MEDIA WATCH: Good! Shut down NZ Facebook too!

1. And are we all so dumb that we are seriously letting the word “influencer” into our vocabulary and news, FFS.

   • @ RL
     Oh, I know! The first time I came across the word ‘influencer’ was when I went on-set once and asked the PM ( Production Manager) ” Who the fuck are they? in reference to three fine young cannibals strutting about with their on-trend rolled up straight legged jeans, on-trend sneakers and no socks on-trend and brandishing pool table sized cell phones. ” She informed me that they were ‘influencers’. They, so I was told, used their social media popularity to ‘influence’, or ‘parasitise’ if you will, the minds of anyone who has an equally enormous cell phone and who’s never read a book and often forget where they left their last bowel motion.
     And of course such head-fuck tactics are not confined to social media EBW or Electronic Brain Washing. When ever we drive through any city and most towns there are massive advertising hoardings demanding our attention and they’re strategically placed so we hapless drivers can’t help but look at them.
     I tried facebook once years ago. I was on there for about four days until I could feel its covert intrusions spearing into my soul. I deleted the ap then re deleted it until I could feel the warmth of the sun on my face as I wandered about in my garden rejoicing at the wonders of a natural reality.
     Or is it…?
     Is banning anything such a good idea though? Or is it better to know one’s enemy? I’m a bit of a fan of education over banning if I must be honest.
     In my humble opinion I think facebook, like the many other social media sites there are, is little more than a surveillance mechanism and what is it that’s said of the abyss?

   • 🙂 Exactery!
     The most sought after careers in future – in this space, going forward: To be an Ontra-prin Oooh Aaah, and failing that, an Influencer. A perfik fit for a future in politics or the corporate world.
     Look at moi look at moi.
     Skull sets required? Comms and marketing. Even if it results in a hefty loan, the gamble is that it’ll pay off in the long to medium term.
     But get in quick. The natives are getting restless, and even if aspirants only ever subscribe to the singular media bubble, the plebs are becoming wise to the spin and bullshit.
     On the plus side though, you don’t really have to do that much other than have an ability to swallow.
     Critical thought desirable, although not essential. Preference will be given to candidates who can lie straight-faced and have experience in sales.

2. Agree with this. People need to grow up, take a breath of fresh air i.e. from outside the house/apartment, and source more of their news intake from places other than social media.

   Many, if not most of us, have had to personally deal with fall out from FB’s algorithms. Even if you have not had a friend or colleague develop malfunctioning cognitive abilities and go full conspiracy or anti vax, you will have had to put up with the likes of Billy TK and ACT.

   • The issue is deeply-rooted and structural in society and the failures of the education system. Facebook algorithms exacerbate it, but largely because they were susceptible and showing interest in the first place. The algorithm doesn’t magically sense who is a gullible idiot and seek them out. If you give someone a library card there’s a chance that sooner or later they might check out a copy of M**n K**mpf – does that make you or the library to blame for what might happen next?

3. To use and profit from news that has been sauced by other media and not pay for it is theft in my book! Don’t threaten, use bully tactics or give ultimatums, play fair, pay up or get out of the game.

   • Strangely, your first sentence is saucy enough to meaningful.

     • Saucy enough to meaningful’s pretty broad. I’m sure you could narrow it down a bit. Maybe something like generally informative falls somewhere between the two? Or perhaps even fairly interesting?

   • How exactly? Thumbnails and hyperlinks are not content, especially if they lead to paywalled sites. It’s directly analogous to demanding that the yellow pages should be paying you for including the phone number of your business just because they profit from selling advertising that someone looking for a plumber or whatever might see. It. Is. Not. Logical. Captain.

4. please! Fake news, bias and shoddy journalism have always been with us. to side with corporate media now is like siding with horses and blacksmiths against cars and mechanics

5. facebook and google are slippery massive corporations who can not be trusted … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O3UOrJdoSyw

   They are uber creative and in that rich elite group who pay little or no tax ,,, starving governments of revenue and creating artificial austerity for citizens all around the world.

