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lurkiestvoid · 4 months

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You're being targeted by disinformation networks that are vastly more effective than you realize. And they're making you more hateful and depressed.

(This essay was originally by u/walkandtalkk and posted to r/GenZ on Reddit two months ago, and I've crossposted here on Tumblr for convenience because it's relevant and well-written.)

TL;DR: You know that Russia and other governments try to manipulate people online. But you almost certainly don't how just how effectively orchestrated influence networks are using social media platforms to make you -- individually-- angry, depressed, and hateful toward each other. Those networks' goal is simple: to cause Americans and other Westerners -- especially young ones -- to give up on social cohesion and to give up on learning the truth, so that Western countries lack the will to stand up to authoritarians and extremists.

And you probably don't realize how well it's working on you.

This is a long post, but I wrote it because this problem is real, and it's much scarier than you think.

How Russian networks fuel racial and gender wars to make Americans fight one another

In September 2018, a video went viral after being posted by In the Now, a social media news channel. It featured a feminist activist pouring bleach on a male subway passenger for manspreading. It got instant attention, with millions of views and wide social media outrage. Reddit users wrote that it had turned them against feminism.

There was one problem: The video was staged. And In the Now, which publicized it, is a subsidiary of RT, formerly Russia Today, the Kremlin TV channel aimed at foreign, English-speaking audiences.

As an MIT study found in 2019, Russia's online influence networks reached 140 million Americans every month -- the majority of U.S. social media users.

Russia began using troll farms a decade ago to incite gender and racial divisions in the United States

In 2013, Yevgeny Prigozhin, a confidante of Vladimir Putin, founded the Internet Research Agency (the IRA) in St. Petersburg. It was the Russian government's first coordinated facility to disrupt U.S. society and politics through social media.

Here's what Prigozhin had to say about the IRA's efforts to disrupt the 2022 election:

"Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once."

In 2014, the IRA and other Russian networks began establishing fake U.S. activist groups on social media. By 2015, hundreds of English-speaking young Russians worked at the IRA. Their assignment was to use those false social-media accounts, especially on Facebook and Twitter -- but also on Reddit, Tumblr, 9gag, and other platforms -- to aggressively spread conspiracy theories and mocking, ad hominem arguments that incite American users.

In 2017, U.S. intelligence found that Blacktivist, a Facebook and Twitter group with more followers than the official Black Lives Matter movement, was operated by Russia. Blacktivist regularly attacked America as racist and urged black users to rejected major candidates. On November 2, 2016, just before the 2016 election, Blacktivist's Twitter urged Black Americans: "Choose peace and vote for Jill Stein. Trust me, it's not a wasted vote."

Russia plays both sides -- on gender, race, and religion

The brilliance of the Russian influence campaign is that it convinces Americans to attack each other, worsening both misandry and misogyny, mutual racial hatred, and extreme antisemitism and Islamophobia. In short, it's not just an effort to boost the right wing; it's an effort to radicalize everybody.

Russia uses its trolling networks to aggressively attack men. According to MIT, in 2019, the most popular Black-oriented Facebook page was the charmingly named "My Baby Daddy Aint Shit." It regularly posts memes attacking Black men and government welfare workers. It serves two purposes: Make poor black women hate men, and goad black men into flame wars.

MIT found that My Baby Daddy is run by a large troll network in Eastern Europe likely financed by Russia.

But Russian influence networks are also also aggressively misogynistic and aggressively anti-LGBT.

On January 23, 2017, just after the first Women's March, the New York Times found that the Internet Research Agency began a coordinated attack on the movement. Per the Times:

More than 4,000 miles away, organizations linked to the Russian government had assigned teams to the Women’s March. At desks in bland offices in St. Petersburg, using models derived from advertising and public relations, copywriters were testing out social media messages critical of the Women’s March movement, adopting the personas of fictional Americans.

They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners.

But the Russian PR teams realized that one attack worked better than the rest: They accused its co-founder, Arab American Linda Sarsour, of being an antisemite. Over the next 18 months, at least 152 Russian accounts regularly attacked Sarsour. That may not seem like many accounts, but it worked: They drove the Women's March movement into disarray and eventually crippled the organization.

Russia doesn't need a million accounts, or even that many likes or upvotes. It just needs to get enough attention that actual Western users begin amplifying its content.

A former federal prosecutor who investigated the Russian disinformation effort summarized it like this:

It wasn’t exclusively about Trump and Clinton anymore. It was deeper and more sinister and more diffuse in its focus on exploiting divisions within society on any number of different levels.

As the New York Times reported in 2022,

There was a routine: Arriving for a shift, [Russian disinformation] workers would scan news outlets on the ideological fringes, far left and far right, mining for extreme content that they could publish and amplify on the platforms, feeding extreme views into mainstream conversations.

China is joining in with AI

[A couple months ago], the New York Times reported on a new disinformation campaign. "Spamouflage" is an effort by China to divide Americans by combining AI with real images of the United States to exacerbate political and social tensions in the U.S. The goal appears to be to cause Americans to lose hope, by promoting exaggerated stories with fabricated photos about homeless violence and the risk of civil war.

As Ladislav Bittman, a former Czechoslovakian secret police operative, explained about Soviet disinformation, the strategy is not to invent something totally fake. Rather, it is to act like an evil doctor who expertly diagnoses the patient’s vulnerabilities and exploits them, “prolongs his illness and speeds him to an early grave instead of curing him.”

The influence networks are vastly more effective than platforms admit

Russia now runs its most sophisticated online influence efforts through a network called Fabrika. Fabrika's operators have bragged that social media platforms catch only 1% of their fake accounts across YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, and Telegram, and other platforms.

But how effective are these efforts? By 2020, Facebook's most popular pages for Christian and Black American content were run by Eastern European troll farms tied to the Kremlin. And Russia doesn't just target angry Boomers on Facebook. Russian trolls are enormously active on Twitter. And, even, on Reddit.

It's not just false facts

The term "disinformation" undersells the problem. Because much of Russia's social media activity is not trying to spread fake news. Instead, the goal is to divide and conquer by making Western audiences depressed and extreme.

Sometimes, through brigading and trolling. Other times, by posting hyper-negative or extremist posts or opinions about the U.S. the West over and over, until readers assume that's how most people feel. And sometimes, by using trolls to disrupt threads that advance Western unity.

As the RAND think tank explained, the Russian strategy is volume and repetition, from numerous accounts, to overwhelm real social media users and create the appearance that everyone disagrees with, or even hates, them. And it's not just low-quality bots. Per RAND,

Russian propaganda is produced in incredibly large volumes and is broadcast or otherwise distributed via a large number of channels. ... According to a former paid Russian Internet troll, the trolls are on duty 24 hours a day, in 12-hour shifts, and each has a daily quota of 135 posted comments of at least 200 characters.

What this means for you

You are being targeted by a sophisticated PR campaign meant to make you more resentful, bitter, and depressed. It's not just disinformation; it's also real-life human writers and advanced bot networks working hard to shift the conversation to the most negative and divisive topics and opinions.

It's why some topics seem to go from non-issues to constant controversy and discussion, with no clear reason, across social media platforms. And a lot of those trolls are actual, "professional" writers whose job is to sound real.

So what can you do? To quote WarGames: The only winning move is not to play. The reality is that you cannot distinguish disinformation accounts from real social media users. Unless you know whom you're talking to, there is a genuine chance that the post, tweet, or comment you are reading is an attempt to manipulate you -- politically or emotionally.

Here are some thoughts:

Don't accept facts from social media accounts you don't know. Russian, Chinese, and other manipulation efforts are not uniform. Some will make deranged claims, but others will tell half-truths. Or they'll spin facts about a complicated subject, be it the war in Ukraine or loneliness in young men, to give you a warped view of reality and spread division in the West.

Resist groupthink. A key element of manipulate networks is volume. People are naturally inclined to believe statements that have broad support. When a post gets 5,000 upvotes, it's easy to think the crowd is right. But "the crowd" could be fake accounts, and even if they're not, the brilliance of government manipulation campaigns is that they say things people are already predisposed to think. They'll tell conservative audiences something misleading about a Democrat, or make up a lie about Republicans that catches fire on a liberal server or subreddit.

Don't let social media warp your view of society. This is harder than it seems, but you need to accept that the facts -- and the opinions -- you see across social media are not reliable. If you want the news, do what everyone online says not to: look at serious, mainstream media. It is not always right. Sometimes, it screws up. But social media narratives are heavily manipulated by networks whose job is to ensure you are deceived, angry, and divided.

Edited for typos and clarity. (Tumblr-edited for formatting and to note a sourced article is now older than mentioned in the original post. -LV)

P.S. Apparently, this post was removed several hours ago due to a flood of reports. Thank you to the r/GenZ moderators for re-approving it.

Second edit:

This post is not meant to suggest that r/GenZ is uniquely or especially vulnerable, or to suggest that a lot of challenges people discuss here are not real. It's entirely the opposite: Growing loneliness, political polarization, and increasing social division along gender lines is real. The problem is that disinformation and influence networks expertly, and effectively, hijack those conversations and use those real, serious issues to poison the conversation. This post is not about left or right: Everyone is targeted.

(Further Tumblr notes: since this was posted, there have been several more articles detailing recent discoveries of active disinformation/influence and hacking campaigns by Russia and their allies against several countries and their respective elections, and barely touches on the numerous Tumblr blogs discovered to be troll farms/bad faith actors from pre-2016 through today. This is an ongoing and very real problem, and it's nowhere near over.

A quote from NPR article linked above from 2018 that you might find familiar today: "[A] particular hype and hatred for Trump is misleading the people and forcing Blacks to vote Killary. We cannot resort to the lesser of two devils. Then we'd surely be better off without voting AT ALL," a post from the account said.")

