Tag: emails

Day 40: What is the Ministry of Truth?

Facebook’s announcement of an experimental partnership between third party fact checkers: Snopes, PolitiFact, the AP, ABC news, and factcheck.org. Where people request certain links to be factchecked and if they are and found to be false or misleading a warning without reasons behind the warning will pop up before the article opens. Many people on the left and right are wary of this development. For many conservatives, a third of the fact checkers (AP and ABC news excluded) have a liberal bias. For many on the left, this is an expansion of corporate control of media trying to take away their “truth”.

 

Facebook has the legal right to control its platform that it lets us use. I do think that it can be worrisome to think that there will be blind faith in the warning. I think that this is an opportunity for us all to challenge our dogmas. We all could use a hand in expanding our worldviews and many times that hand needs to come from the opposition. Not saying we are all wrong all the time, but we need to be fluid in our responses. Adapt to the situation at hand not the one in the mind. I think that this experiment is a good step forward and should be expanded to include more viewpoints. We need some radical changes but those changes aren’t possible without agreement and I am speaking about Climate Change. It truly is a bipartisan problem that will alter every human’s life. In the age of Elon Musk, no one can question the possibilities in renewable energy that could occur. I believe we need to support if not with funds than beneficial regulations that aid his innovations while improving the quality of life for his labor. We need to use Capitalism to challenge ourselves for real innovation rather than use our money for novelty add ons. We need the hoarded wealth to be reinvested into the American Dream. None of which is possible without dialogue. If fact checking and discussions not in comments but in researched detail can engage us with each other than it is worth trying. Facebook as a form of communication and a company must respect their power. I think this is a step towards a better social media environment in the age of bullshit heralded by Trump and Putin.
-E. C. Fiori

Day 33: What to do About a Problem like Putin

Putin made a monkey of us all. He shifted the election into his favor and now NATO which has guarded his advances since the days when he served in the KGB. In the New York Times, the other day there was an argument that the new fear of America was good. The only problem is the wrong people fear us. The dictators of the world has cheered this result because they know Trump maybe be the only leader who cares less about the truth than them. It is the people who formerly and hopefully still will stand with us in war that are afraid. They are afraid that the United States will not stand up to the barbarians at the gates and not just the Jihad, but Russia and the other illiberal rulers. A free tomorrow is endangered. This election is more damaging than Watergate in that a foreign will decided over our own. The victory was slim and this attacks orchestrated by Putin could have decided the in some cases 10,000 vote difference. I believe now more than ever we need the electoral college to be more than automatons. There is an unqualified possibly impeachable candidate or the choice to send it to the chosen representatives to chose. I don’t expect Clinton to win in that scenario, but at least a republican not chosen by an enemy. We cannot fall to a despot without an active decision by the electors to do so.

-E. C. Fiori