the dark intent of some Facebook personality quizzes; more fake news articles

The Secret Agenda of a Facebook Quiz - to get a profile of quiz takers, to be able to target them with political ads tailored to their individual concerns.

For several years, a data firm eventually hired by the Trump campaign, Cambridge Analytica, has been using Facebook as a tool to build psychological profiles that represent some 230 million adult Americans. A spinoff of a British consulting company and sometime-defense contractor known for its counterterrorism “psy ops” work in Afghanistan, the firm does so by seeding the social network with personality quizzes.
..
One recent advertising product on Facebook is the so-called “dark post”: A newsfeed message seen by no one aside from the users being targeted. With the help of Cambridge Analytica, Mr. Trump’s digital team used dark posts to serve different ads to different potential voters, aiming to push the exact right buttons for the exact right people at the exact right times.
..
In this election, dark posts were used to try to suppress the African-American vote. According to Bloomberg, the Trump campaign sent ads reminding certain selected black voters of Hillary Clinton’s infamous “super predator” line. It targeted Miami’s Little Haiti neighborhood with messages about the Clinton Foundation’s troubles in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake.
..
One day in August, [Trump's campaign] flooded the social network with 100,000 ad variations, so-called A/B testing on a biblical scale...

Facebook fake-news writer: ‘I think Donald Trump is in the White House because of me’

Paul Horner, the 38-year-old impresario of a Facebook fake-news empire, has made his living off viral news hoaxes for several years.
..
"Nobody fact-checks anything anymore — I mean, that’s how Trump got elected. He just said whatever he wanted, and people believed everything, and when the things he said turned out not to be true, people didn’t care because they’d already accepted it. It’s real scary. I’ve never seen anything like it."
..
"My sites were picked up by Trump supporters all the time. I think Trump is in the White House because of me. His followers don’t fact-check anything — they’ll post everything, believe anything. His campaign manager posted my story about a protester getting paid $3,500 as fact. Like, I made that up. I posted a fake ad on Craigslist."

Wikipedia now has an entry on fake news websites too - the page was launched on Nov 15, 2016.

How Fake News Goes Viral: A Case Study

The pro-Trump fake news website that’s finding an audience — with Trump’s help - (article from April 2016)

What was fake on the Internet this week: Why this is the final column - from the Washington Post, Dec. 15, 2015.

Frankly, this column wasn’t designed to address the current environment. This format doesn’t make sense. I’ve spoken to several researchers and academics about this lately, because it’s started to feel a little pointless. Walter Quattrociocchi, the head of the Laboratory of Computational Social Science at IMT Lucca in Italy, has spent several years studying how conspiracy theories and misinformation spread online, and he confirmed some of my fears: Essentially, he explained, institutional distrust is so high right now, and cognitive bias so strong always, that the people who fall for hoax news stories are frequently only interested in consuming information that conforms with their views — even when it’s demonstrably fake.

web of untrust

'Web Of Trust' Browser Extension Cannot Be Trusted - it collects and sells your browsing history to third parties

Web Of Trust Browser Add-On Blasted For Breaking User Trust

cheddar-like

The Follow Your Heart vegan smoked gouda cheese slices mentioned in this post tasted great when melted.

I found a similar product by Daiya, Smoked Gouda Style Block, which melted and tasted pretty much the same. However, it wasn't pre-sliced, so the other one seemed more convenient.

But I don't always eat things up very fast, and the Daiya block was in my fridge for some time (I'm not sure how long), partially used up. These last 2 days, I finally used the rest up as a burrito topping. The interesting thing is that now, it even tastes quite good raw to me. I don't remember it being the same when it was fresh. The raw taste and texture - slightly crumbly - now reminds me of non-vegan cheddar cheese blocks I had as a kid (not the sharp cheddar ones with the bitter taste, but the very mild ones).

I'm not sure if I ever had Gouda cheese before I became vegan, so I can't say whether either of these brands tastes like dairy Gouda or not.