#propaganda #psyops #disinformation #US politics #election 2024 #us elections #YES we have legitimate criticisms of our politicians and systems #but that makes us EVEN MORE susceptible to radicalization. not immune #no not everyone sharing specific opinions are psyops. but some of them are #and we're more likely to eat it up on all sides if it aligns with our beliefs #the division is the point #sound familiar?#voting #rambles #long post

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verosikastrikerstellaexcuser · 4 months

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I’m still disappointed in the way they wrote Stella. It was so… boring. For a show that champions it’s “messy” and “morally grey” characters, Stella is turned into a one-dimensional hate sink who exists for the sole purpose of being mean to Stolas. The show never fails to consider that she was forced into this marriage too and retcon’s Octavia’s comments about them not always hating each other. Which sounds more interesting, a noblewoman forced into an arranged marriage who puts up with it for the sake of status until her husband threatens to bring it all crashing down upon both her and her daughter so she hires an assassin to prevent her life from going down the drain or a whiny brat who exists solely to torment him?

Yeup you can see how they retconned Octavia’s comments and things they established about Stella and Stolas etc. It’s really noticeable and it makes the show anger inducing. No, you can’t just go back on all that stuff you set up because it’s inconvenient now. The fact it’s done for the sake of some horrible forced ship that abuses Blitz makes it even worse.

Their attempts to dumb down Stella more and more to make her a villain actually just made my Stella sympathy even worse though, ironically. Because by adding Andrealphus they reveal they decided to write Stella as having no property rights. For some fucking reason. I guess marriage for goetia is different? But if Stolas dies it all goes to her Octavia, despite Stella being his wife. That’s how it would have operated for women irl hundreds of years ago and confirms Stella has no property ownership in the marriage (historically also why women couldn’t really vote, as voting has historically been tied to property ownership and married women, everything was automatically owned by their husband). And there’s no way Stella could have just decided to work or do something else because the marriage was arranged since childhood. The arranged marriage favours Stolas and protects him more than her so it’s even worse for her. I wish more people analysed that part and talked about it cuz it’s nuts they wrote that like it’s nothing and makes Stella even more of a bitch or something. If they do some sad arc where Stella’s horrible for expecting to be able to still live somewhere and own a home after the divorce because that’s stealing from poor Stolas and she doesn’t deserve anything at all from him!!!!!1 I will actually fucking scream. Who said it Reddit bros who don’t think women should have divorce rights or Helluva Boss lmao.

The “Why do you stay” (I don’t remember exactly how it goes) lines from Stolas boil my blood because of that too. Like what the fuck do you mean? She’s your wife which according to what we’ve seen, for goetia, means owning nothing and everything going to your husband. She’s not like you Stolas. She can’t just leave like you. She has nowhere to go as far as we know except maybe her brothers but he’s a condescending creep towards her and she still wouldn’t have any control or actually own anything. Also she had Octavia to think about too with moving and leaving. Stolas’ home is Stella’s by just as much, and it’s hers by way less choice than it is Stolas’.

Why in the fuck did they make a cheated on woman with no property rights “just a bitch” the list of reasons Stella has to be rightfully angry is actually crazy. As well as the fact she owns nothing and had no choice in marrying him, she also has Stolas cheating on her in her own fucking bed! He brings other people home and fucks them on the bed she has to sleep next to him in. He is brazen and completely unapologetic about cheating on her right in her face. His lines about finding a hotel, they’re him saying he’s just sorry he got caught, that’s it. They imply he absolutely is going to do it again since his concern is just not getting yelled at for it and he has no shame in telling her that. She also has Stolas reading smut at the dinner table, saying completely inappropriate things in front of their daughter, and him calling her a bitch to Octavia.

Making Stella say she sticks around just to torment Stolas is weak. All this rage and her not wanting him to cheat yet no, she definitely doesn’t love him or care or anything she’s just mean and likes being spiteful. WHAT? She puts so much energy into all the yelling and makes all the spiteful remarks “just because”? Not because she’s hurt instead? There’s not a single thing other than random spite motivating her? It’s shit. You are right anon. All these well explored, humanized morally grey characters and yet the one with a plethora of understandable reasons for being mad isn’t allowed to be mad about any of the actual reasons she has to be. Rather she’s mean just so she can be a yaoi fanfic antagonist opposing the sexy mlm relationship. It’s transparent, childish and it’s boring. Dare I say it’s misogynistic too. It’s atrocious writing plain and simple.

#helluva boss critical #stolas critical #anti stolas #Stolas hate #hb critical #helluva boss critique #helluva boss criticism #critical stuff

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onlycosmere · 1 year

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Wander89: Please answer the poll with whether the [r/brandonsanderson] community should take part in the blackout and, if you would like, also explain your stance in the comments.

Brandon Sanderson: For what it is worth, I voted yes.

