Tag Archives: video

How snide algorithms and social media marketing can be

This was taken from the video of Matt Damon reading a Howard Zinn quote. I don’t think many people realize that he was reading someone elses words and were just cheering him on for who he is.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m very glad that he uses his position to bring social injustice and social challenges to our attention, but he could have also read who the quote was from. Because this way, a lot of people who don’t really know just think: oh, he’s a cool guy and he does intelligent social commentary.

Anyway, the point really is that at the end of the video, the little rider slides in from the right, which I thought was just a farce in and of itself. I did not click it although I hate corruption.

It can wait.

Ich habe eben die halbe Stunde damit verbracht, diesen Film anzuschauen und wünsche mir, dass jeder der diesen Text liest, das auch tut.

Ja, mir ist bewußt, dass der Film ganz genau extra so gemacht ist, dass er unter die Haut geht. Das ist aber kein Argument, die Aussage des Filmes in irgendeiner Weise in Frage zu stellen.

Und wer jemals geliebt hat, oder jemanden, den er geliebt hat verloren hat, der weiß, was das bedeutet. Und dass nichts auf der Welt wichtiger sein kann, als die um sich haben zu können, die man liebt.

Interview with the Guardian editors who broke the PRISM news

This interview raises a couple of discussion points that are central in the debate about government surveillance and that are really the issues we as a society have to talk about and balance with our need for security.

– oversight

– the ability of citizens to dissent (a central element in a democracy) without going into self-censoring

– journalists ability to privately communicate with sources and in doing so protecting those sources

It’s worth watching: