MSNBC's Joy Reid apologizes for insensitive blog posts from the past, while also not taking full responsibility.

Courtesy Raw Story: 

Calling her comments “despicable and wrong,” Reid copped to writing some of the offense comments, but said she truly believed she did not write them all. 

“A community I support and deeply care about is hurting because of despicable and truly offensive posts being attributed to me,” the somber Reid began. “Many of you have seen the blog posts circulating online and social media. Many of them are homophobic and discriminatory and hateful. When a friend found them and sent them to me, I was stunned. Frankly I couldn’t imagine where they came from and whose voice that was.” 

“I spent a lot of time trying to make sense of the posts,” she continued. “I hired cyber security experts to see if somebody manipulated my words or former blog and the reality is they have not been able to prove it. But here’s what I do know: I generally do not believe I wrote those hateful things because they are completely alien to me, but I can definitely understand, based on things I have tweeted and I have written in the past, why some people don’t believe me. I’ve not been exempt from being dumb or cruel or hurtful to the very people I want to advocate for. I own that. I get it. And for that I am truly, truly story.”

I held off writing about this situation because to be honest I was not sure what to make of it.

The posts showing up on the internet, and being attributed to Reid, did not really fit my perception of her at all.

I am still not completely convinced that it was her.

Besides that I also went through something similar myself, after this blog gained a little infamy.

After the Splitsville story the Right Wing trolls went through my old posts forensically and found some that, taken out of context, did not paint a very flattering picture.

In my case most of the content was misrepresented, but there were a few things that I wrote, back when virtually NOBODY visited IM, that were truly impossible to completely defend.

They were the type of musings that one might jot down in a diary with the expectation that nobody would ever see them, but that is certainly not a mindset which translates well to the internet, where everything lives forever.

So that should serve as a lesson to us all, that we need to consider that the things we write on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even the comment section of a blog, might one day be dredged up and used against us when we least expect it.

I think that Joy Reid is very admirable person, but there is a journey to arrive at the best version of ourselves, and sometimes those missteps along they way can trip us up even after we think we have already arrived. 

One of the oldest white supremacist sites on the internet is going broke. I know, sad right?

Courtesy of The Daily Beast:  

Stormfront.org has been an internet hate hub since it launched in 1996. Its owner, former Ku Klux Klan leader Don Black, said last week that donations had plummeted and that the site was scaling back operations. But longtime Stormfront posters suggested Black’s wife had been paying the bills, and that she was finally checking out. 

“Our contributions have once again totaled less than $2,000, which is not enough to cover our basic server and radio bills, and this month we no longer have enough personal money to make up the difference,” Black wrote last week in a post first spotted by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The plunge in donations follows a decline in web traffic to the site. 

Though popular with an older generation of KKK members and white supremacists, Stormfront’s outdated design has fallen out of favor with younger neo-Nazis who tend toward sites like the right-wing Twitter clone Gab, and semi-private messaging platforms like Discord. 

So far in 2018, Stormfront has fallen more than 5,000 places in the global ranking of most-viewed websites, according to web traffic tracker Alexa.

I guess it's hard to compete for traffic against the famous white supremacist who now occupies the White House. 

I mean let's face it, if you want more bang for your racist buck you donate to Donald Trump.

Ecuador cut off Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's internet, because that is how you punish petulant teenagers.

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

Ecuador has cut Julian Assange’s communications with the outside world from its London embassy, where the founder of the whistleblowing WikiLeaks website has been living for nearly six years. 

The Ecuadorian government said in statement that it had acted because Assange had breached “a written commitment made to the government at the end of 2017 not to issue messages that might interfere with other states”. 

It said Assange’s recent behaviour on social media “put at risk the good relations [Ecuador] maintains with the United Kingdom, with the other states of the European Union, and with other nations”.

It has already been reported that being locked away in this embassy was having a "dangerous" impact on Assange's health, losing access to the internet might drive him out of his mind as well.

Gee' maybe then he will be forced to flee the embassy and he can be picked up by Swedish law enforcement for those sexual assault allegations, or by American law enforcement for his part in helping Russia hijack our democracy.

Either way he needs to have his day in court, and quit hiding like a pussy.

