Public Address | Cafe | Hard News: Digital persuasion and the dark places of democracy

Moz

Tue, 28 May 2019 19:17:53 +1200

rebooting the door open.

My ex-gf recently left a plastic item on the stovetop when she went out, and apparently there was an element on. The fire brigade used their universal key to get in.

Maybe I should borrow that, rather than boots?

Ian Dalziel

Tue, 28 May 2019 15:39:00 +1200

forced to use the windows instead of Windows
What a pane...

linger

Tue, 28 May 2019 12:22:27 +1200

They want people to be forced to use the windows instead of Windows?

Ian Dalziel

Tue, 28 May 2019 10:36:13 +1200

Are there no door handles?
The vandals took the handles!

and... you don't need a weather man
To know which way the wind blows

Look out kid...

Moz

Tue, 28 May 2019 08:05:21 +1200

Well, it's more like how many users would we get from that month of developer time, vs what else could the developer do in a month. The answer "one" is technically better than "none" but it's still not going to get a developer assigned to the task. For that I…

Moz

Mon, 27 May 2019 11:17:43 +1200

buying an ubuntu phone

I would love one but in order to get into work I have to run either an Android app or an IPhone one. The mobile team have not taken my request for a Linux app seriously, apparently it's an even stupider idea than a Windows phone…

Craig Young

Sat, 04 May 2019 10:07:06 +1200

I keep hoping that they'll piss off someone in what's left of Anonymous so they can retaliate and inflict some strategic hacktivist damage on the buggers...

Sacha

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 12:21:39 +1200

Why aren’t people discussing those?

To avoid showing the disaffected where to gather?

andin

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 11:30:03 +1200

4chan and 8chan

Im hoping we dont have to, in the public realm, because those who say they want to target hate speak on the net are, by now, all over those fuckers. Problem tho, most of them are in the US. And yes, Im looking at our PM and…

Craig Young

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 09:48:18 +1200

In the case of the alt-right, surely 4chan and 8chan are more relevant media outlets insofar as toxic social media networking goes? Why aren't people discussing those?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4chan
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/8chan

Neil

Tue, 30 Apr 2019 09:14:52 +1200

One theory of the origin of this form of extremism has been disproved at least. These people are not the product of oppression or some sort of western imperialism. Their grudges and grievances are based on hatred of difference which has been with us for a very long time.

andin

Sun, 28 Apr 2019 19:14:51 +1200

Or more correctly I should say it is the bland words first originated in the advertising industry to reduce people to units so they could then be marketed too, distanced and depersonalized another variable to be factored in for the spreadsheet data that is then reduced to $ & cent's
So…

andin

Sun, 28 Apr 2019 18:37:38 +1200

honest and truthful answer

In computerspeak. Template? targeted advertising? You'd have to give me a time stamp. Im not listening thru that again.

andin

Sun, 28 Apr 2019 12:07:32 +1200

I stopped worrying about facebook when all the young people left.

Its some of the oldies that are the bigger worry, they'll fall for Marks sanitized vision of a future. In which FB will throw out a wide variety of opinion to counter the closed groups that breed on FB.…

Kumara Republic

Sat, 27 Apr 2019 22:39:57 +1200

Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey is increasingly looking like the 21st century's Alfred P Sloan. Compare & contrast his bending over backwards for culture war profiteer Trumpnik Candace Owens.

HuffPost: Twitter’s Jack Dorsey Told Ilhan Omar He Won’t Take Down Trump’s Tweet Targeting Her

Simon Armstrong

Sat, 27 Apr 2019 20:07:18 +1200

I stopped worrying about facebook when all the young people left. I stopped worrying about office 365 after cancelling mother's monthly Microsoft stipend. I stopped worrying about trump after toilet paper got stuck to his shoe.

