#mass news media

[politijohn]

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[pyxehastoomanyinterests]

thinking of the damsel route where the princess turns into an anime girl. thinking about how the mere act of questioning her autonomy made her lose it. because viewing her as brainless made her so. because our perceptions shape who she is, and by not believing her simple want we are not believing her existence as an original person. thinking about how she's a person until we decide she's not being "person enough"

[ohello0]

Every new piece of information I see coming out of Al-Shifa and the surrounding area is more devastating than the last.

Kidnappings, torture, point blank executions, new reports from those on the ground of the IOF raping and killing women, I have no words.

Western media will undoubtedly be silent about this most recent atrocity as they’ve been silent on, ignored, or sugarcoated everything else the last six months.

[butchscientist]

"media literacy is dead" was it ever alive though?? are people today actually worse at interpreting media than they were in the past, or is it perhaps a matter of people being exposed to far more media than ever before (thus having more opportunities to misinterpret media) as well as a variety of platforms to share their interpretations. were people in the 1970s better at media literacy or are you comparing preserved 1970s media interpretation (largely things written by professional critics, journalists and academics) to bad takes 17 year olds have on twitter

[tending-the-hearth]

people outside of new york: they are Freaks, they are Weapons, they are Terrifying

actual new yorkers: they share a single brain cell and most of the time don't know who has it. look at them. they have never done anything wrong in their entire life.

[mass-media-mayhem]

This just in: A new deranged news channel just popped on the air! Tune on in to:

Mass Media Mayhem!!

The Eden Report just got some new reporters! Please show at least a little interest for Chill Bill, Broccoli Guy, Neil Ostrich, Pierre Parrybo, Sarah Hatoff, Bot Botson, and Villager No. 4!

And you can’t forget the original: Rayman !!

Welcome welcome. This is a brain child formed by two idiots:

- @rainbow-wolf120

- Pasta (who does not Tumblr atm)

This was very much impulse, but that’s where the best ideas come from (we’re delusional)

If we have time, we may make introductions to the 8, but for now, enjoy this general beginning blog :D

[thepastisalreadywritten]

(CNN) — Jack Latham was on a mission to photograph farms in Vietnam — not the country’s sprawling plantations or rice terraces but its “click farms.”

Last year, the British photographer spent a month in the capital Hanoi documenting some of the shadowy enterprises that help clients artificially boost online traffic and social media engagement in the hope of manipulating algorithms and user perceptions.

The resulting images, which feature in his new book “Beggar’s Honey,” provide rare insight into the workshops that hire low-paid workers to cultivate likes, comments and shares for businesses and individuals globally.

“When most people are on social media, they want nothing but attention — they’re begging for it,” Latham said in a phone interview, explaining his book’s title.

“With social media, our attention is a product for advertisers and marketers.”

In the 2000s, the growing popularity of social media sites — including Facebook and Twitter, now called X — created a new market for well-curated digital profiles, with companies and brands vying to maximize visibility and influence.

Though it is unclear when click farms began proliferating, tech experts warned about “virtual gang masters” operating them from low-income countries as early as 2007.

In the following decades, click farms exploded in number — particularly in Asia, where they can be found across India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, the Philippines, and beyond.

Regulations have often failed to keep pace: While some countries, like China, have attempted to crack down on operations (the China Advertising Association banned the use of click farms for commercial gain in 2020), they continue to flourish around the continent, especially in places where low labor and electricity costs make it affordable to power hundreds of devices simultaneously.

‘Like Silicon Valley startups’

Latham’s project took him to five click farms in Vietnam.

(The click farmers he hoped to photograph in Hong Kong “got cold feet,” he said, and pandemic-related travel restrictions dashed his plans to document the practice in mainland China).

On the outskirts of Hanoi, Latham visited workshops operating from residential properties and hotels.

Some had a traditional setup with hundreds of manually operated phones, while others used a newer, compact method called “box farming” — a phrase used by the click farmers Latham visited — where several phones, without screens and batteries, are wired together and linked to a computer interface.

Latham said one of the click farms he visited was a family-run business, though the others appeared more like a tech companies.

Most workers were in their 20s and 30s, he added.

“They all looked like Silicon Valley startups,” he said. “There was a tremendous amount of hardware … whole walls of phones.”

Some of Latham’s photos depict — albeit anonymously — workers tasked with harvesting clicks.

In one image, a man is seen stationed amid a sea of gadgets in what appears to be a lonely and monotonous task.

“It only takes one person to control large amounts of phones,” Latham said. “One person can very quickly (do the work of) 10,000. It’s both solitary and crowded.”