The Russians also infiltrated Reddit, one of the most popular websites on the internet.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Reddit admitted it has “found and removed a few hundred accounts” associated with Russian propaganda, one week after The Daily Beast confirmed the Kremlin-backed Internet Research Agency, or Troll Farm, used the platform during the 2016 presidential campaign. Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman, writing under the username Spez, outlined both direct propaganda, such as troll accounts using the platform, and indirect propaganda, like subreddits such as r/The_Donald repeatedly linking to Russian Twitter troll account @TEN_GOP. “Given the recent news, we’d like to share some of what we’ve learned,” he wrote. 

If you are a frequent visitor to Reddit this is not really news, since this was being called out during the election, but nothing was ever really done about it.

Like Facebook the moderators of Reddit seemed to ignore the problem altogether.

And that has really pissed off a number of Reddit users: 

Reddit users rebelled en masse against the site’s CEO for concealing Russian troll activity the site now admits it knew about, and for not working fast enough to ban dangerous and extremist communities. 

Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman admitted the site has been targeted by at least “a few hundred” troll accounts in an announcement to Reddit users on Monday, four days after a Daily Beast investigation confirmed for the first time that Russia’s troll farm used the platform. 

Reddit has not responded to repeated requests by The Daily Beast for comment about The Daily Beast’s investigation, which showed Russia’s Internet Research Agency used American proxies to access the site. 

Based on that reporting, Senate investigators are looking into opening up probes on the troll farm’s use of Reddit and Tumblr, according to The Washington Post.

I only visited that r/The Donald subreddit a few times, but the stuff that was posted on there was outrageous, misleading, and consistently pro-Donald Trump.

Many of the talking points that you may have seen defending Trump during the election, or minimizing news stories about him, originated on these subreddits and then spread far and wide on Facebook, Twitter, and various other social media outlets.

By the way as of this post r/The Donald is still up and has over half a million subscribers.

How the take down of Al Franken was orchestrated by the Right Wing and supported by Russian Twitter bots.

Courtesy of Newsweek:

While everyone has been focused on Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election to support Donald Trump, the Franken take-down originated in—and was propelled by—a strategic online campaign with digital tentacles reaching to, of all places, Japan. Analysts have now mapped out how the initial accusation against Franken by Hooters pinup girl and lad-mag model Leeann Tweeden was turned into effective propaganda after first being hinted at by right wing black ops master Roger Stone.

A pair of Japan-based websites, created the day before Tweeden came forward, and a swarm of related Twitter bots made the Tweeden story go viral—and then weaponized a liberal writer's criticism of Franken. The bot army, in tandem with prominent real live human right-wingers with Twitter followers in the millions, such as Mike Cernovich, spewed thousands of posts, helping the #frankenfondles hashtag and the "Franken is a groper" meme effectively silence the testimonies of eight former female staffers who defended the Minnesota Democrat before he resigned last year. 

The operation commenced on November 15, when Roger Stone— who is now banned from Twitter for racism and profanity—tweeted from one of his accounts “Roger Stone says it’s Al Franken’s ‘time in the barrel.’ Franken next in long list of Democrats accused of ‘grabby’ behavior.” 

On the same day, a web domain called realusa.site was registered in Japan by a developer named Atsufumi Otsuka. A fake-news website was then established at that web address, and then a second one was created a few days later, according to research shared with the voting rights research outfit Unhack the Vote. 

Tweeden’s account of being groped by Franken was first amplified by a network of right wing media, including KABC in Los Angeles, where Tweeden has a radio show, The Hill, Infowars and Breitbart, which mobilized within hours of Stone's tweet and the release of a picture of a Tweeden and Franken clowning around at a USO performance before he was a senator.

By November 17, the trending of “Al Franken” was officially also a Russia Intelligence operation, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, an organization tracking Russian social media accounts, based on a sample taken that day of 600 of the fake accounts.

There is apparently a sophisticated botnet called "The Voty botnet" that was instrumental in pushing a story by a liberal writer called “Dear Al Franken, I’ll Miss You But You Can’t Matter Anymore” out to millions of people.

That article provided legitimacy for actual liberals to pile on Al Franken as well, and before you knew it Democrats like Kirsten Gillibrand were calling for his resignation. 