As a longtime user of reddit, I sympathize with the website's difficult time figuring out how to be profitable while serving a highly advertising-adverse crowd. However, these app developers invested a great deal of time and money into their programs. Only to now have the rules change.

As another posted above, this reminds me of Amazon working hard to convince independent authors to come to their website. Only for the rules to then change grossly in Amazon's favor once they had the market.

Reddit can and should do better.

Fax_of_the_Shadow: I'm currently doing research on reddit alternatives and creating a pros/cons list of them on the off chance reddit does implode on itself and we decide to move the community. We don't want to have to move, but if it ends up being inevitable, we don't want to be left out in the cold.

So, if people know of alternatives for me to research, reply to me here and I will add it to my list.

**I make no promises about any official stance the mod team is taking. I am researching in my own free time and of my own accord. Any changes made to the community would be done through voting, like this decision was.

Brandon Sanderson: It's too bad that we didn't end up with a good fork of reddit years ago, when they were still making their source code available. It would have been great if someone had been able to basically clone reddit, then start their own development on the new platform to create something better. But the only places that did it were...not great. They quickly devolved into hate speech and the like.

I wonder if this will cause enough of a mess that someone will go back to the last available open source version of Reddit, revamp it, and offer us an alternative. This could indeed be Reddit's Digg moment--where their bad decisions have been building long enough that we all just leave for something new.

For what it is worth, I'm willing to go where the community decides to move. As always, fandom decisions are yours to make; I'm just grateful that there are strong, capable mods willing to put in the time to build these communities.

#reddit #brandon sanderson #cosmere fandom #branderson #wob #cfsbf #root

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mariacallous · 6 months

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Truth Social, former president Donald’s Trump’s clone of Twitter, has a fraction of the users of competitors like Reddit and X. The company has never turned a profit, and just happens to be the place where Trump is currently posting.

But on the Nasdaq, the stock exchange where Truth Social became a publicly traded company today, there's a different story: Truth Social has become a certified meme stock. Trump supporters seem to have conflated their support for the former president with the stock itself, and are buying en masse.

The stock quickly rose more than 40 percent after being listed and trades under a ticker of Trump’s initials, DJT. The company is now valued at more than $6.8 billion. The value, however, could change quickly; the stock was so volatile that it temporarily halted soon after it was listed. The company’s financial performance has been underwhelming. It posted $3.3 million in revenue and lost $49 million in the first three quarters of 2023, according to regulatory filings.

Still, Trump’s fans have posted on Reddit, X, and Truth Social about how they plan to hold the stock in defiance of traditional investing logic. Previous meme stocks like GameStop and cryptocurrency culture have helped provide the script, but the rhetorical formula is simple: Short sellers will perish, this stock is going to the moon, and don’t sell no matter what.

“Let’s go baby! Trump 2024 to the moon,” one user posted on Reddit, followed by the rocket ship emoji.

In another Reddit thread, stockholders discussed at what price they would sell shares in the company. “At least waiting for the election win,” one user posted, with the tag Diamond DWAC, a reference to “diamond hands,” a desire to hold a stock despite volatility.

“$150 maybe … but probably waiting for the launch of TMTG+ streaming and also stories videos,” another replied. “Or when our founder is The Leader of The Free World (again) and most reported on person on the world with the most attention on him and his platform. So maybe never‼️”

Reddit user deepfuckingbagholder speculated that the company could eventually be worth 1 trillion dollars. When another user replied, saying that valuation would be virtually impossible, deepfuckingbagholder wrote back: “This stock represents the value of Trump’s brand and I personally believe it can achieve that valuation.”

Truth Social is, predictability, a hotbed of conspiracy theories. Election denialism, vaccine skepticism, and the great replacement theory are all prominently featured on the site. The company has also been mired in controversy since it began, following Trump’s ban from Twitter after the January 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol. A former senior employee filed a whistleblower complaint with the SEC, and other former employees have sued the company, alleging breach of contract. Shareholders voted to take the company public last week, merging Trump Media and Technology Group with a publicly traded holding company, Digital World Acquisition Corp.

The outsize valuation of Truth Social has made Trump incredibly rich. His net worth rose $4 billion to $6.5 billion, making him one of the world’s 500 richest people, according to calculations by Bloomberg News. Trump is restricted from selling shares in the company for about six months, so his net worth could still tank, however, if the price of Truth Social falls.

On Truth Social, one user said a prayer. “Bless all the patriots invested in #DJT,” GothamGal wrote. “Bless this investment, and make us successful so that we may do your will and bring glory to you. Bless and protect our president DJT, and our country. In Jesus name.”

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telomeke-bbs · 1 year

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Bad Buddy Our Skyy 2 rumored crossover with Tale of a Thousand Stars, posted on Reddit– 👀

Link to Reddit thread here:

[ID text of image post–

Posted on Reddit by redditor RecoverFrosty 7April2023 7.46AM UTC:

Out of curiosity, has no one heard about the 1000 Stars and Bad Buddy crossover? Or is everyone ignoring the elephant in the room like me?