At the farms Lathan visited, individuals were usually in charge of a particular social media platforms.

For instance, one “farmer” would be responsible for mass posting and commenting on Facebook accounts, or setting up YouTube platforms where they post and watch videos on loop.

The photographer added that TikTok is now the most popular platform at the click farms he visited.

The click farmers Latham spoke to mostly advertised their services online for less than one cent per click, view or interaction.

And despite the fraudulent nature of their tasks, they seemed to treat it like just another job, the photographer said.

‘There was an understanding they were just providing a service,” he added. “There wasn’t a shadiness. What they’re offering is shortcuts.”

Deceptive perception

Across its 134 pages, “Beggar’s Honey” includes a collection of abstract photographs — some seductive, others contemplative — depicting videos that appeared on Latham’s TikTok feed.

He included them in the book to represent the kind of content he saw being boosted by click farms.

But many of his photos focus on the hardware used to manipulate social media —webs of wires, phones and computers.

“A lot of my work is about conspiracies,” Latham said. ” Trying to ‘document the machines used to spread disinformation’ is the tagline of the project. The bigger picture is often the thing we don’t see.”

Click farms around the world are also used to amplify political messages and spread disinformation during elections.

In 2016, Cambodia’s then-prime minister Hun Sen was accused of buying Facebook friends and likes, which according to the BBC he denied, while shadowy operations in North Macedonia were found to have spread pro-Donald Trump posts and articles during that year’s US presidential election.

While researching, Latham said he found that algorithms — a topic of his previous book, “Latent Bloom” — often recommended videos that he said got increasingly “extreme” with each click.

“If you only digest a diet of that, it’s a matter of time you become diabetically conspiratorial,” he said.

“The spreading of disinformation is the worst thing. It happens in your pocket, not newspapers, and it’s terrifying that it’s tailored to your kind of neurosis.”

Hoping to raise awareness of the phenomenon and its dangers, Latham is planning to exhibit his own home version of a click farm — a small box with several phones attached to a computer interface — at the 2024 Images Vevey Festival in Switzerland.

He bought the gadget in Vietnam for the equivalent of about $1,000 and has occasionally experimented with it on his social media accounts.

On Instagram, Latham’s photos usually attract anywhere from a few dozen to couple hundred likes.

But when he deployed his personal click farm to announce his latest book, the post generated more than 6,600 likes.

The photographer wants people to realize that there’s more to what they see on social media — and that metrics aren’t a measurement of authenticity.

“When people are better equipped with knowledge of how things work, they can make more informed decisions,” he said.

“Beggar’s Honey,” co-published by Here Press and Images Vevey, is available now.

[public-trans-it]

God... I have so many Thoughts about Scott Pilgrim Takes Off. The original comics/movie had a message of "The power of love IS powerful, but isn't enough to fix things on its own. You have to be willing to change yourself first, and it's never too late to make that change."

And like that's a good message! The first 3/4ths of the series kinda fumble that message, and then it only shows up at the end, but that really helps define the emphasis on that last part.

The original series has also aged like fucking MILK. Bryan Lee O'Malley has been VERY open about the fact that it hasn't aged well, and that even when it was being released he could have handled parts of it a lot better.

And so when he got the chance to make a 'faithful adaption' of his comic into an animated series, a full decade and a half later, what did he do? He took the message to heart and changed the series to be so steeped in that message that it permeated every single moment of it, because even if the series was complete, it still wasn't too late to change it and convey that message better.

[neotaissong]

[aci25]

How The Media Controls The Masses

Dissemination of information is susceptible to manipulation when financial motivations are the primary driver.

[politijohn]

Source

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[toshootforthestars]

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[rad-roche]

i think it's very flattering that a few of you guys are curious about what i think of the ending and some plot stuff, but it hasn't even been a day. that's eight hours of television, a little more. i'm not doing that to my brain

[drsonnet]

speechless #Gaza

www.aljazeera.com

[republicanidiots]

Currently on the New York Times site:

“Israeli commanders describe house-to- house battles with Hamas in Southern Gaza”

How do the Israelis know they’re Hamas? How does the Times? They don’t. Why is the NYT reprinting this as though it’s been established?

Further headline: “Displaced Civilians are Struggling to Find Refuge” — the “civilians” are Palestinians. They’re “struggling to find refuge” because the ISRAELI ARMY is going “house-to-house” destroying where they live now.

[toscanoirriverente]

“Parlamento chiuso 7 giorni per la morte di Berlusconi”: è una fake news. L’odg di Camera e Senato (e il fact-checking di Pagella Politica”) smontano Fratoianni e un titolo di Repubblica