Category Archives: August 2014 update four

How Facebook Can Manipulate the November Election

What could be wrong, though, with increasing voter participation? First, some would point out that people who are Facebook oriented — people who spend more time on social networks — might be inordinately liberal. Others, such as John Stossel and me, have asserted that encouraging generally apathetic, disengaged citizens who wouldn’t otherwise vote to cast ballots simply increases the number of low-information voters at election time. Yet there is another problem, as Zittrain explains:

Now consider a hypothetical, hotly contested future election. Suppose that Mark Zuckerberg personally favors whichever candidate you don’t like. He arranges for a voting prompt to appear within the newsfeeds of tens of millions of active Facebook users — but unlike in the 2010 experiment, the group that will not receive the message is not chosen at random. Rather, Zuckerberg makes use of the fact that Facebook “likes” can predict political views and party affiliation, even beyond the many users who proudly advertise those affiliations directly. With that knowledge, our hypothetical Zuck chooses not to spice the feeds of users unsympathetic to his views. Such machinations then flip the outcome of our hypothetical election. Should the law constrain this kind of behavior?

Professor Zittrain calls this “digital gerrymandering,” which is when a website disseminates information in a way that promotes its own political agenda. Any site can do this, and it’s quite insidious because Web users will generally be unaware of the manipulation. After all, would you know it if a social network simply didn’t send you a voting graphic that a certain targeted group received (I rarely even view my Facebook page)? Zittrain’s article title says it all: “Facebook Could Decide an Election Without [sic] Anyone Ever Finding Out.”

FK – ‘Friends’ don’t let ‘friends’ use facebook.

Is this a viable alternative? I may sign up and find out just how much reality they can stand. I’m not counting on being on there very long. I was a patriot and militiamen before the ‘tea parties’ were cool and ‘tea partiers’ are generally only a couple notches above your average golf playing Dubya voter.

Snr. Editorialist at The Hill says Democrats now facing a potentially “catastrophic” mid-term elections

And the now soon-to-be-famous line at the distinguished Washington D.C. insider’s political publication The Hill, “Clinton hurt 2014 Dems”:

Democrats face potentially catastrophic midterm elections that could leave Republicans and conservatives in control of the House, the Senate and the Supreme Court. Yet while Democrats face a political state of emergency, Hillary Clinton this week launched an aggressive preemptive attack — not against Republicans but against Barack Obama, the Democratic president she served as secretary of State, employing lines of attack eerily reminiscent of attacks against Democrats from former Vice President Dick Cheney. (Emphasis added.)

FK – And so the cycle rolls mindlessly on…

Robin Williams did not commit suicide

FK – Kinda what I was thinkin’…

And on a slightly related front:

Saudi Arabian man dies trying to have sex with a donkey

FK – In case you think this is an impossible thing:(Warning Adult content and kids discussing adult content in Spanish, allegedly)

FK – Allegedly this has happened in rural areas of America as well lest one might want to pick on third worlders and primitive societies.

3/4/14 Who do Americans kill to stop firearms confiscation?

FK – I must disagree with torturing the evil elected public servants or intentionally targeting their families. Doing so makes us no better than what we claim to oppose. There will be plenty of ‘collateral damage’ in the coming war as it is. Unfortunately the beast system doesn’t care who or what it kills here or over seas in the name of preserving itself.