ADL's Never Is Now 2019 | ADL International Leadership Award Presented to Sacha Baron Cohen

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Strong rec cs702 · 2019-11 · on “Sacha Baron Cohen Uses ADL Speech to Tear Apart Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook”

This is a thought-provoking speech. Do yourself a favor and watch it in its entirety -- before commenting: [this video] Among the many thorny issues and questions raised by Cohen: * The business model of social media companies is powered by engagement , which is greatest for content that arouses the basest instincts and feelings of human beings, including fear and hatred. Social media companies earn more with the basest content. * Social media companies are ideal propaganda machines, enabling anyone willing to appeal to the worst in human nature to reach billions of people with a click. * Do social media companies bear responsibility for the negative impact their products have on society, in the

Strong rec cs702 · 2019-11 · on “Sacha Baron Cohen: Facebook would have let Hitler buy ads for 'final solution'”

This is a thought-provoking speech. Do yourself a favor and watch it in its entirety -- before commenting: [this video] Among the many thorny issues and questions raised by Cohen: * The business model of social media companies is powered by engagement , which is greatest for content that arouses the basest instincts and feelings of human beings, including fear and hatred. Social media companies earn more with the basest content. * Social media companies are ideal propaganda machines, enabling anyone willing to appeal to the worst in human nature to reach billions of people with a click. * Do social media companies bear responsibility for the negative impact their products have on society, in the

Recommends dfsegoat · 2019-11 · on “Twitter CEO Endorses DuckDuckGo”

He gets into the relevant details in his speech at below timestamp [1]: > "Just imagine what Goebbels [2] could have done with Facebook" I think the bottom line is he is good at social engineering, and he recognizes the signs of manipulation at scale. Beyond that, he is smart enough to consume the literature. Note: Video is his award speech from ADL. But has sensitive wording and is NSFW. I found it to be pretty well put together - maybe reaching a bit in parts. [1] - [this video] [2] - [LINK]

Recommends mattigames · 2019-11 · on “Facebook's only Dutch factchecker quits over political ad exemption”

I can convince you in the same degree you are willing to understand any evidence I give, a similar challenge arises with anti-vaxxers, a group that few years ago was just a laughing stock but now thanks to the online fear propaganda through social media now has created some focus of kids without vaccines creating disease risks believed to be long gone, such risks of social network are measureable, but there are things that are practically harder to measure like if the "pedophile hillary pizza place" changed what people think about that political candidate; in general the way people are influenciated by propaganda is not immediate but take years to slowly aggregate with other falsehoods or un

Recommends flowerlad · 2020-12 · on “YouTube to remove content that alleges widespread election fraud”

On the internet everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart looks as legit as the BBC. Sacha Baron Cohen [this video] Excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims. Zuckerberg says people should decide

Recommends flowerlad · 2021-01 · on “Facebook Admits It Was Used to Incite Violence in Myanmar (2018)”

On the internet everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart looks as legit as the BBC. Sacha Baron Cohen [this video] Excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million followers. Freedom of speech is not freedom of reach. Sadly There will always be racists, misogynists, anti-Semites, and child abusers. We should not be giving bigots and pedophiles a free platform to amplify their views and target their victims. Zuckerberg says people should decide

Recommends flowerlad · 2021-01 · on “How Silicon Valley destroyed Parler”

> do we really want a handful of unelected billionaires deciding what is acceptable speech Historically newspapers, television and radio have decided what is acceptable to be published through their media. There is no reason modern internet-based media should be any different. On the internet everything can appear equally legitimate. Breitbart looks as legit as the BBC. Sacha Baron Cohen [this video] Excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities to millions of people. President Trump using Twitter has spread conspiracy theories more than 1700 times to his 67 million follo

Recommends flowerlad · 2021-01 · on “Facebook Incubated the Insurrection”

Conspiracy theories once confined to the fringe are going mainstream. It is as if the age of reason -- the era of evidential argument -- is ending. Knowledge is de-legitimized and scientific consensus is dismissed. Democracy which depends on shared truths is in retreat, and autocracy, which depends on shared lies, is on the march. All this hate and violence is being facilitated by a handful of internet companies that amount to the greatest propaganda machine in history. The above is by Sacha Baron Cohen, see: [this video] More excerpts: Voltaire was right when he said "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." And social media lets authoritarians push absurdities