Tag: social media

Twitter’s ‘Birdwatch’ Community Fact-Checking Feature is Crowdsourcing Censorship

Now that Trump is out of office, many have been half expecting that mainstream media and Silicon Valley’s hyper-active ‘fact-check’ brigades might calm down, have a few wheat grass smoothies and bask in their momentous victory. Unfortunately, this new class of self-styled thought police are just getting warmed up. Jack’s got a plan.

Before we discuss Twitter’s latest dystopian add-on feature, let’s first establish a few important terms of reference as to the role which Big Tech has ascended to. The bottom line is that Twitter was caught directly meddling in the 2020 US Election and the mainstream press have worked hard to obfuscate this fact. When the Hunter Biden laptop scandal materialized prior to the November election, Twitter took the unilateral partisan decision to shutdown any information on the story, and even went so far as to shutdown the account of the New York Post who originally broke the story, and even suspended the White House Press Secretary’s account for retweeting it, as well as other high-profile staffers. Emboldened by Twitter’s bombast, Democrat leaders, mainstream media and even ‘the Big Guy’ Joe Biden himself – all clung to one singular narrative claiming the Hunter Biden story was somehow untrue, baseless misinformation planted by The Russians!™ to undermine candidate Biden. Not only were they all wrong, but we later learned that partisans at FBI had in fact been quietly sitting on Hunter Biden’s laptop since autumn 2019, effectively keeping it on ice so as not to hurt Biden’s Presidential run. After the election, Twitter, along with Facebook and YouTube, then took what appeared to be coordinated action to pursue any users who dared to challenge the 2020 election result, in some cases prohibiting terms like “voter fraud” and “election fraud” on their platforms. This wave of censorship and fact-checking came into effect even before many of the court challenges. Regardless, the new ad hoc corporate ‘truth committees’ appeared omnipotent in their anointed role as information gatekeepers of the new digital public square. If that wasn’t enough, after Twitter and Facebook’s political purge, Big Tech cartel members and Democrat activists then conspired in the take-down an emerging competitor, Parler, taking the social media completely offline, and pressuring its vendors to abandon their service commitments with the new social media firm.

While this approached may have worked for them in the short-term, and indeed helped to achieve the election results they wanted, it won’t erase that fact Big Tech is guilty of the very crime which Democrats and media mavens spend 5 years trying to convince the world of when they floated the evidence-free conspiracy theory that the Russians ‘meddled’ and colluded with the Trump campaign in order to install The Donald in the White House in 2016.

Now, creative technocrats at Twitter appear to have devised a tangential escape route (and Section 230 workaround) from their own obvious culpability in election meddling and political censorship. It’s called “Birdwatch,” a new feature designed to supposedly combat the supposed omnipresent threat of ‘misinformation’ on their platform – by allowing users to add so-called ‘fact-check’ notes to peoples’ tweets. It’s supposed to allow ‘regular users’ (how are going to determine who is a ‘regular user’ is another question) called ‘Birdwatchers’ who will be allowed add to fact-check notes and provide ‘informative context’ for tweets.

Wait a minute. Call me old fashioned, but don’t Tweets already have a forum for discussion, context and debate? Isn’t that what the comment section below each Tweet is for? I used to think so.

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The Internet’s War On Wall Street Did What Government Could Not—It United America

In the last three weeks, after the Trumpists were duped into thinking they could stop the election of Joe Biden by walking into the capitol and taking selfies with cops, the American technocratic police state has shifted into hyperdrive. In the name of stopping the “insurrection” that wasn’t, President Joe Biden and his team of neoliberal cronies have moved to criminalize speech, up to and including arresting people for trolling with memes as far back as 2016!

Facebook, Twitter, Google, Amazon, Apple, and the like have been unceremoniously creating tens of thousands of online unpersons since January 6. Establishment hacks, hungry for more power, have seized this moment to increase the surveillance state apparatus and push for the criminalization of everything and anything that is anti-establishment. A nightmarish police state is unfolding in front of us and because the Trumpists were the first to be sacrificed, the left has still been on their honeymoon ignoring the fact that “pro-democracy” Biden is quickly becoming a dictator, bypassing Congress and ramming through a record number of executive actions.

