Cambridge Analytica

[Mikey]

The thing that's troubling is that they use this information to target the masses with loads of "fake news." When I say "fake news" I don't mean stuff that I disagree with but out and out lies. I'm sure both sides do this, one side maybe more egregiously than the other.

What's most troubling isn't the existence of this fake news, but fact that so many people fall for so much of it without question or critical thought. Believe it if it suits their pre-conceived notions.

I guess we're just fucked.

I stopped using Facebook a couple of years ago because I thought it was fucking creepy.
LinkedIn at least has some legitimate use for business, employment, etc. Really looking forward to retirement in a few years, though, when I can actually disconnect. The world has just passed me by I guess.

[Rooster]

What I find funny is that it is only after the Right discovers its’ use that Silicon Valley grows alarmed. Back in 2012 when Obama was scouring social media for voters and tailoring his pitch to them based off of their likes and dislikes, the reaction by the Zuckerbergs of the social media world was, “Meh.”

But get that scourge of humanity, Steve Bannon, involved, well, just like with the anti-gun crusade going on right now, something must be done!!!. It’s only a problem when the Right discovers how to wield a particular weapon the Left considers its’ own* that the trouble starts— and America is simply too precious and fragile to have that.


*such is the case with gerrymandering, but only after the Republican Party just got too good at it. Now it’s a dire threat to democracy...

[smackaholic]

In politics, one person's fake news is another person's bible verse. Just look at the dumb shit that Screwy, Diego, Jsc et al. post on here. Complete fabrications, but they believe it like gospel.

It would be great if the news agencies reported things without bias, and were trustworthy and trusted. But they are not. When you've got an FBI director selectively leaking shit for publication in the NY Times and no one seems to think that is a problem, you've got a real problem.

Most people in this country are lazy and uneducated on most issues. But that isn't unique to this country or this time. It has always been that way. Electing one person to represent you means you have to buy the whole frog, warts and all. It would be impossible to elect any person who could fairly represent any group of people in this country because our views and interests are as diverse as our experiences and backgrounds.

We get the douchebags we get because the douchebags have figured out how to manipulate the sheeple into voting for them. Nothing is going to change that. Nothing. You could sit every person in America down and let them watch the video of two hijacked airliners flying into the side of the WTC's, and there would still be loons who believe to their core that they saw something else. It will always be that way.

I think we have to accept that morons will be morons, that your version of the truth will very likely be different than mine, and that it is better to let people espouse their positions in the open air than try to establish some sort of government-imposed checker of "truthiness" etc. Once you grant government the power to determine "truthiness", the actual truth (whatever you may believe it to be) is no longer available to you to speak.

Rack the smartest mofo on T1B.

Low fukking bar, that, I realize.

As he says people trying to bullshit other people into believing what they believe isn't anything new. Politicians and religious fukkers of all religions have been doing since man figured out how to coordinate his grunts into language.

Private sector political operatives will continue to do it and there really isn't anything we can or should do about it, because once you give some government official the right to squash anothers right to lie to people, things go south quickly.

[Softball Bat]

How naive does a person have to be to imagine that the *personal and private* information they put up at a place like Farcebook will remain... personal and private?






You fucked up. You trusted us.