Tag Archives: ethics

Shutting Down Research

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Mark Zuckerberg doesn’t want serious research into his advertising targeting to be done.

Facebook is demanding that a New York University research project cease collecting data about its political-ad-targeting practices….
The dispute involves the NYU Ad Observatory, a project launched last month by the university’s engineering school that has recruited more than 6,500 volunteers to use a specially designed browser extension to collect data about the political ads Facebook shows them.

In particular,

Scraping tools, no matter how well-intentioned, are not a permissible means of collecting information from us….

Facebook says (Zuckerberg says; it’s his company, and he retains controlling interest) that it already maintains an advertisement database that contains information such as who paid for an ad, when it ran and the geographic location of people who saw it, but the company does not maintain—in that database—data concerning its targeting methods. NYU wants those targeting data, too, including data on what political ads ran in which state and political race, what ads are targeted to what audiences, and how those ads are funded.

Zuckerberg doesn’t want those usages and techniques exposed.

His bottom line: “Don’t you dare scrape the data we scrape from our users and tell the world what the data are that we scrape, how much of it we scrape, how we use it, how we charge others for the sale or use of those data.”

Alphabet’s Fact Checking

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Progressive-Democratic Party Presidential candidate Joe Biden’s campaign team ran a campaign ad featuring a poor, downtrodden bar owner whose business was in the wind due to the Wuhan Virus (my term, not the ad’s) related lockdowns that shut businesses like his. In the ad, the bar owner blamed the situation on President Donald Trump.

The ad ran on YouTube during some Sunday football games.

There’s a problem, though:

[T]he [bar owner] is actually a wealthy tech investor who made contributions to the former vice president’s campaign. He also supported Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home orders that kept businesses shuttered longer.

Why blame Alphabet for this? YouTube is wholly owned by Google; Google is wholly owned by Alphabet. Alphabet is the MFWIC of this organization. The ad wouldn’t have run without YouTube‘s carefully considered checking and approval, that checking and approval is completely controlled by YouTube‘s controlling organization, Google, and Google‘s approval process is completely controlled by Google‘s controlling organization, Alphabet.

That’s sort of how the position of Boss works.

Plainly, Alphabet is carefully selective of the facts it chooses to “select.” The blatant censorship on display here is yet another reason to withdraw Alphabet‘s Section 230 exemption and further, to treat it like the publisher—equal time for all views, for instance—that the company insists on being, in deed if not word.

Progressive-Democrat Hypocrisy

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Again.

California’s Progressive-Democrats have been busily rewriting election laws to help their party “ballot harvest.”

In 2016 California [Progressive-]Democrats passed a law allowing anybody, including paid campaign operatives and political parties, to collect and return mail-in ballots. Two years later [Progressive-]Democrats prohibited “disqualifying a ballot solely because the person returning it did not provide on the identification envelope his or her name, relationship to the voter, or signature.”

And

[Progressive-]Democrats boasted that they used ballot harvesting to flip seven House seats in California that year including four in Orange County. Before this year’s March primary, hospitality unions threw a “ballot party” for workers outside of Anaheim hotels.

This election season, Republicans have decided to take them at their law. Even worse, according to the Progressive-Democrats,

[Republicans have] also learned to harvest ballots more efficiently by setting up drop boxes at shooting ranges, churches, gun shops, and GOP offices. The boxes, which are locked and supervised, received permission from the site hosts.

Oh, the Progressive-Democrat hue and cry over being challenged in accordance with their own book, Alinsky style. They’re accusing Republicans of voter suppression. And they’re actually serious in their accusation.

As the WSJ put it near the end of its editorial,

When Democrats harvest ballots, they are increasing voter access. When Republicans do it, it’s cheating. Glad we cleared that up.

Election Interference

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Here we go.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg says expects the social media giant will impose fewer restrictive rules on content following the conclusion of November’s presidential election.

After having used is restrictive rules on content to suppress Conservative speech, posting, and post-sharing. After having explicitly and deliberately “restricted” posts related to the Biden father and son influence peddling in Ukraine and the People’s Republic of China as reported by the New York Post.

“Once we’re past these events, and we’ve resolved them peacefully, I wouldn’t expect that we continue to adopt a lot more policies that are restricting of a lot more content,’ Zuckerberg said, according to BuzzFeed News.

Translation: “Once Biden is elected, I wouldn’t expect that we continue to adopt a lot more policies that are restricting of a lot more content,” because he will have achieved the purpose of his interference.

It’s hard for Zuckerberg’s interference in our election through his Facebook company to get any more blatant than this.

Making a Mockery

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Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D, NY) claims that

[O]ur Republican colleagues have made such a mockery of the Supreme Court confirmation process, we are not going to have business as usual here in the Senate….

Here’s what Schumer is doing to illustrate his point:

  • forced a vote on a measure that would ban the Justice Department from arguing against the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act (ACA)
  • invoked the rarely-used “two-hour rule,” which governs when committees can meet when the Senate is in session, at one point preventing the Senate Intelligence Committee from meeting
  • move[d] to bring up a vote under the Congressional Review Act and force Action on a resolution to undo the Trump administration’s gutting … of the Community Reinvestment Act
  • Schumer then motioned to adjourn the Senate until after the presidential election
  • appealed that ruling [that his motion to adjourn was out of order] and then motioned to table his own appeal, essentially putting up a motion in opposition of his own effort to close down the Senate

Then Schumer said this:

This is the most rushed…most partisan, least legitimate Supreme Court nomination process in our nation’s history—in our nation’s entire history—and it should not proceed.

Never mind that moving at the speed of business rather than at the glacial pace of politics is not at all rushed, but simply a matter of efficiency, of eschewing dithering or delay for the sake of delay—like the forgoing.

Never mind that, to the extent the present Supreme Court nomination process is partisan, it’s because Schumer is blocking partisanship in the process, refusing to allow Party take any serious part in the Senate’s Constitutionally mandated advise and consent role in confirmation.

No, with deliberately obstructive moves like these, Schumer personally is preventing business as usual in the Senate, including its confirmation business; he personally is making a mockery of the entire Senate. And so are his fellow Progressive-Democrats, who are going along with his nonsense.