Society's ChildS


Light Sabers

Social media giants Facebook, Google and Twitter unleash 'counterspeech' psy-op to protect people from 'extremism'

Jake Anderson
The AntiMedia
Thu, 18 Jan 2018 11:08 UTC
george orwell
If you're a radical or search for "extremist" content online, the biggest social networks and internet companies on Earth will soon be converting you into a docile moderate, or at least, they will try.

Facebook, Google, and Twitter have been screening and filtering extremist content for years, but on Wednesday, the gatekeepers of the internet confirmed to Congress that they are accelerating their efforts and will target users who may be exposed to extremist/terrorist content, redirecting them instead to "positive and moderate" posts.

Representatives for the three companies testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation to outline specific ways they are trying to combat extremism online. Facebook, Google, and Twitter aren't just tinkering with their algorithms to restrict certain kinds of violent content and messaging. They're also using machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) to manufacture what they call "counterspeech," which has a hauntingly Orwellian ring to it. Essentially, their goal is to catch burgeoning extremists, or people being radicalized online, and re-engineer them via targeted propagandistic advertisements.

Comment: In fact it already has. Their use of vague language is by design, and thus can be used to call almost anything 'extremist' or 'radicalization'. Content that exposes one to the truth or goes against the official line can and will be treated as such the further we go down this road. See also:

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Biohazard

'Chaos' as central London station closed and 1,500 people evacuated after gas main leak


RT
Tue, 23 Jan 2018 15:09 UTC
London gas leak
© London Fire Brigade / Twitter
Some 1,450 people have been evacuated from a nightclub and a hotel, and major station Charing Cross is closed after a gas main ruptured in the Strand, central London.

Witnesses have described "chaos" as doormen at the Heaven nightclub ordered them to leave after the alarm was raised at around 2am. Guests at the hotel were moved into emergency accommodation.
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No Entry

Puerto Rico to privatize 'crippled' public energy company


RT
Tue, 23 Jan 2018 13:56 UTC
PREPA Puerto Rico power utility
© Alvin Baez / ReutersA man walks past the headquarters of Puerto Rican power utility PREPA (also known as AEE) in San Juan
As Puerto Rico continues its recovery from Hurricane Maria's devastation, the island's government plans to sell its public energy company's assets in a bid to modernize their power supply system and recoup its economic losses.

Puerto Rico Governor Ricardo Rossello announced Monday that the US territory will begin the privatization process of the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA), selling assets to companies that will "transform the generation system into a modern, efficient, and less expensive one for the people."

"The Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (PREPA) has become a heavy burden on our people, who are now hostage to its poor service and high cost," Rossello said in a televised address. "What we know today as the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority does not work and cannot continue to operate like this."

Comment: Further reading: Puerto Rico: 1 million still without power 100 days after hurricane Maria

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Star of David

Palestinian-American groups withdraw from women's march in protest of Israel's SodaStream promoter Scarlett Johansson


The Palestine Chronicle
Sun, 21 Jan 2018 14:01 UTC
Scarlett Johansson
© YouTubeScarlett Johansson speaking at at the Women's March in Washington last year.
NBC reported that three Palestinian human rights groups pulled out of the Los Angeles Women's March Saturday after it was announced that one of the featured speakers was actress Scarlett Johansson, who promoted SodaStream, a beverage company that owns a factory in an Israeli settlement in the West Bank.

Comment: Given that Israeli settlements in the West Bank are illegal and are built with the intent to create 'facts on the ground' in order to steal land from Palestine, it is easy to understand the anger and disappointment at Johansson's choice of SodaStream over Oxfam. But is she a 'liberal zionist' of sorts or is she simply motivated by the handsome money she gets from SodaStream?

More background on this story:

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Folder

Kim Dotcom sues US & NZ governments for billions of dollars in damages


RT
Tue, 23 Jan 2018 07:49 UTC
kim dotcom
© Nigel Marple / Reuters
Internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom is suing the New Zealand and US governments for billions of dollars in damages over his arrest in 2012 and the subsequent collapse of his business.

Papers filed in the New Zealand High Court claim the government pursued an erroneous arrest warrant with malice and without proper legal disclosure. The Megaupload founder is now seeking damages for the destruction of his business, loss of reputation, as well as lost business opportunities and legal costs.

Accountants calculate that the Megaupload group of companies would be worth $10bn today, if they had not been shut during the 2012 raid. Dotcom was a 68% shareholder in the business, and is seeking the estimated value of this - $6.8 billion, along with additional costs.

Dotcom revealed he had lodged the multi-billion dollar lawsuit on his wedding day - which coincided with the sixth anniversary of the raid on his Auckland mansion.

Comment: See also: Megaupload founder agrees to settlement with New Zealand after FBI "military-style raid" on home

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Megaphone

Tried on social media, convicted by the press

Sharon Coen
Quillette
Mon, 22 Jan 2018 00:01 UTC
Margaret Atwood
The struggling economics of news organisations these days means that it's cheap to report debates and controversies taking place on social media and so these rows, especially when they involve well-known people, get more prominent coverage in newspapers and news bulletins than they deserve.

