On a huge election year for the world, Meta will shut down CrowdTangle, it's tool for election integrity observers without replacement
Open Letter To Meta: Support CrowdTangle Through 2024 and Maintain CrowdTangle Approach
This is quite concerning
Sounds like Zuck is hoping for a one-party Fascist autocracy in the US.
"We will give you tax breaks, you'll help us build out theocratic fascism!"
(If anyone asks: Facebook already got caught spying on abortion providers in red states, expect even worse once Project 2025 is enacted.)
yet another year goes by where tech companies seem to be influencing the state.
What a fascinating time to live in.
Fascist-inating indeed.
Fascist-enabling eh?
To be fair, corporations have always influenced the government. For better, or for worse.
We're heading towards cyberpunk
i'm interested to see what all the offshoots of cyberpunk are.
We've already got solarpunk.
I kind of can’t stand Biden, in spite of the many surprisingly good things he’s done in the last few years.
But god damn if this isn’t the kind of action from Meta that can only help Trump.
I am sorry to feel that this decision from Meta has much more to do with certain ongoing wars and preferred candidates than any “EU legislation.”
Meta wants Trump. Meta wants fascism.
Meta knows these Trump Republicans can be easily duped.
in spite of the many surprisingly good things he's done in the last few years
...that's about when I stopped reading.
He isn't great, but he has done some pretty good thing. (Lots of not good things too, obviously.) He's taken steps with student loan forgiveness, he's empowered the FTC and DOJ to enforce anti-trust regulations that haven't been used in far too long, and he's done a good number of other things too, but nothing else large is coming to mind at the moment.
They suck at communicating, but they have actually done some good. Biden is far from my choice of president, but it does seem like the progressive faction has at least moved him in the right direction. It's far from ideal, but he isn't that bad.
We should teach critical thinking and logic skill from month one. There will be so much propaganda and misinformation from this point on, being able to spot it, most of the time with common sense, would nip most of this crap in the butt.
In before 5 yo
Mommy, "because I say so" is an appeal to authority, I will not abide by such logical fallacy. Please provide me with a systematic review of relevant double blind studies to convince me that I should eat my greens."
I try to use "because I said so" as little as possible. It's a lot more work, but they know why they're doing most of what they need to do, and they know why they're avoiding what they should not do.
Edit: I've noticed that making an effort to avoid "because I said so" has built up a habit of thinking about why I'm telling them to do something before I say it out loud. Often times, this changes what I'm about to tell them to do.
That would be the ideal world. There is plentiful research to show that eating vegetables is good for you. If you can't figure that little out, why are you a parent?
Come on, you know those who have the influence over this don't want it. Remember: Donald Trump loves the uneducated 👍
I think the issue is more that people like propaganda and misinformation as long as they agree with it.
There just seems to be something about seeing your own opinions coming out of a man in a tie or printed in a large serif font that gives people the same feeling as a cat having its neck scratched.
And of course, once you hear one of your opinions come out of them, it's easier to agree with the other ones as well.
im ok with propaganda as long as its clear that it's propaganda.
You know, much like how criminals understand that committing crime is bad, and yet they continue to commit crime. Seems like a rather apt solution IMO.
And still it would not be enough. You need to trust some core institutions and delegate on some people who know more than you, you can't be an expert on everything. Even smart people can be deeply wrong if they trust the wrong people or if they think their expertise makes them an expert on everything. You also need a little intellectual humility.
This is why the position I take is that when there is any room for doubt, lean into whichever belief would lead to the most compassionate outcome.
There will always be uncertainty, always facts that you can't know, but the compassionate choice is pretty much never wrong, at worst it might be inefficient, but that's okay. Anyone who's trying to convince you that something that harms or dehumanizes anyone is necessary probably has an ulterior motive and is profiting somehow off of the harm and dehumanization.
You do know that this comment could be posted word for word on a right wing post and everybody would agree with it just as well? The term "critical thinking" alone is so worthless, not to mention "common sense". Some people justify ancient aliens with that phrasing. I don't mean to criticize you, I just have this thought so often when scrolling through this polarized world... And I really don't know what to do about it. Everything feels so lost.
The term “critical thinking” alone is so worthless
No, it's not. There's a very specific definition - to think critically, i.e. to not accept any idea without first investigating it and analysing its merit. That's the absolute basis of all philosophy and science.