   “Facebook has hewn its own corporate reality. Facebook the company decided it didn’t want to be known as a large company any more. It didn’t even want to be part of a large company, so it applied to Australia’s corporate regulator and was duly granted a special exemption from being large.” …
   ….”our regulator verily changed the laws of the land to fulfil Facebook’s fantasy of being small – and presumably to help it in paying no tax – like its idol, the golden calf of tax chicanery, Google.”…

   “Facebook meanwhile is doing a rollicking ad trade in this country even though every entity connected to it is somehow unaccountable in our tax jurisdiction. Contracts are being signed in Australia but somehow the business isn’t actually happening here” , https://www.michaelwest.com.au/laws-of-the-land-make-facebook-fantasies-come-true/

   google in Aussie … ” They spun it as a 15 per cent tax rate; a bill of $7 million on a profit of $46 million. After deductions, though, the amount paid was just $466,802. Google’s real profit – mostly booked in more amenable tax jurisdictions – is many times what it declared. Its ad revenue in Australia is as high as $2 billion.” https://www.michaelwest.com.au/google-pays-little-tax-while-commission-of-audit-goes-after-poor/

   Facebook … “Dirty Tricks

   Today’s series of articles in the Guardian expose a series of apparently unethical and deceptive practices by the PR company, which hides its clients and operates anonymously in their favour by setting up social media and Facebook campaigns promoting their interests whilst pretending to represent the views of ordinary, unpaid members of the public.

   Key clients for whom CTF have run covert fake media operations include the government of Saudi Arabia, for whom it ran sites promoting the country’s attacks on Yemen and the major coal mining concern Glencore,” …. https://www.sarawakreport.org/2019/08/uk-news-article-confirms-najibs-extensive-use-of-secret-pr-advisors-at-last-election/

   “A British Artcic explorer, Philip Goodeve-Docker, who recently died tragically after becoming stranded in appalling icy conditions, for example, has been reinvented as a banker named Harry Drakeford, allegedly keen to promote an anonymous defamatory Facebook site called The Real Clare Rewcastle, which accuses Sarawak Report of lying and forging.”

   google … ““The [Bell Pottinger] executives also discussed what they called the “dark arts” of optimizing Google searches and editing Wikipedia pages in favor of clients. Collins said that Bell Pottinger’s goal would be “to get to the point where, even if they type in ‘Uzbek child labor’ or ‘Uzbek human-rights violation,’ some of the first results that come up are sites talking about what you guys are doing to address and improvethat, not just the critical voices saying how terrible this all is.”

   facebook .. https://www.sarawakreport.org/2015/11/liars-forgers-and-paid-pr-people-posing-as-activists-black-pr-against-sarawak-report-exposed/
   “The recent PR campaign against Sarawak Report, supposedly supported by a team of enthusiastic Tweeters and Facebook fans, has accused this writer of being a “liar” and a “forger” and of being a paid “activist posing as a journalist”.

   Yet our research, together with the UK’s Independent newspaper, into the anonymous outfit behind this campaign, has shown that these descriptions perfectly fit the accusers instead.

   The Independent has today published their investigation and featured our complaint against Facebook and Twitter, for taking inadequate steps to protect victims from this kind of abuse..”

6. google ,,,, the .0001 %

   ENTITY OF THE YEAR

   Google Australia romps away with this prize. It managed to pay $74,176 in tax on its $1 billion in revenue (or $2 billion, the accounts are a tad unclear) and should upgrade its motto instantly from ”Don’t be Evil” to ”Don’t be Good Either”.

   This 0.0001 tax rate was an increase over last year, so there may have been a slippage in its Australian earnings before they became royalties paid from a Dutch subsidiary to a holding company in Bermuda. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/and-the-gong-goes-to-google/

   • That’s still more than Australia’s media triopoly paid, which was zero.

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