All posts tagged: The web they want

Bait & Switch – Fake News, propornot, the Real Inform & Influence Operation

Published by

by GH Eliason A few days before the 2016 election I contacted several publishers and told them they were on a list to be dealt with/ taken down after what was supposed to be a Clinton victory. This effort was against news sites and websites that spoke or wrote against current US policies that Clinton supported. As I was writing this Glen Greenwald’s great article came out specifically about propornot. That plays a small part in this. Journalists that said or wrote anything damaging to the Clinton campaign or supported her opponents in any way were targeted. News sites and journalists that failed to criticize Vladimir Putin, or worse; they were sympathetic of this or that Russian or Syria policy at any time are on the lists. The implication isn’t that Hillary Clinton had anything to do with this. She didn’t, at least not directly. We’re going to take a clear look at this, who is behind it, and why. The political stakes and stakeholders go far beyond the presidency. It was about setting the …

Female politicians (sometimes) receive more abuse than male counterparts, apart from when they don’t…

Published by

by Kit The Guardian have tried their hand at statistical analysis again – after resounding failures the last two times, you have to at least salute their determination. As part of their “web we want” initiative, the Guardian have published Max Kelsen’s extensive study of twitter “abuse” suffered by politicians. The study seeks to demonstrate and explain the “concerning” level of abuse, and manages to do neither. Instead it becomes just a tool for the Guardian to justify and renew their assault on the idea of internet free speech. Methods and Data The first point that needs to be addressed is how this study defines, and subsequently identifies, “abuse”: Tweets were filtered into those that contained abusive words, and those that didn’t. While this will include false positives in the case of tweets primarily directed at one politician but containing abuse directed at another, these are in the minority. Their method WILL produce false positives. Not “might produce”, “ will produce”; a very important distinction. But don’t worry, these “false positives” are, they assure us, …

The Web They Want: How a twitter wordsearch justifies internet censorship

Published by

by Kit Earlier this year the Guardian launched their new campaign – “The Web We Want”. It’s an agenda driven campaign to suppress free speech and protect the ancien media regime from the alt-news revolution, in the name of protecting ethnic minorities, female writers and the LGBT community from the all the hate that pours out of the privileged fingertips of all the white men on the internet. We have written extensively on what the Guardian really means by “the web they want”. We know their statistics are a farce and can see through their editorial double talk. Their place in a planned roll out of an idea is obvious, coinciding with political climbers from all parties making speeches attacking free speech in the name of freedom. Banning liberty because…won’t somebody please think of the children! When the Guardian talks about “taking action” against internet abuse, we know what they mean. They mean censorship. There’s nothing more need be said. But this latest story cries out for a response. Apparently by tracking the number of …

Does Owen Jones really believe the internet is hurting democracy?

Published by

by BlackCatte Over at the Guardian’s shiny new “the web we want” section there’s a veritable onslaught of the “problem – reaction -solution” method of manipulating public opinion. Several articles are currently running over there, all of which can be broken down into the following: The problem is “abuse on the internet.” The reaction is “this is killing democracy/harming minorities/destroying online communities. The solution is…well, so far that’s only being discussed in hints and whispers. Posed only as leading questions, or elisions in the discourse. Shielded from us with interrogation marks and weighted silence. But it’s clear what it is. What else could it be? In a piece titled Is it too late to stop the trolls trampling over our entire political discourse?, Owen Jones offers a classic example of the method being employed. He starts by citing a number of experiences of abuse he’s undergone as a Guardian columnist, which are intended to illustrate the problem. It was a pretty standard far-right account: anonymous (check); misappropriating St George (check); dripping with venom towards “Muslim-loving” …