Just an FYI that I wrote this post below before reading the article. I just added these 1st two sentences after reading the article.
-----------------------------------------------
DARPA funded ARPANET, a forerunner to the Internet, and the CIA provided the seed money to start Google. Google is in essence a surveillance tool 1st, and a search engine last.
The internet was always going to be a tool for domination and control, unfortunately.
We can't even keep our social media companies accountable for destroying millions of children's lives or our politicians from their corruption.
I'm sad to believe this, but trying to pretend that we are going to have some sort of decentralized control over it is a pipe dream.
-----------------------------------------------
New thoughts:
As countries around the world (with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and UK leading the charge) move towards tighter strangleholds on the “checkpoints” with crushing, censorship bills in order to control the information we read, does anyone actually believe we’re going to get a more decentralized form of internet?
Especially after we saw first hand what a stranglehold on the truth Governments around the world had during the pandemic? Fauci used his authority to cover his butt and sent the world into the largest coverup / conspiracy the world has ever experienced.
Not without a revolution. These people will not let it go.
If we can't bring accountability to people in the highest echelon's of power who abuse their positions, I think the world has entered a new Dark Age and I don’t think it’s going to be pretty. Wish I felt different.
The internet is just a tool, and it’s a poor handyman who blames his tools. The rotten ideas dominating our political discourse are a reflection of our political commentators, not the medium they use.
The Arab Spring mentioned in this article is a perfect example of this exact problem. There’s absolutely no point in being able to "coordinate, organize, and act" if you don’t actually know anything about politics and have no viable alternative to authoritarianism in the first place.
Tools do sometimes shape us. Cars, for example, shape the way we live and think about our life possibilities and behaviors: it is not for nothing that people reflexively inattentive to the needs, or safety, of pedestrians and cyclists are called "car brained".
The most plausible mechanism by which modern social media may be shaping us to be worse humans is that the engagement-maximization profit imperative ad-supported platforms created for themselves led them to boost content that induced unthinking anger and bigotry, because those things really do drive more engagement than more prosocial emotions and motivations. Masnick doesn't explicitly make that connection in this article, which surprised me.
Just an FYI that I wrote this post below before reading the article. I just added these 1st two sentences after reading the article.
-----------------------------------------------
DARPA funded ARPANET, a forerunner to the Internet, and the CIA provided the seed money to start Google. Google is in essence a surveillance tool 1st, and a search engine last.
The internet was always going to be a tool for domination and control, unfortunately.
We can't even keep our social media companies accountable for destroying millions of children's lives or our politicians from their corruption.
I'm sad to believe this, but trying to pretend that we are going to have some sort of decentralized control over it is a pipe dream.
-----------------------------------------------
New thoughts:
As countries around the world (with Australia, Canada, New Zealand and UK leading the charge) move towards tighter strangleholds on the “checkpoints” with crushing, censorship bills in order to control the information we read, does anyone actually believe we’re going to get a more decentralized form of internet?
Especially after we saw first hand what a stranglehold on the truth Governments around the world had during the pandemic? Fauci used his authority to cover his butt and sent the world into the largest coverup / conspiracy the world has ever experienced.
Not without a revolution. These people will not let it go.
If we can't bring accountability to people in the highest echelon's of power who abuse their positions, I think the world has entered a new Dark Age and I don’t think it’s going to be pretty. Wish I felt different.
The internet is just a tool, and it’s a poor handyman who blames his tools. The rotten ideas dominating our political discourse are a reflection of our political commentators, not the medium they use.
The Arab Spring mentioned in this article is a perfect example of this exact problem. There’s absolutely no point in being able to "coordinate, organize, and act" if you don’t actually know anything about politics and have no viable alternative to authoritarianism in the first place.
Tools do sometimes shape us. Cars, for example, shape the way we live and think about our life possibilities and behaviors: it is not for nothing that people reflexively inattentive to the needs, or safety, of pedestrians and cyclists are called "car brained".
The most plausible mechanism by which modern social media may be shaping us to be worse humans is that the engagement-maximization profit imperative ad-supported platforms created for themselves led them to boost content that induced unthinking anger and bigotry, because those things really do drive more engagement than more prosocial emotions and motivations. Masnick doesn't explicitly make that connection in this article, which surprised me.
But we wouldn't blame the car if the driver hit a pedestrian because he was being "car brained."
Likewise, we shouldn't blame the internet for the historic failure of our political experts.
This is the sanest thing I have seen in a long time about the Internet. I became a paid subscriber because of it.