Tag: Big Data

Big Brother Spy Culture: How your AccuWeather app is spying on you

Source: RT
August 23, 2017

A popular weather app known for precise forecasts and storm warnings has been caught tracking users and sharing the location data with a third-party monetizing firm. RT America’s Marina Portnaya brings us the details.

Could This be the Beginning of the End for Facebook?


Source: TheDailyBell.com
August 23, 2017

“Facebook is for old people,” I was told by a 17-year-old last week in San Francisco at the Startup Societies Summit.

He doesn’t use the social media platform. He’s right too. About half a million fewer teens aged 12-17 will use Facebook this year compared to last year.

Facebook depends on older people for its advertising revenue. But it needs to get users while they are young in order to keep them coming back to the social media website when they are older.

Facebook may be busy cooking up ways to attract the younger crowd, but they will inevitably fail at doing so. It is too late. If I am being told by a teenager that Facebook is for old people, the company probably suffers from an insurmountable branding problem among teens.

If parents are on Facebook, kids aren’t interested.

It’s not time to dig Facebook’s grave just yet.

Instagram is the preferred alternative to Facebook among youngsters. And Facebook owns Instagram.

But Facebook and Instagram are totally different platforms. On Instagram, you share pictures. Sure, you can write a caption and use some hashtags. And plenty of people still share memes. But it is not the personal information clearinghouse that Facebook is… or was.

Facebook is struggling with how to get people to share more personal things on their website. That was the main feature for a while, and probably what made Facebook popular. But now people are moving towards sharing more images, memes, and videos… things you can do on Instagram, Youtube, and Snapchat.

Ironically Facebook’s attempts to compete with other platforms helped depersonalize it. The engagement which made it popular is in the process of evaporating.

…sharing of original, personal content on Facebook declined by 21% between mid-2014 and mid-2015, and by 15% between April 2015 and April 2016, according to the Information.

Facebook addressed this decline in the sharing of personal content as “context collapse.” As users’ networks ballooned and their feeds became crowded with an ever growing pool of links and multimedia content from brands, who could blame them for not sharing? What’s the point of writing on a friend’s Timeline or posting a status update when it won’t be seen?

For me, Facebook is basically just a directory. People I have met and want to network with are added as friends, and then if I need to contact them, I can always send them a Facebook message.

It is also considered necessary to have Facebook pages for businesses or websites. This just adds to the impersonal feeling. People are seeing Facebook as more of an advertising machine, and less as an online social club. They are seeing more news–sure sometimes with their friends’ terrible opinions thrown in–and less about how their friends are feeling.

Facebook needs to know how you are feeling… it is how they advertise to you.

And this highlights why owning Instagram might not be enough for Facebook’s business model. Yes, they will still be alive as a company. But being alive isn’t the same as being an advertising powerhouse.

The reason Facebook is such a good way to advertise is because of the data. They know your “likes” and dislikes. They know what time you are most likely to click, and when you just want to be shown a cute cat video.

In Zuckerberg’s quest for world domination, Instagram just cannot deliver.

Facebook is in the power game by manupulating emotions, and making you feel a certain way. Facebook actually performed a study which manipulated the emotions of over 600,000 users in January 2012. For a week, they showed some people only negative news and status updates, and others only positive stories.

What the targetted users went on to post corresponded with whether or not they were being shown negative or positive things. They even were more likely to post emotional status updates when shown friends’ emotional updates. When they were shown mundane, boring posts, they were more likely to refrain from posting at all.

Facebook basically demonstrated that they can shape your worldview based on the information they throw into your feed.

But Instagram is different. On Instagram, you don’t have “friends.” You can follow someone, and they can follow you back. But they don’t have to. You can have one way follows. And it isn’t that easy for the other person to tell if you follow them, except at the very beginning, or by tediously looking through their follow list.

Sure, Instagram could serve up, or withhold certain images. But it is easy to unfollow friends who are posting stupid political memes without them ever knowing. People want to see beautiful places, architecture, animals, and pictures of friends.

It is a photo platform. Most of the time I don’t even read the description. Most of the time I scroll right past an image with words on it. Yes, they are still going to advertise to me, but my brain immediately recognizes it as an advertisement. They can only go so far without taking me out of the experience. In Facebook, that is all part of the experience, and it is relatively seamless.

So is Facebook going the way of the dinosaurs?

Probably not anytime soon. But I would be surprised if their influence didn’t shrink significantly over the next decade. They are not immune to industry disruption.

Even mighty behemoths of companies are not as safe as they might think. Remember MySpace?

Read More at: TheDailyBell.com

Explosive: Psychiatric Diagnosis, Surveillance State Linked

TruthFact
Source: NoMoreFakeNews.com | JonRappoport.wordpress.com
By: Jon Rappoport
July 23, 2017

Pay close attention to this one. It’s the future coming at you like a strong wind.

First, a bit of background. As my readers know, I’ve assembled conclusive proof that psychiatric diagnosis of mental disorders is a fraud. It’s pseudoscience. There are no defining lab tests. No definitive blood, saliva, hair, brain, genetic tests.

Instead, committees of psychiatrists meet and discuss arbitrary clusters of behaviors, group them and label them with “mental-disorder” names.

But diehards insist that one of the earliest and oldest disorders, schizophrenia, is the exception. That one is solid. That one isn’t pseudoscience. That one is the “gold standard.”

Wrong.

As fiercebiotech.com reports, “…Diagnosing schizophrenia relies on subjective methods…There is no single test for schizophrenia, so diagnosis typically involves observing symptoms and ruling out other potential causes for them…”

Want more? Fiercebiotech: “And while scientists have observed differences in brain scans of healthy people and those with schizophrenia…these are not currently used to diagnose the neurological disorder, according to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH).” Not used because the brain scans aren’t precise or definitive.

Same old, same old. Committees of psychiatrists “observe symptoms” (behaviors) and invent rules for diagnosis of schizophrenia.

As usual, the public is the last to know.

Now, there is a new project afoot that aims to change the non-objective diagnosis, using MRI images of the brain. IBM and the University of Alberta are working on it:

Fiercebiotech (see also this press release): “The team used machine learning to create a model that identifies schizophrenia based on connections in the brain, IBM said. The fMRI data was taken from different sites, using different machines, but the algorithm could differentiate between the patients with schizophrenia and without 74% of the time.”

No one is popping champagne corks. This was a small pilot study using 95 volunteers. Typically, these projects die out when larger studies are done, because the results aren’t specific enough.

That’s why NO brain tests, for ANY so-called mental disorder, are labeled definitive in the psychiatric bible, the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.

However, the computer boys and medical pros keep trying—and here is where the Surveillance State enters the scene in an ugly way.

Fiercebiotech: “Mindstrong Health, cofounded by former NIMH [National Institute of Mental Health, a federal agency] chief Tom Insel, is working on technology that analyzes smartphone data to determine a person’s mental state. The company’s tech collects information on which words are used, or a person’s location when using certain apps, for example, and turns them into objective measures of brain function. The company recently raised $14 million…”

“Meanwhile, Boston-based Akili Interactive and Pfizer reported data last year showing that a video game-based diagnostic test could distinguish between people with and without brain amyloidosis, a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. And PureTech’s Sonde Health is working on the analysis of ‘vocal biomarkers,’ or changes in nonlinguistic characteristics of a person’s voice, to indicate changes in health.”

To make a long story short: spy on everybody through their cell phones and computers, in order to diagnose them with ANY mental disorder.

The Surveillance State gets a new justification, and the psychiatric establishment gets to play Big Brother, “to protect us all” from mentally ill persons.

This research was kicked into a higher gear by Obama’s Brain Mapping Project, which he announced in the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting. The Project is necessary, he claimed, to help prevent such future tragedies.

No, the Project is necessary to expand surveillance of the population, for the sake of control.

Psychiatric diagnosis, and the toxic drugging that follows, IS a form of control.

“Well, we have a red-flagged subject in Boston who’s been using key words in his cell phone calls, and the non-linguistic pauses and voice inflections indicate he’s demonstrating a schizoid pattern. According to outlined procedures, we need to step up surveillance on him, do a deep check on his financials, quietly interview a few of his friends and co-workers, determine his voting record, find out what groups he belongs to. He’s a college professor. He teaches American history. Do we have anything on how he interprets the Founding Fathers, the Constitution…oh look, he seems to be making statements about the need to return to limited central government…we’ve got a live one, guys. Get busy…”

Diagnose the prof with schizoid tendencies and put him on an anti-psychotic drug, which will sink him into a brain haze and slow down his motor reflexes, at minimum.

Psychiatry and the Surveillance State:

Kissing cousins.

Read More At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com
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Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

Big Data Exposed

Think of Big Data as a malevolent technocratic Santa Claus: it sees you when you’re sleeping, it knows when you’re awake, it knows if you’ve been bad or good (even in advance!), so be good for goodness sake!

Source: Theinternationalforecaster.com
James Corbett
May 20, 2017

Pinocchio is the story of a marionette that dreams of becoming a real boy. He wishes upon a star, proves himself selfless, brave and true, and a kind fairy grants him his heart’s one true desire.

When the history of the 21st century is written, it could very well be the story of real boys and girls that willingly become marionettes. They stare blankly into their smartphones, prove themselves selfish, cowardly and false, and a group of technocrats puppeteer them.

