Tag Archives: anti-vaxxer

What the media silences

Yes, that is again the topic of discussion. The BBC (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-61709782) gives us ‘Elon Musk threatens to walk away from Twitter deal’, in there we see “Mr Musk has said he believes spam and fake accounts represent a far greater share than the less than 5% of daily users that Twitter reports publicly.” The media knows this to be true, several others know this to be true, I know this to be true and one other party that we are about to be introduced to knows this to be true too.

You see, Twitter seemingly hides itself behind ‘daily users’ yet the truth is not that nice. Ever since Covid things have escalated. Anti vaxxers creating account after account, supporting each other and their fake accounts. The Ukrainian war made things worse. Russian Trolls, politicians supporting Russian needs in the Netherlands all. Connected to trolls and troll like behaviour. There we see a new player (since around 2014). It is the firm Trollrensics (at https://www.trollrensics.com) that shows actual data. And do not get fooled by the shy “His software and algorithms have helped uncover and analyse a significant number of troll networks and disinfo campaigns.” They have 8 years of data from all kinds of sources including Twitter showing millions of fake accounts. Even as I personally thought that the fake accounts are around 20%, they have numbers that indicate that these numbers are much closer to 50% and the media is steering clear. Others are steering clear. Twitter represents billions and the media loves people who have billions no matter what foundation it is on. And there we get the new stage. With ““As Twitter’s prospective owner, Mr Musk is clearly entitled to the requested data to enable him to prepare for transitioning Twitter’s business to his ownership and to facilitate his transaction financing. To do both, he must have a complete and accurate understanding of the very core of Twitter’s business model – its active user base,” lawyer Mike Ringler wrote in the letter.” We get to see the other side. Twitter hopes for $45,000,000,000 for a 50% population, so in what universe will an intelligent person pay twice the price? In what universe will any person pay for fake data, altered and weighted data? It is raw data that counts and too much comes from Russian and Chinese trolls. Too much of it come from click farms. Too much of this comes from non people. The game has for over a decade been about engagement and Twitter failed that test (miserably) and is now in a stage where they prefer to get out with a $45,000,000,000 camping voucher. Speculatively where the women are loose, the sun always shines and the booze pours uninterrupted. 

So when we see the option below, some people might get the idea. 

Below we see the assurance and under there is how these things come to play. 

The third is a random click-farm and this one might not have been used for Twitter activities, however considering that these matters have been going on since well before 2019. 

The impact is real and it is also all over Twitter. Several sources give us that most of these activities are in China and the profits are lucrative as this is not labour intensive. Twitter is keeping its doors locked and the media is not knocking on these doors, even though there is news all over the globe on click farms. So why is the media not digging deeper? Simple it is fear. The media needs Twitter and it needs Facebook and Google (who they pissed off), so they are letting Twitter be. That is how I personally see it and in all the settings Elon Musk is correct and he is a lot more intelligent than anyone gives him credit for. He has seen what Twitter is, what Twitter can be and he is willing to pay a fair price and that goes against the grain of its board of directors who are all about ‘daily users’ all whilst some sources are setting the stage that well over 40% are fake accounts. And the 5% and its ‘daily user’ label is not bringing home the bacon and as such Elon Musk and via him Mike Ringler are asking questions. Questions that people at Twitter do not want to answer. And it is important that you do not believe me, dig yourself! When we tart digging into engagement locations and time frame of certain accounts, a new timeline becomes visible, a timeline too many do not want to see, because the impact could indicate that Elon Musk could get Twitter for a mere $15,000,000,000 and that is the fear of some. OK, I get it I would not want to lose $30 billion either, but in that is it not strange that the media is not all over Twitter asking questions? They merely need to dig into the engagement line and where these engagements come from and when you see the click farm, you might realise that a location large enough for about 15 people should not house a click farm with 150-300 mobile phones. It is like being in a sweets shop wth 150 children. You wouldn’t last a minute, but one person can click on 300 phones easily enough and there is enough data, merely an unwilling media digging deeper and as we see the Twitter folly evolve more people should be catching on how the media is BS’ing us. Because this data has ben out in the open for the longest time. And even now as the BBC gives us “Texas attorney general Ken Paxton entered the debate on Monday, saying he had launched an investigation into Twitter for “potentially false reporting over its fake bot accounts”. Twitter has until 27 June to respond to his request for information.” It does not take away the stage that this has been out in the open and the media ignored a lot of this, I personally believe that they ignored it intentionally, to what end is anyone’s guess.

The fact that players like Trollrensics have had data spanning years with supporting evidence makes the acts of the media even more debatable, but that might merely be my view on the matter.

