TimoMalum.com

Revealed: The Many Evils Of Facebook.

In 2014, Facebook publicly admitted to manipulating the news feeds of almost 700,000 users without their knowledge. The goal? To measure whether it was possible to change people's emotional states simply by controlling the type of content that appeared on their screens.

For a week, some users received more negative posts, while others only saw positive messages. The result confirmed what was already suspected: people's moods were affected — and they began to post content with the same emotional charge that they were consuming.

This experiment, conducted in partnership with university researchers, revealed something frightening: social networks have the power to manipulate emotions en masse in a silent, almost invisible way — and all this without the need for violence, just with algorithms.

The question that remains is: if they did this in a "scientific" test, what else has been tested in silence? And how many decisions that we think are ours were actually induced by invisible lines of code?

[graphic & text courtesy of Revellati Online]

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Related content:

A study entitled, "The Effect Of Deactivating Facebook And Instagram On Users' Emotional State" has just been released by the National Bureau of Economic Research. The study says there "is an active debate over how social media affect users’ psychological well-being. Do social media make people happier, for example by facilitating beneficial social connections? Or do they make people depressed and anxious, for example by reducing face-to-face interactions or increasing unfavorable social comparisons? Some analysts argue that social media have contributed to the alarming recent decline in young people’s mental health." The study concludes, "Our estimates suggest that deactivating Facebook or Instagram improved people’s emotional state."

If being experimented on isn't enough and you aren't worried about Facebook affecting your mental state, here's another reason to break your social media addiction: privacy. A new article has been published on Tuta.com entitled, "All The Data Facebook Collects - And How To Stop This". The article goes into a fair amount of detail on how Facebook tags and tracks your behavior, but here's an overview:

What data does Facebook collect and track?

• All your profile information
• Any actions you've performed on the platform
• How you engage with content
• Your political preferences
• Your device's data
• All your browsing data
• Your current and past locations
• Your purchasing habits online and in stores

Most people have no idea that posting a favorite cookie recipe on Facebook opens them up to this kind of surveillance. It's probably revealed somewhere deep in a user agreement written by a highly paid attorney, but few people read those agreements in their entirety, and companies like Meta (Facebook's corporate name) take full advantage of it.

Unfortunately the only way back to safety is to delete your Facebook account, and most likely the accounts of any other Meta products you use, such as Instagram and WhatsApp. If that's a bridge too far for you, Tuta.com has another guide you might find useful: "How To Make Your Facebook Private: Yes, It Is Possible".

Isn't it time you take back your life from the soulless tech companies that play with your emotions and harvest your personal data for profit?

Bluesky Proves The Land Of The Left Is The Land Of The Lost.

It didn't take long. Another social media site run by the radical left has kicked me out. Not long after having my Mastodon accounts deleted without cause, Bluesky has now done the same. To be honest, I'm surprised I lasted as long as I did, but not because I broke any rules. To the contrary, I was polite and civil and did my best to link to sources whenever I posted anything related to health and science issues. But I did post news articles and podcasts that I hoped would open some minds and maybe create a dialog. For my efforts I was called a Nazi and a MAGA cultist, and my sources were all dismissed as being not good enough for the pseudo-intellectuals who read my posts. But I wasn't very active on Bluesky at all, preferring to keep a low profile and gently nudging rather than shoving in an attempt to not be cancelled. How did it work out? Here's the email I received from the "Bluesky Moderation Team":

Bluesky's moderators claim I posted content that promoted "hateful content" or was "disruptive to others". This claim is a lie. I was careful to be respectful of others. I'm not a bully and never have been, but I will stand up for myself if attacked and I will correct misinformation when I see it. But apparently in the land of the left, replying with factual data is perceived as being disruptive. The left has become so obsessed with conformity and obedience that instead of resembling the free-love hippies of the 1960's they're now more like the hive-mind Borg creatures of Star Trek. Independent thought isn't allowed. Be assimilated or be destroyed.

They don't believe in shared truth. They use words as weapons. They rely on you implicitly assuming that they have good intentions and are aiming at shared truth. It's a deception. For Marxists, dialogue is not a way of attaining truth. It is a forum for manipulation.

Although I had low expectations, I did go through the motions of filing an appeal to my account's deletion. Two days later and no one at Bluesky has bothered to reply. And honestly, the only reply I expect to get is "appeal rejected", which is the reply I got from Mastodon and also a year earlier from Elon Musk's Twitter/X.

This is the world we now live in: a world where mentally weak anonymous authoritarians function as social media moderators and censor anything that upsets their frail emotions or is seen as a threat to their demonic Marxist agenda. It isn't possible to have a real conversation with these people. Dissenting opinions are dismissed without thought. Their minds are closed. Their science is settled. Nothing changes until new propaganda is sent to them like a software upgrade.

I gave it my best shot. I tried on three separate social media sites. And now I question if it's possible to co-exist with people who are so mentally shut down, intolerant, and (strangely) arrogant.