Posted on Reddit by redditor RecoverFrosty 8April2023 12.46PM UTC:

It’s not even a fever dream. It’s for sure happening. There were photos of OhmNanon shooting in Chiangrai when EarthMix shot 1000 Stars. And then EarthMix were also on the set of Bad Buddy according to crew members posting about food support. Bad Buddy filming ended after two queues, so you can already assume that most of it was shot in Chiangrai with EarthMix.

I think this is why Bad Buddy special isn’t set after university (hence the uniforms), cause it makes the most sense (even though it doesn’t) to send college kids up to PhaPunDao as volunteers teachers, similar to Tian. The only “rumor” circulating is that there might be a HIGH chance of body swap which entangles the two series together.

This crossover is mostly due to Aof’s laziness to write two separate stories for each series and film them so he decided to combine it…which I guess if he’s in a time crunch then whatever but it basically loses the purpose of Our Skyy being about fandoms wanting to see where their favorite couples are now and having episodes that solely focuses on their relationships and progress but instead fans are getting a weird crossover watpad plot. But take this with a grain of salt until the series airs.

End ID.]

Ohm's been pictured in what looks like Chiangrai too...

Link to photo on Twitter here.

I'm not fully convinced that there's going to be a crossover, or that it would work if there was. (Like, Drake's in both of those universes. Does Korn have a twin in Rang?)

Maybe they just used the same locations to cut down on logistics and filming time? 🤔 As in – if you use the same crew, equipment and general locations, you only need to call the actors in as and when needed, but for separate episodes. Which might be easier to do. 🤷‍♂️

Dunno how I feel about this!

#bad buddy #our skyy 2 #a tale of a thousand stars

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tiresa-mae-villamor-alcuizar · 1 year

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INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATIONS TECHNOLOGIES

WRITTEN BY ALCUIZAR

SEPTEMBER 18,2023

TRENDS IN ICT

As the world of ICT continues to grow, the industry has focused on several innovations. These innovations cater to the needs of the people that benefit most out of ICT. Whether it is for business or personal use, these trends are the current front runners in the innovation of ICT.

CONVERGENCE.

Technological convergence is the synergy of technological advancements to work on a similar goal or task. For example, besides using your personal computer to create word documents, you can now use your artphone. It can also use cloud technologies to sync files from one device to another while also using LTE technology which means you can access your files anytime, anywhere. Convergence is using several technologies to accomplish a task conveniently.

SOCIAL MEDIA

*Social media-is a website, application, or online channel that enables web users to create, co-create, discuss, modify, and exchange SM.jpguser-generated content. According to Nielsen, a global information and measurement company, Internet users spend more time in social media sites than in any other type of site. With this, more and more advertisers use social media to promote their product.

SIX TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA

*Social Networks-These are sites that allow you to connect with other people with the same interests or background. Once a use creates his or her account, he or she can set up a profile, add people, create groups, and share content. Examples: Facebook and Google+

*Bookmarking Sites-These are sites that allow you to store and manage links to various websites and resources. Most of these sites allow you to create a tag that allows you and others to easily search or share them. Examples: StumbleUpon and Pinterest.

*Social News-These are sites that allow users to post their own news items or links to other news sources. The users can also comment on the post and comments may also be ranked. They are also capable of voting on these news articles of the website. Those who get the most amount of votes are shown most prominently. Examples: reddit and Digg

*Media Sharing-These are sites that allow you to upload and share media content like images, music, and video. Most of these sites have additional social feature like liking, commenting, and having user profiles. Examples: Flickr, YouTube, and Instagram.

*Microblogging-These are sites that focus on short updates from the user. Those subscribed to the user will be able to receive these updates. Example: Twitter and Plurk

Blogs and Forums These websites allow users to post their content. Other users are able to comment on the said topic. There are several free blogging platforms like Blogger, WordPress, and Tumblr. On the other hand, forums are typically part of a certain website or web service.

MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES

The popularity of smartphones and tablets has taken a major rise over the years. This is largely because of the devices capability to do tasks that were originally found in personal computers. Several of these devices are capable of using high-speed internet. Today, the latest mobile devices use 4G Networking (LTE), which is currently the fastest mobile network. Also, mobile devices use different operating systems:

1.iOS – used in Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad

2.Android – an open source operating system developed by Google. Being open source means several mobile phone companies use this OS for free.

