Ello -The Facebook Killer?
September 26, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci – LocalOrg) – Ello, a social network alternative to Facebook is expanding its user base immensely, even as it remains in beta testing. Market watchers and tech trend analysts attribute the influx of users indicative of Facebook’s waning popularity due to its invasive, profit-driven, monopolistic, and downright creepy conduct. Facebook’s incremental, manipulative policy and terms of use have been described as everything from a greedy business practice, to a government sanctioned means of mass manipulation and soft censorship.
It was inevitable that start-ups and activists would seek to offer Facebook users an alternative that allowed social media to be used as a tool of empowerment, not insidious manipulation and censorship. Ello appears to be tapping into that with its manifesto which states:
Your social network is owned by advertisers.
Every post you share, every friend you make and every link you follow is tracked, recorded and converted into data. Advertisers buy your data so they can show you more ads. You are the product that’s bought and sold.
We believe there is a better way. We believe in audacity. We believe in beauty, simplicity and transparency. We believe that the people who make things and the people who use them should be in partnership.
We believe a social network can be a tool for empowerment. Not a tool to deceive, coerce and manipulate — but a place to connect, create and celebrate life.
You are not a product.
In theory, not only does Ello’s manifesto sound ideal, it is likely to attract a multitude of disillusioned Facebook users fed up with the big-tech’s monopoly, but who have stayed aboard for a lack of a better alternative.
Market Watch in an article titled, “Facebook killer called Ello gets the timing right,” reported:
There has been a lot of chatter on social media this week about a new social network called Ello, which is getting buzz for its anti-Facebook Inc. stance. But is the start-up, which accepts no advertising and does no data mining, ready for prime time?
Ello has apparently been gaining such a huge influx of new users that its servers were having problems in the past two days, despite the requirement that you need an invitation to join.
Market Watch notes that Ello’s popularity is due more to Facebook’s shortcomings than Ello’s superior performance – Ello which is admittedly still in beta testing and with features still being incrementally added.
FBI pretended to be Seattle newspaper in order to hack suspect’s computer
End the Lie
Oct 28, 2014
Screenshot from http://seattletimes.com
The editor of the Pulitzer Prize-winning Seattle Times newspaper says she’s “outraged” to learn only this week that the FBI made a mock-up of the publication’s website in 2007 in order to spread spyware onto the computer of a suspect.
When agents with the Seattle division of the FBI swarmed the home of a 15-year-old high school student that year and charged him with making bomb threats, media reports noted that the arrest was made possible with the use of a so-called “Computer & Internet Protocol Address Verifier” program, or CIPAV, that had been remotely installed on the individual’s machine to collect and then communicate to the authorities the user-specific information that eventually identified the suspect. The student later pleaded guilty to emailing repeated bomb threats to Timberline High School and was sentenced to 90 days in juvenile detention.
Until this week, how the FBI actually went about sneaking the CIPAV program onto the student’s computer was a matter that went unreported. After digging through a trove of emails previously obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, however, American Civil Liberties Union technologist Chris Soghoian stumbled upon details this week showing that authorities accomplished the installation by sending a malicious link disguised as a Seattle Times news article to a social media account used by their suspect.
A ‘No Social Media List’ For Extremists And Potential Terrorists?
by Michael Snyder
End Of The American Dream
Sept 30, 2014
You have heard of the “No Fly List”, right? Well, now the Tories are pledging that if they win the next election in the UK they will establish a list of “extremists” that will have to have their social media posts “approved in advance by the police” before they post them. There are also plans to ban “extremists” from broadcasting and speaking at public events. The stated goal of these proposals is to crack down on terrorism, but in the process the civil liberties of the British people are going to be flushed down the toilet. And the American people need to pay close attention to what is going on in the UK, because whatever police state measures are implemented over there usually also get implemented over here eventually. For those that believe that we need to do “whatever it takes” to fight terrorism, there is a very important question that you need to ask yourself. What if the government decides that you are an “extremist” because of what you believe? What will you do then?
When I saw a report in the Telegraph today entitled “Extremists to have Facebook and Twitter vetted by anti-terror police“, I could hardly believe it.
Do the British people actually want a “no social media list” that will essentially ban people from using Facebook and Twitter even though they haven’t actually been convicted of doing anything wrong?
The following is a brief excerpt from that article…
Extremists will have to get posts on Facebook and Twitter approved in advance by the police under sweeping rules planned by the Conservatives.
They will also be barred from speaking at public events if they represent a threat to “the functioning of democracy”, under the new Extremist Disruption Orders.
Theresa May, the Home Secretary, will lay out plans to allow judges to ban people from broadcasting or protesting in certain places, as well as associating with specific people.
The plans — to be brought in if the Conservatives win the election in May — are part of a wide-ranging set of rules to strengthen the Government’s counter-terrorism strategy.
This sounds like an Orwellian nightmare for the British people.
And who is an “extremist” anyway?
We are being told that those that belong to ISIS are extremists, and nobody would argue that.
But the article in the Telegraph makes it sound like any group “that spreads or promotes hatred” would be considered extremist. And under these new proposals, even belonging to such a group could get you thrown into prison for up to 10 years…
The Home Secretary will also introduce “banning orders” for extremist groups, which would make it a criminal offence to be a member of or raise funds for a group that spreads or promotes hatred. The maximum sentence could be up to 10 years in prison.
So what does all of that exactly mean?
Would anti-abortion groups be considered “extremist”?
Would groups promoting traditional values be considered “extremist”?
