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• The Kremlin has spoken...The Kremlin has spoken... (Score: 3, Interesting) by canopic jug on Tuesday January 19 2021, @08:15AM (2 children)

  by canopic jug (3949) on Tuesday January 19 2021, @08:15AM (#1102330) Journal

  That's probably an easy bet [ted.com], given what the few remaining investigative journalists like Carole Cadwalladr have found out since Brexit and the 2016 US presidential election.

  The bigger, more serious problem is that Facebook and other social control media have even stronger footholds in other countries than they have had in the UK. There social control media are actively brewing even worse discontent and, possibly, on the verge of fomenting violence, but keeping it just below the surface so that standing politicians can turn a blind eye to it until it is too late. Only a small number are tuned in, the rest are twitting away and having sessions in Facebook video and so on, feeding the very beast which will soon kill their institutions, and possibly the politicians themselves also.

  Thererefore it is very important that the "Schrems II [techcrunch.com]" case go forward, even though it is mostly about privacy and the integrity of personal data.

  --
  Money is not free speech. Elections should not be auctions.

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• Re:The Kremlin has spoken...(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 20 2021, @12:44PM

  by khallow (3766) on Wednesday January 20 2021, @12:44PM (#1102829) Journal

  I find it remarkable how poorly justified the TED talk was.

  When I got there, I was just a bit taken aback, because the last time I went to Ebbw Vale, it looked like this. And now, it looks like this. This is a new 33-million-pound college of further education that was mostly funded by the European Union. And this is the new sports center that's at the middle of 350-million-pound regeneration project that's being funded by the European Union. And this is the new 77-million-pound road-improvement scheme, and there's a new train line, a new railway station, and they're all being funded by the European Union. And it's not as if any of this is a secret, because there's big signs like this everywhere.

  Where did those half a billion pounds come from? Then she talks about her scientific study of asking a few people around town and characterizing the whole population from that.

  I had this sort of weird sense of unreality, walking around the town. And it came to a head when I met this young man in front of the sports center. And he told me that he had voted to leave, because the European Union had done nothing for him. He was fed up with it. And all around town, people told me the same thing. They said that they wanted to take back control, which was one of the slogans in the campaign. And they told me that they were most fed up with the immigrants and with the refugees. They'd had enough.

  Just because one is standing near a sports center doesn't mean that one got a piece of the sugar.

  And this entire referendum took place in darkness, because it took place on Facebook. And what happens on Facebook stays on Facebook, because only you see your news feed, and then it vanishes, so it's impossible to research anything. So we have no idea who saw what ads or what impact they had, or what data was used to target these people. Or even who placed the ads, or how much money was spent, or even what nationality they were.

  So in other words, the talk is being done in darkness too. We have to take her word that things happened like she claimed they happened.

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• Re:The Kremlin has spoken...(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 20 2021, @12:46PM

  by khallow (3766) on Wednesday January 20 2021, @12:46PM (#1102830) Journal

  The bigger, more serious problem is that Facebook and other social control media have even stronger footholds in other countries than they have had in the UK. There social control media are actively brewing even worse discontent and, possibly, on the verge of fomenting violence, but keeping it just below the surface so that standing politicians can turn a blind eye to it until it is too late. Only a small number are tuned in, the rest are twitting away and having sessions in Facebook video and so on, feeding the very beast which will soon kill their institutions, and possibly the politicians themselves also.

  Keep in mind that a fair number of those other countries badly need a cull of their institutions.

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