The rest, as they say, is history. 

And this serves as yet another reminder that it is not only the Right Wing who can be manipulated by Russian tactics online, but also seemingly intelligent liberals.

We have to examine literally every bit of information we see to discover its roots, and to determine if it is indeed accurate, before we accept it as fact.

This puts a huge burden on each of us, but right now this is essentially our only defense against allowing ourselves to be used to spread and weaponize misinformation.

One of the world's top advertisers is threatening to take their ads offline if digital platforms do not do something about the fake news and extremism on their sites.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Unilever is threatening to pull its advertising from digital platforms that it says have become a "swamp" of fake news, racism, sexism and extremism. 

The forceful warning to digital platforms such as Google (GOOGL) and Facebook (FB) will be delivered at an advertising conference in California later on Monday. 

"We cannot continue to prop up a digital supply chain ... which at times is little better than a swamp in terms of its transparency," Unilever marketing boss Keith Weed will say, according to a copy of his speech obtained by CNN. 

Unilever (UL), which owns brands including Dove, Lipton, and Ben & Jerry's, is one of the world's top advertisers. It has an annual marketing budget of roughly €8 billion ($9.8 billion), and 25% of its ads are digital. 

Weed will say that a proliferation of objectionable content on social media -- and a lack of protections for children -- is eroding social trust, harming users and undermining democracies.

This is the kind of thing that can actually have an impact.

As large and powerful as Google and Facebook are, their power is greatly reduced once you remove their revenue streams.

If enough advertisers follow Unilever's lead it could almost change things overnight. 

Right Wingers and Trump supporters are overwhelmingly the largest consumers of fake news on the internet.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

Fake news published in the U.S. was overwhelmingly consumed and shared by right-wing social media users, a new study from the University of Oxford has revealed. 

Research from Oxford's "computational propaganda project" investigated into the sources of "junk news" shared in the three months leading up to President Donald Trump's first State of the Union address last month. 

On Facebook, they found that "extreme hard-right" conservatives shared more fake news stories than all other political groups combined, while on Twitter, Trump supporters consumed the most fake news. 

"On Twitter, a network of Trump supporters consumes the largest volume of junk news, and junk news is the largest proportion of news links they share," they said.

They should just simply say that liberals are smarter.

Because let's face it, we are.

That is not to say that progressives cannot chase after fake stories as well.

It simply means that as a rule once we discover that they are fake, we do not then make excuses to continue believing them.

The Senate has the 30 sponsors it needs to move a bill to the floor to reverse the FCC's decision to repeal net neutrality.

 Courtesy of The Hill:  

A Senate bill that would reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) decision to repeal net neutrality received its 30th co-sponsor on Monday, ensuring it will receive a vote on the Senate floor. 

Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.) announced her support for the bill on Twitter, putting it over the top of a procedural requirement to bypass committee approval. 

The bill, which is being pushed by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), would use Congress’s authority under the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to reverse the FCC’s rollback of its popular net neutrality rules. 

“We’ve reached the magic number of 30 to secure a vote on the Senate floor, and that number will only continue to climb,” Markey said in a statement Monday. “Republicans are faced with a choice — be on the right side of history and stand with the American people who support a free and open internet, or hold hands with the special interests who want to control the internet for their own profit.”

It should be remembered that net neutrality has overwhelming support from the American people, so these Senators have to keep in mind how this vote will be used against them in their next reelection bid.

That bodes well for the passage of this bill.

Though of course you can bet that communications giants like AT&T and Comcast are going to lobby hard against it.

Might be time to start making some phone calls to our Senators.

Remember the New Mexico school shooter? Yeah, well he was a Trump supporting white supremacist.

William Edward Atchison

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

In real life, William Edward Atchison—people called him Bill—lived in a little yellow house with his parents, about a mile away from the Giant gas station where he worked and from Aztec High School, where he shot and killed two students and then himself last Thursday. 

At the murder scene, police found a thumb drive with a note that read, “If things go according to plan, today would be when I die. I go somewhere and gear up, then hold a class hostage and go apeshit, then blow my brains out.” 

He wrote “work sucks, school sucks, life sucks. I just want out of this shit.”

