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(Guardian)   Robert Reich: Social media giants have "the largest megaphones in world history. They're also among the richest and most powerful corporations in the world", and that's a dangerous combination   (theguardian.com) divider line
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    More: Obvious, Supreme Court of the United States, First Amendment to the United States Constitution, supreme court, concurring opinion, Last week, tech companies, Kanye West, content moderation  
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648 clicks; posted to Politics » on 13 Oct 2022 at 8:46 PM (24 weeks ago)   |   Favorite    |   share:  Share on Twitter share via Email Share on Facebook



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emtwo
2022-10-13 8:48:22 PM  
Also, the sky is blue and water is wet.

Fark user imageView Full Size
 
AmbassadorBooze
2022-10-13 8:49:13 PM  
Shut down social media.

Problem solved.
 
emtwo
2022-10-13 8:50:12 PM  

AmbassadorBooze: Shut down social media.

Problem solved.


Besides Fark, or including Fark?
 
Kumana Wanalaia
2022-10-13 8:51:51 PM  
If we can't agree on a solution we need to start by agreeing there's a problem.

That won't happen because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

So things will continue to spiral out of control until the whole thing shakes apart.

Death to traitors.
 
mistahtom
2022-10-13 8:54:19 PM  
Fark user imageView Full Size
 
mrparks
2022-10-13 8:54:48 PM  
It was so much simpler when they just owned the papers.

Now it's all "Wanna see Lucy's tits?" and so on so forth.
 
mistahtom
2022-10-13 8:56:13 PM  

emtwo: AmbassadorBooze: Shut down social media.

Problem solved.

Besides Fark, or including Fark?


News aggregate =/= social media.

Reddit is more social media than Fark.

Reddit is extremely corrupt.
 
meat0918 [TotalFark] [OhFark]
2022-10-13 8:56:43 PM  

mrparks: It was so much simpler when they just owned the papers.

Now it's all "Wanna see Lucy's tits?" and so on so forth.


Lucifer does have a nice chest

Fark user imageView Full Size
q
 
Archie Goodwin
2022-10-13 8:57:43 PM  
Fark user imageView Full Size
 
Porous Horace
2022-10-13 8:58:10 PM  
We're simply feeling the growing pains of an evolving electronic Democracy.
Duty now for the future.
 
AmbassadorBooze
2022-10-13 8:59:54 PM  

emtwo: AmbassadorBooze: Shut down social media.

Problem solved.

Besides Fark, or including Fark?


Whatever it takes to solve the problem
 
HighwayBill [OhFark]
2022-10-13 9:00:06 PM  

emtwo: AmbassadorBooze: Shut down social media.

Problem solved.

Besides Fark, or including Fark?


This isn't the anti-social media site?
 
iheartscotch
2022-10-13 9:00:40 PM  
Fark user imageView Full Size
 
Karma Chameleon
2022-10-13 9:01:24 PM  
a case where regular people actually do have power to change something, but don't, for incredibly dumb reasons.
 
Tarl3k
2022-10-13 9:02:06 PM  
This is exactly why "Meta" and Twitter need to be broken up.  They're monopolies now, and are hurting humanity.
 
AmbassadorBooze
2022-10-13 9:03:20 PM  

Kumana Wanalaia: If we can't agree on a solution we need to start by agreeing there's a problem.

That won't happen because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

So things will continue to spiral out of control until the whole thing shakes apart.

Death to traitors.


We need to go to a society where we live in the pods and eat the bugs and grind resources for the elites.

But in return we get screens in our pods where we can see our digital "assets" and we can work real work for more digital Nikes or achievements.  While the elites have garnd estates and real life assets.  Like real shoes. And they don't eat the bugs.

Insert always has been .jpg here.
 
KCinPA
2022-10-13 9:03:57 PM  

Kumana Wanalaia: If we can't agree on a solution we need to start by agreeing there's a problem.

That won't happen because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

So things will continue to spiral out of control until the whole thing shakes apart.

Death to traitors.


because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

No they don't! This statement is stupid AF and not even you believe it. But you have the right to say stupid shiat so carry on. I hope you get a few smartest votes and it makes you night.
 
PoweredByIrony
2022-10-13 9:06:32 PM  

mrparks: It was so much simpler when they just owned the papers.

