Posted on 10/05/2015 10:08:47 PM PDT by Swordmaker
Apple and Facebook are asserting themselves as gatekeepers of necessary information to the public. Can we trust them?
We're trying to have a democracy here, and ideally an informed one.
Nowadays, however, almost everyone is too distracted with their smartphones to muster the attention span to put up with reading a newspaper or news magazine delivered by a publisher, or even watching TV news.
Instead, we get news through apps and on social networks. The biggest source of apps in the U.S. and the biggest social network are Apple's App Store and Facebook, respectively.
This trend transfers the job of gatekeeper of what political information reaches the public from publications, editors or news directors to the likes of Apple and Facebook -- the companies that choose, in Apple's case, which apps are allowed and which are banned or, in Facebook's case, which news stories or sources are favored by its secret algorithms.
What that means -- and there's no gentle way to put this, so I'm just going to say it -- is that the people in charge of what voters and citizens know are people motivated by selling tiny computers with "selfie cameras" or ads for tiny computers with "selfie cameras" (Samsung is currently the biggest advertiser on Facebook).
(Excerpt) Read more at computerworld.com ...
We’re the docs in Encarta? I don’t recall that or that Jobs mandated it. I DO remember the signatures of the original Mac development team were inscribed in the cases of the original Mac, however.
I use Advanced Search in Google all the time to find an article or thread. What you describe has never once happened to me. I get the normal FR pages in search results.
I have used it quite a lot as well, as the search here is, as you know, almost worthless.
I’ll have to look again, but I’ve definitely seen what I described in the last few days.
All the ones with the "this site may harm your computer" message have links that don't go to FR, but rather to the FR link to the original article.
All true. But in fact, they are competition with the Associated Press, and any competition at least marginally improves the “gatekeeper” problem. It is because of search engines that FR typically “scoops” the MSM on stories which interest conservatives. Granted that a search engine can, in principle, censor by giving the illusion that “there’s nothing to see here” - but that is what the AP has been doing for a century and a half. And the beauty of FR is that we know everyone. The six degree issue comes into play, and with so many of us it actually isn’t easy to smoke things past us all . . . and up pops Buckhead.
No doubt the NSA uses Facebook, Google, Apple and all the others to track and profile every individual within their grasp, the world over. If I live long enough I’ll one day be arrested for some “hate speech” I’ve posted years earlier on this very forum.
“If I live long enough I’ll one day be arrested for some “hate speech” I’ve posted years earlier on this very forum.”
Well, get off your butt and do something, like elect a pro-2nd amendment, Constitutional sheriff in your county. Then when the fascists come around, they’ll be met by a battalion-size armed deputy auxiliary. Try looking up Committees of Safety. The Founders left us a blueprint on how to deal with tyrants.
We aren’t about to have 50 million Freepers and lurkers
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