To put it mildly, since the onset of lockdowns last March, those of us who have been paying attention, have seen that the outlook is bleak, so long as the masses keep allowing their elected officials to take away their rights in the name of perceived “safety.”

All promise is not lost, however. There have been multiple glimmers of hope, proving and reasserting the power of the individual versus the establishment. Gavin Newsom, who has been compared to Hitler for his draconian and entirely arbitrary lockdown orders, likely reacting to a massive recall effort against him, suddenly reversed course on the lockdowns this week, allowing struggling businesses to hang on to their life’s work. But this was just the beginning.

On Tuesday, a paradigm shift took place unlike anything we’ve seen in history. A populist movement started on Reddit that threw aside their political differences and moved to take back some of this power and wealth that has been extracted from them particularly over the last year, but going back decades before.

Gamestop, stopped the game.

The rigged game that has paid for yachts with helopads belonging to the myriad of slime balls on Wall Street, whose job description entails betting (in a casino they own) that businesses will fail, and then ensuring their failure, was exposed. In the last few days, millions have witnessed — many for the first time ever — that the system is a rigged club, and they are not in it.

The coordinated effort by millions on the internet has shown the establishment that the people have power. It knocked them on their heels as kids with $500 in their bank accounts helped take down multi-billion dollar hedge funds. Predictably, however, like the establishment does every time it is threatened, it used its power and influence to attempt to stop it.

On Thursday, the Robinhood app ironically began acting like the Sheriff of Nottingham as it froze trading to protect hedge funds from rising stock prices of GME, AMC, and NOK. This was de facto market manipulation to protect Wall Street while screwing over the individual investor.

But this move did not go unnoticed. In fact, it was an act so egregious that it garnered the attention of political enemies who actually found a moment of solidarity to stand against it.

MAGA Congressman from Arizona’s 4th District, Paul Gosar, along with Ted Cruz, and Lauren Boebert, united with their perceived political foes across the aisle like Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to call out this coordinated effort by Big Tech to collude against private investors.

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Social Media Influencer Charged with Election Interference Stemming from Voter Disinformation Campaign

The complaint alleges that in 2016, Mackey established an audience on Twitter with approximately 58,000 followers. A February 2016 analysis by the MIT Media Lab ranked Mackey as the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming Election, ranking his account above outlets and individuals such as NBC News (#114), Stephen Colbert (#119) and Newt Gingrich (#141).

As alleged in the complaint, between September 2016 and November 2016, in the lead up to the Nov. 8, 2016, U.S. Presidential Election, Mackey conspired with others to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages designed to encourage supporters of one of the presidential candidates (the “Candidate”) to “vote” via text message or social media, a legally invalid method of voting.

For example, on Nov. 1, 2016, Mackey allegedly tweeted an image that featured an African American woman standing in front of an “African Americans for [the Candidate]” sign.  The image included the following text: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home. Text ‘[Candidate’s first name]’ to 59925[.] Vote for [the Candidate] and be a part of history.”  The fine print at the bottom of the image stated: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by [Candidate] for President 2016.”

The tweet included the typed hashtags “#Go [Candidate]” and another slogan frequently used by the Candidate. On or about and before Election Day 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “[Candidate’s first name]” or some derivative to the 59925 text number, which was used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by the defendant and his co-conspirators.

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Twitter Encourages Users to Snitch on Each Other with ‘Birdwatch’ Feature

Social media giant Twitter has announced a new feature called “Birdwatch” which aims to encourage users to police and flag each other’s tweets if they believe they spread misinformation. The company claims it wants to “broaden the range of voices” fighting against misinformation, but the feature has the potential to devolve into flagging wars between different factions of users.

In a recent blog post, Twitter announced a new feature on its site called “Birdwatch,” which allows users to add notes with “helpful context” to tweets that they believe are misleading. To participate, users must have certain information on file with Twitter such as their phone number, ostensibly to prove the account belongs to a real person.

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Telegram feature exposes your precise address to hackers

If you’re using an Android device—or in some cases an iPhone—the Telegram messenger app makes it easy for hackers to find your precise location when you enable a feature that allows users who are geographically close to you to connect. The researcher who discovered the disclosure vulnerability and privately reported it to Telegram developers said they have no plans to fix it.