Would groups protesting against the abuses of the British government be considered “extremist”?
Would Christian churches ultimately be considered “extremist” because they don’t agree with the radical liberal agenda of the central government?
Essentially what the Tories propose to do is to tightly regulate all speech. And there is no way to do that without turning the entire United Kingdom into a totalitarian hellhole.
Meanwhile, the United States continues to march down a similar road.
Facebook & Apple Are Paying Women to Delay Having Children — video included
by Susanne Posel
OccupyCorporatism.com
Oct 15, 2014
Facebook has been offering female employees the chance to freeze their eggs by paying up to $20,000 in expenses and give the gift of putting of having children in exchange for working through the “prime career-building years”.
Apple said in a public statement: “We want to empower women at Apple to do the best work of their lives as they care for loved ones and raise their families.”
Around the age of 35, women on average are expected to begin having a family by way of societal pressures.
It is also round this age that the viability of eggs for freezing begins to diminish and therefore harvesting these eggs would not guarantee the employee would be able to use them for fertilization successfully in the near future.
In fact, it is unknown how successful a woman of 30 or 40 who has had her eggs frozen would be in being able to become pregnant using this method.
Jennifer Eaton, medical director of assisted reproductive technology at Duke Fertility Center (DFC) said: “We don’t yet have patients who’ve cryopreserved eggs in their 20s and are coming back in their 30s and 40s, because the technology is so new.”
Author Sarah Elizabeth Richards spent nearly $50,000 freezing her eggs 8 years ago and chronicled her experiences in a book: “You feel bad about yourself, like you’re the odd man out, and somehow you’ve messed up on your path. By freezing, you’ve done something about it. You’re walking taller; your head is held higher. And that can pay off in both your work and romantic lives. Egg freezing gives you the gift of time to start a family, but it’s also, like, here’s how many years I actually have left for my other goals—what can I do with them?”
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) stated in their National Vital Statistics Report (NVSR) that “since the 1970s the number of women having babies between the ages of 35 and 39 has increased 150%” while the other side of this trend reveals that 2 out of every 100 infants born in the US are conceived with the help of fertility treatments.
Facebook Wi-Fi Drone the Size of 747 Could Fly in 2015
Red Ice Creations
Sept 25, 2014
From: NBC News
The Facebook drones are on their way, and we’re not talking about bored friends who send out Candy Crush Saga invites. The company shared a few more details about its plan to use drones to provide free Wi-Fi to the two-thirds of the world’s population that lack Internet access. First, don’t call them “drones,” Yael Maguire, engineering director of Facebook’s Connectivity Lab, said Monday at the Social Good Summit in New York City. Instead he refers to them as “planes,” seeing as they will be “roughly the size” of airplanes “like a 747,” although much, much lighter.
They also will have to be powered by the sun to continuously provide Wi-Fi coverage. It would not be the first solar-powered plane; the makers of the Solar Impulse 2 told the AP in April that their vehicle could theoretically fly indefinitely. That plane, however, had a pilot. Facebook hopes to get around regulatory and technical barriers to let one person be in control of up to 100 of its drones. Maguire said that Facebook hoped to test one of its planes in the United States by 2015 and have them sending out Wi-Fi signals in the next three to five years.
Beware: Facebook’s “Soft Censorship”
September 5, 2014 (Tony Cartalucci – LocalOrg) – The Land Destroyer Report maintained a Facebook page under the name Anthony Cartalucci. Since 2009 it was used to express my personal thoughts regarding the news of the day, as well as share relevant links with followers. Today, Facebook, without warning or opportunity to appeal, decided that the Facebook account must be changed over to a “page.” By doing so, all those following my account no longer would receive updates, because of Facebook’s “news feed” filters.
The premise behind news feed filters is that people have too many “friends” and are following too many accounts, so they can’t possibly manage all the content themselves. Therefore, Facebook will do it for them. We already know about the Facebook “experiment” where they intentionally manipulated the news feed of hundreds of thousands of Facebook users without their consent.
A report published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) titled, “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks,” stated in its abstract that:
We show, via a massive (N = 689,003) experiment on Facebook, that emotional states can be transferred to others via emotional contagion, leading people to experience the same emotions without their awareness. We provide experimental evidence that emotional contagion occurs without direct interaction between people (exposure to a friend expressing an emotion is sufficient), and in the complete absence of nonverbal cues.Not only are the findings troubling – illustrating that Facebook possesses the ability to influence the emotions of its users unwittingly through careful manipulation of their news feeds – but the invasive, unethical methods by which Facebook conducted the experiment are troubling as well.
Clearly manipulating users’ news feeds possesses powerful propaganda and mass-manipulative influence – surely influence those with the resources would be willing to pay for. And that is exactly what Facebook has arranged for with their new “reach” system. Facebook’s own explanation is as follows:
Rather than showing people all possible content, News Feed is designed to show each person on Facebook the content that’s most relevant to them. Of the 1,500+ stories a person might see whenever they log onto Facebook, News Feed displays approximately 300. To choose which stories to show, News Feed ranks each possible story (from more to less important) by looking at thousands of factors relative to each person.
Those involuntarily forced to switch from standard accounts over to “pages” will notice the “boost” feature below each post. This is where you are required to pay Facebook money to ensure people who voluntarily followed you to receive content from you, actually receive it. Obviously, this confers a major advantage to well-funded start-ups, established media outlets, and large, corporate-driven propaganda machines. For the independent or freelance journalist, analyst, or activist, Facebook has gone from an open platform to a cage of soft censorship.
PN 