Level1 News July 31 2018: Fake News, Faker Users | Level One Techs

https://www.one-tab.com/page/t3_K6KvGR-elX7l9MnXNLw


This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://level1techs.com/video/level1-news-july-31-2018-fake-news-faker-users

@wendell can we please get a link to the images in the background? would be nice being able to get a look at them without it being obscured by some nerds

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How come there are sometimes 2 Threads for a news episode :thinking:

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Thanks for letting us know. Ive hid it for now :slight_smile:

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I’ve noticed it a few times the last month or so, idk if the bot is messing up or it just gets the publish notice twice… who knows what YouTube is doing ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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iirc wendell said it was a bot problem

On the Alex Jones topic.

I originally tuned in to Alex Jones channel because the mainstream media made him sound like another William Cooper type ( a conspiracy theorist who died in 2001) . The media loves to say things like “Alex Jones is into UFO conspiracies, Sasquatch, believes there are secret bases on the moon, bla bla bla…” ; Coast to Coast AM type stuff.

But Infowars never gets into those topics at all. Alex Jones is mostly a political conspiracist (911, that kind of thing) and a lot of the things he says aren’t really all that groundbreaking. It’s the same type of stuff you would see from other Youtube channels of similar nature. From what I have seen, there is definitely some truth to what Jones says, but he also parrots from other sources that do hold truth to them. But Alex Jones does put a sensationalist spin to them.

I mostly get the impression that the established media are out to get him because he found a way to monetize his channel and platform to a point where he was getting a very large viewership and following. I think some of the old media outlets are worried that they are losing viewership, advertising dollars and relevancy to channels/ sites like Infowars. So they are trying to circumvent Alex Jone reach on social media and make an example out of him. CNN has lost a lot of viewership over the last year, its not hard to find their ratings. It seems like petty bi-partisan fighting on both sides.

But, I do agree that there is something a little weird about Alex Jones. He does seem like a character of some kind.

No, he just sells snake oil anti-radiation drugs and screams about making the frogs gay.

Thats to put it mildly.

A broken clock is right twice a day, the same is true for a nutjob.

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I’ve had the upvotes/downvotes appear on my Facebook. Only seen them in the comments of posts by pages. They’re independent from the likes/reactions, and it looks like they have more of an effect on comment order.

It looks like they’re trying to push more controversial comments further down, and filter out the people just tagging others.

That kinda sounds like something he himself would say~

Also even if that is true, that doesn’t change the fact that he’s spouting a lot of bullshit and selling it as truth.
Not saying traditional media is always honest, but the truth to bullshit ratio is definitely wildly different.

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@wendell @ryan about the Kodi thing… I think you may be getting something wrong here.

This is in the making for a while now, and fun fact: Kodi itself is trying to push in that direction because for some time Kodi itself seemed to have gotten into the mix here and got sued by the content industry. They are working together now actually.

This is about plugins for “clearly illegal” services. We had a few of those cases going to court already, and basically that means what it sounds like. It’s about sites that are made solely for the purpose of pirating content. So YouTube would not fall under that unless Google starts allowing pirated content, which I don’t think they will in the foreseeable future.

Sure people upload pirated content, but it’s usually taken down pretty quickly (if it isn’t filtered by content-ID outright). For those illegal sites there is no such mechanism, they don’t take down content that is illegal because… duh.

And from that perspective it is understandable that plugin authors for those sites would be liable, because those are tools to access the same content of those same illegal sites. The same is true for Popcorn time by the way.

Also… wendell’s Star Trek collection is protected here, just as well as it is for you. TV recordings of freely available channels are legal, there’s no way around that (currently). It doesn’t matter where they are stored. What matters however is if you share them, because you are allowed to make private and personal copies, but not distribute them.


Regarding german states switching to Windows, that was Munich with their own Distro, not Berlin.
Honestly we just need to get a state wide state-sponsored Linux Distro that’s used everywhere, like the Government Site Builder… The BSI needs to do and certify that or nothing will happen. They have at least some clue of what they’re doing.

