There was a very interesting show today with the guest Dan Patterson. He works with Major and CBS doing Fact Checking in a big way. He came by it as a technical guy given the job of hunting where all the misinformation and disinformation is coming from…you guessed it; the Internet! Here’s the link to the show:
https://www.cbsnews.com/video/dan-patterson-on-the-takeout-12312021/
On Twitter he is @MajorCBS. See also: @TakeoutPodcast @TheDebriefCBS
The radio/podcast/streaming show comes on at 5PM Eastern Fridays and is repeated any time from CBS or CBSNEWS streams.
Dan Patterson is a CBS News Technologies reporter. On Twitter he is @DanPatterson. He also has written for many many technical, financial, and industry publications.
Today’s show on Disinformation was special as the guys got to drill down into finding from where these outright lies emanate. Dan has gone down all these rabbit holes to follow the “do your own research” links planted in these abundant social media websites.
The finding is that because the social media linking of these activities follows the clicking through these sites to generate ad income, the more activity (read clicking through) the more the message gets out…however false and misleading.
Concurrently there is a disincentive for the website selling the ad click-throughs; more clicks make more money. More controversy or “facts-that-fit-your-mindset” make more clicks. The participants in the media site are followed and recruited by the media peddler while the back end income from clicks is really what the site is peddling.
Pick a topic such as voting fraud and run it into the ground while raising money for yourself and your personal agendas. That’s been done to the point of Insurrection at the Capitol.
Technologists must realize as enablers of the modern tech that they also may bear some social responsibility as well. Good moral judgment must go into all vocation and professional pursuit.
Tech responsibly! Bernard Lambert – January 9, 2022 – @systemwrights