Now it's all "Wanna see Lucy's tits?" and so on so forth.


[iunderstoodthatreference.jpg]
 
HighwayBill [OhFark]
2022-10-13 9:06:34 PM  

KCinPA: Kumana Wanalaia: If we can't agree on a solution we need to start by agreeing there's a problem.

That won't happen because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

So things will continue to spiral out of control until the whole thing shakes apart.

Death to traitors.

because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

No they don't! This statement is stupid AF and not even you believe it. But you have the right to say stupid shiat so carry on. I hope you get a few smartest votes and it makes you night.


because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based service economy.

there, I fixed it for you.
 
Dr. Bison
2022-10-13 9:07:49 PM  
Breaking up big media and limiting the number of stations a given company can have would go a long way to this as well
 
mudesi
2022-10-13 9:08:26 PM  
All this hand wringing over "social media". Puh-leeze.

The truth is it's the mainstream media, Fox News in particular, that sows the seeds of all viral disinformation.  Them and asshat celebrities who feed the mainstream media machine and vice versa in a circular ecosystem that achieves the goal of sucking as much money from the idiot masses as possible.

Some random asshole on Twitter or Facebook isn't the reason the bullshiat spreads.  The bullshiat comes from the top and gets filtered down by those random assholes.

As it always has been, since time immemorial.
 
Palined Parenthood [TotalFark]
2022-10-13 9:09:43 PM  
And yet he participates in social media! Curious! I am very smart
 
Kris_Romm
2022-10-13 9:10:13 PM  
Geez.  Does he Captain Obvious (TM) much?

The flip side is Social Media companies also being used as easy scapegoats, both for what they block, and what they don't.
 
Mr.Insightful
2022-10-13 9:11:11 PM  
Social Media is not one megaphone. It's monetizing enormous numbers of tiny megaphones.

The cacophony hardly agrees with itself.

No, the problem that Reich doesn't quite get because he's sucker to it as well, is the ease at which using modern day technology, we all can create our own echo chambers, with their own group think. This then normalizes the micro-culture's mores to the point that, surrounded by like minded "yes men", many people start to believe that nobody could possibly disagree with them. And more importantly, facts that are inconvenient to that micro-group's narrative are false somehow.

Right wing Trumpsters are most famous for this of course, but it's hardly only them who fall victim to it. The hard-left has communities that are equally as impervious to fact, creating alternative conspiracy theories to explain away facts that don't comport with their preferred narratives.
 
andrewagill [TotalFark]
2022-10-13 9:13:42 PM  
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Decorus
2022-10-13 9:14:48 PM  
I don't mind social media companies deciding who gets a platform. Companies need to make money to survive. The Elon Musks of the world don't have the money to keep it running without an actual base of customers using it. Right wing idiots and racist shiatbags don't pay the bills.
 
mudesi
2022-10-13 9:14:57 PM  
By the way, you wanna know what the original "social media" platforms are?
Fark user imageView Full Size
Fark user imageView Full Size
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adamatari
2022-10-13 9:19:40 PM  
100+ years out from old Teddy Roosevelt and the trusts have entirely reconstructed themselves, and added new industries on top.
 
Bith Set Me Up
2022-10-13 9:23:13 PM  
This was something that Al Franken tried to talk about in 2017:

"As tech giants become a new kind of internet gatekeeper, I believe the same basic principles of net neutrality should apply here: no one company should have the power to pick and choose which content reaches consumers and which doesn't. And Facebook, Google, and Amazon - like ISPs - should be 'neutral' in their treatment of the flow of lawful information and commerce on their platforms.

[...]

Everyone is rightfully focused on Russian manipulation of social media, but as lawmakers, it is incumbent upon us to ask the broader questions. How did big tech come to control so many aspects of our lives? How is it using our personal information to strengthen its reach and its bottom line? Are these companies engaging in anticompetitive behavior that restricts the free flow of information and commerce? Are they failing to take simple precautions to respect our privacy and protect our democracy? And finally, what role should these companies play in our lives, and how do we ensure transparency and accountability from them going forward?"

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/08/big-tech-security-freedoms-democracy-al-franken

/Franken should've gotten investigated.
 
