Is Anyone Else Seeing Political Ads Pushed to Them On These Forums?

[Yihang]

Originally Posted by Uncle Bob

Do you still get the begging letters from Ivanka now that you're in Beijing??

Wish I did. Made me feel real special. Was addressed to me and everything.

[HeinSdL]

I just watched 'The Social Dilemma' on Netflix. Super interesting/revealing, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to figure out more precisely what's going on in cyberspace.


Starting premise is that the social platforms have one simple goal, and that is to make money (duh! obviously). They do that almost exclusively by selling advertisements. To sell more they need to ensure the users stay glued to the screen.


And that is where it gets ugly. To ensure users stay glued to the screen the algorithms have figured out that what the user wants to see (and is most likely to click on) are news feeds which are in line with already held beliefs by the user. This is no-one's fault, it's just a by-product of how the algorithm works in conjunction with human weakness (I want to be told I am right and I am less interested in hearing alternative viewpoints).


The unfortunate thing is that this has heavily polarized debate on just about anything of importance these days, Democrat/Republican, Climate change is real/Climate change is a hoax, Leave/Remain, etc. And because both sides get fed mainly self-reinforcing data (which reinforces regardless of whether that data is real or fake), both sides are thoroughly convinced they are right (and the other side is crazy, at best).


So now we are more or less screwed. The creators of the platforms (which are the ones speaking mainly in abovementioned documentary) never intended it to be like this. Adding the 'Like' button was supposed to be fun, some kindness from friends to give positive feedback. Instead it has contributed to more unhappiness, even rising suicide rates, as vulnerable teens don't get as many likes as their friends. Other example: The concept of showing you what you want to see should be a great idea, but is has now completely stifled proper debate. Even CF suffers from this at times.


Conclusion of the documentary: we don't have long to fix this, otherwise humanity will not have the capacity to make some very important decisions in the very near future and actually has a good chance of destroying itself.


As stated, that documentary I can't recommend highly enough.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by HeinSdL

I just watched 'The Social Dilemma' on Netflix. Super interesting/revealing, I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to figure out more precisely what's going on in cyberspace...

A 6,600-word internal memo from a fired Facebook data scientist (Sophie Zhang) details how the social network knew leaders of countries around the world were using their site to manipulate voters — and failed to act.
➥ https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article...tleblower-memo

“If the product is free, you’re the product,” Tristan Harris (former design ethicist at Google, and co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology) reminds us. And while most people are aware that they’re being mined for data while on these sites, few realize how deep the probe goes. If you think the trade-off is merely getting targeted ads for your favorite sneakers, you are in for a big shock.

[LouK]

As a paid subscriber to this site I would much prefer to be opted out from political and bikinis I would never wear. Marine advertisers do seem appropriate though.

Two thumbs up for the ‘Social Dilemma’, an honest look at how we are being manipulated by social media. Realistically though, I probably shouldn’t complain that the RNC is wasting pennies on me to support the president with the most environmentally adverse reputation in recent memory. My largest regret is that they’re wasting pennies, not dollars.

[Yihang]

Just watched the show.........

And realized the ramifications that all this is banned in China. My friend's 10 yo goes to cognitive computing class on the weekend. Cellphones are banned in schools.

We are ****ed.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Yihang

...We are ****ed.

Not if we all just stopped. Stop using Facebook (and their many cousins), stop using Google. Stop being complicit in our own destruction.

It's nearly impossible to completely disengage from everything, but it is very possible to take back most control.

• If it's "free" then think long and hard about what you are actually paying. Nothing is free. Not even CF.
• Stop using Facebook and all the other similar platforms. I know, it's hard. THEY make it hard. But you can do it.
• Stop using Google anything. Facebook gets the bad wrap, but Google is far more insidious.
• Break the chains by running blockers (Ghostery, Badger, etc). Block ads with adblockers, and use alternative search tools like DuckDuck. Better still, use your own VPN.

It is possible to limit your complicity in all these stuff. It just takes a little effort.

[Yihang]

Yeh the irony is the chinese government is blocking me from all that, but im using a paid VPN to get myself back into it.....oh the irony.

It was probably the great firewall that weaned me off FB all those years ago.

Still need my google though. what other search engines can you use?

[FastTrout]

There is a major election going on, you are not going to avoid seeing political things right now.

[FastTrout]

Originally Posted by Uncle Bob

Do you still get the begging letters from Ivanka now that you're in Beijing??

I wish she would send me a begging letter

[GordMay]

DuckDuckGo is a metasearch* tool, which gathers results from over 400 sources, including Yahoo, Bing, and Wikipedia.
DuckDuckGo offers users genuine privacy, and control, customisation.
In spite of DuckDuckGo’s efforts to offer a “smarter search”, it’s not able to match Google for sheer accuracy and intuition.

* it gathers results, as an anonymous query, from other search engines, and combines them.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Yihang

...Still need my google though. what other search engines can you use?

Gord beat me to it. I haven't used Google for many years now. DuckDuck is my go-to. There are others out there as well.

And don't use a Google account for anything. Don't use their "free" tools. Just don't.

Originally Posted by FastTrout

There is a major election going on, you are not going to avoid seeing political things right now.

I never see any ads; not political, not bikini ads, nothing. It's not hard.

[bletso]

And clean your cookie files cache often!

[Lake-Effect]

The ad systems can detect where a user is from by their IP address; advertisers are not going to pay to serve US ads to outside of the US. So no US election ads appearing for me.

I regard Google, and to a lesser extent Facebook as trailblazers... companies that were instrumental in making the Internet as useful as it is; Google led the way in search, advertising, and many web addons and utilities like mapping, and Facebook made the web easy enough that grandma could use it. So I don't see them as evil so much as "too successful", and maybe too long as monopolies, with an outsized clout. Of the two, I dislike Facebook as a company more; they seem to play more games with their data, and let it out to more questionable uses.

I teeter between using an adblocker and not; I believe that content providers like CF need income, but I also hate seeing inappropriate or downright gross/offensive ads. Eg I've never searched for ear wax problems, but because they know I'm an older guy, I get these "ear wax remover" ads frequently, and they used to be completely gross.

[Yihang]

The scary thing is 'the social' media is controlled by Ai. Sure the content is still made by humans, for now. But the way it is shown to us is almost entirely dictated by Ai.

So the argument that we've always been manipulated by TV and other media outlets doesn't stand because those are at least filtered through human beings with somewhat of a conscience. We are really in unchartered territories. Google and Facebook doesn't know where all this is headed either.

It's a little creepy google seem to know what I want to type into the search engine before I do it.

Ai is the way forward though. So I think the best we can do is realize how we are being manipulated and act accordingly. Maybe there's an idea for an app in there somewhere.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Yihang

...Ai is the way forward though. So I think the best we can do is realize how we are being manipulated and act accordingly. Maybe there's an idea for an app in there somewhere.

Completely agree, except I think the answer is to recognize that we are being manipulated, and therefore the best answer is to not use those tools.

Just say no to Facebook and Google and all their kissing cousins. It's not hard to do. Before Facebook people used to stay in touch via email or lists or Usenet or forums. There are a number of alternatives to Google, and there are easy ways to block the tracking.

For example, I can see that there are four background trackers attempting to tag me on this page as I type. I've blocked them all. If everyone did this, Google et. al would be stopped, and they've have to come up with a different business model that didn't involve stealing my privacy.