Power of the Q

1. Action

Q posted about RBG

1. Reaction

YouTube searches for 'RBG' led to slew of bogus conspiracy videos

The site still has work to do cleaning up its searches.

As much as YouTube has done to counter hoaxes and fake news in its searches, it still has room for improvement. The Washington Post discovered that "more than half" of YouTube's top 20 search results for "RBG," the nickname for US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, were known fake conspiracy theory videos. In fact, just one of the results came from a well-established news outlet. And if you played one of those videos, the recommendations quickly shifted to more extreme conspiracies.

The site addressed the skewed results shortly after the Post got in touch, promoting more authentic videos. There were still conspiracy videos in the mix as of this writing, however. In a statement to the newspaper, YouTube's Farshad Shadloo acknowledged that "there's more to do" in curbing false videos.

The internet giant has implemented a number of measures to combat false videos, including fact checking textboxes to counter some falsehoods. However, the "RBG" incident highlights the limitations of its current approach. It still relies on search algorithms that present results based primarily on relevance, not accuracy, and it doesn't offer fact checks for a wide range of subjects, including developing news. Although it's unlikely that many people will be sucked into a conspiracy black hole, this makes life difficult for both vulnerable people and those simply looking for trustworthy videos.

https://www.engadget.com/2019/01/13/youtube-searches-for-rbg-led-to-conspiracy-videos/

Trump might actually win the trade war with China

For nearly 20 years, American leaders of both parties had shown they were not willing to even contemplate walking away. Is it any wonder that for decades, many Americans overpaid in terms of lost jobs, declining wages and crumbling communities?

Trump ran to reverse those trends. The elites in both parties heard his talk and immediately labeled him a protectionist. I guess those are fighting words on college campuses and in corporate boardrooms, but in places such as Newton, Iowa, they were a compliment. That’s because people saw what Trump would be trying to protect: their jobs, their wages and their towns.

Trump seems to be willing to walk away from bad deals. He knew we were overpaying, and he knew that quiet efforts to cajole better behavior had largely fallen on deaf ears in Beijing. So he turned the tables and started to walk away.

This should serve as a wake-up call to business leaders, economists and politicians. Tough talk backed by tough action can get results. A nation does have to worry about the distributional effects arising from market transactions. It’s good business to pay attention to your home country and its citizens, even if the shareholders might get a slightly smaller return.

Leaders of other nations have always known this and been much savvier in negotiating their “free trade” deals. Former Canadian prime minister Stephen Harper says as much in his recent book, “Right Here, Right Now,” in which he quietly remarks how he conducted trade negotiations to ensure that key Canadian industries were not unduly harmed and that the gains from the resultant agreements would be spread around the country.

We do not yet know how the new game will end. Trump may not get the deal we need, or he might blunder and overpay in a quest to sign anything he can call a success. But for now, all the signs look good. More importantly, the signs give people hope that leaders can be responsive to their citizens and that elections can produce change. That hope alone is worth the gamble he has taken.

https://www.postandcourier.com/opinion/commentary/trump-might-actually-win-the-trade-war-with-china/article_d7504b54-15d8-11e9-bfe7-ff8ede7402af.html

In China, they’re closing churches, jailing pastors – and even rewriting scripture

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jan/13/china-christians-religious-persecution-translation-bible