1 Comment

Filed under Finance, IT, Media, Politics, Science

Principle of a chair

Yes, we get that. We sometimes we rely on the principle of a chair until we figure things out, we sit on the problem. We aren’t hiding it, we aren’t ignoring it yet at times we aren’t sure where we are in such a situation. We contemplate and I am no different. So when I saw (at https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59970281) the article ‘Is the pandemic entering its endgame?’ I was not sure how to feel about that. So when I saw ““We’re almost there, it is now the beginning of the end, at least in the UK,” Prof Julian Hiscox, chairman in infection and global health at the University of Liverpool, tells me. “I think life in 2022 will be almost back to before the pandemic.”” I was not sure how to feel, was the man openly optimistic? There is optimism and there is folly. Until November 2021 there was no Omicron, there was no enhanced danger to the global health systems. Now we see that we are seeing less cases, but it is still almost 2 million new cases a day. And that is whilst we openly see that the numbers from India do not make sense. A setting where the US has a health system that is near collapsing and the UK is in no better state. Then there is the one thought we all ignore, what comes next? Omicron slapped us across the face and when is there a next version? Is this Prof Julian Hiscox trying to sell us genuine pink salmon? (A Barnum and Bailey joke). Yet we also get the good stuff here, because we are told “What’s changing is our immunity. The new coronavirus first emerged two years ago in Wuhan, China, and we were vulnerable. It was a completely new virus that our immune systems had not experienced before and we had no drugs or vaccines to help.” I agree with that part, I agree that the vaccines are the solution, yet the evolution of Covid is still largely unknown, or at least we are not being told. So a next version could spell a lot of havoc in many lives. And that fear is confirmed with “The only major curve ball would be a new variant that can outcompete Omicron and cause significantly more severe disease”, as such the article makes a lot of sense and I cannot disagree, but at what stage do we ignore what might come? When do we accept the endemic path? People are all about to get back to the job and income, but the danger with endemic and a new version in that endemic universe means more death and even as I applaud that (we are as overpopulated as we need to be), will you feel the same when it is your children or your parents whose lives are on the line? We see the line that less die but this time around we have a new setting, the lack of hospital beds could also fuel deaths and Omicron made that clear in the US and the UK. Even if we see causality in these cases, we cannot continue on a path where people die because all the beds are taken by Covid cases. That was why I supported the stage where unvaccinated cases are not allowed hospital beds, and if required only through fully paid services (upfront), if you feel it is unfair, too bad. It is shown several times over that vaccinated people can get seriously sick, but shorter and for the most not fatally. So whenever I see another hack piece where someone claims that the unvaccinated take only 50% of the beds, I kinda go ‘Yes, and the pope is Jewish!’ There is a clear station where vaccines are the solution, yes there are a few dangerous side effects possible, but that danger is nowhere near the station of the unvaccinated dying of covid. So how do we react to anti vaccine people like Kelly Ernby, Marcus Lamb, Glynn Steel, William Hartmann? We need not react, covid killed them all and a lot more like them. My only issue is that they talked others in refusing the vaccine, optionally killing them all. 

Some say we need to to make fun of them. I am on the fence on that. On one side it might make those who listened to these anti-vaxxers wake up and get vaccinated, on the other hand their graves should be a clear message and in all this misinformation continues on nearly all fronts. The only issue is that even doctors are spreading misinformation. Not many, but those who do are fuelling into vaccination feelings under the average person and that is a dangerous stage. You see, the stage of an endemic is fine as long as we are ALL vaccinated, when that is not the case we will see more mutations and more deaths and that is the larger stage, the next mutation might be a lot more deadly than Omicron was. In Omicron it was about spreading the disease, but if that evolves into a more deadly version the game changes by a lot and to stop that danger we all need to be vaccinated, there is no other option. This is a stage we face, we either act in fear (for kids, siblings, parents), we act in denial, we act in support or in acceptance. I get it, they are all stages that propel us, but that is equally wrong, as is sitting on the problem, but at times when there are too many unknown elements it feels like the best solution. I got vaccinated in the early days, I am a product of vaccines (60’s) I lived through the eradication of Polio, difteria, TBC, measles and so on. Some of these diseases still exist, but they are now so rare that we act in surprise when a case does show up. At some point this will be the case for covid as well, but not now, there are still too many dangers and to some degree the anti-vaxxers are making it happen. It is my personal believe that a mutation can only come from an unvaccinated person. I know, it might be completely wrong, but that is how I feel and the medical people still do not know what drove covid, what brought mutations and why Omicron was regarded as ‘mild’ when we knew so little. Too many questions and we see no answers that is in part the problem because it fuels the feelings of anti-vaxxers. 

The principle of a chair is at times not the wrong position to have when enough information comes towards us, yet that too has not been the case with covid and w get it, there are a lot of unknown elements and scientists do need the time to study and prove parts. But this is a setting that has gone on for well over a year and the people are burning out on all sides and their less accepting side is becoming visible more and more, especially now.

Leave a comment

Filed under Media, Science