Shame.
Couldn't happen to a nicer group of humans.
For the fourth straight day, Cambridge Analytica is scrambling in the wake of damning media reports. The embattled London-based biz suspended its CEO Alexander Nix on Tuesday after the UK's Channel 4 aired yet another news report – this time showing Nix claiming to have run the "digital campaign" for US President Donald Trump' …
Classifying other people as non-human is a slippery slope towards fascism and the final solution.
Think it through.
I did and it isn't the same. With regards to the holocaust that was perpetrated against people who could not help being Jewish, Slavic, Gypsy, Homosexual, or having a genetic illness.
In the cases here we have a group of people that choose to be utter bellends, and lying bastards.
Godwin's law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1"
There is a popular extension that mentioning Hitler causes instant loss of a debate, which is sometimes abused. Godwin has expressed the need for an exemption when the debate is actually about real Nazis.
"Classifying this group of gutter dwelling, bottom feeding, shallow end of the gene pool upright mammals as Human is somewhat alarming."
"Bolshevism is the declaration of war by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself". ref
So why is the comparison invalid? Because it's a cliche?
Godwin's law: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1"
We should add Putin, Skripal and Litvinenko to the list.
From what I've seen, Trump needs to be in that list as well. Occasionally Hillary Clinton. Of course, I can be smug in the knowledge that I voted for my Johnson...
There is a popular extension that mentioning Hitler causes instant loss of a debate, which is sometimes abused.
Cliff Stoll may have been the first to add that corollary. Mike Godwin endorsed it in his 1995 Net Culture post.
Part of Godwin's original point - as he described it in the Godwin's Law post he cross-posted to a number of popular Usenet newsgroups in 1991 - was to point out how readily Usenet posters would trot out the Hitler comparison. He felt that trivialized the associated historical events, and was rhetorically ineffective, because it had become a cliché.
Stoll's point, I assume, is that once Godwin's Law is satisfied, there's a good chance that the debate has degenerated to hyperbole, insult, and trivial generalization, at least on one side; and so nothing more productive would happen in it.
It's an observation, not a parliamentary rule. Note also Quirk's Exception.
It is similar enough. Would it be OK, for instance, to treat people who voted for or against Brexit (depending on your view on it) as subhuman? It's a completely standard trick to treat people you don't like as not human -- it's how people think about the other side in wars so they killing them seems OK.
But they are human, as are these people, and if you remember that, you also remember that humans can do terrible things which means that you or I can do terrible things if we aren't careful to avoid doing so.
It is far from evident that these people, snakelike as they may be, should be read out of the human race for embracing practices that, subject to constraints of contemporary technology, have been common practice in US political campaigning for over two hundred years and probably are as widely used nearly everywhere public elections are held.
"I did and it isn't the same. With regards to the holocaust that was perpetrated against people who could not help being Jewish, Slavic, Gypsy, Homosexual, or having a genetic illness."
You could end up in the camps for being a communist, a Catholic or a member of a trade union. You could argue that a Jew or a Catholic could give up their religion.
The holocaust was perpetuated against scapegoats and those who might oppose the fascists. Not just those who fell foul of the rules. Otherwise Hitler would have ended up in a camp on account of having too much Jew ancestry.
Bear in mind a lot of what we have today, in terms of government and private company co-operation is quite literally fascism. To big to fail, PFI and the industrial military complex are manifestations of it.
Any point where you go from attacking a persons ideas/values/morals/actions to declaring them to be sub-human is the slippery slope. Because once it's OK to dehumanize a person, you can find a way to do it to the next one, and so on. Once they don't have their rights, then you can do what you like to them.
It's the same puerile (and unhelpful) attitude that supports/glorifies/jokes about rape in prison as being part of the process.
People do shitty things, but they don't stop being people.
"I finally twigged earlier today what the whole thing uncannily reminds me of."
I doubt the Stasi read C S Lewis.
The Stasi was the combination of Soviet paranoia and German recording efficiency. Anything with Stave Bannon involved might be suspected by unkind people of having similar leanings.
I doubt the Stasi read C S Lewis.
The STASI read everything - I've been to the former headquarters in East Berlin (now a museum, and incidentally, the actual filming location for the rather good Deutschland 83), and seen the row of steamers they used for covertly opening pretty much everyone's mail. The STASI directly employed over 90,000 people, and had one informer for every 6.5 citizens...
So, not only did the STASI almost certainly read C S Lewis's books in an official capacity, if he ever corresponded with anyone on the other side of the Iron Curtain before his death in 1963, they will have read his letters too.
Anything with [Steve] Bannon involved might be suspected by unkind people of having similar leanings.
You give Bannon too much credit. He's a lower-tier lackey and public face for the people who prefer to operate out of direct sight, like the Mercers. Before he took over Breitbart NN (which only happened because of Andrew Breitbart's unexpected death in 2012), Bannon was just a marginally-successful investment banker and Hollywood producer. He was best known for his claims to have helped negotiate the syndication deal for Seinfeld, but no one actually involved in that deal seems to recall his participation.
Now, anything the Mercers are involved in - watch out.
Nah - it won't last that long. You can hire JCBs by the day.