3.Blackberry OS – used in Blackberry devices

4.Windows Phone OS – a closed source and proprietary operating system developed by Microsoft

5.Symbian – the original smartphone OS; used by Nokia devices

6.WebOS – originally used for smartphones; now used for smart TVs

6.Windows Mobile – developed by Microsoft for smartphones and pocket PCs

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clatterbane · 2 years

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I posted 7,283 times in 2022

388 posts created (5%)

6,895 posts reblogged (95%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@clatterbane

@kelpforestdwellers

@katisconfused

@bluenorther

@kellyclowers

I tagged 5,374 of my posts in 2022

Only 26% of my posts had no tags

#art - 664 posts

#kept tags - 638 posts

#video - 626 posts

#cats - 455 posts

#politics - 407 posts

#long post - 380 posts

#food - 257 posts

#personal - 248 posts

#uk politics - 181 posts

#us politics - 168 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#and it's absolutely fucking infuriating to see posts that are like 'everyone who is [catagory] was treated like ___ & therefore privileged'

My Top Posts in 2022:

(via r/disability)

Though, as unsurprisingly already came up in the comments there? I would not necessarily say "ignore" without tacking on "willfully"--in a "not my circus, not my monkeys" sort of way driven by ableism.

95 notes - Posted February 24, 2022

‘Life in a box’: young autistic man confined in hospital’s former file room | News | The Sunday Times

His sectioning is subject to a rolling review and he can be discharged at any time by the doctor in charge of his care. It means the Priory, a private company receiving large amounts of NHS funding for his care, is also in charge of deciding whether he is fit for release. There is no suggestion that Patient A’s funding has had an influence on his care plan at the hospital...

Patient A is stuck inside a system the government vowed to fix in 2011, after the abuse of adults with autism and severe learning disabilities was exposed by the BBC’s flagship investigations programme, Panorama...

In 2015 NHS England launched its Transforming Care programme, which aimed to reduce the number of autistic people and those with learning disabilities in mental health hospitals. But while the number of people with learning difficulties in hospitals has fallen, the number of autistic people in mental health hospitals has risen by 59 per cent since 2015 to 700 (autistic people only), according to NHS figures. When taking into account autistic people with and without learning difficulties, the figures have risen from 1,100 in 2015 to 1,215 today.

“People can deteriorate because the environment is not right for them and that can make their behaviour worse,” said Dan Scorer, Mencap’s policy expert...

Experts say that for those with autism, being confined in a unit such as Patient A’s exacerbates aggressive behaviour. As a result they become trapped in a vicious cycle of overmedication and ever more draconian restrictions on their liberty.

“People with autism can have sensory problems. They need the right space to live in. A nice garden. The correct lighting. A comfortable home,” says Alicia Wood, who has studied the effects of long-term segregation on people with autism and learning disabilities for the government’s oversight panel, led by Baroness Hollins.

Some are left “traumatised” after long-term inpatient care. Moving out can initiate a period of three to six months in which “their behaviour can be extremely challenging.”

108 notes - Posted January 10, 2022

(Source | Context)

Everybody forgetting that Gen X exists yet again, with too many years' worth of exasperated snark to contribute! 😅

142 notes - Posted August 3, 2022

PSA for people in Virginia:

More glitches at the DMV. Check your voter registration.

150 notes - Posted October 21, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

Speaking of the goat!

Free crochet pattern:

391 notes - Posted December 12, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

#this try it didn't trap me in a freaking redirect loop #tumblr2022 #year in review #my 2022 tumblr year in review #your tumblr year in review

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gavinners-soundbox · 1 year

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Please consider voting for the ace attorney cats in the quarterfinals of the cat poll!! They are losing by .1% :(

https://www.tumblr.com/best-fictional-cat/713969363468926976/round-6-quarterfinals

So by the time I'm answering to this the polls have gone to the finals, and our cat friends are running for 1st place, woo! You can vote for them here if you want to

Now, if you don't mind me indulging myself a little bit, and so that we can talk about fun new things, let's talk about Animals. Like, the animals in the game, obviously. The AA wiki tells us there's 36 mentions/showcases of pets in all of the games (including spin-offs), however there are only 2 animals that have a canon thematic song attached to them (according to little old me) (Warbaa'd does not count as a pet) : AA5, Orca Shipley/Ora Shipley the 1st - Cap'n Orla's Swashbucklers - Oh, We Be Pirates , however more precisely im thinking of the use of the Swashbuckler Spectacular (2027) theme for Orca, and the 2026 version for Ora (It's SO painful to find these themes online). Literal case of "character leitmotif being part of a song", or in proper terms, a diegetic theme being carried to an underscore for our own viewing context.

As for more Biased takes we could say that Balmung shares a theme with The Legend of the Baskervilles, maybe...? It can't be The Professor track, since that is about the Killer himself, but saying Baskervilles has any association is also a stretch here. It would be as if I said that Kristoph's theme was also Vongole's theme because Vongole's his dog. You know, if Vongole were to even be in the game.

Also side fact but If you ever wanted to learn what each species our animals friends in the game were, here's a reddit post describing each breed in detail.