And yet online, the 21-year-old New Mexico resident lived a prolific life as a white supremacist, pro-Trump meme peddler who was most known for his obsession with school shooters. For a half-decade, Atchison spent most of his days online, repeatedly posting threats of violence and cries for help. 

When users saw posts from Atchison, who went by dozens of names like “Adam Lanza” and “Future Mass Shooter” on both larger platforms like YouTube and racist communities like The Daily Stormer, they would often ask how his manifesto was going.

This kid literally spent most of his time online obsessed with school shooters and asking for hep to fix his life.

And yet he seems not to have been on the radar of any law enforcement officials.

Could that simply be because he was white?

As it turned out the two kids he killed, Casey Marquez and Francisco Fernandez, were non-whites so it would seem that this could indeed be racially motivated.

The FBI has been saying for decades that the White Supremacist and militia groups were far more dangerous than terrorist groups from overseas, and clearly this is yet another example to prove that point.

These two young people should not have died, and if their attacker had been a Muslim kid name Abdul they probably wouldn't have. 

Something to keep in mind.

Next time someone tries to tell you that the internet was fine without #NetNeutrality and it going away will won't change anything just remind them of this... pic.twitter.com/YHJMiWEBSe

— Barnacules Nerdgasm (@Barnacules) November 24, 2017

We busted our asses to put those net neutrality protections in place, and now we need to get off our asses in order to protect what we accomplished.

For more information, and guidance on what you can do, just click here.

Trump's head of the FCC is on track to reverse the 2015 bill on net neutrality.

Courtesy of Reuters:  

The head of the Federal Communications Commission is set to unveil plans next week for a final vote to reverse a landmark 2015 net neutrality order barring the blocking or slowing of web content, two people briefed on the plans said.

In May, the FCC voted 2-1 to advance Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to withdraw the former Obama administration’s order reclassifying internet service providers as if they were utilities. Pai now plans to hold a final vote on the proposal at the FCC’s Dec. 14 meeting, the people said, and roll out details of the plans next week. 

Pai asked in May for public comment on whether the FCC has authority or should keep any regulations limiting internet providers’ ability to block, throttle or offer “fast lanes” to some websites, known as “paid prioritization.” Several industry officials told Reuters they expect Pai to drop those specific legal requirements but retain some transparency requirements under the order.

The progressives worked hard to get these protections in place, and it will require even more of an effort to protect them. 

Remember every single thing that the Obama Administration accomplished Donald Trump is determined to destroy.

Fake News creator, who believed he helped get Donald Trump elected, found dead in Arizona.

Courtesy of the New York Post:  

Paul Horner, who penned debunked articles about Bill Murray running for president and President Barack Obama opening a Muslim museum, was discovered unresponsive in his bed Sept 19. 

There were no signs of foul play, according to the Maricopa County medical examiner, and there was evidence the death could be due to an “accidental overdose.” 

During the 2016 presidential election, Horner created a list of websites that appeared to be legitimate news sites to spread false information. 

One article that claimed protesters who disrupted Donald Trump rallies were paid $3,500 went viral on the internet and fueled endless rumors about the alleged conspiracy. 

Despite the fact that no evidence existed, Trump repeated the charge about the paid protesters while on stage during one of his rallies. 

Horner told the Washington Post last November that although the information was clearly fabricated, he made thousands of dollars each month from them because Trump’s supporters were “easy to fool.” 

In the same interview, Horner said he thought Trump won the White House because of him.

Man I am not going to go all Alex Jones here, but damn this is convenient. 

Horner was the face of 2016 fake news, but he was by no means alone.

Without the Russians helping to push his fake news stories, and without Donald Trump himself actually repeating at least one of them to his audience, he would have had virtually no impact at all. 

This guy made "thousands of dollars each month." Let me tell you, THAT is not easy to do.

In order to pull that off you have to have a lot of help from others who also want your articles to be spread far and wide.

And now that this guy is gone, I have a feeling that this is one investigative channel that is going to be a lot harder to explore.

Damn, I did go a little Alex Jones there, didn't I?

Russia, who just used Facebook to help undermine our democracy, wants to make sure they have control over it in their country. Update!

Courtesy of the Los Angeles Times:

In its latest attempt to wrest control of the internet, Russia's communications agency has threatened to block access to Facebook if the company refuses to store its data locally. 

