In which the pond riffs along with the oscillating fan ...

The great thing about the new, severe reptile paywall is not just the personal sense of triumph the pond feels that the reptiles have been forced to retreat behind the moat and pull up the drawbridge…

As a result of the pond's perverse refusal to pay for the pleasure of reptile company, the pond has been forced to go free range, and forage in the ancient way that Tamworth chooks once did, and anything thrown up by the reptiles becomes a chance for some free associations.

It mightn't do much for the pond's elaborate business plan, but what a relief it is to step away from old favourites … why if the oscillating fan turns up, the pond is happy to go free associating even with him, a renowned cardigan wearer and ABC fellow traveller, and what purports to be the soft side of reptile life …

The capacity to use the search engine preferences of Facebook users to target them with political paraphernalia designed to shock or instil fear - for example because users have searched for stories on terrorism or gang crimes …?

Um, could we stop right there?

In the good old days before the paywall blitz, your average user of google had no need of Facebook.

They could go to the heart of the crime in a nanosecond.

These days, if researching the phenomenon, they might end up at Junkee reading The Recent Obsession With "African Gangs" Betrays A Sad Reality About Australian Politics …

Of course the HUNsters, the Bolter and the rest of the Murdochian hounds were at the heart of it, with the Fairfaxians joining in and the lot of them generating stories designed to shock and instil fear and loathing ...

Footy, kangaroos, meat pies and shameless displays of racist fear mongering in an election year — ah, the quintessential Aussie experience. Over the past week the Australian media has been losing it over a supposed gang crime wave orchestrated by “African youth”. The Herald Sun has been running front page story after front page story calling on the state Labor government to take stronger action against “out-of-control African teens” and The Age has called for a “whole of government response” to “African gangs”.

While the media has whipped itself, politicians on all sides, and no doubt a decent chunk of the public, up into a frenzy the Victorian Police have actually been begging everyone to stop using the term “gang” because it doesn’t accurately represent the nature of the problem, and could actually make things worse.

The current flare up is reminiscent of the Apex gang stories throughout 2016 and 2017. According to the media, in particular the Herald Sun, the alleged gang was made up of young Sudanese men and responsible for a raft of brawls, riots and petty crimes across Melbourne. 

The Herald Sun continued to report on gang last year even though police said back in April the group was a “non-entity” and was never predominately made up of people with African backgrounds. 

So we’ve got a pretty well-established pattern where sections of the media are willing to ignore crime stats as well as the police in order to construct a narrative about alleged migrant crime. All that’s missing are a few politicians willing to escalate racial tension in order to snare a few extra votes. Thankfully, since this is Australia, we didn’t have to wait long.

But let's not worry about Malware, the point of the quote is that the pond has faithfully replicated the links in that bit of the Junkee story, with one exception - the HUNsters are now behind a paywall, the link doesn't work, and already the pond can feel the online temperature cooling, and the Reddit raging no doubt softening …

You see, Facebook actually doesn't generate the stories that batter … it's the reptiles wot does it, your honour … 

Hang on, hang on, the public has a right to use Freedom of Information laws to access information on what might be in a person's Centrelink or Medicare file?

Well to a certain extent, though the Freedom of Information disclosure log actually only publishes non-personal information released after an FOI request …

Worse it obscures the way that deep mining of data is actually used as a way to generate cheap, mindless, fear-mongering slogans.

But it's not just social media that manages that.

More to the point, no such access provisions exist for checking up on what the Murdochians know about us, and it seems there are no protections in place to ensure the accuracy of the information compiled, nor to protect how it is stored and/or published …

Geoffrey Rush would be able to tell the pond a thing or two about that …

In a decision handed down on Tuesday, Justice Michael Wigney of the Federal Court threw out part of News Corp's defence against the defamation lawsuit, and dismissed News Corp's application to inspect a copy of the complaint made to The Sydney Theatre Company. Justice Wigney said News Corp's "truth" defence suffered many deficiencies and raised many questions. "What exactly was the 'scandalously inappropriate behaviour' or 'inappropriate behaviour' that Mr Rush was said to have engaged in?" Justice Wigney asked. "What exactly had he done which was said to meet those descriptions? If the inappropriate behaviour was said to be the inappropriate touching, how exactly had Mr Rush 'inappropriately touched' the actress during the production of King Lear? "Where had he touched her and in exactly what circumstances? Was it said that the touching was intentional? Why was the touching 'inappropriate' and 'so serious' that the Sydney Theatre Company 'would never work' with Mr Rush again?" He said asking The Sydney Theatre Company for a copy of the complaint would amount to "fishing" for News Corp's defence, and therefore an "abuse of process". (AFR here).

Who knows the truth of the matter, but one thing's certain. 

Neither Facebook nor any other form of social media could manage to do as much damage to the #metoo movement as this cheap, shoddy, sensationalist, nasty front page …

Sheesh, the pond suddenly feels deeply soiled … please excuse while it pauses to imbibe a Rowe cartoon … with more cleansing Rowe here …

That's supposed to be cleansing Mr Rowe? Oh come on Mr Rowe … is that the fate of free range Tamworth chooks?

Why looking at that plucked Donald is as bad as settling down to Mad as Hell for a little light political entertainment and being confronted by images guaranteed to unsettle, or perhaps horrify and terrify …

 

Never mind, the pond's just doing the social media thing, and spreading the gargoyles a little further, and now it's back to the oscillating fan …

Well yes, political parties and privacy is concerning, but then it's not just social media that must carry the can.

For years the crusading reptiles, as they've become more desperate about their business plan, have embarked on ever more offensive campaigns to attract attention to themselves.

The pond is so careful with its data that it only uses cash at supermarkets - let the supermarkets track the personal spending activities of the pond from that information as they will - and the pond doesn't tweet or use Facebook, but there's a deeper reality at work here … 

All the data and analytics in the world are useless unless you have an amplifier at hand, an organisation which will take mindless rhetoric, cheap, distorting fear-mongering slogans, and slavishly reproduce the lot of it on a relentless 24/7 basis … like Fox News trying to outbid Breitbart to capture the heart and soul of bigoted xenophobic America or the local reptiles on a frenzied outing bashing unions, Labor, tax policy discussions, crime gangs, or whomever or whatever else pops up in the news cycle …

… which is why the newly stringent paywall is the best thing to have happened to tree-killing media in recent years …. and to the body politic …because suddenly the reptiles are in a better place, and things are a little safer for everyone ...

Now if the pond were to lose the Pope, that would be an entirely different affair … and no, a Bunnings catalogue is no compensation … and relax, you can still head off to get more coral cement here.