What's funny is how the whole disinformation media cycle was going full throttle, complete with a cottage industry in finding some random, shitty, moderately viral FB post and writing a story about it, until Nov. 6th. Now, suddenly everything looks different. Amazing.
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so your position is basically that the journalists in question are right that tech is bad (assuming you like Enlightenment values/dislike violence) but silly for thinking anyone can do anything about it?
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This is about the worst forum for this discussion, but it's what we have (speaking of deleterious social media). Globally, I think we all agree on the impact of social media, whether good/bad. The question is what exactly is wrong with it, and what (if anything) can be done.
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Among many other civilizational headwinds we face--inequality, looming automation, climate change--social media serves to exacerbate underlying problems and serve as megaphone to the worst (and rarely best) among us. Even if FB goes away tomorrow, we're in trouble.
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But leaving that aside and focusing on FB, yes, I think we often obsess over the wrong things re: FB. There have been so many headline topics in this busy FB media cycle, I almost can't keep track. First, supposedly 'micro-targeting' was the horrifying bogeyman.
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Cambridge Analytica could swing an election using provably ineffectual keyword targeting in FB, but hey 'psychometrics'. Well, where'd that story go? Targeting system is the same as before. Now it's not worth worrying about?
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Or privacy as the big deal, and GDPR was the great savior. Well, GDPR didn't do shit, and if anything, solidified FB/GOOG's market position in the EU (which I wrote about extensively, to much jeering). Nobody gives a shit about privacy really, so I guess that's gone.
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Now, it's disinformation, something that's unavoidable in any disintermediated system with free(ish) speech where Joe Tin-Hat can beat the reach of a NYT piece if he's inflammatory enough. But maybe since FB is blocking marginally more than it used to, that story will die.
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I'm cataloging two years of talking points to illustrate that much of the conversation has been as mimetic as the FB platform itself, with questions rising and never quite resolving, and being dictated by whim and viral happenstance.
End of conversation
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