We are drowning in a sea of nonsense and "fake news&quo

[BritDownUnder]

My take home message is that you have to read around. Personally I think current affairs news is a bit biased on all of them but by reading e.g. Fox, CNN, AlJazzy, RT and BBC you can get a good idea of what is going on. I find that BBC is good for technology news but has a obvious bias towards the left on political issues. Same for AlJazera it has some good technology and environmental news but has a consistent anti-America bias in the mainstream news. Shop around a lot especially window shopping. Buy little.

[Vortex2]

It's the click bait embedded in adverts which gets me.

"Huge sink hole swallows office block" .... twenty five clicks through adverts later you see a poxy photo and two lines of text.

Also I am sick of being chased across the web by "L-shaped desk" adverts.
I may have searched for one some weeks back but I certainly don't want one now!

[adam2]

I am being pursued by adverts for warehouses to purchase, warehouses to rent, estate agents who will locate for me the ideal warehouse, warehouse staff, software to optimise my warehousing operations, and for logistics companies to whom I could outsource the whole operation.

All as a result of looking on line for warehouse coats (to wear at home when cutting up fire wood, or doing other dirty work)

Elsewhere on these forums I discussed the new Dubai lamps introduced by Phillips, a new and even more efficient LED light bulb.
This resulted in a number of irrelevant adverts on these forums for legal services, cosmetic surgery, limo hire, hotels, and travel agents, all based in, or serving the place in the Middle East after which the lamps are named.

[Vortex2]

I have upgraded my PC and so haven't added all the anti-advert add-ons etc yet to my browser .. need to do that.

Also, duckduckgo and Tor can help avoid that crap .. just need to remember to use them!

[raspberry-blower]

Not sure what the big fuss is about.

There are quality news sources, telegraph, guardian, ft, Bloomberg, Reuters, asian times, BBC etc to use.

Mix it up with the quality end of the non mainstream media, for example insurge intelligence, blogs like Greer, WSWS, rt, as well populist sources like the daily mail and breibart and the eco end through forums like this and you should capture what is going on.

Be sceptical, read across the spectrum and always think for yourself!

I largely agree, though it must be said that a significant proportion of the population regard ANY mainstream media as being purveyors of fake news, and put much more faith in obscure websites, and in news media that others regard as propaganda outlets run by our enemies.

I doubt that we could have won the last war if most of population believed the Nazi propaganda, and disbelieved our own news broadcasts and papers.

Propaganda works on omission - what is NOT being said is far more important than what is being said.

There is an official narrative that promotes "Neoliberal ideology" - that is privatisation deregulated "free markets" and house price rise forever. It also turns a blind eye to the malcontents or the brutal dictators the West supports.

Western media gets its news sources from three news agencies - they don't appear to interrogate the data to check whether it is accurate or not. instead they rely on cutting and pasting:

So what are the names of these news agencies that are “always at the source of the story�? There are now only three global agencies left:
•The American Associated Press (AP) with over 4000 employees worldwide. The AP belongs to US media companies and has its main editorial office in New York. AP news is used by around 12,000 international media outlets, reaching more than half of the world’s population every day.
•The quasi-governmental French Agence France-Presse (AFP) based in Paris and with around 4000 employees. The AFP sends over 3000 stories and photos every day to media all over the world.
•The British agency Reuters in London, which is privately owned and employs just over 3000 people. Reuters was acquired in 2008 by Canadian media entrepreneur Thomson – one of the 25 richest people in the world – and merged into Thomson Reuters, headquartered in New York.

Off-Guardian: The Propaganda Multiplier

Beria is right - be sceptical, and think critically

[emordnilap]

Satire’s useful too, for keeping your wits about you.

This article (long-ish but every word true) is a great primer.

It fits US/UK/Israel policy to a t.

[vtsnowedin]

I am being pursued by adverts for warehouses to purchase, warehouses to rent, estate agents who will locate for me the ideal warehouse, warehouse staff, software to optimise my warehousing operations, and for logistics companies to whom I could outsource the whole operation.

All as a result of looking on line for warehouse coats (to wear at home when cutting up fire wood, or doing other dirty work)

Elsewhere on these forums I discussed the new Dubai lamps introduced by Phillips, a new and even more efficient LED light bulb.
This resulted in a number of irrelevant adverts on these forums for legal services, cosmetic surgery, limo hire, hotels, and travel agents, all based in, or serving the place in the Middle East after which the lamps are named.

I haven't tried the add blockers being a bit computer tech. challenged. What I do is just shop for something different so the adds change. A glance through a women's clothing catalog will have pretty models wearing shoes to tiaras and everything in between popping up for weeks. I much prefer them to adds aimed at senior citizens, annuities to hearing aids.

[eatyourveg]

I use Adblock. Every now and again I switch it off,some websites become unusable, particularly newspaper ones. What's worse is cinema adverts, I only watch tv streaming these days so never see ads. Going to the cinema after you haven't seen adverts for a long time is quite jarring, so much so I now refuse to enter the theatre until 20 minutes after the advertised start. Ads are just so insulting if you haven't seen them for a while.

[woodburner]

I am being pursued by adverts for warehouses to purchase, warehouses to rent, estate agents who will locate for me the ideal warehouse, warehouse staff, software to optimise my warehousing operations, and for logistics companies to whom I could outsource the whole operation.

Perhaps they read this forum and they are just trying to be helpful and ensure you have enough room to store all your prep stocks.

[emordnilap]

What's worse is cinema adverts, I only watch tv streaming these days so never see ads. Going to the cinema after you haven't seen adverts for a long time is quite jarring, so much so I now refuse to enter the theatre until 20 minutes after the advertised start. Ads are just so insulting if you haven't seen them for a while.

Same here, they're simply so ridiculous I often say something, like "What a load of bollix that was" when there's a pause, not too loud but enough...

[woodburner]

It’s all in the presentation

[BritDownUnder]

I am being pursued by adverts for warehouses to purchase, warehouses to rent, estate agents who will locate for me the ideal warehouse, warehouse staff, software to optimise my warehousing operations, and for logistics companies to whom I could outsource the whole operation.

I bought an auger type attachment for an electric drill that I bought for a Filipino colleague in Australia. He was going to use it to plant things in his garden, so to drill holes in the ground to plant seeds.

For months I was haunted by images of this auger on many websites I visited ranging from the Daily Mail to the pirate eBook website I am so fond off. Eventually it stopped but it took a while.

[vtsnowedin]

Still if they know so much about what I'm thinking about buying or not why don't they also know when I have made a purchase and have no need for another. When I go on line looking at a product it is because I am in the market for it and will usually have a transaction completed within hours if not a single day. I don't think I'm unusual in this as far as men shoppers go.
If they had a button where you could click on it to say "already purchased" don't show this again , they could free up about half of their ad space and improve the cost effectiveness of the ads they are selling.

[adam2]

Still if they know so much about what I'm thinking about buying or not why don't they also know when I have made a purchase and have no need for another. When I go on line looking at a product it is because I am in the market for it and will usually have a transaction completed within hours if not a single day. I don't think I'm unusual in this as far as men shoppers go.
If they had a button where you could click on it to say "already purchased" don't show this again , they could free up about half of their ad space and improve the cost effectiveness of the ads they are selling.

Indeed, I have recently purchased from fleabay a rather obscure book. But I still get adverts for said book when a little common sense would suggest that having found it I probably don't want multiple copies. (And if I DID want multiple copies that I could have purchased several in the original transaction)

[Mr. Fox]

Nice little demonstration of how news media works described here:

http://medialens.org/index.php/alerts/a ... ganda.html

Interview in question:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6_nFI2Zb7qE