Bluesky has proven to me that the land of the left is the land of the lost. But I won't stop talking. I have a voice. It's too bad the people who need to hear it the most will hear nothing but echoes of propaganda and hate coming from the soulless entities that control them.

Censorship Is Fast & Furious On Mastodon.

Pictured above is a screenshot of the message I received from the power-mad moderators on Mastodon.social, one of the largest servers in the Mastodon social media network. Less than two days after I joined, I got my first strike against my account for merely reposting someone else's content. The original post stayed up, but my repost was taken down. The reason given? "Content violates the following community guidelines: Do not share information widely-known to be false and misleading." 

Here's the post:

The original post by Lesley Carhart said, "I am not sure that people outside the US who have not had to deal with a similar party leader understand when we say, 'cult', we mean an actual, completely brainwashed cult. Not just racists. Not just people who like strong men or fascism, as exists globally today. An actual cult, where the members are willing to abandon their families and long-time friends, give away their belongings, and even resort to violence. Nothing, no matter how vile or rational, will get through to them except careful deprogramming. We have to contend with that. It can happen to you. Please be careful out there."

At first I thought she had to be talking about the Marxist Democratic Party, since all the things she describes are what I see every day among the brainwashed leftists. But then I saw her hashtags, which all point to "blue" targets. It was then I realized she was talking about Republicans and probably anyone who supports Donald Trump. 

I could go point by point and destroy Carhart's post, but my concern isn't so much with her as it is with the moderators at Mastodon. Why was my repost considered a violation of community standards? Was it what Carhart said, or how I replied? My reply to the post said, "Members of a radical leftist cult think YOU'RE in a cult, and must be "deprogrammed". 

My reply was true, because that's clearly what Carhart said should happen to Republicans. Is pointing out the truth a violation of community standards, or is the act of criticizing a leftist my real violation? To be clear, Carhart's post originally appeared on Infosec.exchange, another Mastodon server, but was then made visible on Mastodon.social, where my account is. (If you're not familiar with the Mastodon "Fediverse", this probably seems confusing.) It's possible the original post met the standards on Infosec.exchange, but not Mastodon.social, and by reposting it and adding a comment, I brought it to the attention of the Mastodon.social moderators who might have been okay with my comment but not the original post. Unfortunately, I will never know. I appealed the strike, asking how the repost and comment were "widely-known to be false and misleading". Within a few minutes, I got a reply: Appeal Denied. I wasn't given the courtesy of an explanation.

I really wasn't surprised. The same thing happened to me on Twitter/X, only worse: a permanent suspension with no reason given, and no response to my appeal. This seems to be the standard operating procedure for social media sites now that the stench of authoritarianism has begun spreading around the world.

But what makes it so ironic is that the majority of the posts on Mastodon are from Democrats and other Marxists who constantly whine about the dangers of MAGA fascism. Can one of them explain how censorship from the left, often in cooperation with the government and big tech companies, is anything but fascism?

Worse than I've ever seen in my life, people are radically divided by their political ideologies. We all have more common ground than we realize, but the powerful people in the establishment and the media hacks they employ work day and night to drive wedges between us. In many cases, each side believes outright lies about the other, fueled by propaganda and other deliberate efforts to keep us fighting. It's a situation that works very well for the establishment.

Social media promised to bring us together and usher in a new era of communication and understanding. But if power-mad, intolerant moderators abuse their positions and censor things they disagree with, they end up doing harm to society even if they think they're doing something noble.

Mastodon.social has disappointed me in less than two days. They should do better. They HAVE to do better. They, and every other social media site, have a vital responsibility to the public.

They must begin to understand: there is no place for censorship in a free society. But we must begin to understand: many on the left don't want us to be free.

The Arrest Of Pavel Durov.

[click here for a larger version of the image above]

Here is the official press release from the French prosecutor detailing why Telegram founder Pavel Durov was arrested. As you can see, the only thing he's really being charged with is refusing to censor content. As Europe and much of the rest of the world continue to fall into the darkness of totalitarianism, free speech is being attacked like never before. But since the global tyrants can't arrest all of us, they're targeting the people who make free speech possible. 

The more they tighten their grip, the louder we need to talk. Eight billion people can't be easily silenced. Now, more than ever, we must rise up and resist the evil entities who want to steal our property, lock us down, experiment upon us, and destroy our humanity.

It's also time to relearn some older ways of communicating. Signs, posters, flyers, t-shirts, bumper stickers, and direct mail can't be blocked as easily as a social media post. A return to putting ink on paper may be the only way forward if online avenues are censored or shut down. Why not get started today?

The Internet Is A Threat To Human Civilization.

"The world is not sliding, but galloping into a new transnational dystopia. The internet, our greatest tool of emancipation, has been transformed into the most dangerous facilitator of totalitarianism we have ever seen. The internet is a threat to human civilization." -- Julian Assange [2012]

21st Century Crackheads.

Smartphones create weak, addicted minds. "Just say no" to digital dopamine.