BF2S Forums Presidential Election 2016

I thought Trump's speech was pretty funny, it was as if the last few weeks never happened, and he got in a few digs like the 'China-virus'.

uziq wrote:

i'm liking the all new and improved mitch mcconnell model already.

guy is suddenly standing up for truth. who knew all it took was losing the senate majority for him to start doing his good-man act?

I hate that it will be effective but it's such a classic snake move to 'change your ways' on literally the last day of a presidency.

I assumed they were KKK hats.

I don't know, I don't think I know much about them.

Doesn't much look like the lgbtq pattern to me. It's a tribute to the number of covid dead right? Wouldn't make sense to use that pattern.

ursula von der leyen:

The relief that many of us are feeling about the change of administration in Washington should not blind us to the fact that, although Donald Trump’s presidency may be history in just a few hours, his movement will not. More than 70 million Americans voted for him in the election. Just a few days ago, several hundred of them stormed the Capitol in Washington, the heart of American democracy.

That is what happens when words incite action. That is what happens when hate speech and fake news spread like wildfire through digital media. They become a danger to democracy.

Last August, several hundred right-wing extremists tried to storm the Reichstag building in Berlin. It is only thanks to the courage and vigilance of a handful of police officers that they were not successful. And we remember Jo Cox, the British Labour Member of Parliament who was murdered by a right-wing extremist in June 2016, during the torrid days leading up to the Brexit referendum. A deed which still makes us shudder today.

We must impose democratic limits on the untrammelled and uncontrolled political power of the internet giants. We want the platforms to be transparent about how their algorithms work. We cannot accept a situation where decisions that have a wide-ranging impact on our democracy are being made by computer programs without any human supervision.

so, just as i said, the europeans were queuing up to criticize private companies' banning people because they much prefer to legislate for it at the political level. a solution which i roundly agree with, in this case.

Last edited by uziq (2021-01-20 04:19:59)

er, they literally are, that's how algorithms selecting what is shown on your news feed by default and what is filtered out works.

that's what decides to a large extent what adverts are seen on your profile, matched to their psychological profile built on your data, interactions, feedback, etc.

how much human supervision do you think there is of the individual user experience on facebook or youtube? lol.

yes, a human 'supervises' the algorithms by creating them, but, just as with any number of machine learning algorithms or supposed 'AI', these human designers in-build their own selection biases and assumptions to the models. and their operations, when live, are ultimately not accountable or transparent. especially when these algorithms are not designed with a criterion of 'fairness' or 'balance' but rather ad-driven or profit-motivated criteria of 'generating the most clicks'. the results are people driven further and further into frenzies of click-provoking content.

https://towardsdatascience.com/understa … 65e23900ac

Last edited by uziq (2021-01-20 04:56:10)

er, that's THEIR whole point. they want to make facebook more accountable for the consequences, designed or unintended, of their algorithms. they are evidently becoming extremely powerful tools which shape our social and political landscape today. their ramifications on increasing polarization, heated-up rhetoric, promulgation of misinformation and 'alternative facts', etc, are numerous.

how are you being this dumb? that is exactly what von der leyen just pointed out. that the social media tech giants have just set a top spinning and won't answer for their own algorithms' consequences.

What they need to do is reinstate the fairness doctrine and make these platforms liable.

i have already alluded to this many, many times. the social media companies want to get into the media/news organization world without any of the accountability or standards that govern their communications. the fairness doctrine is certainly a very imperfect one, but it betokens the efforts which publishing or media companies have to go to in order to be 'fair' and 'balanced' in a democratic society. those standards are important in public communication; if people are being presented with a political slant or bias account, they need to be informed of it.

facebook and co. pretend to be a faceless, impartial 'platform', but actually their ad spaces and algorithms are highly tailored to certain ends. people are not aware of that, in the main, or at least not how it pertains to their own data and 'profile'. the objective, balanced picture is nowhere to be found. most users aren't even aware that the results that show on their feed when they visit aren't even an 'even' spread of their contacts' output; even the basic feed is tailored towards what the system thinks you want to see.

Last edited by uziq (2021-01-20 05:28:36)

guis we gotta new prez now

well, it's a bit like watching a sports event without the audience and crowd noise. it was always going to be a muted ceremony in covid-year.

The fuck is with this guy hugging and shaking hands lmao

This is like a light version of rapping