July 13 2023 - DuckDuckGo

 

Bill C-18 has brought the monopolistic behaviour of search and social media sites Google and Meta to the foreground.  And what to think other than monopolistic?  The Alphabet (Goggle) net profit margin is over 20%.  How does that compare with other industries?  U.S. margins reveal an average net profit margin of 7.71%. As a rule of thumb, 5% is a low margin, 10% is a healthy margin, and 20% is a high margin.  Doesn't it make you wonder what has taken so long to start to address this imbalance?  IN the meantime, individuals are looking to show their dissatisfaction. Searchers are downloading DuckDuckGo - in the quest for alternatives.   DuckDuckGo makes these promises: Search privately and block trackers Block annoying cookie pop-ups Watch YouTube without targeted ads Hide your email address These are useful promises. I don't know how DuckDuckGo handles news feeds, and that seems to be a major motivation for switching.  So we'll keep looking and see how things go.  So on to searching with DuckDuckGo. Today's picture?  DuckDuckGo starting to take shape as a search engine.   Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblogspot.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwell.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca

Sep 21 - 2022 - Celebrity Death Hoaxes

 

What is the purpose of celebrity death hoaxes?  By that, I mean how do they generate money for the perpetrators? "Web traffic-goosing tricks come and go. But if there’s one that has enduring appeal, it’s the celebrity death hoax." "Now considered a popular subgenera of misinformation, the celebrity death hoax is a tried-and-true scheme to drive traffic to their sites, which they’re monetizing with ads. The fake stories follow a loose pattern: Often coming from sites with legit-sounding names like Msmbc.co and Nbctoday.co, the stories tend to focus on young, popular celebrities with many fans who would be shocked by their premature death, causing a burst of traffic to the site, which is paid for with programmatically served ads." And the expression "traffic-goosing?" It doesn't pop up anywhere with a meaning, and fails to make it to the urban dictionary.  There are retrievals from 2010 accusing sites of traffic-goosing.  I would assume the expression comes from the slang use of the verb to goose - "To move to action; spur: goosed the governor to sign the tax bill." As Google seemed to not want to deliver any headlines on misinformation techniques, I hopped over to Bing for the "traffic-goosing" search, and got some results.  The gawker.comarticle HERE with an excerpt has a history of these techniques: "Internet publishers — successful ones — have concocted numerous sub rosa playbooks around traffic-goosing techniques: from the early days of annoying email blasts and Google-juicing headline techniques to, you know, more boobs. Then HuffPo came along with its lefty megaplex Drudge Report amalgamation which has morphed into the modern day Buzzfeed curating algorithm of business in the front, party in the back (or vice-versa), now considered standard wisdom for some of the bigger publishers." And what prompts this investigating into celebrity deaths?  It is the immediate burst of misinformation campaigns that the Queen is not dead or has been dead for a while and her death is part of a dark conspiracy involving pedophilia or child trafficking.  The Politifact post on the misinformation postings says it rates this claim "Pants on Fire".  There we go, another urban dictionary term to look up.

I created this interpretative image a few years ago.  The shape of the bottom of this Muscovy duck was egg-like so I thought it was fascinating on its own.    Read more daily posts here: marilyncornwellblog.com Purchase works here: Fine Art America- marilyncornwellart.com Redbubble - marilyncornwellart.ca