#DGS 2 SPOILERS #Ace Attorney #Asks #Anonymous #Cross Examination: Lore #Cross Examination: Music #not proof read #Unrelated #Band Notes:#Very funny to me I get this ask in my 50 something blog and not my 1k one #I respect the grind Anon you're really getting to all of the ace attorney folks out there #I need to make a post compilation of all of the AA information I have #Its. Too much.#tgaa2 spoilers

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5-7-9 · 5 months

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keeping track of the timeline of my deep dive. WARNING!!! Triggers include a fuck ton of homophobic stereotypes

Starting with the writer that hated Jason so much (Jim Starlin) that he made him more unlikable in his run in 1987 after being forced to write Jason on Neil’s behalf, first establishing the idea of Jason being an aggressive brat with anti-poverty concepts of an addicted mother and an abusive father. According to Denny O’ Neil’s perspective of fans, it worked. It was also right after the time of Frank Miller’s darker edgy version of Batman gained popularity. Jason was a symbol of that child audience, which Starlin did not want.

Starlin takes inspiration of Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns from 1986, using the plotline where Joker murders Jason and putting it into his story Death In The Family from 1988. Very unoriginal. So let’s see why Miller made Joker kill Jason.

Frank FUCKING Miller says “-Joker isn’t insane so much as satanic.” And then has the NERVE to say if he’d have casted anyone to play Joker in the Dark Knight Returns movie, he’d let it be DAVID FUCKING BOWIE?!?!? In his words, because he believes DAVID BOWIE is capable of great menace?!?!??!??!! David Bowie? The queer icon that came out in 1972? Oh hmmmm I wonder why he’d think DAVID BOWIE is a menace.

I’d like to remind people that Miller has explicitly stated Joker as “a homophobic nightmare.” Very intentional queer-coding that he has admitted to. Here’s the warning part under here

There’s also a rumor that Miller wanted Joker to explicitly admit Joker raped Jason but DC pulled it out. But Miller still implied it throughout his comic.

Wow how mysterious Joker is also implied to sexually assault Selina. It can be argued it’s not, but I wouldn’t put it past Miller’s sexist ass of all people to say so.

Judd Winink also wished to have Jason die of aids.

After the popular revival of Jason Todd, we are now forced to have a homophobic plot point be forever immortalized in canon. Now it will never go away. The edgy Frank Miller era is a stain to the current state of comics. I’d like to add that The Killing Joke was already confirmed to be a one shot, and although it has a sexist element to it, that’s on par for most comics. If anything, the story only served to make a philosophical point, like it was meant to, and dipped.

I’d also like to mention that the theory of Jason being a CSA survivor is probably a reference to Joker or the HIV PSA but i don’t like how it can be argued for both at the same time. Hence why I don’t care for the theory. The theory can go fuck itself.

Not sure how much more proof i need to bring up to prove Joker killing Jason is homophobic. But that’s all for now.

#tw homophobia #tw mentions of sa #long post #controversial take #the joker

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gossipgurlingursht · 6 months

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You're being targeted by disinformation networks that are vastly more effective than you realize. And they're making you more hateful and depressed.

(a copy of this long ass reddit post)

And you probably don't realize how well it's working on you.

This is a long post, but I wrote it because this problem is real, and it's much scarier than you think.

How Russian networks fuel racial and gender wars to make Americans fight one another

There was one problem: The video was staged. And In the Now, which publicized it, is a subsidiary of RT, formerly Russia Today, the Kremlin TV channel aimed at foreign, English-speaking audiences.

As an MIT study found in 2019, Russia's online influence networks reached 140 million Americans every month -- the majority of U.S. social media users.

Russia began using troll farms a decade ago to incite gender and racial divisions in the United States

Here's what Prigozhin had to say about the IRA's efforts to disrupt the 2022 election:

Gentlemen, we interfered, we interfere and we will interfere. Carefully, precisely, surgically and in our own way, as we know how. During our pinpoint operations, we will remove both kidneys and the liver at once.

Russia plays both sides -- on gender, race, and religion

MIT found that My Baby Daddy is run by a large troll network in Eastern Europe likely financed by Russia.

But Russian influence networks are also also aggressively misogynistic and aggressively anti-LGBT.

On January 23, 2017, just after the first Women's March, the New York Times found that the Internet Research Agency began a coordinated attack on the movement. Per the Times:

They posted as Black women critical of white feminism, conservative women who felt excluded, and men who mocked participants as hairy-legged whiners.

Russia doesn't need a million accounts, or even that many likes or upvotes. It just needs to get enough attention that actual Western users begin amplifying its content.

A former federal prosecutor who investigated the Russian disinformation effort summarized it like this:

It wasn’t exclusively about Trump and Clinton anymore. It was deeper and more sinister and more diffuse in its focus on exploiting divisions within society on any number of different levels.

As the New York Times reported in 2022,

China is joining in with AI

Last month, the New York Times reported on a new disinformation campaign. "Spamouflage" is an effort by China to divide Americans by combining AI with real images of the United States to exacerbate political and social tensions in the U.S. The goal appears to be to cause Americans to lose hope, by promoting exaggerated stories with fabricated photos about homeless violence and the risk of civil war.

The influence networks are vastly more effective than platforms admit

It's not just false facts

What this means for you

Here are some thoughts:

Edited for typos and clarity.