Allow me to illustrate: You are a white, middle class American woman in your late 20s. You are active on Facebook, where you have a lot of friends, but you spend most of your time interacting with your sister, your boyfriend, and your BFFs from college. You watch a lot of 90s teen dramas but specifically skip the episode of Felicity where she cuts her hair. You work at a dental office in a mid-rise commercial building and eat lunch at the diner in the strip mall next door every Thursday. You used to fly home for Thanksgiving and Christmas every year on United, but you recently switched to Southwest. You like ballroom dancing on the weekends. Your last three purchases were a patchwork and quilting magazine, a 32 lb. bag of chicken-flavor puppy chow, and a silk tie (a present for your father’s birthday). You are agreeable but not very conscientious and you are prone to worry.

Et voilà. Your specially-crafted toothpaste advertisement is served.

Sound like the future of advertising? Wrong. It’s already happening thanks to Acxiom, Oracle Data Cloud, Epsilon, and a host of other data analytic marketing companies you’ve never heard of.

But you may have heard of one member of this new breed of Big Data-driven marketing firms in recent months: Cambridge Analytica. They’re the company that Trump employed to out-spin the Hillary campaign, or so we have been told ad nauseam by the strangely PR-like coverage of the firm that has been showered on them by the corporate lamestream #fakenews media since the end of last year’s (s)election cycle.

They bill themselves as a “data driven services” company that specializes in “data integration” and “audience segmentation” delivering “psychographic analysis” to drive targeted advertising campaigns or profile and influence potential voters. Or, in the significantly less buzzword-laden language of their company mission statement:

“To deliver Data-Driven Behavioral Change by understanding what motivates the individual and engaging with target audiences in ways that move them to action.”

No, that’s not a typo, that’s a selling point. The firm uses the slogan “Data driven behavior change” in their online promotional videos and offers the image of balls being directed down an inclined plane to illustrate how they can shape people’s behaviors along predetermined paths using data and marketing.

The company’s CEO, Andrew Nix, likes to go on stage at various conferences and deliver spine-chillingly Orwellian pronouncements about how Big Data is helping Cambridge Analytica create detailed psychological profiles of millions of unsuspecting “cosumers” and “voters.” These profiles can then be used to deliver individually-targeted messages to each of those millions of people, whether that message is used to sell a certain brand of toothpaste or generate interest in a certain political candidate.

If you watch any of Cambridge Analytica’s presentations, advertisements or PR spots on the national news (but I repeat myself), you’ll see that they like to brag about their ability to combine over 5000 pieces of data that they can collect on any given individual—from what airlines they’ve flown on to what magazines they’re subscribed to and everything else you can possibly imagine—to help create “psychographic” profiles of that person.

Whereas “demographics” is the division of the population into age groups and/or ethnicities, “psychographics” seeks to divide the population up along personality lines. Cambridge Analytica touts an “OCEAN” profile that rates individuals on the rather smearily-defined character traits of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extroversion, Agreeableness and Neuroses. By rating each individual in a target market on these characteristics, the company can deliver custom-tailored messages that appeal to different people in ways that specifically appeal to them. Thus, someone high on agreeableness and neuroses would be better persuaded to buy toothpaste by preying on their insecurity over their smile while those with higher degrees of openness and conscientiousness would respond to advertising explaining the properties and characteristics of the toothpaste.

The story of Cambridge Analytica is a particularly chilling one, involving secretive hedge-fund billionaires and British military psyops officers who, we are now being told, shaped the political landscape through “data-driven behavior change” to usher in the era of Brexit and Trump. To be sure, there is a fascinating and chilling story to be told there, but that’s a story for another time.

The larger story here is the story of Big Data, and it will be familiar to those who are reading this article. The long story short is that we have reached an inflection point in history. Large data broker services have been quietly purchasing and collating thousands of pieces of data on you and everyone you know, and the burgeoning data-driven marketing industry is now weaponizing that data in psychological operations designed to influence your choices, behavior and patterns of thought without you even knowing.

Think of Big Data as a malevolent technocratic Santa Claus: it sees you when you’re sleeping, it knows when you’re awake, it knows if you’ve been bad or good (even in advance!), so be good for goodness sake!

Actually, it’s worse than that. It doesn’t even matter if you’re trying to be good (or bad) for whatever sake; the social engineers are now honing their ability to make you want to buy things, do things, vote for or against certain candidates, and otherwise shape your daily thoughts and actions, without your knowledge or consent, by appealing to your individual psychological profile. And instead of running in the other direction, people are in a mad scramble to put even more intrusive data-collection devices in their homes to scoop up every last drop of information about their lives and send it off to corporations they often don’t even know exist.

The real boys and girls are uploading their lives to facebook and Twitter and Snapchat and Alexa and every other Big Data collection front. And in the process, they are giving the Big Data puppeteers the strings with which they will be pulled around like so many marionettes.

It’s a real question whether there is any way short of living in a cabin in the woods to avoid being scooped up in the Big Data dragnet. But the more fundamental question is whether the real boys and girls will ever realize, or even care, that they are slowly becoming Pinocchio.

Read More At: Theinternationalforecaster.com