(03-04-2021, 09:14 AM)Nately120 Wrote: The scandalous books all 6 of em are on a shelf 5 feet from me as I type this.  Im the last free man om earth.  Suck it!

Related note, I was thinking how freak shows are antiquated and offensive but TLC has money making shows where the super morbidly obese and people with medial deformities and issues are poked prodded paraded about and humiliated.  We are still the same bastard society we always have been.  Fear not, people 

(03-04-2021, 01:08 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Sure, but as stated earlier, I think social media has really changed the game.  It's essentially the same as you describe above but now on steroids.

(03-04-2021, 01:11 PM)Nately120 Wrote: Social media doesn't spread propaganda, people spread propaganda.

(03-04-2021, 01:46 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: Social media makes it infinitely easier to spread propaganda.

Quote:POLITICS
The most engaging political news on Facebook? Far-right misinformation.
A new study shows that before and after the election, far-right misinformation pages drew more engagement than all other partisan news.

A new study finds that far right misinformation pulls in more engagement on Facebook than other types of partisan news. | Photo: Brett Jordan/Unsplash



[url=https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?url=https://www.protocol.com/facebook-misinformation-far-right-politics&text=The%20most%20engaging%20political%20news%20on%20Facebook%3F%20Far-right%20misinformation.&][/url][url=https://www.protocol.com/core/3partyapi/post_to_slack/start?message=The%20most%20engaging%20political%20news%20on%20Facebook%3F%20Far-right%20misinformation.+@+https%3A%2F%2Fwww.protocol.com%2Ffacebook-misinformation-far-right-politics]
Issie Lapowsky
 
 March 3, 2021

In the months before and after the 2020 election, far-right pages that are known to spread misinformation consistently garnered more engagement on Facebook than any other partisan news, according to a New York University study published Wednesday.

The study looked at Facebook engagement for news sources across the political spectrum between Aug. 10, 2020 and Jan. 11, 2021, and found that on average, far-right pages that regularly trade in misinformation raked in 65% more engagement per follower than other far-right pages that aren't known for spreading misinformation.
That finding was specific to the far right. In every other category — including far left, slightly left, center and slightly right — misinformation pages saw significantly less engagement than non-misinformation pages of the same political slant.

The research casts doubt on Facebook's efforts to limit the spread of election misinformation leading up to Election Day in November and in the aftermath of the January attack on the U.S. Capitol. Far from a barrier to engagement, the researchers wrote, "Being a consistent spreader of far-right misinformation appears to confer a significant advantage."



The researchers analyzed 2,973 news sources that had their own Facebook pages, had at least 100 followers on average and had been graded for both quality and partisan bias by the news rating organizations NewsGuard and Media Bias/Fact Check. They divided those pages on a spectrum from far right to far left and, within those categories, separated out pages that have been identified for spreading misinformation. Finally, they downloaded all of the public posts from all 2,973 pages to analyze their follower and engagement data over time.

Their findings provide yet another data point to counter conservative claims that they're being more aggressively censored than liberals. The researchers found that not only did far-right misinformation outperform every other ideological category, but far-right news in general also drew far more engagement per follower than any other category. Far-left news came in close behind, suggesting that the more extreme a news source's partisan slant is on Facebook, the more engagement it gets. Centrist news received by far the least engagement per follower during those months.

Engagement was particularly high for far-right news sources on Election Day and on Jan. 6, the day of the Capitol riot. "In the week of Jan. 6, for example, far-right news sources generated just over 500 interactions for every thousand followers of the page" the authors write. "Slightly-right or slightly-left news sources reached only around 150 interactions per thousand followers that week."



The findings align with other analyses of the top-performing posts on Facebook, which have shown far-right commentators like Dan Bongino consistently dominating in the United States.

While the study provides some firm data about how well political news sources perform, questions remain about why this is the case. The researchers can't see, for instance, how many people were shown a given post, which could contribute to the higher engagement numbers. "Further research is needed to determine to what extent Facebook algorithms feed into this trend, for example, and to conduct analysis across other popular platforms, such as YouTube, Twitter, and TikTok," the authors wrote. "Without greater transparency and access to data, such research questions are out of reach."

Some of the paper's authors are also behind the NYU AdObserver, a browser plug-in that enables them to analyze Facebook political ad targeting data. Shortly before the election, Facebook served the AdObserver team with a cease-and-desist letter.

Facebook, for its part, seems to be increasingly interested in limiting the rampant political polarization of its platform. Last month, Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company was launching an experiment to limit the amount of political news in some users' news feeds. "One of the top pieces of feedback we're hearing from our community right now is that people don't want politics and fighting to take over their experience on our services," Zuckerberg said.