Paul Campbell

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 20:58:07 +1200

The US also has the "fairness doctrine" which essentially required the users of the public airwaves to be politically neutral, effects of that spun over into cable (because much of cable is also on satellite which is over the air)

Sadly it was repealed by the Republicans in the late…

Moz

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 18:48:09 +1200

Part of it is that in NZ (and Australia) we’re culturally accustomed to some level of media regulation and a certain number of rights wrt truth in advertising and so on. None of that applies to social media, and those companies viciously defend their refusal to permit their assets to…

Simon Armstrong

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 17:53:58 +1200

I think this article is a great reminder that there are two sides to every story, good and bad with every new technology and most alarming for me that social media is not just a first world problem:

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2019/04/why-social-media-going-dark-in-sri-lanka-isnt-as-simple-as-you-think/

andin

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 10:06:38 +1200

The devil is in the detail I know.

Like this article, while we opine how our minds are being polluted. In other parts of the globe peoples environments are being polluted with the waste of the hardware now no longer fulfilling the needs of the mental polluters of the west.…

Rob S

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 09:03:42 +1200

The anonymity of a lot of these political postings lets malicious players get away with outright falsehoods.
Surely like a lot of political ads in the traditional media a real life breathing human with contact details etc should have to associated with any ads from which Mr Zuckerburg is presumably…

Ian Dalziel

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 08:57:52 +1200

the evolution from Silicon Valley ‘hippy’ hackers (think Steve Jobs) to Libertarian (and NZ citizen Peter Thiel) particularly chilling.
This is well worth a watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSbhsPNnVWo&t=1360s

further interesting reading:
https://thenewstack.io/silicon-valley-legend-captain-crunch-publishes-life-story/
and
https://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2017/11/19/the-roots-of-apple-microsoft-and-facebook-in-hacker-culture/#560ff4ce2d38

It used to be 'they' were just hacking machines – now 'they' are hacking brains and culture -…

Ian Dalziel

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 08:45:31 +1200

Not unlike the proprietor operated coffee houses before television was invented.
Kaffee Klatsches aside, Salon is still going!

Ian Dalziel

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 08:35:56 +1200

disinformation and hacking count as methods of warfare these days.
CyOPs?
(add 150 – CL – and it becomes very one-eyed!)

Ian Dalziel

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 08:13:06 +1200

a case can be made for public service social media
Perhaps NZ Post should look into as they slowly dismantle their traditional model.
I see today that NZ Post shops seem to be pulling out of their symbiotic relationship with Kiwi Bank branches (well at least near me at the…

Neil

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 02:13:46 +1200

I do think there’s something new about how social media effects the liberal democratic process. Being a bit inclined to the medium is the message I think it’s partly about how things are being said not just what is being said.

However, looking at Europe, the dynamic is a fairly…

Neil

Thu, 25 Apr 2019 02:05:44 +1200

andin

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 15:41:30 +1200

And so

According to The Daily Beast all Trump wanted to talk about, when he met Dorsey, was why his follower numbers were down, and all Dorsey wanted to talk about was what a good job Twitter had done re the opiod crisis.
And I hear the ghost of a…

Rob S

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 14:20:10 +1200

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2019/04/twitter-shuts-down-network-of-5000-possibly-saudi-pro-trump-bots/

And so it goes.

SHG

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 13:40:54 +1200

If you're onboard the podcast train, these episodes of Sam Harris's pod are must-listen on this subject.

#71 – WHAT IS TECHNOLOGY DOING TO US?
A Conversation with Tristan Harris
https://samharris.org/podcasts/what-is-technology-doing-to-us/

#145 – THE INFORMATION WAR
A Conversation with Renée DiResta
https://samharris.org/podcasts/145-information-war/

#152 – THE TROUBLE WITH FACEBOOK
A Conversation…

Neil

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 11:26:18 +1200

Maybe a new development in politics, but not for humanity, and that is where the problem is our selves.

Yes, is social media just giving us what we already have been doing just in another guise or does social media tap into something in us that has been hitherto latent.…

Tom Semmens

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 06:22:51 +1200

I would like to see the NZ police issue a warrant for the arrest of Mark Zuckerburg in relation to the Christchurch shooting video and seek his extradition.

