By SKWAWKBOX (SW)20/10/202019

Social media platform censors left-wing news publishers and relaxed fact-checking standards for right-wing pages

Revelations in the Wall Street Journal have confirmed what the SKWAWKBOX reported in 2017 and 2018: that Facebook knowingly biased its news algorithms against left-wing news sites in order to reduce their visibility in its users feeds and the amount of traffic sent to them from the social media platform.

The WSJ reports that Facebook bosses were worried that they would be accused of bias against right-wing sites (hardly a surprise, since right-wingers claim that even the Tory-run BBC News is too left-wing). So, in changes approved by Mark Zuckerberg, the platform updated its processes to hit left-wing sites hardest.

On Facebook Banning Anarchist And Antifascist Pages and The Digital Censorship To Come

PeterGelderloos@PeterGelderloos·Aug 19Gotta love our racist, Centrist overlords. F-book shut down pages of a few right-wing militias who have shot multiple people, and anarchist news sites like @IGD_News and @crimethinc, which share news articles, promote organizing against fascists or evictions, don’t murder ppl.

A Facebook spokesperson did not deny that the changes had been designed to affect left-wing sites more, but simply said no individual publisher had been targeted.

Continue reading “Confirmed: Facebook now filters out left news from user feeds while leaving right untouched”

from Grist , shared with thanks!!

“When we get full rights to our forests, we protect them, preserve huge stores of carbon, and help mitigate climate change.”

By Kynan Tegar

Kynan Tegar, 15, is an Indonesian photographer, filmmaker, and activist for Indigenous land rights.

You can see many more of his photos on Instagram @kynantegar.

How indigenous land victories can cool a warming planet..

Your country and mine are suffering from literal floods (1.5 meters of water in my home as I write this!) as well as a flood of bad news, so I want to share some rare good news: It’s about how a big step for my Indigenous community could become a giant leap for all of us.

Since I spend a lot of my time taking photos and making films, I’m going to show, not just tell. This story starts in 1973, just before my parents were born. A group of men representing a Malaysian logging company showed up in our hamlet, Sungai Utik, in Indonesian Borneo and offered our Dayak Iban elders rolls of cash to gain access to our pristine forests.

They knew our traditional lands contained abundant ironwood and other hardwoods as prized and overexploited as the Truffula trees in Dr. Suess’s book The Lorax.

Continue reading “We protect Our Forests. How indigenous land victories can cool a warming planet..”

Filosofa’s Mind Meanderings

Posted on October 18, 2020 by jilldennison shared with thanks, illustrations added

I am in a pensive mood tonight, rather saddened and disgusted by what I see people doing.  Y’know … Donald Trump is to blame for a lot … I could spend this entire post pointing out the things for which he should be held to account, but he isn’t responsible for our own behaviour … only we can be held to account for what we say and do, for how we treat others. 

It is true that Trump has encouraged much of what is happening, has praised white supremacists, denigrated democrats, Muslims, Jews, women and a whole laundry list of others.  But, at the end of the day, I am responsible for the things I have done … nobody else.

Continue reading “Good people don’t ….. WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH PEOPLE???.. toxic capitalism.”

Climate Denial Crock of the Week with Peter Sinclair.

In 2008-9, Coal was supposedly on the verge of a huge new buildout.
It all went belly up much faster than anyone imagined.

I had lunch with a major utility executive around that time, who was planning a big new coal plant near me.

I told him I saw no need to oppose it, mainly because they had missed their window of opportunity, and if they did build it, the market was going to leave it a stranded asset very soon.

A few months later they cancelled. They’re now committed to solar, wind and efficiency.

Continue reading “Gas Looking Like Coal, Just before the Crash”

Two agonizing lives have come to an agonizing end: Mambo, who was born around 1983 in the wild and has been abused as a circus clown since his capture, suffocated miserably in a van about 2 weeks ago together with a fellow sufferer whose name was not yet known to us.

This can be seen from current entries in the Elephant database.

Mambo and the elephant cows Tonga, Nanda, Betty, and Kimba (also caught in the wild) have been at the “mercy” of the Casselly family of tamers for years, who force them to perform disgusting tricks in the arena: unforgettable the unspeakable pictures, taken in 2017 in the Karlsruhe Christmas Circus when Mambo pulled a carriage through the ring in which a pony was sitting.

Furthermore, he and his fellow sufferers were repeatedly abused during the breaks as mounts and also as springboards.

Continue reading “Germany: Circus elephant Mambo and his companion die painfully in the truck”