Alexander Zharov, chief of the Federal Communications Agency, told Russian news agencies Tuesday that they will work to “make Facebook comply with the law” on personal data, which obliges foreign companies to store it in Russia. Critics have slammed the law, which took effect in 2015, for potentially exposing the data to Russian intelligence agencies. 

Zharov said that the Russian government understands Facebook is a “unique service” but that it will not make exceptions and will have to block it next year if Facebook does not comply. 

Last year, Russia blocked business-focused social network LinkedIn after a court ruled it violated the law on data storage. LinkedIn is available in Russia only if accessed via proxy servers.

Sounds like Facebook wants to maintain control over who uses Facebook, and how they use it in their country.

In other news this is how Russia used the social platform to manipulate OUR fellow citizens.

Courtesy of WaPo:   

The batch of more than 3,000 Russian-bought ads that Facebook is preparing to turn over to Congress shows a deep understanding of social divides in American society, with some ads promoting African American rights groups, including Black Lives Matter, and others suggesting that these same groups pose a rising political threat, say people familiar with the covert influence campaign. 

The Russian campaign — taking advantage of Facebook’s ability to send contrary messages to different groups of users based on their political and demographic characteristics — also sought to sow discord among religious groups. Other ads highlighted support for Democrat Hillary Clinton among Muslim women. 

These targeted messages, along with others that have surfaced in recent days, highlight the sophistication of an influence campaign slickly crafted to mimic and infiltrate U.S. political discourse while also seeking to heighten tensions between groups already wary of one another.

Clearly the Kremlin understands the potential power of Facebook, having used it against us, and they do not want anybody else to have that power to manipulate them as well.

On the one hand that is smart.

On the other hand, fuck these guys.

I think Facebook should not only allow themselves to be banned in Russia, but also only allow Russians who have been thoroughly vetted, and DON'T have any ties to the Kremlin, use Facebook.

Update: Politico has more on who was targeted:

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was the beneficiary of at least one of the Russian-bought political ads on Facebook that federal government officials suspect were intended to influence the 2016 election. 

Other advertisements paid for by shadowy Russian buyers criticized Hillary Clinton and promoted Donald Trump. Some backed Bernie Sanders and his platform even after his presidential campaign had ended, according to a person with knowledge of the ads.

The pro-Stein ad came late in the political campaign and pushed her candidacy for president, this person said. 

“Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein,” the ad reads. “Trust me. It’s not a wasted vote. … The only way to take our country back is to stop voting for the corporations and banks that own us. #GrowaSpineVoteJillStein.” 

The ads show a complicated effort that didn’t necessarily hew to promoting Trump and bashing Clinton. Instead, they show a desire to create divisions while sometimes praising Trump, Sanders and Stein. A number of the ads seemed to question Clinton’s authenticity and tout some of the liberal criticisms of her candidacy.

As I have stated before, if you did not vote for Hillary Clinton there is a strong possibility that the Kremlin made you their little bitch. 

Online advertising makes the spreading of fake news as easy as tying your shoes.

Courtesy of Bloomberg: 

The intentional spreading of false stories has been credited with swaying such monumental events as last year's Brexit vote and U.S. presidential election. Tech firms such as Alphabet Inc. unit Google and Facebook Inc. have been trying to find ways to weed it out, or at least help users spot it. Some say we need to start earlier, educating children on how to think critically. 

But understanding the unique epidemiology of fake news may be no less important. Unlike a typical virus, purveyors of falsehood don't have to infect people at random. Thanks to the wealth of information available on social media and the advent of targeted advertising, they can go straight for the most susceptible and valuable victims -- those most likely to spread the infection. 

This insight emerges from a recent study by network theorists Christoph Aymanns, Jakob Foerster and Co-Pierre Georg, who ran computer simulations of the way fake news moves through social networks. Using state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms, they examined how individuals might learn to recognize false news, and sought to identify the most important factors in helping fake news spread. 

They found that the most important catalyst of fake news was the precision with which the purveyor targeted an audience -- a task that can easily be accomplished using the data that tech companies routinely gather and sell to advertisers. The key was to seed an initial cluster of believers, who would share or comment on the item, recommending it to others through Twitter or Facebook. False stories spread farther when they were initially aimed at poorly informed people who had a hard time telling if a claim was true or false. 

