October 29, 2019

Report: Tech companies have secret data showing that conservative voices outperform liberals

Axios reports that tech companies are showing conservatives data that they outperform liberals. The companies have not released it.

According to an Axios report, conservative groups are planning to make supposed social media censorship a crucial part of their 2020 campaign. But the report also says that tech companies are conducting outreach with conservatives and “trying to push hard on data showing that conservative voices often outperform liberal ones.”

(snip)

Axios’ report says that conservative “charges of overt bias by social media platforms are way overblown.”

This is an understatement. The data is clear: There is no censorship of conservatives on social media platforms. To the contrary, the existing data does show that conservatives receive equal or greater engagement than others.

I. Facebook organic content
Media Matters conducted three extensive studies of political pages on Facebook (pages that post about politics or news regularly), all finding that left-leaning and right-leaning content performed about the same. Those same studies show that right-wing meme pages are the most engaged-with content on Facebook.

(snip)

Donald Trump’s campaign ran over 2,200 ads this year referring to immigration as an invasion -- a white supremacist dog whistle later echoed in the manifesto of the El Paso, TX, mass shooter. Nine other Republicans ran similar ads since May 2018. Facebook’s advertising policies and community standards prohibit attacks which target a group of people based on their immigration status. The policy clearly states that “violent” or “dehumanizing” attacks against a group of people based on immigration status are prohibited.

The impact of YouTube is not in doubt. A massive New York Times report found that YouTube fueled the rise of the far-right in Brazil. Another report examined how YouTube radicalized a West Virginia man. The Daily Beast’s Kelly Weill spoke to people who were radicalized on YouTube. “I’d met a neo-Nazi and didn’t even know it,” one told her.

Following pressure about all of this radicalization, YouTube said that it would stop recommending conspiracy theory videos. A HuffPost investigation by Jesselyn Cook and K. Sophie Will found that the channel was instead pushing viewers towards Fox News videos.

https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/report-tech-companies-have-secret-data-showing-conservative-voices-outperform-liberals

The other day I was surfing after I watched a video on Youtube on my Roku and it kept playing back-to-back Fox videos that eventually I had to stop it. I think social media is actually biased toward conservatives.

October 17, 2019

Arizona-ASU is the most intense rivalry in sports, per study

When it comes to heated sports rivalries, there are none more intense than Arizona vs. Arizona State.

And, no, we’re not just saying that because this is an Arizona Wildcats website and we may have a slight bias.

It’s true! At least, according to a study.

As reported in the New York Times, two business professors surveyed fans of North American pro sports teams and college football teams, and had them rank their hatred of their rival on a scale from 0 to 100.

Arizona fans averaged 89 hate points toward ASU, while ASU fans averaged 83 hate points toward Arizona. The combined total of 172 is 20 points higher than the second-most intense rivalry—between the Los Angeles Dodgers and San Francisco Giants.

https://www.azdesertswarm.com/platform/amp/2019/10/15/20916461/arizona-asu-rivalry-most-intense-rivalries-college-sports-new-york-times-history

America’s Biggest Sports Rivalries? You Might Be Surprised

Which rivalries are most intense? Can a team have more than one rival? What if the hatred isn’t returned? Two professors wanted answers.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/14/sports/best-sports-rivalries.html

October 15, 2019

Your N.J. home is worth less than it should be, thanks to the Trump tax law

The average Essex County home, according to Zillow, is worth $391,500. But it should really be about $40,000 more than that, a new independent study has found.

It isn’t because of a bad housing market.

The culprit is the Republican tax law signed by President Donald Trump, according to Moody’s Analytics.

The law’s limits on how much you can deduct from state and local taxes — a $10,000 cap — contributed to reducing the average value of a home in Essex by as much as 11.3 percent below what it would have been if the law was not passed, the study found.

It’s a bigger loss than any county in America.

And it’s felt all around New Jersey — of the 30 counties with the largest estimated percentage loss of home value, 16 are in the Garden State. All 21 counties in New Jersey had reduced home values, the study found.

https://www.nj.com/politics/2019/10/your-nj-home-is-worth-less-than-it-should-be-thanks-to-the-trump-tax-law.html?outputType=amp

October 4, 2019

Iraq unrest comes at critical moment in region

BAGHDAD (AP) — The young men and women coordinated on social media. Fed up with an Iraqi political elite they blame for their many grievances, they agreed on a mass demonstration on Oct. 1.

They were met with bullets, water cannons and tear gas, plunging the country into renewed instability just as it was starting to emerge from a bloody war against the Islamic State group.

The response to the unrest has triggered ongoing confrontations with protesters across the country and has claimed the lives of more than 30 people in three days. Hundreds have been injured.

The turmoil in Iraq, a country central to America’s Middle East policy, comes at a critical moment in the region amid soaring tensions between Iran and the United States _ both allies of the Iraqi government. Iraq hosts thousands of U.S. troops and also is home to powerful Iranian-backed militias. There were already concerns the country was turning into a proxy battlefield between the two sides.

https://apnews.com/c6a68be447bf4ca29c00a00bb4e94690

October 4, 2019

America is likely complicit in war crimes in Yemen. It's time to hold the US to account

Saudi-led forces have deliberately targeted civilians since the war’s early days – and US officials have done little to stop it

Since Saudi Arabia and its allies intervened in Yemen’s civil war in March 2015, the United States gave its full support to a relentless air campaign where Saudi warplanes and bombs hit thousands of targets, including civilian sites and infrastructure, with impunity. From the beginning, US officials insisted that American weapons, training and intelligence assistance would help the Saudis avoid causing even more civilian casualties.

But this was a lie meant to obscure one of the least understood aspects of US support for Saudi Arabia and its allies in Yemen: it’s not that Saudi-led forces don’t know how to use American-made weapons or need help in choosing targets. They have deliberately targeted civilians and Yemen’s infrastructure since the war’s early days – and US officials have recognized this since at least 2016 and done little to stop it.

A team of United Nations investigators, commissioned by the UN Human Rights Council, presented a devastating report in Geneva in early September detailing how the US, along with Britain and France, are likely complicit in war crimes in Yemen because of continued weapons sales and intelligence support to the Saudis and their allies, especially the United Arab Emirates.

Despite pressure from Saudi Arabia, the Human Rights Council voted last Thursday to extend its investigation.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/03/yemen-airstrikes-saudi-arabia-mbs-us