Category Archives: Communications

Facebook will filter out fake news because you’re too stupid to do it yourself

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According to Snopes, “In recent years, the spread of fake news stories (designed to drive traffic to fake news-generating sites) by inducing social media users to share links has been increasing in a manner that appears almost exponential.”

Here at BITEME, we love fake news. In fact we used to sit around, reading randomly-clipped articles from the Weekly World News, the Onion, and the New York Post, and then try to guess which paper the clipping came from.

But in case you’re not smart enough to do it yourself, Facebook has announced

Today’s update to News Feed reduces the distribution of posts that people have reported as hoaxes and adds an annotation to posts that have received many of these types of reports to warn others on Facebook.

Interestingly, the fake ads that used to abound on Facebook seem to be fewer these days.

snopes.com: Facebook to Rain on Fake News Parade.

What’s Verizon up to now?

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Verizon tracks you using their secret cookies but doesn’t want the government to be able to subpoena their offshore servers which store data from their US customers.

What gives?

Maybe they’re angling for Kim Dotcom’s or Dread Pirate Robert’s business.

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@threatpost: #Government Demands for @Verizon Customer Data Drop – http://t.co/VOXVSerw6S
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Ted Cruz wants you to have slow porn

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We all know how Ted Cruz is fighting against net neutrality. Oh, you didn’t know? Well Cruz thinks it’s a good idea for your cable company or ISP to decide which programs come to you at full speed and which are throttled. No doubt you’ll be seeing infomercials in HD while things you actually WANT to see — like news and porn, concerts and porn, how-to-videos and more porn — will stream all jaggedy-assed.

For a scholarly introduction to this significant issue, just click below:

AT&T surrenders to criminals; DOJ steps up to the plate

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Several cellphone providers have been tracking their users’ Internet activities by adding “supercookies” to cellphone transmissions. The providers say that it’s just for normal business purposes, but the truth is that the trove of data they’re amassing is of enormous value to law enforcement in their struggle to stay ahead of the bad guys.

Because of the negative publicity that followed the disclosure of this cellphone tracking, as well as pressure from self-appointed Internet watchdogs like the Electronic Frontier Foundation, AT&T has caved and is no longer collecting the data.

The good news is that the Department of Justice has stepped into the breach. The DOJ now has a fleet of airplanes that act as decoy cell towers. Say you use Verizon, and the DOJ wants to see what you’re up to — they have their planes send out the same signals that real Verizon towers use, so that your phone connects to their network instead of Verizon’s. That way, the government can capture everything you do on your phone.

As for privacy, the government assures us that, if you haven’t done anything wrong, you have nothing to worry about.

AT&T stops adding Web tracking codes on cellphones | The Augusta Chronicle.

FBI says new Apple, Google phones too secure, could put users beyond the law

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FBI director James Comey is concerned that Apple and Google are making phones that cannot be searched by the government.

Let me join with the Founding Fathers in telling the Director to Bite me! If he wants to know what I’m doing with my phone, he can get a warrant, just like the Constitution provides.

FBI: new Apple, Google phones too secure, could put users ‘beyond the law’ – Yahoo News.

National Science Foundation sponsoring study of the accuracy of your political tweets

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“[T]o detect political smears, astroturfing, misinformation, and other social pollution . . . Truthy uses a sophisticated combination of text and data mining, social network analysis, and complex networks models . . .”

And, yes, the project really is named “Truthy.”

Truthy.

Good news for Sports Illustrated advertisers

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Apparently Sports Illustrated has instituted new criteria in the evaluation of some of its editorial employees: how “beneficial to advertiser relationship” an editor/writer’s work is.

If you’re advertising in SI and you’re getting slammed in the news articles, complain to your ad rep and see if he can exert a little pressure on your behalf. It just might work.

Time battles blow-back from ad-based employee ratings | New York Post.

On a similar note, see RIGGED RESEARCH: WALL STREET STOCK ANALYSTS UNDER FIRE

Famous Nude Statues Have Naughty Bits Pixelated — Now Safe for For Facebook!

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Apparently, German photographer Peter Kaaden had a picture of a naked statue from the Louvre yanked from Facebook, so he’s now created a whole series of pictures of nude statues, each with their erogenous zones carefully redacted. Click the link to see. Don’t worry — they’re Safe for Work!

Artist Hilariously Censors The Louvre’s Nude Statues For Facebook (SFW!).

Many Governments Listen To Phone Calls Anytime They Want

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Vodafone, one of the world’s largest cell phone companies, revealed the scope of government snooping into phone networks in a report that is described as the first of its kind, covering 29 countries in which it directly operates.

The most explosive revelation was that in a small number of countries, authorities require direct access to an operator’s network — bypassing legal niceties like warrants. It did not name the countries.

“In those countries, Vodafone will not receive any form of demand for lawful interception access as the relevant agencies and authorities already have permanent access to customer communications via their own direct link,” the report said.

[adapted from HuffPo]

Many Governments Listen To Phone Calls Anytime They Want: Report.