Ok, what’s going on here?

We should all be aware by now that the tech companies are vacuuming up all our information as we use the internet so that they can target ads towards us. All of us are familiar with how if we search for some item such as shoes, we then find shoe ads popping up in the pages that we subsequently visit. Since I surf the web a lot and do a lot of searches, mostly for news items, I find it amusing to see if I can identify what I have done recently that might have triggered an ad that appears. Often I can figure it out, either because of specific actions that I have taken or because the tech companies have general demographic information about me such as my age, gender, ethnicity, religion, socio-economic status, general habits, etc.
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Film review: The Social Dilemma (2020)

This documentary exposes how the social media algorithms work to keep people hooked to spend vast amounts of time on the sites by identifying their wants and sending them down addictive rabbit holes. It features mostly people from within most of these companies (Facebook, Google, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and the like) who became disaffected with the effect these companies and their practices were having on society and saw them as destructive and have now left the companies and are speaking out.

But the filmmakers also added a wrinkle. They have actors portray a family whose members are social media users, focusing on two children who are addicted to it. They show a room in which there is an avatar of the son with three identical people looking at all the data about him and what he is doing and pushing things on him to keep him glued to his phone. In reality of course, there are no people doing this, only algorithms. But there is something much more creepy in the image of actual people who know every thing about us and what buttons to push to get a specific reaction and are monitoring our every waking moment to try and find ways to get us to spend more time on their sites and then selling that engagement to advertisers. Although algorithms may feel less creepy than if humans were doing this, they are far, far more thorough than humans could ever be.
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I have a better idea than Geraldo Rivera

Geraldo Rivera was once, if you can believe it, considered to be a genuine reporter but he descended into the fever swamps of Fox News and is now one of Trump’s most groveling sycophants. But he outdid himself with the suggestion he made yesterday.

I think that a better idea would be to rename to coronavirus that causes covid-19 after Trump. Right now it has the awkward and hard-to-remember name of SARS-CoV-2. Calling it the ‘Trump virus’ would not only be easier, it would be more appropriate since it is his utter failure to deal with it that has now led to over a quarter of a million deaths in the US with no end in sight.

Then we could ask each other, “Have you got your immunity to Trump?”

John Oliver examines One American News

Donald Trump and his supporters have soured on Fox News because they think that apart from Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, and Laura Ingraham, the rest of the hosts were not sufficiently supportive of Trump and not enthusiastic enough is peddling his lies that the election was stolen from him. As a result they are seeking even more extreme news sources and one that is becoming popular is a cable news outfit called One America News.

About seven months ago, John Oliver took an in-depth look at OAN.

Et tu, Fox News?

Trump and his supporters continue to be in denial that he has lost the election and claim that the election was stolen from him, despite the almost complete absence of evidence. As is usually the case, the losing side is looking around for the villains who contributed to this situation and they have taken aim at Fox News, despite the fact that the network has long been been a faithful mouthpiece for Trump, with their talk shows giving him complete freedom to utter nonsense and amplifying his efforts to spread hate and division. Fox viewers were the largest part of Trump’s support, dwarfing in numbers other Trump-supporting outlets like One America News Network, Newsmax, and Breitbart.

What has specifically earned their recent ire is that Fox News, along with the AP, were the first to call Arizona for Joe Biden, doing so late on Tuesday night itself. That call, though it did not put Biden over the top of 270 electoral votes, still brought him to 264, close enough that it was all over bar the shouting, since it was expected that Nevada with its six EVs would go for Biden too. That would make all the other as yet uncalled races in Pennsylvania and Georgia moot.
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The hate speech conundrum

The problem of hate speech never goes away. What to do about people who say or write the most hateful things is problematic to say the least. The freedom to say whatever one likes is not absolute even in the US where the First Amendment provides robust protection for almost any kinds of speech. There are certain things that you cannot say, and this article summarizes the kinds to things that are allowed and not allowed. You are not allowed to “incite actions that would harm others” or to “make or distribute obscene materials”. Interestingly, you are allowed to “engage in symbolic speech, (e.g., burning the flag in protest)” but you are not allowed to “burn draft cards as an anti-war protest”.
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We should not normalize this election

It seems clear that the TV network NBC’s decision on Wednesday to schedule a Trump town hall on Thursday at the same time as the previously scheduled town hall that Joe Biden was having on ABC (which itself was a replacement for the debate that Trump refused to take part in) was due to them caving in to the demand by Trump that it be at the same time. Trump must have been sure that he would get higher ratings than Biden and thus could gloat about it because for him, ratings are everything. But that strategy proved to be a bust because not only was his performance panned, what must have really stung was that the Biden show got better ratings than the Trump show.
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You want media attention? Say that you are an undecided voter

As the election draws nearer, reporters are fanning out trying to root out that very rare species, the undecided voter. I find it hard to imagine how anyone can be an undecided voter at this point. Elections with an incumbent running are usually a referendum on that person’s performance and Trump has been such an intensely divisive and polarizing figure that this time it will be even more so. I find it hard to imagine that any sentient being could not have formed an opinion of whether to vote for him or not. But yet there are people claiming to be so and the media is drawn to them as flies to honey.
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Future debate plans and schedule

The next debate on the schedule is between the vice-presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Mike Pence to be held on October 7 at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City. Usually the vice-presidential debate does not generate much excitement (with the possible exception of 2008 when Sarah Palin was debating Joe Biden and people wanted to see if she knew where Europe was) but given the utter disaster of the first presidential debate and no indication that Trump will behave any better in the next two presidential debates, this one might be the only chance to have anything approaching a substantive discussion of the issues. Harris is sharp and aggressive and quick on her feet and it will be interesting to see how Pence will defend his indefensible boss.
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The pitfalls of vox pop reporting

As the election nears, there are more and more media attempts to gauge the mood of the electorate. Polls of course are one indicator but given how people got burned by polls in 2016, people are a little skeptical of putting too much faith in them. Another popular reporting staple is to go out to various communities and talk to the people and then report on what they are saying, often quoting specific individuals. These vox pop pieces (short of vox populi or ‘voice of the people’) are interesting but how seriously can you take these people in the street interviews?
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