Greg's Corner

Updates from May, 2017 Toggle Comment Threads | Keyboard Shortcuts

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  Geebo 9:00 am on May 2, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Bloomberg, News ( 7 ), Twitter ( 13 )   

  Twitter strikes deal with Bloomberg to provide real news 

  

  Limited character count social network Twitter, announced yesterday they were entering into a partnership with one of the more trusted news organizations in the business. On Monday, at an event for advertisers, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey detailed plans for them to host a 24 hour live news stream produced by Bloomberg.

  Dorsey was quoted as saying…

  “We want to be the first place that anyone hears of anything that’s going on that matters to them, the first place where people hear of what matters. That is our focus, and that is what we will work so hard to deliver.”

  This is a great move for Twitter. Not only is Twitter usually the first place a lot of people go worldwide for details on breaking stories, now it could be the first place where a lot of these stories are confirmed. This is in direct contrast to what Facebook is doing by relying on themselves and users to try and combat the modern scourge that is fake news.

  Outside of the Bloomberg news stream, Twitter will also be entering into other entertainment streams as well. This could be beneficial for the financially questionable platform as the streams will be ad supported. In its history, Twitter has always had the spectre of profitability hanging over its head. Not only could this push Twitter past Facebook in legitimacy, but it could also bring them to new levels of financial stability.

   

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  Geebo 9:01 am on May 1, 2017 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Election ( 21 ), Facebook ( 178 ), fake news ( 12 ), propaganda   

  Facebook claims that foreign agents used propaganda to influence 2016 election 

  

  Facebook recently released a report claiming that there were agents they believe were backed by foreign governments who tried using the social network to influence the 2016 presidential election. While not outright saying that it was the Russians, Facebook did say in its report that their findings did not contradict the US Director of National Intelligence’s claim that Russia was allegedly interfering.

  The propaganda was supposedly spread through the following ways. First, bad actors would create legitimate looking websites that would post false information, or as we commonly call it now, ‘fake news’. They would then set up fake Facebook accounts by the thousands and repost the false information. Then, actual people, who don’t know it’s false information, would repost these false stories. Surprisingly, this wasn’t done by using bots, or automated scripts, but were done by multitudes of human users.

  The social network has said that it’s taking steps to prevent these kinds of events from happening again, but don’t Facebook’s users bear some responsibility in this matter? It’s so much easier to just click share rather than researching a story. This is especially true for people who prefer to remain in their own echo chambers with their personal biases.

  While Facebook can take steps to try to prevent this spread of misinformation, it’s ultimately up to us to be more discerning with what content we post to our virtual walls.