I’m sure the New York Times, LA Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, et al, will welcome such Truthy overlords …
Oh, wait, that would be against the First Amendment, right? Nevermind. Let’s just have the Feds monitor private citizens instead, m’kay?
If you take to Twitter to express your views on a hot-button issue, does the government have an interest in deciding whether you are spreading “misinformation’’? If you tweet your support for a candidate in the November elections, should taxpayer money be used to monitor your speech and evaluate your “partisanship’’?
My guess is that most Americans would answer those questions with a resounding no. But the federal government seems to disagree. The National Science Foundation , a federal agency whose mission is to “promote the progress of science; to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare; and to secure the national defense,” is funding a project to collect and analyze your Twitter data.
The project is being developed by researchers at Indiana University, and its purported aim is to detect what they deem “social pollution” and to study what they call “social epidemics,” including how memes — ideas that spread throughout pop culture — propagate. What types of social pollution are they targeting? “Political smears,” so-called “astroturfing” and other forms of “misinformation.”
Named “Truthy,” after a term coined by TV host Stephen Colbert, the project claims to use a “sophisticated combination of text and data mining, social network analysis, and complex network models” to distinguish between memes that arise in an “organic manner” and those that are manipulated into being.
But there’s much more to the story. Focusing in particular on political speech, Truthy keeps track of which Twitter accounts are using hashtags such as #teaparty and #dems. It estimates users’ “partisanship.” It invites feedback on whether specific Twitter users, such as the Drudge Report, are “truthy” or “spamming.” And it evaluates whether accounts are expressing “positive” or “negative” sentiments toward other users or memes.
The Truthy team says this research could be used to “mitigate the diffusion of false and misleading ideas, detect hate speech and subversive propaganda, and assist in the preservation of open debate.” […]
Some possible hints as to Truthy’s real motives emerge in a 2012 paper by the project’s leaders, in which they wrote ominously of a “highly-active, densely-interconnected constituency of right-leaning users using [Twitter] to further their political views.”
Let me repeat … this is being done by the National Science Foundation.
And scientists wonder why the rubes are questioning their alleged dedication to non-partisanship on a host of issues?
Yeah, right.
h/t Glenn Reynolds
The NSF is the source of funding for most university research. The notion that they are apolitical was knocked out of me years ago. I mean, who do you think has been funding most of the anthropogenic warming studies in the U.S?
They fund what is politically popular and scientifically popular.
Pop science should be limited to developing new flavors of fizzy sugar water.
We must be forver vigilant against counter-revolution.
Also:
FBI director: Tech companies should be required to make devices wiretap-friendly
There was a time they would have hidden their fascism. This is not one of those times.
They don’t hide it because, not knowing what fascism ever was, they don’t know they have it now.
They no longer hide it because this is their moment.
[Orchestra begins…]
Just once in a lifetime
There’s one special moment
One wonderful moment
When fate takes your hand
And this is the moment
My once in a lifetime
When I can explore
A new and exciting land
For once in my lifetime
I feel like a giant
I soar like an eagle
As tho’ I had wings
For this is my moment
My destiny calls me
And tho’ it may be just once in my lifetime
I’m gonna do great things
Just once in my lifetime
I feel like a giant
I soar like an eagle
As though I had wings
For this is my moment
My destiny calls me
And tho’ it may be just once in my lifetime
I’m gonna do great things
Mime’s the word.
*burble*
So true, unfortunately for us. I’m sure they would condemn Hitler with their dying breath, yet not realize that there are very few things Hitler did that they would disagree with.
And, considering the rise (again) of anti-sematism, I wonder if there is anything Hitler did besides invade Russia that they would have an issue with currently.
BTW, we all know that the progressives loved Hitler and fascism until he invaded Russia, after which they tried to paint fascism as an ideology of the right. Maybe they didn’t know or believe he was killing “undesireables” wholesale at the time, or chose not to believe it.
Maybe.
Yet more proof that the problem with government is too much money.
Well…I guess I’ll have to start using the #TEAParty hashtag.
Greetings:
Anyone want to wager on how many SWAT teams the National Science Foundation has ???
Ernst, you have hit in on the head as to “too much money.” There are two ways that will stop: 1. Economic melt-down, or 2. Tax revolt. While 1. is likely to happen without our input, 2. is the only one over which we have any semblance of control. But it would only work if a large number of taxpayers grow big brass ones. So, I’d give odds of 80% and growing for 1., but only 1% for 2. Wish it were the other way around.
Gamergate is probably ultimately doomed. I’ve been to meetings online and in person. Most of these guys are uneducated as to civic, history, and politics to the point where they do not understand that they are under asasult from the left even if they are of the left.
So this movement has moxie and anger but no brains really.
Sad.
I fear it will get confused and be split apart as it tires and is smeared as a racists sexist violent nerdy bogeyman.
It’s the three stooges starring in a short about the fall of Masada.
Even the bright people making persuasive videos want wage caps and don’t understand political basics or terminology. Most of their success has come from being up against coddled hot house flower trust fund kid amateurs. If a union org gets involved everything will get much more serious.
At least I now know for sure how America fell. It stopped reading, learning, and thinking and started collecting packaged simplified slogans instead. Now there is no common foundation apart from shared physical stimuli. We know when something tastes bad and little else.
Gamergate is what I’ve been doing since August BTW thinking it might be the hill to die on since it actually pushed back against the cultural marxist monoculture and gain some ground and not die.
I was tossing coins in a fountain though. Still, it IS a hill to die on. So…
It will be good to have Jeff back. He deserves a welcome feast. Like Richard the II coming back to stop the usurpation of John Lackland (even though he became king anyway and gave us the Magna Carta).
I think maybe I need a few weeks to de-stupid.
Richard I, actually – Lionheart.
Richard II was a poofda.
Richard I was the homosexual king of England who had his throne temporarily usurped by John Lackland before dying of an infection caused by a puncture wound to the chest.
Richard II was the homosexual king of England whose throne was usurped by Henry (IV) Bolingbroke before dying of starvation.
Okay.
You say that like you’re slowly backing out of the room and trying to avoid eye contact.
Sure.
Which of us has not slowly backed out of the room while trying to avoid eye contact?
I’d ask for a show of hands but I’m avoiding eye contact…
Don’t have contact between your eyes and your hands – Ebola!
I caught it at a party in west Africa
I asked for its name and in a dark brown voice it said
Ebola
E-B-O-L-A
Ebola…
A “Truthy”/Lie-y followup at Washington Free Beacon. “And that will be an end to that,” thinks “Truthy”.