jwz: 6-Aug-2020 (Thu)

If you work for Facebook, you're part of Trump's re-election campaign.

And also a white supremacist. But I repeat myself.

Facebook Fired An Employee Who Collected Evidence Of Right-Wing Pages Getting Preferential Treatment:

A senior engineer collected internal evidence that showed Facebook was giving preferential treatment to prominent conservative accounts to help them remove fact-checks from their content.
The company responded by removing his post and restricting internal access to the information he cited. On Wednesday the engineer was fired. [...]
Some of Facebook's own employees gathered evidence they say shows Breitbart -- along with other right-wing outlets -- has received special treatment that helped it avoid running afoul of company policy. They see it as part of a pattern of preferential treatment for right-wing publishers and pages, many of which have alleged that the social network is biased against conservatives. [...]
On July 22, a Facebook employee posted a message to the company's internal misinformation policy group noting that some misinformation strikes against Breitbart had been cleared by someone at Facebook seemingly acting on the publication's behalf.
"A Breitbart escalation marked 'urgent: end of day' was resolved on the same day, with all misinformation strikes against Breitbart's page and against their domain cleared without explanation," the employee wrote.
The same employee said a partly false rating applied to an Instagram post from Charlie Kirk was flagged for "priority" escalation by Joel Kaplan, the company's vice president of global public policy. Kaplan once served in George W. Bush's administration and drew criticism for publicly supporting Brett Kavanaugh's controversial nomination to the Supreme Court. [...]
Facebook did not respond to questions about why Kaplan would personally intervene in matters like this.

Facebook-owned Instagram has shielded Trump from potentially negative hashtags while allowing parallel content about Biden to be hijacked by disinformation and smears:

When a person searches Instagram for a hashtag and clicks on it, the platform has automatically generated "related hashtags" pointing users to other relevant content. TTP examined related hashtags for 20 popular terms associated with the Trump and Biden campaigns and found starkly different treatment of the two candidates.
Instagram blocked the display of related hashtags on all 10 of the Trump hashtags reviewed, including #donaldtrump, #trump and #trump2020. That means users were not directed to other content, including anything negative or critical about the president.
But for all 10 similar Biden hashtags, Instagram did display related hashtags, which at times steered users to insults and disinformation about the former vice president, with phrases like #creepyjoebiden, #joebidenpedophile and #joebidenisaracist. [...]
It's not clear why Instagram blocked related hashtags for key Trump-themed content and not for parallel Biden content. It appears to be a custom service that the company did not advertise but performed for certain political figures and celebrities in the past. [...]
TTP found no mention in Instagram's policy website, help center or Facebook's hashtag guidance offering campaigns or brands the ability to turn off related hashtags. Beyond the Trump campaign, it appears to have been done on an ad hoc basis for some politicians, celebrities and Instagram executives. [...]
One interesting case is Instagram's treatment of the hashtag for Brad Parscale, Trump's former campaign manager. On June 23, #bradparscale displayed no related hashtags, TTP observed. But after Parscale's recent demotion, TTP noticed on July 21 that related hashtags had begun appearing on #bradparscale, suggesting the switch had something to do with his changed status.

AOC:

Remember when I asked Zuckerberg why he allowed a white supremacist-linked org to be an official fact checker for Facebook and he wouldn't give a straight answer? Maybe this is why.
The incentives are certainly there.
Dems believe in antitrust, reigning in monopolies, and checking abuse of corporate power.
Zuckerberg himself said he'd go "to the mat and fight" against these points.
Could that include weaponizing FB's platform to influence our elections?

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

4 Comments

Tags: big brother, conspiracies, corporations, doomed

Satanic Abortions

3 years ago

Satanic Abortions Are Protected By Religious Liberty Laws

In accordance with the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), first trimester abortions are now exempt from unnecessary regulations for all individuals practicing The Satanic Temple's religious abortion ritual.
The Satanic abortion ritual provides spiritual comfort and affirms bodily autonomy, self-worth, and freedom from coercive forces with the affirmation of TST's Seven Tenets. The ritual is not intended to convince a person to have an abortion. Instead, it sanctifies the abortion process by instilling confidence and protecting bodily rights when undergoing the safe and scientific procedure.
Religious freedom ensures Satanists have access to safe abortions that are free from unwarranted state interference. Examples of requirements that cannot be enforced on Satanists are:
Mandatory Waiting Periods
The Requirement that Practitioners Withhold Certain Medical Information
Compulsory Counseling Prior to Abortion
Required Reading Materials
Medically Unnecessary Sonograms
Mandatory Listening to the Fetal Heartbeat
Compulsory Burial or Cremation of Fetal Remains
As a federally-recognized religion, The Satanic Temple utilizes RFRA and the Hobby Lobby precedent to protect its members from unnecessary abortion regulations that inhibit their religious practices and force them to violate their deeply-held beliefs.

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.

3 Comments

Tags: big brother, pranks, religion

Wine Windows

3 years ago

Medieval 'wine windows' reopen, reviving Italian plague tradition

Thus, the "wine windows," or buchette del vino, of Tuscany. They are just as they sound: pint-size hatches, carved into the concrete walls of urban wineries and shops, where beverage merchants would serve sips at a safe social distance.
First introduced in the 1600s, their true purpose went untapped for centuries after the plague -- that is, until a new one came along this year.

Previously, previously, previously, previously.

9 Comments

Tags: doomed, plague, retrocomputing

DNA Lounge: Wherein we had our first live burlesque show during lockdown!

3 years ago

Last week we did our first quarantined live show at the club: Apothecary Raree! We've been doing DJ sets from the main stage pretty regularly but this was the first one with real performers.

We recorded about half of the acts the night before, and did the rest live from the main stage. That gave us time to turn over the stage without anyone needing to get too close to each other. It was a short show, only an hour of acts, not counting the DJ before and after, but it went pretty well!

To my great surprise, I was able to upload the show to Youtube. It got dozens of Content-ID hits, but it looks like it's not actually blocked? Yet? I hate you, Milkman Youtube.

We hope to do more of this kind of thing, mostly because we're all going crazy doing nothing! But lest anyone mistake this for a business model -- it's not. It's a small way we can put a little joy out into this dystopian hellscape we're all living through. But it's not a business. The tiny amount we take in via the "Donate" button might cover our bandwidth and staffing costs, but that's about it. And we're still paying rent and insurance on a big empty building.

We've managed to turn this place into a nice little TV studio in the meantime, though. Besides the existing webcast cameras we've also got a mobile recording rig that lets us do more complicated shots. And we've got projection mapping all over the place, which looks just fantastic. Now we're trying to find ways to use it that make sense. And don't kill anybody. And... maybe pay some bills? But probably not.

We've got live DJs tonight: Sound Breaker, Gabber and doomcore with DJs Reinforcer and Pyramidhead. Our DJ webcasts have mostly had a pretty good "turnout", and the chat has been really active, especially at Death Guild, Star Crash and Turbo Drive. Come hang out!