Meta, Zuck, Media

Ed Zitron, on “The Slop Society”:

Meta hasn’t “made a right-wing turn.”  It’s been an active arm of the right wing media for nearly a decade, actively empowering noxious demagogues like Alex Jones, allowing him to evade bans and build massive private online groups on the platform to disseminate content. A report from November 2021 by Media Matters found that Facebook had tweaked its news algorithm in 2021, helping right-leaning news and politics pages to outperform other pages using “sensational and divisive content.” Another Media Matters report from 2023 found that conservatives were continually earning more total interactions than left or non-aligned pages between January 1 2020 and December 31 2022, even as the company was actively deprioritizing political content.

A long, long post by Ed Zitron which fires both barrels at Meta, reloads, fires at Casey Newton specifically, reloads again and fires at the tech media in general. And at least on the first point (and definitely the third) I think he’s entirely right. Meta’s platforms have consistently promoted right wing talking points, and the tech media spent nearly two decades largely cheerleading odious people like Zuckerberg.


Systemic Risk Reporting: A System in Crisis?

Instead of relying on platforms or regulators to define how risks should be conceptualized and mitigated, a joint approach is needed—one that builds on expertise by civil society, academics and activists, and emphasizes best practices. A collaborative approach would help make sense of these complex challenges and how they can be addressed in ways that strengthen users’ rights and protect fundamental rights.


The “something” that I was testing earlier (which worked) is the integration between Drummer and Micro.blog. I’ve always been a fan of outliners, and I’m interested in maybe using this one.



Testing something which I hope will work. Wish me luck!


Tom MacDonald and Roseanne Barr have written what can loosely be called ‘a song’ for Trump’s inauguration. And it is as bad as you might expect. The first lines are:

We won, you mad/It’s done, too bad/Boo-hoo, so sad/Now your daddy’s home


SpaceX calls their explosions “rapid unscheduled disassemblies,” which I think is intended as a joke, a parody of corporate euphemisms (while still trying to deflect attention from the danger). It reminds me of the language used by manufacturers of certain types of light bulbs. When their products explode, they call it a “nonpassive failure.” And they’re not trying to be funny.


Did Donald Trump Really Just Drop a Solana Meme Coin? - Decrypt

On-chain sleuths pointed to potential red flags, including the apparent fact that the project was seeded with millions of dollars of funds from Binance and Gate—two exchanges that don’t serve U.S. customers. But some other apparent concerns diminished with further sleuthing, not to mention with time as Trump’s social posts remained online.

Barf.


Over on my big school blog, Ten Blue Links is a day late, but you’ll forgive that, won’t you?


Some nifty news: Ghost is getting ActivityPub features this year. This makes me even happier that I moved from WordPress to Ghost.


Mark Zuckerberg lies about content moderation to Joe Rogan’s face

In fact, many of the controversial moderation calls Facebook made in the pandemic were during the Trump administration. Take, for instance, the “Plandemic” video hoax: Facebook removed the video in 2020. Joe Biden took office in 2021. If Zuckerberg was dealing with an administration pressuring him about this, it was the Trump administration. The Biden White House may well have engaged in similar outreach, but it was joining what was already an active discussion about Facebook moderation.



Meanwhile, the Heritage Foundation is planning to target Wikipedia moderators. So there’s that.

forward.com/news/6867…


Flat tax rate is an ‘attractive idea’, Kemi Badenoch says | Kemi Badenoch

From the department of batshit Tories, we bring you this:

At the moment, we are a welfare state with a little bit of a productivity attached to it. We’ve got to turn that around.


I’m going to make a subclause of Betteridge’s Law for this one which changes “no” to “nothing good”.


Meanwhile, the billionaires would very much like you to know it’s now illegal not to give them your money.

Tweet from Marc Andreessen, a man who has no idea about anything, saying "The orchestrated advertiser boycott against X and popular podcasts must end immediately. Conspiracy in restraint of trade is a prosecutable crime." What a fucking moron.

It’s nearly November and I’m wearing a t shirt. Global warming, eh? Not a fan.

Middle aged bloke in hat and t shirt at the coast.

The jay is visiting

A very handsome jay on the lawn.

Bunny ears biker

A motor cyclist with a rabbit ears cover on their helmet.

If you know you know

A sticker with the Black Flag logo which replaces "Black Flag" with "Live Laugh Love"