FatherChaos [TotalFark]
2022-10-13 9:27:41 PM  
That case hinges on a Texas law that allows Texans and the state's attorney general to sue the social media giants for unfairly banning or censoring them based on political ideology.

People are NEVER banned for being Republican or Democrat. They are banned for violating the Terms of Service (TOS) agreement they clicked "I Agree" to when they signed up for an account. This means they agreed they wouldn't post stuff the site disapproves of, including (but not limited to): racism, threats of violence, flaming, bullying, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, threats of terrorism, bigotry, and so on.

If you said you got banned for simply saying "I like Republicans," I would be HIGHLY suspect that this is all you did. Companies like this don't WANT to ban users since the more people who look at their ads, the more money they make. If you got banned for violating the TOS, you have no one to blame but yourself. Making a law isn't going to change that.
 
Fart_Machine
2022-10-13 9:30:34 PM  
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was the first shot across the bow.  Consolidating media into a handful of controlling entities is never a good idea.
 
Bith Set Me Up
2022-10-13 9:31:44 PM  

Dr. Bison: Breaking up big media and limiting the number of stations a given company can have would go a long way to this as well


Indeed.

"Additionally, Common Cause's Todd O'Boyle told The A.V. Club that 'election season is a gravy train for broadcasters,' as well, meaning that most local stations 'book record revenues for political ads.' According to O'Boyle, 'in many communities, voters are seeing more election content in the form of advertising than they are in the form of news reporting,' saying there have even been instances of local newscasts cutting their broadcasts short in order to air more political ads. With politics becoming increasingly polarized over the past 20-odd years, absence of objective local news doesn't help ease that struggle, nor does it make most people think that there's anything to be done anywhere close to home.

While some people -- especially younger people -- might say, 'who cares? I get my news from social media anyway,' O'Boyle points out that, 'the majority of news coverage, and particularly local news coverage, still comes from local newsrooms.' In other words, just because you saw some article about a police scandal on social media doesn't mean it wasn't uncovered by some intrepid reporter first. Additionally, says O'Boyle, 'a healthy news ecosystem' is essential if you want 'to cut through some of the viral nonsense that's getting passed around' these days."

https://www.avclub.com/the-telecommunications-act-of-1996-gave-us-shiatty-cell-1798250823

Mr.Insightful: Social Media is not one megaphone. It's monetizing enormous numbers of tiny megaphones.

The cacophony hardly agrees with itself.

No, the problem that Reich doesn't quite get because he's sucker to it as well, is the ease at which using modern day technology, we all can create our own echo chambers, with their own group think. This then normalizes the micro-culture's mores to the point that, surrounded by like minded "yes men", many people start to believe that nobody could possibly disagree with them. And more importantly, facts that are inconvenient to that micro-group's narrative are false somehow.

Right wing Trumpsters are most famous for this of course, but it's hardly only them who fall victim to it. The hard-left has communities that are equally as impervious to fact, creating alternative conspiracy theories to explain away facts that don't comport with their preferred narratives.


Fark user imageView Full Size
 
Hyjamon
2022-10-13 9:32:42 PM  

Bith Set Me Up: /Franken should've gotten investigated.


Seriously, just take the one month of being the outrage-du-jour and you'd still be a senator today.
 
austerity101 [BareFark]
2022-10-13 9:34:57 PM  

Hyjamon: Bith Set Me Up: /Franken should've gotten investigated.

Seriously, just take the one month of being the outrage-du-jour and you'd still be a senator today.


Weird that the Democratic Party absolutely didn't want that to happen. Why wouldn't they give a senator a chance to defend himself, when he's explicitly calling for the chance?

Weird. So weird.
 
SplittingAces
2022-10-13 9:34:59 PM  
Thank you, Robert

Fark user imageView Full Size


/ how about no

// thank you for your irreverent input
 
shinji3i
2022-10-13 9:35:36 PM  

mistahtom: emtwo: AmbassadorBooze: Shut down social media.

Problem solved.

Besides Fark, or including Fark?

News aggregate =/= social media.

Reddit is more social media than Fark.

Reddit is extremely corrupt.


This place has its problems but as far as I know Drew hasn't knowingly had a paid child groomer on staff overseeing the FARK4kids tab like Reddit did for a while.
 
sirrerun
2022-10-13 9:42:09 PM  
Much as I hate social media, they are really not entirely to blame for Kanye West.

