Oprah's epic commencement speech at USC's school of journalism ❤️

I thought Steve Jobs' commencement speech at Stanford was transformational, a speech everyone should hear. And yet, can you think of other commencement speeches that really moved you? I don't know why that is.

But Oprah's speech yesterday really spoke to me. It made me feel like the panel conversations we plan at Cake will become incredibly important one day.

Today I come bearing some good news and some bad news for anybody who intends to build their life around your ability to communicate. So, I want to get the bad news out first so you can be clear. I always like to get the bad stuff upfront, so here it is: Everything around us, including—and in particular the internet and social media—is now being used to erode trust in our institutions, interfere in our elections, and wreak havoc on our infrastructure. It hands advertisers a map to our deepest desires, it enables misinformation to run rampant, attention spans to run short and false stories from phony sites to run circles around major news outlets. We have literally walked into traffic while staring at our phones.

Now that I have presented some of the bad news, the good news is that there really is a solution. And the solution is each and every one of you. Because you will become the new editorial gatekeepers, an ambitious army of truth seekers who will arm yourselves with the intelligence, with the insight and the facts necessary to strike down deceit. You’re in a position to keep all of those who now disparage real news, you all are the ones that are going to keep those people in check. Why? Because you can push back and you can answer false narratives with real information and you can set the record straight. And you also have the ability and the power to give voice, as Dean Bay was saying, to people who desperately now need to tell their stories and have their stories told.

Transcript. Would love to know what you think.

 the internet and social media—is now being used to erode trust in our institutions, interfere in our elections, 

I didn't read the full transcript but the above struck a chord.

In Ireland, we are facing a very contentious constitutional referendum on abortion.

The relevance to above is that Google has blocked all ads from outside ireland

Google is to block all ads on its search engine and on YouTube relating to the upcoming abortion referendum. Quote from Irish Independent article:

“Following our update around election integrity efforts globally, we have decided to pause all ads related to the Irish referendum on the Eighth Amendment,” said a company statement.

The tech giant’s move means that related to the upcoming referendum on the Eighth Amendment are now completely banned on both Google and Twitter.

Yesterday, Facebook announced that it was blocking all ads related to the Eighth Amendment referendum that come from advertisers out of Ireland. However, it will still allow referendum-related ads that are paid for by organisations within Ireland.

While Facebook has indicated that it will implement the same rule for future elections in Ireland, disallowing any ads that do not come from registered entities in Ireland, Google has not yet said what it intends to do in the area of political ads in future.

The company is currently rolling out a ‘verification process’ for election ads in the US, which is expected to extend into other countries.

The ban will take effect within 24 hours also includes related ads on Youtube.

The regulation comes directly after Facebook’s declaration that it was banning all foreign advertisers from using ad space on its platform.

I see this as a positive step to blocking outside influence on a countries elections / referendums.

I don't know the source of the fake news used during the last presidential election in the US but I think the majority of it came from outside the US?

it will be interesting to see what happens in 2 years time, will Google block all outside posts for the next presidential election?

And it’s true, you can’t personally stop anybody from walking into a school with an assault rifle, nor can you singlehandedly ensure that the rights that your mothers and grandmothers fought so hard for will be preserved for the daughters you may someday have. And it’ll take more than you alone to pull more than 40 million Americans out of poverty, but who will you be if you don’t care enough to try? And what mountains could we move, I think, what gridlock could we eradicate if we were to join forces and work together in service of something greater than ourselves

"Ask not what your country can do for you.... " ???