CSotD: Directions and Misdirections
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Joy of Tech comments on the decline of the Internet, and they’re not alone, though this detailed takedown of Facebook’s flurry of AI spam requires free registration. But the gist of it is that much of what you see on Facebook is spam being commented on by bots, and that click farms have essentially taken over the place and Facebook doesn’t care.
Most Facebook (and other platform) users don’t recognize that they are not the customers. The common metaphor is that the users are the monkeys in the zoo and the customers are the advertisers who pay to visit the monkeys.
That’s always been true of commercial media. TV and radio produce attractive content to bring in viewers and then sell advertising to companies that want to reach those viewers. Facebook, Twitter and the other social media do the same thing, except that they count on other people to produce the content and build the supply of monkeys.
But TV ratings are nearly entirely tracked through diaries kept by a sample of viewers. Having sold advertising with ratings books, I know their numbers are inexact, because people forget to fill in everything they watched and who was in the room.
Social media can track usage far better, and I suspect they could also track the difference between bots and real users if they wanted to.
Which leads us back to Joy of Tech’s cartoon, because technologies not only permit click-farmers to generate attractive but fake AI images but to fill the comment section with artificial praise that will lead real users to think other people are accepting the stuff.
Juxtaposition of the Day
Davies notes that adults are just as prone to accept the fakery and deception as their kids, but fake themselves out by thinking they are able to spot the garbage and work their way through it.
Australia is in the midst of discussing domestic violence, and Wilcox targets that specific problem here, but she echoes the concept that parents have no idea what their children are ingesting.
Case in point: When I was in local TV in the mid-70s, every kid in America knew Big Bird and Oscar, and stores were full of Sesame Street clothing and toys. But the program barely showed up in the ratings books, because five-year-olds didn’t fill out diaries and their parents weren’t tracking what the kids were watching.
And that was back when only a handful of kids had TVs in their rooms. In fact, a decade and a half later, the advice to parents was to install the computer in a common area of the house so they could monitor what the kids were getting into.
There’s your laugh for the day.
Chris Madden celebrates the obvious, because, as Joy of Tech points out, if you ask whether something is true, you’ll be told that it is.
It’s not like the old logic puzzle of two tribes, one that always lies and one that always speaks the truth, because there’s no correct way to ask the question and find out who’s who.
It’s more like the old vaudeville routine about the farmer who suspects a thief in his hen house but is assured “Ain’t nobody in here but us chickens!”
Chickens, monkeys, whatever.
Meanwhile, back on campus
Rob Rogers (Tinyview) lays out part of the current chaos. Biden’s military support of Israel has drawn criticism from throughout the world, but international relations are complex and there are likely things happening behind the scenes that we can’t see.
But however well he’s playing that hand, he’s botching the situation with protesting students and, for better or worse, he’s the guy taking most of the heat.
Yesterday’s statement was a lot of same-old-same-old and did him no favors. The only vandalism I’ve seen was students at Columbia breaking into a building that under normal conditions would have been unlocked.
Worse, the violence on campuses across the country seems to have been ordered by administrators and initiated by police, not by demonstrators.
Yesterday, I was recalling a police riot in Chicago in April, 1968, to a friend. Daley’s police attacked a peace march, beating unarmed college kids for the crime of not supporting the Vietnam War. I’d never seen anyone bashed in the face with a truncheon before and it’s an incredibly ugly sight.
As it happens, it fit Guy Venables’ cartoon in the reverse, because it happened roughly at noon and a lot of businessmen were coming or going to lunch. Some executives from Kansas City rescued a friend of mine who had a broken collar bone and other injuries, taking him up to their hotel room and phoning for a doctor.
There were furious letters in the Sun-Times the following week from “straight people” who had witnessed the bloodshed, but perhaps more to the point, this little pre-season scrimmage set up the more violent events of the Democratic Convention, because local peace freaks recognized the folly of coming back with a kumbaya attitude.
On this Press Freedom Day, it’s worth noting that Mauldin wasn’t exaggerating. The Pulitzer Board has commended the student press for their coverage of the current events, but I hope they keep their heads on a swivel, because they’re seen as enemies, too.
Following the Convention, Hizzonner — whose goons attacked Dan Rather on the floor of the Convention — spoke an unintentional truth.
Juxtaposition of the Day #2
Kal makes a good point, because, as I’ve noted before, there were plenty of loudmouths, show-offs and play actors among the throngs back then and I’m sure there are once more today. It would be lovely if the cooler heads could gain center stage, but disciplined demonstrations died with MLK.
And as Davies points out, a nuanced explanation of intent won’t attract much attention anyway.
Juxtaposition of Whataboutism
And then there’s the argument that you should stop demonstrating about what you care about and demonstrate about what I care about.
We managed to protest the war and also support the farm workers, and I’ll bet most of the kids demonstrating about Gaza have also been active about climate change, gun control, gender identity and abortion rights.
But starting a second front has rarely worked out.
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