with you on this one, bud.

Edited by Thanatos
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See I honestly don't think that many people are fooled by fake news on social media. Anecdotally speaking nobody on my feed is. Cherry hit the nail on the head in my opinion. Who gets to decide what fake news is? Remember, it's not just fake news that's being shut out, it's anything deemed to be offensive too. That opens up the flood gates even more. People shouldn't be sheltered from different view points. The whole thing started because of all the corruption that was revealed by wikileaks about Hillary. People SHOULD know that and it SHOULD be reported. It's called journalism. If you want to live in an authoritarian country where the media is heavily censored I suggest moving to China. You might like it there.

 

Preventing a flat out lie from being published as the truth is not censoring someone. You can't lie in the public sphere and then scream censorship when you're shut down. If I run into a crowded theater and yell fire and there is no fire, I am held liable for that. Just because you're behind a monitor doesn't truly change that. Tell a lie loud enough that it will be heard by a lot of people and you should be shut down. Note: Not by the government, but by your fellow members of society. Which is what is happening here.

 

We do have rules in society. Having a differing opinion is fine. And things that are opinions, no matter how offensive, should probably be let through, but this is facebook and Google, NOT the government. So no, government is not censoring the media, and facebook and google can do what they please.

 

Thus your ridiculous comparison to China is completely invalid.

 

The wikileaks information is one thing. Reporting that Hillary Clinton runs a child prostitution ring was taken seriously by a ton of people on the internet. r/pizzagate was a thing for a long time, to the point where someone went and shot a gun- fortunately not at anyone, just to get people's attention- in said pizza joint as part of some messed up vigilante crusade.

 

To act like people don't get sucked in and deceived by fake news on their social feeds is just blatant naivety at this point.

Edited by Thanatos

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I agree with you, but who determines what's a lie? Who determines what's offensive? What's going into these algorithms that are censoring the search results? Would you deny that the lines between big business and government are very blurred. This censorship is the result political pressure.

 

Also, the dude who attempted to assassinate Ronald Regan said he did it for Jodie Foster lol. Some people are just nuts. I'm not really convinced that anyone is resorting to violence because of the internet or fake news. There were conspiracy theorist searching for big foot and claiming to have been abducted by aliens long before the internet and the 2016 presidential election.

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No, I don't think facebook is not controlled by the government. Nor is Google.

 

And second, as I stated before, this is not censorship. This was a computer algorithm *malfunctioning*- NOT doing what is intended. That's what happens with new tech, there are bugs and glitches to work out.

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I wasn't implying that the government controls Facebook or google. I do think that a lot of these industries like old, banking and silicon valley are in the same tax bracket and it's an indisputable fact that that tax bracket rules this country.

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I think you're only looking at the bad side of technology, Ngata. And frankly, I think you're given to a ton of hyperbole regarding its usage.

 

Tech is a tool. With or without it, humans will still be humans.

 

Without the internet, a video I saw could never have happened.

A doctor used a tablet PC to operate on a patient in South Africa from Baltimore, MD. Obviously using someone else's hands, but he directed the entire operation. That person dies without that technology.

 

Making grand pronouncements like technology will destroy us just makes you sound, honestly, naive. Like my parents who just want the "good old days" back. The days before vaccines virtually eliminated polio and measles. The days when institutional racism was so much larger than it is now.

 

I encourage you to watch this T.E.D. talk by an ex-Westboro Baptist Church member. It was the internet that changed her views.

 

The internet has changed the world far more for the good than for the bad. You focus on all the bad, but its simply a product of the human race. The evil would still exist without the internet, you just wouldn't know about half of it. Unless you really believe that ignorance is bliss, your statement is completely untrue.

 

Without the internet, a lot of ills about the world would still be hidden. The Arabic summer never happens. North Korea and China and Russia are able to successfully hide a lot of their abuses and most world powers probably cooperate with them a lot more.

 

Without the internet, military operations are far more complex, result in more civilian casualties, and people don't even get to know about it.

 

Gotta strongly disagree with you on this one, bud.

 

Some of what you say is true, and some if it is not, in my opinion anyway.

 

I am not pining for the days were we had no vaccines, where raping women was cool, and that people were more racist. I am saying that I dont think any of those ills were cured by the internet, not to say the internet should, as it took no hand in creating them.

 

You mention things like the Arabic Summer, and the hiding of the abuses of foreign leaders. I will sound like a cynic and I don't care, but none of those have a damn thing to do with me, my wife, or my son. Honestly they are about as much of my business as who you are banging at the moment...none whatsoever. So the advantage about the internet is that we now know about it in your estimation, right ? Well that is all well and good, but what have we done about it ? What CAN we do about it ? If we could do something how would we ? War ? Negotiation ? Sanctions ? So basically, all of the things we have tried and have failed miserably already ? So great, we know about all of these things and the internet has gotten us no further than a newspaper would in resolving. Not exactly a huge advantage in my opinion. I mean we know, but we have changed LITERALLY nothing about those things you mentioned, so a lot of damn good it did us.

 

Then lets look at the supposed change we want to create. You say I am naive to believe it is bad, to which I say you are equally naive to think that we would care anyway. At least, in any real meaningful and impacting way. Remember Kony 2012 ? My god, everyone was crazy about some Ugandan warlord they had never heard of and dumped millions into it, and things in Uganda improved. And by improved I mean stayed EXACTLY the same, but hey they soothed consciences. It had 18.6 million views watched by almost every major world leader, and he is still at large... WE call it a victory because we dont consider him a threat anymore. The secret they are not telling you is he was as much of a threat at the height of his power as he is now, and still nobody cares except for those in Uganda. You don't, I mean you may right now, at this moment, but before I brought it up when was the last time anybody heard about it.

