As IF Times

Source: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

It’s incredibly ironic that at a time when communication to the larger world has never been more accessible, peoples’ exposure to it can actually be shrinking.  This doesn’t mean that people are unaware of things happening across the county or even across the globe.  Thanks to social media platforms such as the ubiquitous Facebook, people are able to snoop into the lives of people whom they would normally never hear from…and that includes relatives, from all over the world.

Now, you can be Facebook pals with any ‘celebrity’ who willingly leaves the door open for the public to ogle their lives.   This satisfies both the voyeur and exhibitionist elements of society.  Facebook has evolved from being a bulletin board of peoples’ actual activities, (essentially a year round Christmas letter), to one where people post cute cat and dog videos.  From this banal stage, Facebook is now moving to a more ambitious, possibly sinister stage, that of news dissemination.

Those of you who post or frequent Facebook regularly may have noticed the proliferation of ads and infomercials interspersed among the cat videos.  That is to be expected, since monetization of eyeballs is the raison d’etre of the company.  What is more subtle are the “trending” news stories that appear throughout the site which are then ‘liked’ and forwarded by your social network.  Since you are more likely to click on the referrals of your pals than to randomly read a story, the newsworthiness of the article gains exposure and by implication, veracity.

This is nothing different from the way that humans have long communicated: the tried and proven technique of gossip.  It’s the modern day equivalent of  “I heard from a reliable source that…”  This gets passed on throughout the community and the story becomes fact without regard to the validity of the story. Next thing you know, the neighbor is part of the JFK cover-up.

The problem is, as the linked story illustrates, the original sources of the story may have questionable facts and indeed may be promulgating a particular worldview.   If a story emerges about the plight of missing penguins caused by evil global warming (and especially if accompanied by doe eyed pictures of the little critters) is “liked” by Pamela Anderson, then every girl on that social net will ‘like’ and pass on that story on their sites and voila, global warming kills cute animals.  For some reason, they never use spiders or snakes.

It’s always good to be skeptical of the news stories foisted upon the public by the major commercial news outlets, but Facebook’s tack is much more powerful, because it creates a mechanism for people to get information from trusted sources, namely their friends, which may carry more weight than if they had read it from oh, let’s say, the unimpeachable Huffington Post.  People may appear to be more informed about things; until you find out that they are really just Facebook bots.  Deluding people with make believe friends is harmless: deluding them with make believe realities is not to like.

link Heroic Giffords Intern Could Be Asked For Papers Under Arizona Immigration Law.

Apologies in advance for referring to a Huffington Post article, but the inanity of this piece was just too glaring to ignore.  Yes, that Huffington Post, where the truth is merely an inconvenience.  Even before the smoke clears on the shooting rampage in Arizona, this writer of the linked article feels compelled to spin the story with a political angle. 

One of the heros in the aftermath of the shooting was congresswoman Giffords’  aide, Daniel Hernandez,  who heroically stemmed the bleeding from the congresswoman after she had been shot.  Now, the insightful writer muses that Mr. Hernandez may be required to prove he is not an illegal immigrant in accordance with a proposed Arizona law. 

So what? If you buy booze in a liquor store, you have to prove that you are of age. If you want to go to country club and have drinks there, you are expected to provide  proof of membership.  If you want to drive a car, you need a license. If you want to be a resident of the state of Arizona, you need to have proof of citizenship.  But in none of the above cases would exclusion from those groups prevent someone from acting as any humane person would in an emergency situation such as the one that transpired in Tuscon. 

That is a question of morality, not of legality.  Is the author implying that illegal immigrants would be less likely to save people from a burning building because their immigration status may be at stake?  While this is possible, I think this implies a cynicism on  the morality of the people who may find themselves in that predicament bordering on insulting. Only the rabid left would be thinking of political ramifications in a life and death circumstance.  Would someone like Hernandez be less inclined to help because he owed back taxes? Or was tardy in child support payments?  Most rational people are not concerned with left or right politics in making day to day life decisions.  That prism of life is left to the underemployed nutbars who pose as journalists and pundits. 

There’s an old joke in the financial business that goes; what’s the difference between a bond and a bond trader?  Answer, a bond matures.  I wouldn’t bet that on Huffington Post scribes.  Heaven help people like this writer if the world actually operated as cynicially as she depicts.  Imagine if she were ever to be wheeled into a “conservative” hospital during an emergency and the doctors asked, ” okay, who was the republican vice presidential candidate in 1963, we only need initials?”.   That’ll learn her.