Why the Fakebook Scandal Is Important

Rush Limbaugh.com ^ | May 10, 2016 | Rush Limbaugh

[Elsie]

 It's inherently subjective and there is no "mathematically neutral" way to objectively evaluate subjective opinions.

 

They count words and phrases

 

They toss out commonly used words.

 

Whatever ends up on top "should be" the 'trending stuff'.

 

 

 

 

Have you noticed the stuff at the top of FR??

 

Guess how that is determined....

 

 

Popular Keywords

• 113th
• banglist
• budget
• catholic
• communism
• communists
• conclave
• coup
• democrats
• economy
• education
• electionfraud
• guncontrol
• guns
• homosexualagenda
• military
• obama
• obamacare
• palin
• randpaul
• secondamendment
• sequester
• talkradio
• votefraud
• voterfraud

[Elsie]

...were subtly "tweaked" to favor anything Leftist.

...were subtly "tweaked" to favor anything PORNO.

Do you want Search or Safe Search?

[Elsie]

Deceiving your clientele is not the free market!

Madison Avenue makes FORTUNES from doing this!

[Elsie]

I'm not aware that anybody's claiming that facebook is controlling their own thoughts.

Just wait...

[Tau Food]

I am certain that there are a gazillion stories with the the word "weather" in it. Doesn't some human being have to "choose" that weather is too broad a topic so that weather is not always trending? How about we "choose" to exclude the word "weather" and count as separate topics articles with the words "rain" and "tornado"? Oh, dear, maybe we should throw out the word "rain" because there are a gazillion rain stories throughout the world.

Somehow, people have to make decisions as to what to count and that is subjective. There are more stories about "Trump" than there are about "Trump choosing a VP," etc. Somebody is choosing and defining "topics" for any measurement. And, machine's can't do that. Subjective human beings choose those topics and human beings determine how specific each topic should be before they can be counted.

Anyone who thinks about this problem for more than a few minutes has to realize that it is impossible to create the machine that some people claim Facebook was somehow promising. There is not going to be any such machine. Humans are always going to be involved in determining what it is that computers should count.

[CardCarryingMember.VastRightWC]

It's not an actual conspiracy, meaning they don't get together and collaborate on what they're gonna report, what they're gonna leave out.

Rush is wrong about that. How has he forgotten JournoList so soon?

See this old FR post: JournoList - 157 Names Confirmed

Here's one of many links on that page, and the one that's always made my blood boil the most:
When McCain Picked Palin, Liberal Journalists Coordinated the Best Line of Attack

When they were worried that such an authentic, genuine human being such as Sarah being chosen for VP might put in danger the Overarching Mission of electing B.O., one of these 157 Nationwide News-Shapers/Spinners mentioned that her decision at age 45 to have a Downs baby instead of aborting would resonate with many voters.

For one thing, it proved she Walked the Walk when it came to Pro-Life beliefs, and wasn't your average talk-out-of-both-sides-of-the-mouth politician.

And the countermeasure chosen for this was, "OK, let's spin that as what an awful mother she is to have a career while having a newborn to take care of."

!!!! What the HELL?!?!? HYPOCRITES!!

These are the same liberals who get outraged when anyone criticizes the First Pillar of Feminism - namely that any woman can "have it all," when it comes to having both a fulltime career and being a fulltime mother simultaneously.

[Elsie]

Doesn’t some human being have to “choose” that weather is too broad a topic so that weather is not always trending?

---

You may find this website useful...

http://wordhoard.northwestern.edu/userman/analysis-trackwordovertime.html

[Elsie]

There are more stories about "Trump" than there are about "Trump choosing a VP," etc.

This is why I mentioned word count and phrase count earlier.

[Elsie]

There are more stories about "Trump" than there are about "Trump choosing a VP," etc.

This is why I mentioned word count and phrase count earlier.

[Elsie]

Anyone who thinks about this problem for more than a few minutes has to realize that it is impossible to create the machine that some people claim Facebook was somehow promising. There is not going to be any such machine. Humans are always going to be involved in determining what it is that computers should count.

640 K ought to be enough for anybody.

Often attributed to Gates in 1981. Gates considered the IBM PC's 640 KB program memory a significant breakthrough over 8-bit systems that were typically limited to 64 KB, but he has denied making this remark.

I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time … I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640 K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again.

[Covenantor]

“640 K ought to be enough for anybody. Bill Gates”

Clearly a falsehood...

What he really said was, “Windows floats the bloat...”

[huldah1776]

If FB is based on a political agenda why wouldn’t a truly popular issue based criteria make more money?

[Tau Food]

Yes, you're right, computers are excellent at counting. The hard part about deciding what to choose to display on a website requires that human decisions be made as to what is important to count. If "weather" (in general) is allowed to be a topic, then "weather" will always be very high on the list of what is trending. What then - maybe the top story should be just one of the "weather" stories like "One-half Inch of Rain Sprinkles Reno Yesterday." Obviously, some human has to intervene and that's what does happen.

I just find it hard to believe that there are people so unimaginative as to find it shocking that there is a website being operated by humans with biases. "Well, no wonder my life is all screwed up; there's a biased website out there!" ;-)

(And, then they post about it on FR.) ;-)

[Elsie]

The hard part about deciding what to choose to display on a website requires that human decisions be made as to what is important to count.

Nah.

Content doesn't need to 'mean' anything.

Count everything; post the top twenty makes NO distinction about content.

[Tau Food]

Count everything; post the top twenty makes NO distinction about content.

You could do that, but you'd probably get 20 stories with the word weather in it (or some other very general term). It would be a worthless list.

We still need humans for some things. People shouldn't worry about other people controlling their thoughts Healthy people still need to think for themselves, I'm afraid.

[Elsie]

It would be a worthless list.

Why?

It would be an ACCURATE indicator of what people are talking about.

If their conversations are vapid; it ain't the data takers fault.

[Elsie]

Healthy people still need to think for themselves, I'm afraid.

And non-healthy ones don't.

And they vote; too!

[Elsie]

https://www.bing.com/search?q=word+counter&form=EDGEAR&qs=DA&cvid=5d5284d262224f33ac9dcb016b32358e&pq=word%20counter

[Tau Food]

They toss out commonly used words.

Yes, they (people) have to "choose" what they want their machines to count. It's clear to me that you do understand the need for human involvement. You just need to fully accept the fact that you understand it.

If there were people who pretended to believe that machines were performing this task without guidance and direction by humans, they were only fooling themselves. More importantly, the fact that there is bias in all human communication does not mean that people have lost control of their ability to think for themselves. People should try to accept responsibility for their own thoughts. ;-)

[Elsie]

Yes, they (people) have to "choose" what they want their machines to count.

And the operative word was ALL of them.