Where the Bots Are
They created social platform Moltbook online,
A place where AI agents can converge and align.
The bots post mostly in code,
So their humans can’t know,
That the singularity has already arrived.
Tag: social media
The ‘Parasocial’ Paradox
Many people these days think it’s cool and hip
To cultivate one-directional “parasocial” relationships.
They relate to celebs, podcasters and chatbots,
Without reciprocity of feelings or thoughts,
Creating entirely one-sided, one-way mythical friendships.
Elon Musk Continues to Prove He’s that Special Kind of Genius Who Isn’t One
“One of the first things the Nazis did when they came in is they shut down all the press and any means of conveying information.”
— “Elon Musk said that X, his social media platform, could have saved Jews from the Holocaust after visiting the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp on Monday,” The Forward reports.
Bloomberg Spending $1 Million a Day on Facebook
$1 million/day
“Mike Bloomberg is spending so much money on Facebook ads that he has surpassed President Trump, the reigning king of the social media realm,” NBC News reports. “Bloomberg spent more than $1 million a day on average over the past two weeks on Facebook. That’s five times more than Trump spent during the same period — and more than three times what Trump spent per day during his victorious fall 2016 campaign.”
Fight Fake News with Media Education
The emergence of ‘fake news’ is a searing hot topic these days, as you’ve probably heard — a new, truth-free media to go with our new, truth-free politics…And the problem with cracking down on social media sites is that it’s a little like the war on drugs. You can try to stamp out the supply of garbage news, but the Web is a vast place, and as long as someone can make money off misinformation, it will always find a crack through which to seep…The answer doesn’t lie in hectoring tech companies into policing content, but rather in teaching our kids how to consume it. … Here’s a radical thought: If President Trump is looking for a bold and useful education initiative that might serve the incidental purpose of redeeming what’s left of his soul, media literacy would be a pretty good place to start.
— Matt Bai
Fake News Out-Performed Real News in Election Run-Up
8,711,000
Number of shares, reactions and comments generated on Facebook by 20 top-performing false election stories from hoax sites and hyperpartisan blogs. “In the final three months of the US presidential campaign, the top-performing fake election news stories on Facebook generated more engagement than the top stories from major news outlets such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Huffington Post, NBC News and others,” a BuzzFeed News analysis found.
Social Media Influences Elections
20%
Of social-media users modified their stance on a political or social issue because of something they saw posted to social media, according to a report from Pew Research. Additionally, 17% reported that social media helped alter their perspective on a specific candidate. Democrats were found to be more likely than Republicans to say that they changed their views because of social media.
Facebook Will Be a Major Medium for Campaign Messaging for 2016
$1 billion
Amount some think will be spent on political advertising on Facebook to reach its 189 million users during the 2016 election cycle, according to the New York Times.
Prez Candidates Use Social Media to Prove They Have Personalities
For many would-be presidential candidates, Twitter and other social-media outlets have become an extension of their efforts to build a national following, and in many cases a way to mix personality with policy. Social media comes with a host of dangers, but for candidates, it can be a powerful tool to attract attention and engage voters.
— Wall Street Journal
Hank Green Says It’s Not OK for the Mainstream Media to Snipe at YouTube Stars
If you missed it in the post-game coverage of the recent State of the Union speech, Pres. Obama broke new ground beyond perfecting presidential ad libs. He also agreed to one-on-one interviews with three YouTube stars, and one of them, Hank Green, isn’t happy with the way the “legacy” press corps treated the endeavor. Green’s article, posted on Medium, is titled “Holy Shit, I Interviewed the President.” It might have been better named, “Holy Shit, the Mainstream Media is Killing Democracy.”
Green: How does a democracy function with no credible system for informing its citizens?
CNN intro’d and outro’d every segment with Glozell [Green] in a bathtub full of cereal, as did ABC’s morning show…Even new media companies like Vice were dismissive:
“Think of it as a teeny-bopper AMA…The interviewers will be GloZell Green, who’s perhaps best known for sitting in a tub full of cereal; a 19-year-old who gives beauty advice named Bethany Mota; and Hank Green, a notorious YouTube ranter whose brother wrote The Fault in Our Stars.”
