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gnidrologs (

gnidrologs) rakstīja,
@ 2019-05-06 13:52:00

sovoks 2.0
Faceberg is going to meddle in the upcoming Euro elections as well. Should be fun. They are already starting their PR offensive for credulous public broadcasting boomers:

Big news at NOS [Dutch state broadcaster] this morning: Facebook is going to protect the elections from fake news. You'll never believe what happened next.

The people working for NOS were all proud, judging by the VICE-style headline: "Facebook wants to work on its image, so they let us visit." The state broadcaster flew to Ireland, where the Zuckerberg company has a department to monitor the EU elections using terms like "Threat Intel" and "Imminent Risk" as if they're the CIA executing drone attacks on strategic targets. An Irish Facebook Al-Sahaf type can be seen in the clip with his happy egg head, explaining how the platform is becoming increasingly keen on censoring opinions and expressions they don't like, but with a tone that makes it sound like it's really nice that Facebook (an unelected, undemocratic, commercial entity) gets to determine what is or isn't "fake news".

But here's the joke, noticed by a commenter: the whole Elections Operations Center of the social media company's digital deep state is one big sham. All the screens in the video keep showing the same data and info. The NOS were allowed an insider view of a carefully directed press operation (as they were well aware, but they still present it to the TV viewer as if it's a journalistic report. See the screenshots. Isn't it great to have state broadcasters and social media companies guarding our elections?

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(Careful, fake!)

https://www.geenstijl.nl/5147502/there-are-no-american-tengels-in-onze-verkiezingen/

Tweets by the journalist from the second link:

I was allowed to visit Facebook's election centre in Dublin with @TBspekschoor. That's where they monitor manipulation of the EU elections. Together with eight other broadcasters and 18 online/print media, we were allowed to take a look. It turned out to be a strange visit.

In almost a decade (!) of tech journalism, I've reported on quite a few PR events. Think Apple keynotes. But I've never seen something as tightly controlled as this.

To me a "visit" means: being allowed to walk freely, talk to people, get a sense of what they're doing. This event, compared to a visit, was like a drive-by shooting compared to a good conversation. After barely 20 minutes (!) our time was up.

A few shots and an interview shorter than my career as a florist (I was not very good at cutting flowers) and that was it.

It's very limiting for your journalistic freedom of movement when your host dictates whom you can talk to in which location, and from which angle you're "allowed" to film. The next step will be Facebook themselves supplying the footage and interviews.

Here is our story about this visit and the measures Facebook is taking against fake news and other forms of electoral influencing: [link to the article]

Now I'm forgetting to mention @Hoguhugo, who managed to deliver an 8 o'clock news-worthy item despite Facebook's control-freakery. Coming up soon on NPO1.

Gotta love journalism these days:

1) Get invited to a 100% stage-managed PR event.
2) Complain about it on Twitter.
3) Broadcast it without a critical note for the normies and boomers who still watch linear television, so that, come election time, they will be quaking with fear about accidentally voting for a party supported by evil Russian bots.

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