Critical thinking and common sense are not even close to being the same. Perhaps finding the definition of critical thinking would be a prudent thing before dismissing it as a buzz word.
I have this thought a lot too when people discuss things like teaching "media literacy". I dunno. I've seen enough people completely abuse logical fallacies that I really wonder whether or not we're all logically consistent conscious beings, or if we're all just kind of flying by the emotionally charged pants seats, and making shit up later to retroactively justify it. People cry strawman, red herring, goalpost moving, when realistically people are just changing the subject to something that they think they know more on, because things aren't formalized into a rigorous debate where everything is organized and structured and we all actually know what the definitions of things are supposed to be. It's hard enough to get people to even agree on a definition, because people are so insulated to their little bubbles. Getting past that semantic difference and into the actual debate seems more to me like a structural problem, where people are arguing with the wrong people, than like, a problem you could solve with just raw education. Seems like a structural problem related to the death of the monoculture, and the rapid propagation of regional cultures, even regional cultures online.
Meta
integrity
lmao
I work in integrity at Meta. It's mostly about staying legally compliant with the countries we make $ in. You have to keep in mind we have like 4 billion users, and own 5 out of the top 10 most used apps (hello antitrust?), so it's a pretty big deal here.
We should outlaw political advertisement on social media? Kind of like how cigarette advertisement was eliminated from movie theater ads.
The fines should be stacked as factors - unmitigated offenses will build up and incur exponentially growing fines. Very large incentive to shut that shit down.
Politics should be advertised by performance review, not marketing.
No politics was a rule on many forums. One of the things social media did away with.
Or someone should do something that will actually have literally any impact.
My hope is that the FBI asked them to shut this down on NSA's behalf, so threat actors feel more comfortable as they aren't being watched, studied, and analyzed by every OSINT collective in existence.
My fear is that they know what happened the previous 2 elections and this year will be the worst yet, and they don't want their users knowing how badly they got duped and feeling bad/dumb enough to leave the platform. Also advertising $$.
Dark money from other countries is a good boogeyman, but it's basically irrelevant. Biden and Trump are going to spend between 2 and 3 billion on the election collectively. The hundreds of thousands or millions a foreign government may spend is a rounding error.
It has nothing to do with money spent. One is active hatefully divisive propaganda infesting the minds of the country on a total scale. We have multiple US Senators and Congresspeople saying the eclipse and earthquakes are a sign from God ffs. Have you been on reddit in the last few months? If not, I urge you to take a peek. Even in small hobbyist subreddits now every other post is pure hate or FUD, and every other comment is someone taunting people to fight them with divisive and very obvious left/right comments, much worse than the typical "lol seems like a typical lib/cuckservative." It comes in waves, which I assume is reddit finding and banning them, making them rotate accounts and continue the karma generating process so they can post and comment in karma limit subs (the idiotic questions.)
Russia/etc. can always make up by lower-cost bot-activity.
I like it how people use meta and then also hate and complain about it. Let's gooooo!
its* tool for election integrity.
I wonder if Zuckerberg knows that his bunker won't save him?
A practical demonstration may be necessary
he knows where his bread is buttered
Concerning is that someone thinks that something from meta can be used as a tool for election integrity
Weird this is again making the rounds after the news is 2 years old.
Weird this is again making the rounds after the news is 2 years old.
Looks like they delayed the shutdown, but then announced last month that they're going to do it finally.
From the article that you linked...
Today’s report says Meta began an official process to shut down the tool in February but paused it due to the EU’s Digital Services Act push.
What is CrowdTangle
CrowdTangle is Meta's tool for election integrity, they're shutting it down without a replacement.
Mozilla is just Google's way of casting shade on competitors now
No Mozilla is Googles free pass to act as a monopoly in the browser market.
Not free, google is providing more than 90% of mozilla's funding
This a huge step back for transparency with Meta (shocker). Access to this data is important for a variety of reasons, and using the recent EU laws as an excuse is deplorable (again, shocker from Meta).
It's clear the data companies were left alone for too long to rule the schoolyard. It's going to take some time to treat them and others what decorum looks like without throwing an absolute hissy fit.
Here's hoping the EU, which seems to be the only teacher on the playground willing to discipline anyone, will set them straight.
Tear the government down, start from scratch.
As a bonus; we also solve the problem with having police.
I can't wait to become the United States of Walmart. Thanks for that.
How do you prevent it from turning into a "might makes right" system ?