Facebook hosts a tennis match with no referees

Facebook’s Nick Clegg defends FB’s allowing outright lies in political ads by comparing FB to a tennis court.

“Our job is to make sure the court is ready — the surface is flat, the lines painted, the net at the correct height,” Clegg said. “But we don’t pick up a racket and start playing. How the players play the game is up to them, not us.”

Er — no.  How the players play the game is up to the referees, who ensure that the rules are followed and that the game is played fairly.

It’s okay for FB to make the tennis court analogy.  They only need to complete it by supplying the needed impartial referees.

The Press Fails Again

From the NYT:

Not only did the president ask a foreign government to intervene in a presidential election by digging up dirt on a political opponent, .............Mr. Trump appears to have used hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance to pressure a foreign leader to act as the head of his opposition-research unit.

Note the expression "digging up dirt".  This same expression has been used multiple times by multiple news outlets.  The implication is that there is "dirt" to be found, and the constant repetition can only condition readers and viewers - i.e. voters - to believe that somehow Joe Biden is guilty of some unnamed corruption.  This mindless spreading of a false trope is, I'm afraid, rather typical of our uncritical press.

How should the NYT and others described the request from DJT to Zelensky?  How about something along these lines:

Not only did the president ask a foreign government to intervene in a presidential election by looking into alleged corruption by Mr. Joe Biden and his son Mr. Hunter Biden (allegations that have long been debunked) ...................Mr. Trump appears to have used hundreds of millions of dollars in military assistance to pressure a foreign leader to act as the head of his opposition-research unit.

 See how easy it is to provide good information to readers, rather than mindlessly spreading Trump's propaganda?

Where's the Sense of Urgency?

Our press is (once again) falling down on the job - in this case failing to warn the public of how imminent the tipping point for runaway global warning is.

One idea for keeping the subject in the public eye:
A prominently displayed daily update on the current CO2 ppm count, the ppm count expected to cause 1.5⁰ warming, and estimated time to reach that level given present rate of increase.  Along with a reminder of predicted effects of 1.5⁰ warming.

A black box with this info on page 1 of daily newspapers, and a few seconds in every TV news broadcast, would be the minimum the press should be doing.

Update December 20, 2019:

The Guardian is doing its bit.

Estimating Russia's Influence on Trump Win

While it's clear that Russia supported Trump in the 2016 campaign, it's less clear just how effective Russia's aid was.

Soon after the election, news orgs should have run a poll of Trump voters along the following lines:

Which of these reports about Hillary Clinton did you read/hear?
Followed by a list of false statements about HRC put out by Russian disnfo

Were those reports you read/heard about Hillary Clinton an important factor in your decision to vote for Donald Trump?

A poll like this would at least be a start in gauging the effect of Russian interference in the 2016 election.  This long after the election, results would be fuzzier than if news orgs had been on the ball at the right time.

Perversely Brilliant

So Donna Brazile is joining Fox News as a regular contributor.

A smart move by Fox. Let's recall: while Brazile was DNC chairwoman, she was also a regular on CNN. While at CNN, she learnt of at least one question that would be posed to HRC at an upcoming presidential campaign debate, and sent the question on to HRC. A clear breach of trust on Brazile's part.

Fox News knows its audience is well aware of this bad move by Brazile, is hostile to her, and so is primed to dismiss anything she has to say. Yet Fox can cynically claim to be "fair and balanced" because it is hiring such a high profile Democrat.

A perversely brilliant move on Fox's part.

Lottery winnings - a repost

(The recent large lottery prizes prompt me to post this entry from June of 2015 again.)

Yes, the state run numbers game, aka the lottery, is with us for good or bad, but I do question the way prizes are distributed.

From time to time I see posted in store windows the top prize that will be awarded to a winning ticket; this sum sometimes exceeds $200 million.  Now consider who are the purchasers of lottery tickets: the poor, the indebted, the desperate.  How much would it take for them to get their lives back on track?  I would suggest a lot less than $200 million, and I also ask myself: just what is the average lottery ticket purchaser going to do with that much money?

It would make more sense to split the large prizes into a number of smaller amounts that would be enough to turn people's lives around (pay off debts, buy a house, get some job training, put kids through college), but not so huge a sum as to be overwhelming.  Say twenty $10 million prizes instead of one large prize.  So instead of the size of the prize going up week by week as there are no winning tickets, the number of prizes (with new sets of winning numbers) would go up.  Having a larger number of prizes increases the chance of picking a winning number combination, so we could have more winners, and so more people whose lives could be improved.

The Democrats Fail Once More

The Democrats have once more showed their massive incompetence at messaging in the face of the Republicans' passing of the irresponsible tax cut bill.

How hard would it have been to have a unified message something along the following lines?

The Republicans are offering you a little extra spending money by adding $1.5 trillion to our national debt. Think of it like credit card debt.  In your private finances, would you run up your credit card just to give yourself a little extra spending money?  Surely not. So why would you want us to run up the national credit card that way? Especially as most of the extra debt is money going to wealthy people who surely don't need millions more in their pockets.

Responsible people who've had to temporarily live on credit start to pay down their balance once they have regular employment and a steady income. They don't keep running up their debt for extra spending money. 

That's what we should be doing as a country now the economy has recovered. We should be acting responsibly. Those with more than enough money should be contributing part of their large incomes to start paying down our national credit card, not be adding huge sums to it, leaving someone else is to pay the bloated balance sometime in the future.

(Not to mention the fact that the cuts for middle income people will turn into tax increases in just a few years.)

It's really not that hard to put out a message to counteract the Republicans' dishonest rhetoric.  It's shameful that the Democrats won't even try.