Hence, we've unwittingly engineered a social media environment that is inherently prone to fake news epidemics. When marketers use information on surfing habits, opinions and social connections to aim ads at people with just the right interests, this can facilitate beneficial economic exchange. But in the wrong hands, the technology becomes a means for the precision seeding of propaganda.

I read through the entire article and to sum it up in a few words, we're fucked.

It seems the only possible long tern solution to this problem is to convince people to stay off social media entirely, and we know that ain't happening.

Or to dramatically improve our education system.

What was that first one again?

37 pro-Trump rallies cancelled. Will be held online instead where it is much safer for the little snowflakes.

Courtesy of Gizmodo: 

Pro-Trump rallies that were originally being planned for roughly 37 locations across the US have been canceled. The rallies, scheduled for September 9th, were being coordinated by ACT For America, a pro-Trump and anti-Muslim hate group best known for its “March Against Sharia” back in June. The group said it will instead hold online demonstrations. 

ACT For America released a statement to Breitbart, America’s number 1 website for adult virgins, claiming that the cancellations were due to “the recent violence in America and in Europe.” ACT For America, which calls itself “the NRA of national security,” is now proclaiming Saturday, September 9th an online “Day of ACTion.” It’s not yet clear what the organization has planned, but it’s probably a safe bet that it will involve plenty of shitty memes.

"America’s number 1 website for adult virgins," I love that!

Clearly this is for the best because I have it on good authority that when internet trolls are exposed to the public it is kind of like when vampires go out in the sun, they simply whither and die.

Or have warrants sworn out for their arrest:

Officials at the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s Office of Albemarle County in Charlottesville said on Monday morning that four warrants had been issued for Mr. Cantwell’s arrest. The office referred questions about the nature of the charges to the University of Virginia Police Department. A spokesman at the department did not respond to requests for comment on Friday, Saturday and Monday. 

The Boston Globe reported on Thursday that the warrants were related to the “illegal use of gases, and injury by caustic agent or explosive.”

Just in case you forgot exactly which pathetic POS this is, it's this guy.

You know personally I think that ALL Trump supporters should avoid going out in public and acting like they are actual human beings and stuff, and should instead  stay on the internet where they can freely associate with others of their kind, like pedophiles, bronies, and people who still miss Crystal Pepsi.

Sarah Palin pretends to be standing up for children, while using her own to hawk crappy merchandise on the internet.

Courtesy of Buy One Get One Free Barbie's Facebook page:  

The left seems to have a "War on Decency". We used to be able to disagree without being disagreeable. The left has turned this into an all out war. A perfect example of this is people like Kathy Griffin attacking innocent children. Who does that?!?!  (Perhaps the same people who use their own children to grift for cash online. Just a thought.)


www.merchful.com/sarahpalin is speaking up to those snowflakes who cry for equality and tolerance but can't even handle the actions of their own consequences.... SUCK IT UP CUPCAKE!!! 

There's only 3 days left to support Operation Heal Our Patriots by purchasing through this campaign.

According to the website a "portion" of the proceeds will go toward Samaritan's Purse.

I would imagine that is a small portion indeed.

After all Palin does not do these things out of the goodness of her heart. (What's in it for us?)

One has to wonder at the decision to attack liberals while supposedly raising money for an organization that claims to be working to "Heal our Patriots," as if only conservatives ever serve in the military, demonstrate patriotism, or come home wounded from the battlefield.

In an earlier post on her rarely visited website the Queen of Hypocrisy made this statement: 

Do you often give someone a piece of your mind? I confess to it – and most of us probably have pieces of our minds all over creation! As we grow in grace, however, we’re to exercise freedom of speech more responsibly – in a manner that uplifts, rather than destroys. Even when we have to correct, even when we disagree, we can speak truth in love.

Not sure how much love is contained in the phrase "Suck it up Cupcake."

And Palin's Facebook page and website are chock full of attacks on progressives, the media, and politicians with whom she disagrees.

Many of those posts are full of inaccuracies, exaggerations, and "fake news."

Is THAT her example of speaking "truth in love?"

