Addressing Misinformation and Harmful Content Online

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by GordMay

I suspect he's referring to Femi Oluwole, a WOKE campaigner against Brexit.

Google is your friend..

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Google is your friend..

Indeed.
“The only thing that you absolutely have to know, is the location of the library.” ~ A. Einstein

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by boatman61

Google is your friend..

Actually, Google and I broke up many years ago. I prefer my friends not constantly spy on me. DuckDuck is the quackers for me .

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Actually, Google and I broke up many years ago. I prefer my friends not constantly spy on me. DuckDuck is the quackers for me .

I went Huawei so Chandler is my friend.. BingaBang..

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Actually, Google and I broke up many years ago. I prefer my friends not constantly spy on me. DuckDuck is the quackers for me .

Google is nobody's friend. Google is a powerful but treacherous member of the tech community; infinitely useful almost all of the time (at a cost of privacy) but it can and will turn on you at a moment's notice (actually without any notice, and certainly without any recourse).

With Google, the contract is one way, and it is a deal with the devil to be sure.

And it is like a dangerous drug which brings dependency.

So use google, but beware: That which is free can easily be withdrawn or changed, at their whim and your data is their product (that which they sell).

Use it at your own risk

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by wingssail

Google is nobody's friend. Google is a powerful but treacherous member of the tech community; infinitely useful almost all of the time (at a cost of privacy) ... And it is like a dangerous drug which brings dependency.

Sing it Wing! I've been in this choir for a long time .

You're quite right about the drug analogy. Google entices users with "free" stuff like email and network working tools. All they ask is to know everything about you.

And yes, this is also how misinformation and harmful content gets past around. Google, just like the rest, only wants your attention. They'll get it the best way they can, and if that means serving up misinformation, that's what they'll do.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by wingssail

Google is nobody's friend. Google is a powerful but treacherous member of the tech community; infinitely useful almost all of the time (at a cost of privacy) but it can and will turn on you at a moment's notice (actually without any notice, and certainly without any recourse).

With Google, the contract is one way, and it is a deal with the devil to be sure.

And it is like a dangerous drug which brings dependency.

So use google, but beware: That which is free can easily be withdrawn or changed, at their whim and your data is their product (that which they sell).

Use it at your own risk

They won't get much with mine.. as for withdrawal, no problem there's plenty of others out there..

[RaymondR]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Who doesn't like being loved, but I don't know what "Femi" is . I gotta know! Who loves me so???




From this I conclude you don't understand the difference between weather and climate.

Maybe you are impressed when "the media" declares a weather event "unprecedented." I prefer to listen to actual climate scientists with regard to these kinds of statements and conclusions.

Nah mate. I was trying to be satirical in heaping scorn on the proposition that AGM/CC generated weather is killing people. Extreme weather events kill people and have previous to the popularization of CC/AGM theory and if global warming does not eventuate and AGW/CC theory fades away extreme weather events will continue to kill people.

[GordMay]

Mapping internet shutdowns around the world
Over the course of 2020, 29 countries intentionally shut down or slowed their internet communications at least 155 times, according to a new report published by Access Now, a non-profit digital rights group.
Hundreds of millions were cut off, in the COVID-19 pandemic, losing access to life-saving health information, education, and work opportunities.
India remained the country with the highest number [109] of shutdowns. Beginning in 2019, and continuing into 2021, Myanmar imposed one of the world’s longest recorded shutdowns in Rakhine and Chin states. In Bangladesh, Rohingya refugee camps were cut off from high-speed internet [throttling] for 415 days.
An increasing number of shutdowns occurred this year in response to ongoing violence, particularly in active conflict zones.
Authoritarian regimes often shut the internet down to silence protests, sway elections, hide human rights violations, and bargain with other bad actors, with the aid of companies that provide censorship technologies. Seven countries including India, Guinea, Belarus, Burundi, Kyrgyzstan, Tanzania and Togo shut down the internet during an election period in 2020.

When 2021 began with Uganda ordering internet shutdowns during a presidential election, Myanmar’s military using shutdowns in a coup attempt, and India leveraging blackouts to crush the nationwide Farmer’s Protests, the world was outraged, but we were not surprised. The stage had been set by authoritarian regimes that deliberately cut millions of people off from the internet in 2020, ignoring a global pandemic to serve their own ends and, in many cases, gain power.

Our latest #KeepItOn report, "Shattered dreams and lost opportunities: a year in the fight to #KeepItOn", compiles the data on 2020 shutdowns and documents the devastating impacts on people and communities. It reveals what happens when governments do not loosen their iron grip on the dreaded kill switch.

“SHATTERED DREAMS AND LOST OPPORTUNITIES
A year in the fight to #KeepItOn”
This #KeepItOn report looks at incidents of internet shutdowns in 2020.
➥ https://www.accessnow.org/cms/assets...Mar-2021_1.pdf

Access Now ➥ https://www.accessnow.org/

[GordMay]

What Google thinks it knows about you, based on your search history

By clicking a link from a Google account's settings page, users can see what Google thinks it knows about them. Google predicts users' age, gender, marital status, income, and personal interests.
The page also allows users to correct Google's assumptions, remove their information from Google's ad database, or stop Google from predicting their profile entirely going forward.