Well, there will be more occasions where a popcorn-loading JCB will come in handy, because CamAnal has had their fingers in several other processes where influencing voter behaviour was kind of relevant (*cough* brexit *cough*)
Hello Dragons, my pitch is for a smart popcorn machine. It will analyse news headlines before the user gets around to reading them and, based on the user's profile* will automatically start preparing the popcorn, ready for when the user will be reading the news for which they will most likely want popcorn...
* Which we really, really won't get from Facebook. Honest. And the users' data will all be perfectly safe with us, oh yes.
VinceH,
If you can do them in 'Red' and 'Blue' there is £100,000 of my money on the table now !!!
:) ;)
P.S.
Don't worry about the Data issues,I have been told by someone called Nicks or Nix (???) that they will 'fix' it for you, no questions asked.
Btw, does anyone know where I can 'quickly' get a 'Horses head', I am asking for a friend of a friend. :)
P.P.S.
For clarity it does need to be a 'Horses Head' which is a pity as there is no shortage of 'Horses A**es'.
One called 'Boris' will be free soon, so someone called 'Putin' told a mutual acquaintance. !!! :)
Well, we could start with Farage's good friend Robert Mercer, I suppose. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/us-billionaire-mercer-helped-back-brexit
And we know that CA did some work with Leave.EU, so there's Arron Banks potentially implicated too.
It's hilarious when Brexiteers bleat about "democracy" when it's becoming clearer by the way what a nasty perversion of the democratic process that the referendum was.
It's hilarious when Brexiteers bleat about "democracy" when it's becoming clearer by the way what a nasty perversion of the democratic process that the referendum was.
Clearly, the Remain campaign was entirely above board, what with the full weight of our trustworthy Establishment, extensive funding by rich foreign nationals like George Soros, along with the brilliantly and honestly conceived "Project Fear".
But apparently we Brexiteers are mere racist simpletons, who have been swayed by a barrage of targeted advertising driven off our Facebook profiles (not that I have any FB profile, but never mind facts, eh?).
extensive funding by rich foreign nationals like George Soros
FYI, funding of campaigning before the election by foreign nationals, including George Soros, was strictly forbidden. The fact that he gave some money to a pro-EU group this year can hardly have had an effect on the democratic credentials of the referendum, unless a significant number of voters are in possession of time machines.
Got some evidence of malfeasance by the "trustworthy Establishment"? Or evidence that Soros meddled in anything before the referendum? I mean, I'm no fan of Cameron or Osborne, but what did they, or anyone else, do that wasn't above board in terms Remain campaigning?
By the way, I didn't use the word "racist", but you did. Nor did I say you had a FB profile, so I'm not sure what "facts" you think you're referring to.
> Clearly, the Remain campaign was entirely above board, what with the full weight of our trustworthy Establishment, extensive funding by rich foreign nationals like George Soros, along with the brilliantly and honestly conceived "Project Fear".
> But apparently we Brexiteers are mere racist simpletons, who have been swayed by a barrage of targeted advertising driven off our Facebook profiles (not that I have any FB profile, but never mind facts, eh?).
Beep boop. Russian bot detected.
But experience tells me probably not. Cue bungled investigation, backroom deals and limited useless regulation. Thats the recipe these days ain't it?
Cynical me? Of course.
But to be fair I did have an alternate universe moment when watching BBC news. They had a rep from the ICO who was talking solemnly and gravely about "having real concerns about facebook for some time"
Who knows then. Right?
Zuckerberg: Do I look bothered? Is this my bothered face? Really?
And rightly so.
He knows people have very short attention spans and are dumb enough to reveal damm near their whole lives to complete strangers on FB in ways that (had they been asked those questions IRL) would have them thinking "WTF, this guy is beyond creepy."
Facebook is an ecosystem. And in an ecosystem there are predators, prey and parasites.
I'll leave others to work out which is which.
It is in itself beautiful. Still I share your cynicism. CA and Facebook are now the villains in the stocks. The larger problem of psychographic targeting (or whatever they decided to call this) is our sheepish complacency and acceptance.
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Its like talking to a cult member without deprogramming. This story isn't trending in Facebook News Feeds! Investors & Advertisers aren't changing their behavior, just riding out the storm as usual. Until all 3 repel Facebook, Sociopath Zuk and his connecting-the-world monkeys appear unstoppable!
"This story isn't trending in Facebook News Feeds! "
That would be because the news feed is no longer algorithm based, and they have a team selecting which news articles to display in order to prevent "fake news" from being published.
So, maybe, they see the CA bullshit as fake nooze?
This story is so much bigger than CA. Presumably you won't see that on FB either? Is FB even blocking users from sharing links to these stories? (I wouldn't know, I'm a developer not a user)
The FB-CA-Trump conspiracy theory is bullshit, but it's useful: as a salacious headline for C4 and Guardian; as a call to arms for Democrat voters who didn't care when Obama did it (Carol Davidsen: "we were able to suck out the whole social graph"); and conversely, to ensure that Trump voters stay mad at FB & Co.
It doesn't matter. Even the MSM is focusing in on what's been an open secret for years: FB shares too much personal information with every developer, marketing slimelord, scammer, and stalker who wants it. Android, iOS, and other platforms are almost as bad.