Remember it is not simply Palin's opinions that are so disgusting, it's the hypocrisy.

John Oliver helping us all to protect Net Neutrality.

Courtesy of Raw Story:

One of the first John Oliver segments to gain national attention came in 2014, when he called for viewers to flood the FCC's website with comments opposing net neutrality restrictions. The next day, that site crashed due to “technical difficulties with our comment system.” It was the first of many instances in which Oliver would spur grassroots activism among his viewers, whether it be through pushing a hashtag or flat-out soliciting donations to worthwhile organizations. On Sunday night, Oliver ran back his initial call to action by once again encouraging viewers to visit the FCC's website and make their voices heard. This is because, once again, net neutrality is in trouble.

Two years after Oliver shut down the FCC's website, the U.S. Court of Appeals upheld new net neutrality rules supported by President Barack Obama. "Today’s ruling is a victory for the open, fair, and free Internet as we know it today—one that remains open to innovation and economic growth, without service providers serving as paid gatekeepers," the Obama administration said in a statement. 

Now that Donald Trump is in office, however, that "open, fair and free internet" is in jeopardy. His administration in April announced plans to roll back Obama-era net neutrality protections. 

Here is the link that Oliver is providing to help the American people protect their access to the internet.

And as he says this really is something that should unite ALL of us.

Facebook admits that it was used to spread propaganda. Gee, no shit.

Courtesy of The Guardian:

Facebook has publicly acknowledged that its platform has been exploited by governments seeking to manipulate public opinion in other countries – including during the presidential elections in the US and France – and pledged to clamp down on such “information operations”.

In a white paper authored by the company’s security team and published on Thursday, the company detailed well-funded and subtle techniques used by nations and other organizations to spread misleading information and falsehoods for geopolitical goals. These efforts go well beyond “fake news”, the company said, and include content seeding, targeted data collection and fake accounts that are used to amplify one particular view, sow distrust in political institutions and spread confusion. 

“We have had to expand our security focus from traditional abusive behavior, such as account hacking, malware, spam and financial scams, to include more subtle and insidious forms of misuse, including attempts to manipulate civic discourse and deceive people,” said the company. 

In its effort to clamp down on information operations, Facebook suspended 30,000 accounts in France before the presidential election. The company said it was a priority to remove suspect accounts with high volumes of posting activity and the biggest audiences. 

The company also explained how it monitored “several situations” that fit the pattern of information operations during the US presidential election. The company detected “malicious actors” using social media to share information stolen from other sources such as email accounts “with the intent of harming the reputation of specific political targets”. This technique involved creating dedicated websites to host the stolen data and then creating social media accounts and pages to direct people to it.

Look I see this as a positive step.

And working alongside Google who is now also working hard to suppress fake news, this might make it a lot easier moving forward to avoid the kind of fake news and purposeful propaganda which helped get Donald Trump elected and disenfranchised so many potential voters.

Having said that I should also reiterate that the very best filter for fake news is to stay informed as much as possible and to use your critical thinking skills to fact check information which seems odd or too good to be true.

Google reveals new tools for avoiding fake news.

Courtesy of the Guardian:  

Google announced its first attempt to combat the circulation of “fake news” on its search engine with new tools allowing users to report misleading or offensive content, and a pledge to improve results generated by its algorithm. 

The technology company said it would allow people to complain about misleading, inaccurate or hateful content in its autocomplete function, which pops up to suggest searches based on the first few characters typed. 

It also said it would refine its search engine to “surface more authoritative pages and demote low-quality content” – and acknowledged for the first time that it had taken the measures to combat the threat of fake news.

Well I for one welcome the assistance of Google in filtering through the misinformation and fake news.

However it can never take the place of a vigilant internet surfer utilizing their critical thinking skills and common sense.

My reaction after my internet suddenly popped back on after being down or molasses slow all day yesterday.

That feeling when you're caught daydreaming at work :) (via @UmmRKSZ ) #mediawatch pic.twitter.com/lRkTbpygfo

— Media Watch (@ABCmediawatch) April 9, 2017

GCI was a total bitch yesterday, and my internet access was either nonexistent or reminiscent of the old dial up days.

Fortunately I managed to finish and file my taxes right before everything went to shit.