The problem stems from a feature called People Nearby. By default, it’s turned off. When users enable it, their geographic distance is shown to other people who have it turned on and are in (or are spoofing) the same geographic region. When People Nearby is used as designed, it’s a useful feature with few if any privacy concerns. After all, a notification that someone is 1 kilometer or 600 meters away still leaves stalkers guessing where, precisely, you are.

Stalking made simple

Independent researcher Ahmed Hassan, however, has shown how the feature can be abused to divulge exactly where you are. Using readily available software and a rooted Android device, he’s able to spoof the location his device reports to Telegram servers. By using just three different locations and measuring the corresponding distance reported by People Nearby, he is able to pinpoint a user’s precise location.

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TikTok Is Watching You – Even If You Don’t Have an Account

2020 was TikTok’s year. Although the social media platform was already popular by late-2018, nothing could have boosted its user base faster than our thirst for distraction from the imminent collapse of society. And if all press is good press, TikTok certainly benefited from media attention in 2020, taking centre stage in the geopolitical struggle between China and the US. 

Suddenly, everyone cared about what data was being collected by TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance. But despite the Trump administration’s claims that China might be spying on you via your favourite entertainment app, there is no evidence that your data is less safe in the hands of a Chinese company than in those of the US-based “usual suspects”, like Facebook and Amazon. In fact, in July of 2020, the European Court of Justice struck down the EU-US privacy agreement known as Privacy Shield, on the grounds that US national security laws endangered EU citizens’ data.Life

In light of all this, I wanted some clarity. Taking advantage of the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), I asked TikTok to send me all the data they had on me. Anyone in the EU can do this – here is the template I used, and the email address you should send it to.

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Prince Harry demands immediate social media ‘reform’ following Capitol Hill riot

Prince Harry has voiced his opinion of the need for social media reform following the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot where thousands of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol building in protest of the 2020 election results.

“We are losing loved ones to conspiracy theories, losing a sense of self because of the barrage of mistruths, and at the largest scale, losing our democracies,” the duke said.

“The magnitude of this cannot be overstated,” he added.

He further stated that everyone has experienced the negative consequences of social media at some point, The Independent reported.

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MICROSOFT PATENT SHOWS PLANS TO REVIVE DEAD LOVED ONES AS CHATBOTS

Microsoft has been granted a patent that would allow the company to make a chatbot using the personal information of deceased people.  

The patent describes creating a bot based on the “images, voice data, social media posts, electronic messages”, and more personal information.

“The specific person [who the chat bot represents] may correspond to a past or present entity (or a version thereof), such as a friend, a relative, an acquaintance, a celebrity, a fictional character, a historical figure, a random entity etc”, it goes on to say.

“The specific person may also correspond to oneself (e.g., the user creating/training the chat bot,” Microsoft also describes – implying that living users could train a digital replacement in the event of their death.

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If ‘Facebook is Private’ Why are They Feeding Private Messages of Its Users Directly to the FBI?

Despite decrying censorship when it was happening to them last year, when Donald Trump was banned from Twitter and Facebook earlier this month, the left praised the move by big tech. “Facebook is a private company and can do what they want,” the pro-censorship hypocritical crowd chanted ad nauseum through the digital ether after bad orange man was silenced. But as we have said time and again, Facebook being private is simply not true. Now, however, Facebook has made an unscrupulous Faustian bargain with the federal government which should eliminate all doubt once and for all. They are now willfully handing over private messages of Trump supporters who talked about the events at the capitol on January 6.

Google, Apple, and Amazon all moved to wipe the pro-Trump social media network Parler from the internet earlier this month because of what users on the platform discussed. It was alleged that the handful of dolts who stormed the capitol on January 6 had solely used Parler to plan their laughable, unarmed, silly, unsuccessful, and pitiful attempt to keep Trump in the White House.

Despite the ragtag group of Trumpians posing for selfies, photo-ops, and hanging from banisters, the only thing they accomplished was having D.C. turned into a scene akin to North Korea for Biden’s inauguration. Most honest experts in the media have acknowledged that though a few members of the mob thought they were part of some historic coup to keep their leader in power, the idea that they had any real chance at an insurrection was misleading at best and sheer propaganda used to further the domestic police and surveillance state at worst.

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