 

This is not an indictment on you or your character at all, so do not take it that way. What I am saying is that humans are so fickle and have such short attention spans that as humans none of us really care about what is going on around us enough to enact change, or we would. Humans are tribal by nature so if there were a way to make change that we really cared about, we would, but, we don't. The internet making us more aware of these problems has just made people on youtube rich, and has created unrest among small demo-graphs of people that vary depending on the issue. Do you not think that if everyone in the world truly cared and was passionate about justice Joseph Kony's head would have been on a spit before the first article was written about it ? So with all this technology, satellites, internet giving us real time tracking and all of that and the most badass men and women on the planet we were evaded by a Ugandan warlord with 100 children in his army ?

 

That video you were talking about giving surgery over an iPad is a wonderful use of technology. Now would you like to find as many surgical procedures given over the iPad, and I will find people who have been killed because of lets say, bad medical advice on the internet. The point here is not dick measuring. It is to say that for every article you find about technology helping another on an individual basis, not just,"I saw a cat picture that made me smile" I could find you one where it got someone seriously hurt or killed.

 

This also goes to the Westboro Baptist Church woman. Yes the internet changed her views and that is also great as her mother and family patriarch were evil cunts. However I offer the same challenge as before, for everyone of those you find I will find an article where an terrorist or para military group such as the klu klux klan, black panthers, and even gangs are now using to recruit men women and children.

 

So the one thing we will agree on is that it is a tool, and it is a tool that in my opinion humanity is not ready for and now that it is here we will never be ready for it. The internet is a tool in much the same way a gun is. I can hunt with it and feed my family if I am ever in a position where Fred Meyer's and Safeway are no longer operating. That being said I will not give my .338 Lapua to my son and say have a blast. He is not ready, he has many things to learn before it is a useful tool for him that he can operate with a relative degree of safety. As a society we are not ready to use mechanisms such as the internet because we have learned how to feel as a species as almost all humans grieve over great loss, feel pride in triumph, and feel humility in grandeur, and those are all accomplishments that we should be proud of. That being said we have not learned to think as a species yet evidenced in the need for war, the war crimes you demonstrate, and so on. When we reach a point where those are by and large satisfied the internet will not be this shadowy, anonymous, poly-morphic entity that is more divisive than not.

 

So yes, we may dsagree and that is fine, but it will take more than what you posted to get me to change my mind. I have thought about this for many years, and I have though about the things you have said before and while great, I can not see an argument where the good outweighs the bad.

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The vast amount of knowledge alone and the cooperative nature that the internet allows, for research purposes, coordination on military strikes, (which you didn't mention in your response), the ability to communicate with others over very short time periods instead of having to wait a month for snail mail, the ability to find someone you love who isn't near you, there is a fuck ton of things the internet has brought. I can't even begin to make an exhaustive list.

 

To just say the whole thing should never have been invented because some people are using a tool for evil just doesn't make sense. Its the same as any other tool. Evil people will find a way to be evil regardless.

Edited by Thanatos

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The vast amount of knowledge alone and the cooperative nature that the internet allows, for research purposes, coordination on military strikes, (which you didn't mention in your response), the ability to communicate with others over very short time periods instead of having to wait a month for snail mail, the ability to find someone you love who isn't near you, there is a fuck ton of things the internet has brought. I can't even begin to make an exhaustive list.

 

To just say the whole thing should never have been invented because some people are using a tool for evil just doesn't make sense. Its the same as any other tool. Evil people will find a way to be evil regardless.

 

Libraries had INTRANETS not to be confused with INTERNET that allowed HUGE amounts of information on a computer screen anyway. It did not allow to comment so you had to make your own opinion.

 

And I am not saying I am a super badass but I was in the Rangers and I can count on one hand many times we used the internet for joint operations. We used satellite imaging on our blue force trackers to find positions, and we used short wave radio communications for almost all of it other than the BFT's we used. I am not sure I used the internet for a tactical purpose in the military, because after all they are hackable, and our encryption for voice is better encrypted, and instantaneous unlike the military. Now there might be some deep dark shit like in DEVGRU but I cannot speak to that. The military also uses and intranet which is not the same as internet.

 

So with that said I am not saying it does not do good, I am saying in my opinion that it does more harm than good to all of us on levels many dont understand. Telephones allow us to communicate instantly as well. And is writing letters really a bad thing ? Not that we would need too because of telephoens but hey I get it. How does the internet help me find someone near me that I love, that a phone can't. You could make an exhaustive list but the truth is that with the advent of a telephone most communication advantages are a wash, as a matter of fact telephone wins as it is faster.

 

Thats all I am saying is yes it can do some good, but it is vastly overrated, and without it we would not be some neanderthal species. IT does good, but I feel it does more harm than good for most so it is what it is. You disagree and that is ok.

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So perhaps before you claim "facebook and google are censoring things" sean, and thus contribute to the problem, you need a source that's a little better than the National Enquirer. Or even just read the article you link instead of just the headline.

 

On the topic of good news sources, what are the best? I realize that some of the links I click on, I only click on because they have an article that provides confirmation bias. It's hard for me to root out the bad sites.

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BBC and anything Associated Press (AP) tend to be clean cut when it comes to American politics.

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