It was EMI or Bertelsmann or Sony or whatever major label is that signed him who blew him up. Otherwise he'd be just another nobody posting nonsense into the void.

Also as I am not on social media at all, it's legacy media that made me aware of his particular brand of bullsit.

When clueless boomers like Reich say that these companies need to be "broken up" what exactly does that mean? Twitter does one thing. Display a running tab of what both the most erudite and most drooling idiot among us has to say. How do you break that up?

This isn't a technology problem or a business problem. It's a people problem. Our species is a blight on the planet. Always has been. Always will be.

Am I completely defeatist here? Maybe. If you break up these social media companies something will come along to replace them. Likely something even worse.

Every technological advance in communication inevitably ends up enabling bad actors. Often to a greater degree than people of good intent. I don't know what the answers are. I just try not to contribute to the bad stuff myself.
 
frestcrallen [TotalFark]
2022-10-13 9:43:50 PM  
IBM and Microsoft both went through antitrust battles in previous decades.

Isn't this just history being cyclical?
 
RandomInternetComment
2022-10-13 9:44:36 PM  

AmbassadorBooze: Shut down social media.

Problem solved.


They also for organizing of groups. Theres a reason oppressive governments shut them down during protests and time of unrest.
 
BigGrnEggGriller
2022-10-13 9:45:06 PM  

austerity101: Hyjamon: Bith Set Me Up: /Franken should've gotten investigated.

Seriously, just take the one month of being the outrage-du-jour and you'd still be a senator today.

Weird that the Democratic Party absolutely didn't want that to happen. Why wouldn't they give a senator a chance to defend himself, when he's explicitly calling for the chance?

Weird. So weird.


Because by allowing the man to defend himself you're implying that the woman who's throat he stuck his tongue down and who's breasts he mock fondled was lying, and the woman must always be believed.
 
RandomInternetComment
2022-10-13 9:47:42 PM  

HighwayBill: KCinPA: Kumana Wanalaia: If we can't agree on a solution we need to start by agreeing there's a problem.

That won't happen because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

So things will continue to spiral out of control until the whole thing shakes apart.

Death to traitors.

because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

No they don't! This statement is stupid AF and not even you believe it. But you have the right to say stupid shiat so carry on. I hope you get a few smartest votes and it makes you night.

because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based service economy.

there, I fixed it for you.


What do you mean by "go back?"
 
Goimir
2022-10-13 9:52:06 PM  

Tarl3k: This is exactly why "Meta" and Twitter need to be broken up.  They're monopolies now, and are hurting humanity.


Break up Disney, IHeart, and Fox too.

For the exact same reasons.
 
RandomInternetComment
2022-10-13 9:52:38 PM  

FatherChaos: That case hinges on a Texas law that allows Texans and the state's attorney general to sue the social media giants for unfairly banning or censoring them based on political ideology.

People are NEVER banned for being Republican or Democrat. They are banned for violating the Terms of Service (TOS) agreement they clicked "I Agree" to when they signed up for an account. This means they agreed they wouldn't post stuff the site disapproves of, including (but not limited to): racism, threats of violence, flaming, bullying, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, threats of terrorism, bigotry, and so on.

If you said you got banned for simply saying "I like Republicans," I would be HIGHLY suspect that this is all you did. Companies like this don't WANT to ban users since the more people who look at their ads, the more money they make. If you got banned for violating the TOS, you have no one to blame but yourself. Making a law isn't going to change that.


Unfortunately homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, and misogyny are literally part of both being a Republican or supported by Republican politicians and candidates as well as by a huge section of multiple religious beliefs.
 
scanman61
2022-10-13 10:00:28 PM  

BigGrnEggGriller: austerity101: Hyjamon: Bith Set Me Up: /Franken should've gotten investigated.

Seriously, just take the one month of being the outrage-du-jour and you'd still be a senator today.

Weird that the Democratic Party absolutely didn't want that to happen. Why wouldn't they give a senator a chance to defend himself, when he's explicitly calling for the chance?

Weird. So weird.

Because by allowing the man to defend himself you're implying that the woman who's throat he stuck his tongue down and who's breasts he mock fondled was lying, and the woman must always be believed.