First, navigate to your Google account homepage by clicking the widget in the top right corner of any Google site.

From there, you'll see a link to "Privacy & personalization." Click "Manage your data & personalization" to see more options.

The profile Google has predicted based on your history is found under "Ad personalization." Click on "Go to ad settings" to see the full profile.

You'll be greeted with a message describing ad personalization. If you don't want Google to track any personal information for ad purposes, you can switch ad personalization to "OFF" on this screen.

If you aren't able to find this page from your settings, you should be able to reach it
Here ➥ https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated

When you scroll down, you'll see a list of attributes that Google has predicted about you, including your age, gender, and interests.

Clicking on any of the items in the list will pull up a menu that allows you to update the information to correct Google's assumption.

For most of the settings, you can also "Turn off" the tracking, which will stop Google from using its predictions to serve you ads in that category.

[GordMay]

There are ways to protect yourself from cookies, but so-called 'favicons' are a new threat.
Favicons are the little icons you see in the corner of the tab while browsing a website. While those icons may appear harmless, Researchers recently found they can be used as a way to follow someone's internet activity.
This image can be piggybacked with information that can identify us. And just like a cookie, they can then be used to match us in a database. But unlike a cookie, there's no way to opt out of it, because they are managed by your browser.

“Tales of FAVICONS and Caches: Persistent Tracking in Modern Browsers” ~ by Konstantinos Solomo et al
➥ https://www.cs.uic.edu/~polakis/pape...mos-ndss21.pdf



In a blog post, Google's director of product management, ads privacy and trust, David Temkin, said the company continues "to get questions about whether Google will join others in the ad tech industry who plan to replace third-party cookies with alternative user-level identifiers.
"Today, we're making explicit that once third-party cookies are phased out, we will not build alternate identifiers to track individuals as they browse across the web, nor will we use them in our products."

“Charting a course towards a more privacy-first web” ~ by David Temkin
➥ https://blog.google/products/ads-com...acy-first-web/

[GordMay]

Has free speech been cancelled?

We debate censorship, ‘cancel culture’ and the role of Big Tech with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

Debates around free speech and “cancel culture” seem never-ending in democracies around the world. Central to the conversation are technology companies like Twitter and Facebook, which in the United States have played a role in recent months by denying former President Donald Trump and many of his supporters a platform for spreading disinformation.

But could this be a slippery slope? And who gets to decide what the limits are on free speech, if any?

In this UpFront special, Marc Lamont Hill discusses it all with journalist and author Glenn Greenwald and columnist and professor of journalism at Middlesex University Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

Here ➥ https://www.aljazeera.com/program/up...been-cancelled

More on the subject, from Al Jazeera Media Network:

“How should social media be regulated?” ~ by Nanjala Nyabola
Regulation on social media should not be established only with US interests in mind.
➥ https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2...a-be-regulated

“No Parler? No problem, as more apps claim to allow ‘free speech’” ~ by Amy Thomson [Bloomberg]
Amazon removed Parler, a messaging app popular with supporters of US President Donald Trump, from its hosting service.
➥ https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/20...ow-free-speech

[RaymondR]

There's a lot of breeds of misinformation about. For example Australia's ABC radio and TV networks exhibit great skill in misinformation by what they leave out.

[Wotname]

Originally Posted by RaymondR

There's a lot of breeds of misinformation about. For example Australia's ABC radio and TV networks exhibit great skill in misinformation by what they leave out.

Yes, that is correct, they do leave out misinformation and it yes, it does take some skill.

[wingssail]

Originally Posted by GordMay

What Google thinks it knows about you, based on your search history

By clicking a link from a Google account's settings page, users can see what Google thinks it knows about them. Google predicts users' age, gender, marital status, income, and personal interests.
The page also allows users to correct Google's assumptions, remove their information from Google's ad database, or stop Google from predicting their profile entirely going forward.

First, navigate to your Google account homepage by clicking the widget in the top right corner of any Google site.

From there, you'll see a link to "Privacy & personalization." Click "Manage your data & personalization" to see more options.

The profile Google has predicted based on your history is found under "Ad personalization." Click on "Go to ad settings" to see the full profile.

You'll be greeted with a message describing ad personalization. If you don't want Google to track any personal information for ad purposes, you can switch ad personalization to "OFF" on this screen.

If you aren't able to find this page from your settings, you should be able to reach it
Here ➥ https://adssettings.google.com/authenticated

When you scroll down, you'll see a list of attributes that Google has predicted about you, including your age, gender, and interests.

Clicking on any of the items in the list will pull up a menu that allows you to update the information to correct Google's assumption.

For most of the settings, you can also "Turn off" the tracking, which will stop Google from using its predictions to serve you ads in that category.

Basically, Gord, neither of these techniques produced a list of attributes that Google has predicted about me. (Yes I was signed on to my Google account).