Jitsi, an open source audio and video platform for conferencing, was bought and further developed by Atlassian. Some code from Jitsi is in Stride. Was is part of the purchase? Are the Atlassian developers still working for Atlassian? Are they working for Slack now? Or have they been let go?
Check out Jitsi Meet, the open sourced video conference product.
India's governing party is guilty of trolling and fake news on WhatsApp so this is all about control.
He [Mahaveer Prasad Khileri] is a former troll for India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or the BJP. “At that time, poison was in my mind,” he said.
Khileri was recruited by two acquaintances into the party’s social media operation in February 2014, just as Modi was racing to become India's next prime minister. He was given eight cell phones and ID’s for six different Facebook identities, he recalled in an interview in his home village of Jogaliya. He worked 18-hour days, toggling between legitimate campaign work and trolling of opponents and journalists, he said. When Modi won, the operation evolved as well, transitioning to a tool supporting Modi’s government.
Khileri worked in what the BJP calls its ‘IT Cell,’ which effectively operated as an ad hoc troll farm, he said. The development of the cell in the world's largest democracy occurred around the same time that American authorities believe Russia began using such techniques to influence the 2016 presidential election. The researchers contributing to the institute and Google reports found similar timing in different countries and under various circumstances.
According to Khileri, the Indian version of the trolling toolkit included strategies meant to inflame sectarian differences, malign the Muslim minority and portray Modi as savior of the Hindus. Supervisors would set themes for the day and specify targets to attack. Khileri and 300 other paid trolls would create memes or cut-and-paste Twitter posts that were sent to WhatsApp groups of tens of thousands of party loyalists. Their reposts sent hashtags viral in minutes.
“Muslims slaughter cows, so we’d tell them, ‘When Modi comes, we will slaughter you,’” Khileri recalled. “We’d tell Hindus: ‘If you don’t vote for Modi, then Muslims will destroy you.’”
Fake news spreads very fast. People will post things that they agree with (or find interesting) without thinking and checking to see if it is true. One harmless but false post that I recently seen on Facebook posted by a couple of my FB friends is that in 2018 1/1, 2/2, 3/3,
By the time a human looks at the post and determines it is fake news, the post has been reposted hundreds of times. An algorithm can find some fake news posts but how many false positives would there be. People would also figure ways around (or game) the algorithm, so it would be an ongoing battle. And what determines fake new? Is it one misleading statement? Does a slanted story with only one side counts as fake news? Is an opinion that is misleading fake news? It is hard.
Then there is the issue of censorship. Is it right for Facebook to ban posts? Should Facebook mark posts as possible fake news and put it far down in its curated list of posts? I think something can be done, but it is not an easy problem to solve, and it will never be completely solved.
I remember many years ago driving down the road trying to read a paper map to figure out my next turn. That was definitely dangerous, and I was very distracted. I did that more times than I care to admit. Having a cell phone with Google Maps (or equivalent) has definitely made things much better.
Even the act of changing the radio station is distracting. I lose track of what is happening on the road while trying to get a station with a decent song.
Distracted Driving is a serious problem but it is not anything new. Cell phones may have made the situation worse in most cases but in some cases things are less distracting with a smart phone.
God doesn't play dice. -- Albert Einstein
