This is an unofficial Bulletin Board - owned and run by its users. We welcome all fans of the Mighty Collingwood Football Club.
Ad blocker detected: Our website is made possible by displaying online advertisements to our visitors. Please consider supporting us by disabling your ad blocker on our website.
Interesting article on inner-sanctum Facebook wrangling over transparency.
Article in NYT wrote:"One of the main reasons that I left Facebook is that the most senior leadership in the company does not want to invest in understanding the impact of its core products,” Mr. Boland said, in his first interview since departing. “And it doesn’t want to make the data available for others to do the hard work and hold them accountable.
You knew this already, but it's little wonder they aren't keen on letting anyone analyse their data: the platform is a veritable far-right lunacy accelerator.
Tweet from June 2021 quoted in article wrote:The top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages in the last 24 hours are from:
1. Ben Shapiro
2. Ben Shapiro
3. Sean Hannity
4. Dan Bongino
5. Ben Shapiro
6. Go Awesome Animals
7. Ben Shapiro
8. The Daily Caller
9. Dan Bongino
10. Sean Hannity
Tweet from Sep 2020 quoted in article wrote:The top-performing link posts by U.S. Facebook pages in the last 24 hours are from:
1. Fox News
2. Donald J. Trump
3. Ben Shapiro
4. Dan Bongino
5. Blue Lives Matter
6. Fox News
7. Ben Shapiro
8. Sean Hannity
9. Franklin Graham
10. Dan Bongino
Facebook's counter-PR tactic: incite partisan loyalty as needed. It has the data and electoral access needed to do this with bite, too, as if to underscore the original problem.
The problem's not social media; it's a lack of visibility, accountability, research access and competition. You can't hold more information on society than governments and not be accountable to electorates.
Facebook Inc. expanded on its pushback to President Joe Biden’s comment that social media networks enabled the spread of misinformation about vaccines, saying that it won’t take the blame for the administration missing its target to get 70% of Americans inoculated by July 4.
Biden said Friday that social media networks are “killing people” by allowing the spread of misinformation about coronavirus vaccines, saying that “the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated” after he was asked about his message for tech companies.
Amazon shifts up to £8.2bn of UK revenues to low-tax Luxembourg, report finds
Governments are subsidising the growth of a monopoly by allowing ecommerce giant to legally report billions of pounds of sales in a tax haven, argues report commissioned by Unite union
The report, commissioned by Unite, found that Amazon had reported €57bn of revenue in Luxembourg in 2019. If the amount had related to sales made in Luxembourg, it would mean Amazon had sold an average of €92,000 of goods and services to every resident of the tiny Grand Duchy.
The U.K. and U.S. are increasing pressure on Australia to strengthen its emissions-reduction targets in the lead up to the Glasgow climate summit, as the nation’s key allies and trading partners decarbonize.
...
The call comes as Australia, the world’s third-biggest per-capita emitter given its resource-based economy, falls behind other developed nations when it comes to climate change. It scrapped a price on carbon in 2013, and hasn’t set a net-zero emissions target.
Australia has only pledged to cut greenhouse gases by as much as 28% by 2030, trailing the U.S. with its 50% reduction bid and the 40% to 45% cut pledged by Canada, another commodity-driven economy.
...
“I would submit Australia could be much more aggressive,” Pershing said. “It would be really helpful to see Australia step forward with a more ambitious effort.”
Great piece from Krugman on the intersection between far right politics and the quack supplement industry. Two heavily overlapping sets of unstable extremists:
I hadn't realised US withdrawal from Afghanistan also meant the Taliban get control of Texas, too. That said, they were virtually already in control, so it doesn't surprise.
Now Christian extremists have instituted the Texas Tali-abortion-ban, what's next on their anti-Western theocratic agenda?
The rich might be getting richer, but the dim are also getting dimmer, thanks to the proliferation of cult-like lunacy. This won't surprise:
One of the most consistent findings from the past 20 years of public opinion research is that each new president is more divisive than the last. George W. Bush was more divisive than Bill Clinton; Barack Obama was more divisive than Bush; Donald Trump was more divisive than Obama; and Biden may well end up more divisive than Trump, at least in terms of approval rating by partisan affiliation. Some of this reflects circumstances, some of it reflects the individuals, but most of it is a function of partisan and ideological polarization. Modern presidents have a high floor for public opinion but a low ceiling.
So, we've got a new alliance with the USA and UK and we're getting Nuclear submarines.
Australia is embarking on its most significant change of defence and strategic direction in decades, aiming to make the Navy's next submarine fleet nuclear-powered.
"The relatively benign environment we have enjoyed in many decades in our region is behind us," he said.
"We have entered, no doubt, a new era."
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said a new alliance had been formed with the UK and US that was the most significant security development for Australia since the ANZUS Treaty.
In the deal announced by US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the US will share secret nuclear technology to help Australia in the switch to nuclear-powered boats.
Key points:
Australia, the UK and US have formed a new security partnership named AUKUS
As a first initiative, AUKUS will build nuclear submarines for Australia's fleet
The new partnership is designed to counter threats in the Indo-Pacific
