I think we can live our whole lives happy without academia's take on Facebook, but otherwise wholeheartedly agree with this critique.https://twitter.com/alexstamos/status/1453028053802631170 …
-
Show this thread
-
There is an enormous glut of social scientists out there, and a lot of the calls for "proper oversight" of Big Tech amount to a scheme to divert tech profits into a sinecure for academics, who would embed within these companies and produce reports until a comfortable retirementpic.twitter.com/fInnSWJJf7
3 replies 1 retweet 32 likesShow this thread -
Replying to @Pinboard
You’re wrong because with the exception of a few, many those people are already employed by those companies or are already producing “embedded” quasi-PR. There’s a large number of legitimate academics largely or completely shut out exactly because they refuse to play that game.
2 replies 0 retweets 16 likes -
So you’re seeing the ones who mostly played along, who exist for sure. I don’t think they’re representative of the modal aspirations of the academics.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @zeynep
Some of my best friends are social scientists! But worth aspirations don't make anything a good idea.
2 replies 0 retweets 0 likes -
Replying to @Pinboard
It's not just aspirations. Track record in producing good work, understanding, resisting money and being empirically grounded. I, too, can see bad examples, but the track record of *many* academics in this space is pretty solid. Can't be the only group, but has a lot to offer.
1 reply 0 retweets 0 likes
I don't think we can ignore the allure of de facto tenure in Facebook Studies (plus a massive administrative apparatus to oversee it all) when considering some of the schemes that have been floated to grant researchers sustained and privileged access to big tech internal data.
Loading seems to be taking a while.
Twitter may be over capacity or experiencing a momentary hiccup. Try again or visit Twitter Status for more information.