• Why it's hard to fight misinformation in a pandemic - Protocol — The ... ›
• Meet the researchers and activists fighting misinformation - Protocol ... ›
• A Macedonian misinformation site dominated Parler before the ... ›
  

(03-04-2021, 01:50 PM)Nately120 Wrote: That it does.  It's almost like those old sci fi movies were trying to warn us about this sort of thing.  Oh well.

(03-04-2021, 01:21 PM)Tiger Teeth Wrote: Do not read them in a boat...

Do not read them with a goat.

(03-04-2021, 01:57 PM)hollodero Wrote: I have a question. What does "Sam-I-Am" mean?

Heard Ted Cruz reciting that, but this word/name made no sense to me. Not that reading a children's poem in Congress makes much sense to me in the first place, but that still occupied my mind. 

(03-04-2021, 02:00 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: It's typical Dr. Seuss prose.  He uses it frequently in his books, I think likely to make the text more entertaining for children.  Instead of saying "I am Sam"  the character in Green Eggs and Ham says "Sam I am".  Just think of how Yoda talks, which I know is funny as in most languages Yoda's sentence structure would be correct.  Or more correct anyways.

(03-02-2021, 10:47 PM)BFritz21 Wrote: This is getting ridiculous.

Six Dr Seuss books won't be published for "racist images."



Democrats continue to destroy pieces of our culture, and pieces of a lot of our childhoods, over stupid things just so they can play the oppressed card.


There's more in the article, but can someone please explain this to me?  Can someone please justify how the left is ruining everything?  

Do Dems just wake up in the morning and think "what can I be offended about today?"

I gotta wonder if any of the groups that this is "offending" are actually offended by it.

Thoughts?

(03-04-2021, 01:57 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: That's what makes the Twilight Zone, IMO, the best television series ever.  It certainly got uneven towards the end, but Sterling absolutely hammered away at group think and loss of individuality on a near weekly basis.

(03-04-2021, 01:11 PM)Nately120 Wrote: Social media doesn't spread propaganda, people spread propaganda.

(03-04-2021, 01:12 PM)Crazyjdawg Wrote: 1. Those books objectively have offensive content in them. It's not like someone is overreacting to anything. The books had harmful racial stereotypes in them. That's not really disputable.

2. "The left" didn't cancel them. Not only is "the left" not a singular body that makes hivemind decisions, but this wasn't even done due to some call to action on twitter like some of these "cancel culture" issues are. This was done exclusively by the Dr. Seuss Enterprises because they identified the problematic images and stereotypes in their own books.

3. None of the books that the Publisher voluntarily chose to stop publishing were Dr. Seuss' famous works. I've never heard of any of the books being removed. McElligot's Pool? On Beyond Zebra? The Cat's Quizzer? If I ran a Zoo? Are these books part of any person's childhood memories? All of his major releases, such as Green Eggs and Ham, Cat in the Hat etc are still fine. Maybe there are a handful of people who remember 1 or 2 of these books if they were legit Dr. Seuss mega fans when they were children, but the claim that this is removing some big portion of every adult's childhood, I'm not buying that at all.

4. Why are some people so obsessed with keeping racist stuff around? I don't get it. No one is erasing history. It's just updating the catalogue of children's books to be more appropriate for what is accepted today in our society. Please. I'm begging you. Stop freaking out over every single time a company does anything even remotely "woke." The same thing happened with removing the Mr. from Potato head toys and adding disclaimers before videos that had explicitly racist imagery in them. I just...I can't understand how the brains of people who react to these non-stories function. Racism = bad is NOT a hot take. This should be basic logic in our society.

(03-04-2021, 02:55 PM)Mickeypoo Wrote: Neither do guns, but people sure get a warm fuzzy feeling by keeping me from putting a cosmetic AR kit on my 10/22.  Morons.

It's all about the warm fuzzies and not reality.

(03-04-2021, 03:22 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Well, the problem with an AR kit on your 10/22 is that ARs are ugly and the wood stock of a 10/22 is a nice looking design. You shouldn't sully that rifle that way.

(03-04-2021, 03:29 PM)Mickeypoo Wrote: Lol, it's just a dark, composite stock.

I just wanted to make it a little more fun for the kids and the kit was very inexpensive.  Oh well, no soup for you.

(03-04-2021, 03:01 PM)Mickeypoo Wrote: Really?  Harmful?  Getting shot is harmful.  A picture in a Dr. Seuss book from decades ago is not "harmful".

(03-04-2021, 03:01 PM)Mickeypoo Wrote: Really?  Harmful?  Getting shot is harmful.  A picture in a Dr. Seuss book from decades ago is not "harmful".