(Fake news and Streaming video piracy)

The thing about piracy is that it breaks the system. Even though the system is already severely broken, all it does is make it worse. It seems like arguing the new delivery methods is a waste of breath as well. No one wants to retool this late in the game; for financial reasons.

There is however a huge issue with associating stream recording directly with piracy. There are many legitimate uses of stream recordings that don’t break the system. This is in every way over reach. Like DRM it’s more likely to punish the innocent than prevent piracy.

This kind of ties in to the war on “fake news”. This is clearly a grab at the flow of information. Now it’s even financially facilitated; so it’s a cash grab as well. This is probably why Facebook is so adamant about fighting “fake news”.

On the governmental side of the concerns, the concerns for organized dissent grows with instability in the economy. The OG of crowd technologies is in full swing right now. When the powers that be make a statement, they don’t want it second guessed… Ask Ajit Pai. They want to make a statement, the public believe it and move on. That doesn’t happen where “fake news” exists.

The funny part of this is how it effects the punditry of the true believers. The recorded content that is used to bolster the talking points and the public political discourse is to become illegal. Someone who doesn’t understand the technology and how it’s used can often be pointing the dangerous end of it at their faces and not know it. This appears to be happening. Disconnecting themselves from the public in such a way, by removing the personal liberties of those who are already won over, is a bit counter intuitive. It’s probably going to be seen as a betrayal.

They don’t understand the functionality that they destroy; because they don’t even think about it. The internet is literally being dismantled one function at a time. They keep thinking that all will be well after they get control of (_______); even though it consistently hasn’t in the past. It’s just a grasp at another straw… and they just don’t learn.

The main point is, too often, more favorable aspects fall by the wayside; than unfavorable aspects are thwarted. It just keeps getting worse and more importantly, more unstable. Very important complexity is whittled away.

What might happen if the internet were to crash? Could it get that bad? Is there precedent in earlier systems that might support the possibility?

Though every other social system that we have ever created has crashed, there was a transition between internet 1.0 and internet 2.0. This was however to set up the internet for commerce. It wasn’t a renewal project.

There are many renewal projects in the works as we type. This might mean that the internet is essentially safe. If it does destabilize to a point that it no longer functions, there are some contingencies to fall back on. There is Geeks Without Bounds’ decentralized internet project; that functions as coops and there is a few new ICO ventures that are interesting. Gun to my head, I’d say the next internet is a phoenix project.

P.S. This may have seemed like a tangent, but it seems that the issues are part of a larger problem.

(twitter)

The key to monetizing twitter is monetizing it’s patrons… which Facebook has yet to do. This is interesting. One of the first big things that happened on YouTube was open public discourse. People were discussing important issues and building communities. This was decentralizing public discourse itself; away from the guided partisan politics. This can’t happen in a neo-liberal society. How are we to fight this?

Look at the actions of the past decade and a half. The switch from television to the internet was a pretty serious shock to the system. A lot of control measures evaporated in the 2000s. Many things were leaked that might not have, if not for the telecom tech that promoted them.

The Snowden report clearly showed how industry and governance were working in conjunction to direct information; not only to secure commercial and government interests, but also to control the information that flows down the pipe.

One main problem with a capitalistic information society is that information is to be commodified. This means that it it is also to be protected with usage rights. What was happening in the early days of YouTube was not only legal but also productive; and Google thwarted it in any way they could. Now their model is monetary coercion.

The thing about social media outlets is they aren’t the only way for content providers to monetize their content. This is just leaving money on the table when it comes to providing stockholder value. Not doing this is completely counter intuitive. It’s completely irrational. It’s horrible business; but yet it happens.

It seems like the level of complexity required to centralize decentralization is enormous. Dealing with large numbers of patrons (ie. millions) is a logistical nightmare. You just can’t do it and have control of the end product. The work load would have to be distributed as well; and no one seems willing to do that anymore other than services that are dedicated specifically to exactly that; like Patreon for instance, and they’re not just going to give social media companies money for nothing.

It looks like the old standby of paid subscriptions is in the works for many of them. Will you pay, now that you’re hooked?