NZ is a serious country with a proper rule of law so the US courts would have to hear the case and…

Kumara Republic

Wed, 24 Apr 2019 03:23:09 +1200

I know, and it’s a depressing state of affairs. It’s similar to how shopping malls privatised public meeting places and displaced the town squares. once upon a time, people would have looked at Public Address system to see what you had written here. I did. Accurately, I still do:-)

Now,…

Kumara Republic

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 22:34:57 +1200

Topham and Guerin, both young men making their way in the booming industry of digital persuasion, may not feel that they’re doing anything wrong here; that it’s all in the game, that working on contract for Darth Vader is just a hell of a career opportunity. But the rest of…

EliotBlennerhassett

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 22:05:22 +1200

Just a plug for another person who writes about this sort of stuff:

Zeynep Tufekci https://www.nytimes.com/column/zeynep-tufekci

From her latest piece – "There is no longer such a thing as individually “opting out” of our privacy-compromised world. "

andin

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 21:50:38 +1200

Maybe a new development in politics, but not for humanity, and that is where the problem is our selves. Even tho the current High Priest Dorsey dresses like a monk, and his predecessor The Zuck thought youth conquers all. Their humanity seems to have got lost along the way, or…

Neil

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 21:34:48 +1200

Is this a new development in politics? We’ve had very bad things happen in the past without social media.

Ben Austin

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 21:22:48 +1200

Very interesting to see the NZ connection, young Kiwis bored and in need of a challenge beating a path to London and all that.

The campaign to make No Deal/Crash Out/WTO Brexit a popular option has been interesting to watch – loads of people are now convinced that they specifically…

DexterX

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 18:45:15 +1200

Debates on policyere where?

andin

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 18:28:01 +1200

we accept them everywhere else

Doesnt mean the perpetrators will accept them tho'. Unless penalties of some kind are enforced and I mean drastically. But their malfeasance helps the power possessors (I dont know what to call them) maintain their positions, so I dont see that happening any time soon.…

Russell Brown

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:49:13 +1200

Carole Cadwalladr's account of doing the talk and what happened afterwards – including the angry reaction of Facebook executives – is an excellent read.

Gareth

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 17:10:47 +1200

Well, yes, indeed... ;-)

Other forms of media have been around long enough for fairly robust rules/codes to have evolved covering their actions – but Facebook and the other new media haven't, and have done their best to resist any form of regulation, anywhere.

I don't see applying codes of…

Katita

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 16:11:09 +1200

I just finished reading Roger McNamee's Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe .
Some of it wasn't new news ... other parts were horrifying. Enough so that I've changed my FB and Google habits and used McNamee's excellent bibliography to create myself a very long reading list.…

andin

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 15:21:59 +1200

working on contract for Darth Vader is just a hell of a career opportunity.
Well he did used to be a white knight, until he fell in that volcano and had to don that breathing apparatus that makes that creepy noise...still...he was a whitey knighty, maybe he'll reinvent himself... oh…

BenWilson

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 15:18:33 +1200

people would have looked at Public Address system to see what you had written here. I did. Accurately, I still do:-)

I saw it in a tweet.

And yet, it’s wrapped into our lives. It’s a way I can tell people when I’ve written something like the above, it’s my…

Gareth

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 14:49:10 +1200

Something I have been banging on about for some time: if there's a case for public service broadcasting (and there obviously is, because we still, just, have it in NZ), then a case can be made for public service social media (PSSM). Something with the functions of Facebook, but that…

Russell Brown

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 14:31:22 +1200

And yet, it's wrapped into our lives. It's a way I can tell people when I've written something like the above, it's my connection to decades' worth of friends, it's how everyone gets everyone else to come to their damn gigs ...

Russell Brown

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 14:29:08 +1200

Yeah, it's really good. I was interested to see a tweet by her that she had to get past a longtime crippling anxiety about public speaking to do it.

Sacha

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 13:22:57 +1200

The Cadwalladr talk is brilliant, eh. Let's hope there is a lot of media attention on masters Topham and Guerin before both the local body elections this year and the national ones next year.

Public Address

Tue, 23 Apr 2019 13:22:56 +1200

Discussion from blog post.