Podcast Listened to Today: BBC's The Real Story - "Is Fake News a Threat to Democracy?"

If you haven't gathered from past entries or my social media presence, I listen to a lot of podcasts. Since I walk a lot, bike a lot, and do a lot of chores while healthy (without my current fractured heel), I can do a lot of podcast listening. At one point, I figured out that I had averaged something like four hours of podcast listening a day over a period of one year. I figure if I'm going to spend a lot of time with my brain unoccupied (except for maybe unproductive rumination and occasional useful thought), I might as well use that time to expose myself to new information and opinions.

In the last week or so, I resolved to post a blog entry instead of a social media post when I find myself typing up two, three, or more paragraphs. This resolution has provided a bit more output than in the past. Hopefully this additional output doesn't just come from my fractured heel. I wouldn't be surprised if the output has come from my participation in the Make Me Smart-affiliated Facebook group. Discussion gets interesting there, so I find myself typing up a storm in that forum then figuring out I might as well just post to the blog!

Today I found myself listening to the BBC podcast, The Real Story that was released last week. The Real Story comes out weekly. The BBC gathers together a panel, comes up with a topic, then the panel has a conversation about the topic. A moderator asks some questions, helping to guide the conversation. The show generally varies in quality, depending on the panelists. It provides some perspective of viewpoints over in Europe and also provides some good challenges to my own information bubble. Maybe it can for you, too.

Last week's episode, "Is Fake News a Threat to Democracy?", provides an interesting supplement to my essay yesterday about data-free social media requiring stiff competition. I don't provide a review or much in depth commentary on the conversation. Instead, I provide something of an outline based on some commentary in the beginning then list a bunch of questions that the podcast discusses and some of the panelists profess to answer.

My commentary and questions might provide some useful thoughts and routes of inquiry, but you'll likely find the episode a worthwhile listen. Click on the graphic below to access the podcast:

My outline:

1. Categorizing 'Fake News' as 'Misinformation' vs 'Disinformation'
   
   
2. The difference/similarities between the present and USSR's disinformation campaigns in the '80s (I hadn't realized that USSR tried to pin the creation of AIDS onto the US!)
   
   
3. The long time window USSR/Russia had/has for these campaigns. The striking thing to me is how the long-term social design strategies seem to originate in both Marx-influenced societies (while criticizing capitalism/bourgeosie for the ideological culture control) AND in political viewpoints/intelligence organizations that had at one time seeked to fight such disinformation (then adopted such long-term conspiracy arguments against their domestic political adversaries)
   
   
4. Psychological, emotional, & social performative aspects of sharing information on social media & how that’s manipulated
   
   
5. Role of Whatsapp closed groups outside of the United States
   
   
6. What to really watch out for, especially in the future as technology gets better: Deep Fake Video
   
   
7. Can social media be regulated to prevent mis/disinformation? Should social media be regulated? Could regulation of Facebook have prevented the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya in Myanmar? Can we agree on how to regulate?
   
   
8. Have we created a human networked information/knowledge structure? How has such a structure framed our perceptions of reality? Has humanity lost the “rational actor” characteristic as we’ve entered the post-truth age? What role does journalism have to play?
   
   
9. How much do state actors play? How much do non-state actors play?
   
   
10. How long will it take to resolve the post-truth age? Do we have that long (especially considering how much climate change is embedded in disinformation)?
    
    
11. Are open or closed societies better equipped to address fake news and post truth? How? Where do governments using propaganda/disinformation target it?
    
    
12. Selective truth vs crude fakeness/disinformation. Selective truth more dangerous? What happens when people’s fears and worries from dot.com crash, 9/11, then financial crash and other worldwide craziness are layered upon by post truth & disinformation?
    
    
13. Some thoughts on how to address fake news & post-truth, as individuals, societies, and groups. Should librarians be funded from national security budgets (and encouraging librarians to keep doing what they’re doing)?
    
    

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Introducing The Lexfeed (RSS)

Please behold The Lexfeed! It houses a stream of uncurated daily updated links to news articles, fiction, poems and whatever links that look like they have a passing interest to me that I want to read at some point in the future. The only real principle: these links reside in one place. I offer The Lexfeed for your use, pleasure and learning.

The Internet holds a lot of interesting and entertaining content. It has the problem of disorganization and housing at multiple sources. Links on Facebook, Twitter, blogs and wherever else we might frequent.

My gathering of links as browser bookmarks had gotten out of hand. Bookmarks syncing between all my devices helped.

It didn't do enough, though. I couldn't catch up with reading them all while I neglected the articles that my RSS feeder gathered. Offhand, it doesn't sound bad. Reading stuff is reading stuff. I find different types of articles from people I follow on social media (social justice, writing, science fiction & fantasy, politics, etc) than what I have my RSS feed grab (economics, finance, investing, pop culture, local news, world news, etc).

I would have loved to find way of adding my social media feeds to my RSS feed, but I can't find anyway to do it. Twitter allowed it at some point in the past but not anymore. Social media needs to make money, and it can't do so if people don't use their website or apps.

The Lexfeed provides an imperfect solution. I use the following process: bookmark articles that catch my interest, once per day I post as many of the links to The Lexfeed using the AddThis app on Google Chrome.

This process has a drawback: I can post around 50 links a day this way. Once I hit that point, Blogger starts hitting me with human tests. Understandable. I agree with the spirit. We don't want annoying spiders crawling the Internet or pointless news aggregators looking for hits. As an amateur researcher, I hate automated, redundant news aggregators clogging up search engines.

Sure, I'm looking for hits, but I do what I can to keep the Feed off search engines. I DO aggregate links, but I'm doing it for selfish, not directly profit-oriented purposes. I want to integrate links into my RSS feed that wouldn't otherwise appear there. I offer it to those "in the know" as a side effect while trying to avoid collateral cluttering of the Internet. Hopefully it provides benefit.

If you find The Lexfeed helpful, great! Please don't link to individual entries. Link to the actual articles, stories, whatever it is directly. If someone else wants to access such an unfocused feed and/or put it onto their RSS feed, give them the link to whole blog, not any individual entries.

What's funny: I haven't reached any of these links on my RSS feed yet. So much posting on social media! Someday this process should yield some ROI. I look forward to it.

Link of Interest:

• The Lexfeed