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Dare Obasanjo

10 Jan, 6 tweets, 2 min read

I learned about the concept of Failure Theater recently. One reason GOP voters love Trump is that he actually did what he promised. The GOP villainized lots of things from immigration to Obamacare but understood they’re actually not bad so never fixed them redstate.com/streiff/2015/0…

Then comes in Trump promising a bunch of brash ideas consistent with that world view from trade wars with China to Muslim bans and he actually does it. He fulfilled a lot of seemingly outlandish promises from his campaign. Whatever didn’t get done seems more on Congress than him.

He effectively broke the cycle of GOP media & politicians saying terrible things about liberals and their ideas but not taking drastic action. That was all Failure Theater.

Cruz & Hawley pandering to Trump voters miss the point. You won’t be the next Trump by sucking up to him.

The next Trump will be one who carries on his practice of bringing the subtext from Fox News and treating it as policy directives, regardless of how much they are bad faith arguments. Stop immigration even though it helps the economy. Dismantle Obamacare though it saves lives.

The GOP trapped themselves by creating a world where they have to disagree with the Dems no matter how reasonable the proposal. But they couldn’t disagree too hard since that would hurt the country/their donors.

The only fix would be to stop treating politics like team sports.

This fix is unlikely since there’s now an entire ecosystem built around GOP being the opposite of whatever Dems are (i.e. owning the libs) and the politicians have lost control of the narrative. Fox News, Rush, Breitbart & Q frame the narrative now not McConnell.

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More from @Carnage4Life

Dare Obasanjo

@Carnage4Life

10 Jan

There are two fundamental problems with social media and toxic behavior that boil down to human nature which we haven't solved.

1. Confirmation bias: People follow topics/people that they agree with & validate them. This is susceptible to forming in-groups that demonize others

2. Group dynamics and toxic behavior: Any online forum where you can form groups will attract groups of people with toxic behavior. This can lead to gamification of toxic behavior and one-upmanship leading to real world violence (swatting, mass shooters, Capitol Hill riots, etc)

Discussion in the U.S. usually misses these issues and focuses on ascribing malice to social media services. In Europe, just like with GDPR they're ahead and have proposed legislation on how content moderation and algorithmic disclosure should work. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_S…

Read 5 tweets

Dare Obasanjo

@Carnage4Life

7 Jan

https://twitter.com/respectablelaw/status/1347055062284120064

It’s a real problem that there’s a misinformation media ecosystem including prominent politicians and mainstream news sites like Fox News (e.g. yesterday was an Antifa false flag).

The horse has already left the barn and even deplatforming Trump isn’t enough at this point.

https://twitter.com/respectablelaw/status/1347055062284120064

I’m concerned the U.S. simply isn’t structurally setup to deal with this problem. 121 members of the House still voted against certifying Biden’s win AFTER what happened at the Capitol. Fox News is calling yesterday a false flag operation.

There’s no way to hold them accountable

Gerrymandering means you’ll always have members of the House that have no risk of losing elections. 1st amendment and death of Fairness Doctrine means Fox News can push its alternate reality to millions while Newsmax & OANN ready to fill their shoes if they ease up on misinfo.

Read 4 tweets

Dare Obasanjo

@Carnage4Life

22 Feb 19

1) Some thoughts on online advertising. Targeted ads based on user behavior basically involve companies you do business with like banks, retailers and your cellular provider either selling your data to data brokers like Oracle or giving data to FB/GOOG/etc to reach you with ads.

2) Almost every scare mongering article written about Facebook applies to Google, Twitter, and a host of other second tier ad network.

However the reality is that these articles won't change consumer behavior because no article worse than what they already accept.

3) Users already accept that browsing or shopping for something on a retailer site means ads follow them around news sites, Facebook, etc and still continue to use those news sites & services from FB/GOOG/etc.

In fact, the constant coverage helped propel Facebook to record usage

Read 7 tweets

Dare Obasanjo

@Carnage4Life

17 Feb 19

Yesterday Google published a 30 page white paper about how they fight disinformation across Google Search, Google News, YouTube and Google Ads. I read the paper and there's lots of good information in it which I'll summarize in this thread.
blog.google/around-the-glo…

First point, there's no silver bullet in addressing disinformation
- verifying accuracy of breaking news in real time is hard
- real people have different perspectives on seemingly simple issues
- enforcement needs to be predictable to users & enforcers which is hard given above

Google uses three approaches to address disinformation across it's products
1. Make quality count by ranking the most useful information highest
2. Investing in systems to counteract bad actors
3. Giving users context about content they are consuming via labels & disclosures

Read 8 tweets

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