Recent reports have focused on the savaging Canadian author Margaret Atwood has received on social media for an article she authored in which she claimed that the #MeToo campaign was a symptom of a broken legal system. Referring to a case in which a Canadian academic lost his job after allegations of sexual harassment, she claimed that the campaign has become a "witch hunt" in which the idea of due process - that people must be presumed innocent until found guilty under the law, is being threatened by mob rule by which an anonymous allegation (usually of some kind of sexual misconduct) is enough to unleash a reputation-destroying avalanche of negative comments.

Comment: While the author's point is a worthy one, it doesn't necessarily stand to reason that, by focusing on what's happening on social media, journalists are missing an opportunity to provide useful information. Often what people are saying about a debate can be as important as the debate itself. However, such reporting does run the risk of elevating social media in importance, when the dangers of such media have not been fully sussed-out. See: Atwood's original article: Margaret Atwood: Am I a bad feminist?

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Tornado1

'The Storm': Pro-Trump conspiracy theory is gaining traction

Paris Martineau
New York Magazine
Tue, 19 Dec 2017 00:01 UTC
The Storm
They have a surprisingly decent graphics department over in Crazyland.
A new conspiracy theory called "The Storm" has taken the grimiest parts of the internet by, well, storm. Like Pizzagate, the Storm conspiracy features secret cabals, a child sex-trafficking ring led (in part) by the satanic Democratic Party, and of course, countless logical leaps and paranoid assumptions that fail to hold up under the slightest fact-based scrutiny. However, unlike Pizzagate, the Storm isn't focused on a single block of shops in D.C., or John Podesta's emails. It's much, much bigger than that.

As most terrible things do, this story begins with a post on /pol/, a sub-board of the more-or-less-anonymous, anything-goes website 4chan. Over the last few years, /pol/ - which technically stands for "politically incorrect" - has slowly but surely become a top contender for the ever-coveted title of the most upsetting community online. It's the sort of place where neo-Nazis and people who believe women shouldn't have basic human rights used to meet before we started verifying them on Twitter and electing them to public office. And as of late, it's expanded its ranks to include fringe members of all shapes and sizes.

Comment: While the above article seems to have a valid perspective on the Q phenomenon, the author seems to believe that any conspiracy theory, or indeed anything that goes against the mainstream narrative, is false and worthy of ridicule. It's important to read between the lines and keep our wits about us when looking at the geopolitical landscape. Something the Q Anon folks are clearly not doing.

See also:

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Fire

5 still missing after gas well explosion in Oklahoma


RT
Tue, 23 Jan 2018 12:42 UTC
5 missing after gas well explosion in Oklahoma 2018
Five oil rig workers in Oklahoma are missing following an explosion at a gas well. The fire reached "everything" on location at the well situated about 100 miles southeast of the city of Tulsa.

As of 3:30pm, secondary fires that started after the explosion have been extinguished, but the head of a collapsed derrick, a type of crane with a moveable pivoted arm for lifting or moving heavy weights, was still burning.

Authorities searched a wooded area around the well for the missing people, with no success. Seventeen others were rescued.

Comment: Also See:

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Propaganda

China's take down of hip-hop, Bieber, Grammy's and "immoral content"

Pei Li
Reuters
Mon, 22 Jan 2018 10:14 UTC
PG One & Gai
PG One & Gai
China's censors have a new target in a widespread clamp-down on popular culture: the country's nascent hip-hop scene, which resonated with Chinese youth last year on hugely popular television show "Rap of China."

Hip hop artists Wang Hao, known as "PG One" and Zhou Yan, known as "GAI" - the two winners of the show - have been sanctioned in recent weeks for bad behaviour or content at odds with Communist Party values. GAI was pulled from hit show "The Singer" last week.

The crackdown on hip-hop, still very much a new genre in China, reflects a broader squeeze on popular culture as the country's stability-focused leadership looks to rein in potential platforms for youthful dissent.
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Camcorder

Activists protesting in front of Mandalay Bay Casino demand release of Paddock tapes

Matt Agorist
The Free Thought Project
Mon, 22 Jan 2018 11:34 UTC
protest mandalay bay
© Joey Lankowski. Facebook
Dozens of protesters took to the front of Mandalay Bay Casino on Sunday to demand the release of the surveillance footage of Stephen Paddock from inside the hotel.

"Show us the tapes!" demanded the protesters who bravely called for transparency within an investigation that has been filled with retractions, half-truths, and contradictions since the beginning.

Activist Joey Lankowski organized the event which was an effort to let the casino and the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department know that the people will not walk away from this with no answers. The families and friends of 58 victims, as well as the hundreds of injured concert goers, deserve to know the truth.

During the protest, activists noted how the failure to release the footage only fuels conspiracy theories and disinformation online.

"We want to know the truth. We're tired of the lies, we're tired of the murders, it's got to stop," one protester told the local news. "They should release the video."

Comment: Chances are the public will never see the tapes, or at least, the original unedited ones. See also: Three months on, Las Vegas police still won't release basic information about Route 91 Festival massacre

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