I don't mind all of the trolls on Fark, only the boring ones.
 
Goimir
2022-10-13 10:00:56 PM  

FatherChaos: That case hinges on a Texas law that allows Texans and the state's attorney general to sue the social media giants for unfairly banning or censoring them based on political ideology.

People are NEVER banned for being Republican or Democrat. They are banned for violating the Terms of Service (TOS) agreement they clicked "I Agree" to when they signed up for an account. This means they agreed they wouldn't post stuff the site disapproves of, including (but not limited to): racism, threats of violence, flaming, bullying, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, threats of terrorism, bigotry, and so on.

If you said you got banned for simply saying "I like Republicans," I would be HIGHLY suspect that this is all you did. Companies like this don't WANT to ban users since the more people who look at their ads, the more money they make. If you got banned for violating the TOS, you have no one to blame but yourself. Making a law isn't going to change that.


Peoole get hit with fb bans every day for expressing views critical of white male behavior, to the point where posters will use "yt nem" to avoid algorithm detection.

/this also raises the point that the phrase "white men" apparently triggers the algorithm.
//or is it that the people in charge of reviewing stuff are actually that dumb
 
HighwayBill [OhFark]
2022-10-13 10:03:07 PM  

RandomInternetComment: HighwayBill: KCinPA: Kumana Wanalaia: If we can't agree on a solution we need to start by agreeing there's a problem.

That won't happen because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

So things will continue to spiral out of control until the whole thing shakes apart.

Death to traitors.

because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

No they don't! This statement is stupid AF and not even you believe it. But you have the right to say stupid shiat so carry on. I hope you get a few smartest votes and it makes you night.

because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based service economy.

there, I fixed it for you.

What do you mean by "go back?"


To earlier today?  I should have edited that part too: because half of our country wants to accelerate our slide into a slavery based service economy

I also could have added a reference to the rental, or subscription economy.
 
RandomInternetComment
2022-10-13 10:07:30 PM  

HighwayBill: RandomInternetComment: HighwayBill: KCinPA: Kumana Wanalaia: If we can't agree on a solution we need to start by agreeing there's a problem.

That won't happen because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

So things will continue to spiral out of control until the whole thing shakes apart.

Death to traitors.

because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

No they don't! This statement is stupid AF and not even you believe it. But you have the right to say stupid shiat so carry on. I hope you get a few smartest votes and it makes you night.

because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based service economy.

there, I fixed it for you.

What do you mean by "go back?"

To earlier today?  I should have edited that part too: because half of our country wants to accelerate our slide into a slavery based service economy

I also could have added a reference to the rental, or subscription economy.


I was implying we already sort of live in a type of slave service economy. Sure you can quit but you might find yourself homeless.
 
holyflurkingschnitt
2022-10-13 10:11:28 PM  

meat0918: mrparks: It was so much simpler when they just owned the papers.

Now it's all "Wanna see Lucy's tits?" and so on so forth.

Lucifer does have a nice chest

[Fark user image image 425x288]q


Thank you
 
HighwayBill [OhFark]
2022-10-13 10:11:54 PM  

RandomInternetComment: HighwayBill: RandomInternetComment: HighwayBill: KCinPA: Kumana Wanalaia: If we can't agree on a solution we need to start by agreeing there's a problem.

That won't happen because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

So things will continue to spiral out of control until the whole thing shakes apart.

Death to traitors.

because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based agrarian society.

No they don't! This statement is stupid AF and not even you believe it. But you have the right to say stupid shiat so carry on. I hope you get a few smartest votes and it makes you night.

because half of our country wants to go back to a slavery based service economy.

there, I fixed it for you.

What do you mean by "go back?"

To earlier today?  I should have edited that part too: because half of our country wants to accelerate our slide into a slavery based service economy

I also could have added a reference to the rental, or subscription economy.

I was implying we already sort of live in a type of slave service economy. Sure you can quit but you might find yourself homeless.


Yes.
 
gameshowhost [OhFark]
2022-10-13 10:21:09 PM  
Humanity has such a long, distinguished history of coming to societally-optimal choices if you'll just let everyone do whatever they want!

Guys, we swear it's foolproof this time!
 
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