SocraticGadfly: Internet rumors
Showing posts with label Internet rumors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Internet rumors. Show all posts

June 06, 2020

My top blogging during May

A similar post is mistitled because it's about April blogging, actually.

No. 1 and 10 are old blogging.

No. 1, perhaps trending because of what I've written about the First Amendment, churches, and quarantine laws (thanks, sincerely, John Roberts) is an old piece about whether or not a college can discriminate against a religious group. It may also be popular because of the old comment, before I had moderation turned on, has links generating hits. I still like the piece, so I won't delete it. Blogger won't let me delete the comment, sadly.

No. 10 has been popular here before. Timothy Treedwell is still dead, and fertilizing Alaskan soil as decayed grizzly shit and still fricking nuts.

No. 2? Joe Biden's Veep nomination is more important than ever since killer cop lover Klobberin Kobuchar refuses to remove herself from consideration, showing what an embarrassment the modern Democratic Party is.

No. 3 is about why Jesse Ventura was chickenshit on seeking (by the back door) the GP presidential nomination. With the Green Party still refusing to supply a PDF of his letter of interest, it shows what an embarrassment the modern Green Party is also becoming.

No. 4, about Libertarian nominee Jo Jorgensen, has taken off since being reposted on Independent Political Report. It's been extensively updated and expanded and has generated two spinoff posts that will go up later this month.

No. 5? Week 9 of the weekly coronavirus roundup. No. 8? Week 10.

No. 6? That similar post.

No. 7: Another favorite of mine, about how the coronavirus, and the conspiracy theories it's generating, show that the horseshoe theory (at least in the US, with limited political thinking outside the duopoly) might be more true than false. Suck on that, Noah Berlatsky.

No. 9? My latest deconstruction of self-appointed basic income guru Scott Santens. Learn some actual math, dude. And, if you are peddling BI with bad math, stop peddling quasi-libertarian versions, or more accurately, tech-neoliberal versions. This leftist of sorts is tired of it.

December 07, 2009

MUCH more on the dark side of the Internet

So, while the Internet may not be an unallayed force for good, in things like citizen journalism, consumer empowerment against big business, etc., it's a human, "allayed," but still powerful force for good, right?

Uhh, quite possibly not.

Big Biz? It's behind the growth of SEOs, Google-scrubbing companies, etc.
Corporations themselves have not been slow to exploit cyberspace for their own purposes, with many of them relying on “search engine optimization” (SEO)—a set of online techniques to boost their Google ranking--to make themselves easier to find.

Now, they have stepped up their efforts, hiring the services of dedicated SEO firms that can ensure that any online complaints about corporate misbehavior posted by the likes of The Consumerist will be almost impossible to find on Google.

ComplaintRemover.com, the most visible of such companies, advertises “Do you need negative information removed? We are masters at knocking bad links off the front pages of search engines!” boasts its front page. In some sense, cyberspace has made life relatively easy for companies: they don’t need to beat up journalists anymore; they just need to beat up Google. The latter can be done quietly, privately, and at little expense--to their finances or their reputations.

And, now that Big Biz does take this seriously, it's got a lot more money and "weight" than citizen journalists.

Pseudoscience is rampant online in the "educated" West; nationalism abounds elsewhere. Add in the amount of rumor-monging in legitimate protests against authorities and authoritarianism, and the Net has plenty of "issues" and "baggage." Can it overcome that?

October 19, 2009

Baptist mag tells Xns to stop rumor-monging

Specifically, to stop rumor-monging about President Obama and related things. Will Fox call American Baptists (the more Northern, liberal denomination) unchristian?

December 16, 2008

We will see on Iraqi ‘shoe thrower’ mistreatment

Rumors have been flying that Iraqi shoe-throwing journalist Muntader al-Zaidi has been held in the U.S.-run Camp Cropper, has had a broken arm inflicted, or worse.

Well, he’s supposed to appear in court Wednesday; if he has a broken arm, it will be obvious. Besides, after those initial reports, his own brother said he had talked with al-Zaidi and Muntader said he was OK.

September 08, 2008

Snopes says ‘Whoa, Nellie’ on Palin book-ban list

While not denying that, as Wasilla mayor, Sarah Palin may have objected to some library books, the good folks at Snopes shoot down rumors that she actually did ban any books, let alone a particular list of them that’s now circulating the Net.

(The first “Harry Potter” book hadn’t been published yet at the time Palin began pushing librarian Mary Ellen Emmons.