P.S. Apparently, this post was removed several hours ago due to a flood of reports. Thank you to the r/GenZ moderators for re-approving it.

Second edit:

#misinformation #politics #reddit

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alyasserdalimbang · 1 year

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JANUARY 20, 2017

TRENDS IN ICT

CONVERGENCE.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Social media is a website, application, or online channel that enables web users to create, co-create, discuss, modify, and exchange user-generated content. According to Nielsen, a global information and measurement company, Internet users spend more time in social media sites than in any other type of site. With this, more and more advertisers use social media to promote their product.

SIX TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Social Networks These are sites that allow you to connect with other people with the same interests or background. Once a use creates his or her account, he or she can set up a profile, add people, create groups, and share content. Examples: Facebook and Google+

Bookmarking Sites These are sites that allow you to store and manage links to various websites and resources. Most of these sites allow you to create a tag that allows you and others to easily search or share them. Examples: StumbleUpon and Pinterest.

Social News These are sites that allow users to post their own news items or links to other news sources. The users can also comment on the post and comments may also be ranked. They are also capable of voting on these news articles of the website. Those who get the most amount of votes are shown most prominently. Examples: reddit and Digg

Media Sharing These are sites that allow you to upload and share media content like images, music, and video. Most of these sites have additional social feature like liking, commenting, and having user profiles. Examples: Flickr, YouTube, and Instagram.

Microblogging These are sites that focus on short updates from the user. Those subscribed to the user will be able to receive these updates. Example: Twitter and Plurk

MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES

iOS – used in Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad

Android – an open source operating system developed by Google. Being open source means several mobile phone companies use this OS for free.

Blackberry OS – used in Blackberry devices

Windows Phone OS – a closed source and proprietary operating system developed by Microsoft

Symbian – the original smartphone OS; used by Nokia devices

WebOS – originally used for smartphones; now used for smart TVs

Windows Mobile – developed by Microsoft for smartphones and pocket PCs

ASSISTIVE MEDIA

Assistive media is a nonprofit service designed to help p

#TRENDINICT

#trends in ict

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lumapasjessa · 1 year

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CONVERGENCE.

SOCIAL MEDIA

SIX TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA:

Social Networks - These are sites that allow you to connect with other people with the same interests or background. Once a use creates his or her account, he or she can set up a profile, add people, create groups, and share content. Examples: Facebook and Google+

Bookmarking Sites - These are sites that allow you to store and manage links to various websites and resources. Most of these sites allow you to create a tag that allows you and others to easily search or share them. Examples: StumbleUpon and Pinterest.

Social News - These are sites that allow users to post their own news items or links to other news sources. The users can also comment on the post and comments may also be ranked. They are also capable of voting on these news articles of the website. Those who get the most amount of votes are shown most prominently. Examples: reddit and Digg

Media Sharing - These are sites that allow you to upload and share media content like images, music, and video. Most of these sites have additional social feature like liking, commenting, and having user profiles. Examples: Flickr, YouTube, and Instagram.

Microblogging -These are sites that focus on short updates from the user. Those subscribed to the user will be able to receive these updates. Example: Twitter and Plurk

Blogs and Forums -These websites allow users to post their content. Other users are able to comment on the said topic. There are several free blogging platforms like Blogger, WordPress, and Tumblr. On the other hand, forums are typically part of a certain website or web service.

MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES

1.iOS – used in Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad.

2.Android – an open source operating system developed by Google. Being open source means several mobile phone companies use this OS for free.

3.Blackberry OS – used in Blackberry devices.

4.Windows Phone OS – a closed source and proprietary operating system developed by Microsoft.

5.Symbian – the original smartphone OS; used by Nokia devices.

6.WebOS – originally used for smartphones; now used for smart TVs.

7.Windows Mobile – developed by Microsoft for smartphones and pocket PCs.

ASSISTIVE MEDIA

Assistive media is a nonprofit service designed to help people who have visual and reading impairments. A database of audio recordings is used to read to the user.

#ict

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rsprap · 1 year

Text

ICT TRENDS

CONVERGENCE.

SOCIAL MEDIA

SIX TYPES OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Microblogging These are sites that focus on short updates from the user. Those subscribed to the user will be able to receive these updates. Example: Twitter and Plurk

MOBILE TECHNOLOGIES

iOS – used in Apple devices such as the iPhone and iPad

Android – an open source operating system developed by Google. Being open source means several mobile phone companies use this OS for free.

Blackberry OS – used in Blackberry devices

Windows Phone OS – a closed source and proprietary operating system developed by Microsoft

Symbian – the original smartphone OS; used by Nokia devices

WebOS – originally used for smartphones; now used for smart TVs

Windows Mobile – developed by Microsoft for smartphones and pocket PCs

ASSISTIVE MEDIA

Assistive media is a nonprofit service designed to help people who have visual and reading impairments. A database of audio recordings is used to read to the user. You may visit http://www.assistivemedia.org/ for several of their audio recordings.