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Re: Current Events Thread
I loathe Twitter...all social media really....only been checking Twitter for news on the war.
I almost fell out of my chair when I saw this today....
The (former) CEO of Twitter
https://www.twitter.com/jack/status/1510314535671922689
These types rarely make such admissions.
They turned the internet into a monster. Young people of today don't understand how amazing (and different) the internet was back in the 90s. It was not meant to be what it eventually became.
Is it even fixable?
His tweet reminded me of those few big tech honchos years ago admitting how awful social media really is and they wouldn't allow their own children to use it.
This isn't unique to the internet.
Corporations own this country and that's the end of it. Look where we are right now...corporations are recording record profits but the average person is convinced the economy is 'bad.'
This is exactly how it was designed.
- monkeychow
- Rep: 661
Re: Current Events Thread
Yeah it goes deeper than facebook but it's about the period where facebook came out that things went downhill I think.
Social Media has not been good overall I don't think, but also it was like the whole internet became corporatised and powered by the existing societal powers or something. There was a really interesting period first where like the money interests didn't take it all that seriously yet.
Re: Current Events Thread
I don't really remember a time where FB was better other than I do remember it not being riddled with ads and money making schemes.
Zuckerburg was a ruthless bastard and it was always all about the money (or future monies). Not that the guys he screwed over were much better, but from the very outset Zuckerburg was unscrupulous. Comparing images of women to other women. Rating someone's attractiveness based on a picture he likely stole.
But complaining about how it went down or how it could have been different isn't really worth it, is it? This is how it is and people are so addicted to social media it makes addiction to drugs and alcohol look less harmful to society.
Re: Current Events Thread
Another thing I'd like to add is FB and other social media is our generations contribution to the world (or at least one of them). I can tell you that so many people from my parent's generation resisted FB for a long time. Even the last stalwarts of a previous time are suddenly taking selfies and posting them to FB within the last year or so.
I remember thinking to myself 'I wonder if FB will ever infiltrate the baby boomers and Gen X' many years ago. Boy did it ever.
- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: Current Events Thread
I've never had a Facebook or Myspace. There are a lot of fake accounts on Twitter -- it's pretty obvious when an account is part of a farm. But social media in general creates a false reality for some people. And it gives angry, lonely people an identity. Probably a weird sense of power, too. It's not the service, it's the people who use it. Sure it enables a lot of shit and magnifies it. I just think there's a lot of empty people who are drawn to it.
Re: Current Events Thread
James wrote:I loathe Twitter...all social media really....only been checking Twitter for news on the war.
I almost fell out of my chair when I saw this today....
The (former) CEO of Twitter
https://www.twitter.com/jack/status/1510314535671922689
These types rarely make such admissions.
They turned the internet into a monster. Young people of today don't understand how amazing (and different) the internet was back in the 90s. It was not meant to be what it eventually became.
Is it even fixable?
His tweet reminded me of those few big tech honchos years ago admitting how awful social media really is and they wouldn't allow their own children to use it.
This isn't unique to the internet.
Corporations own this country and that's the end of it. Look where we are right now...corporations are recording record profits but the average person is convinced the economy is 'bad.'
This is exactly how it was designed.
The internet wasn't designed to be the corporate, dystopic wasteland it became.
Would the "wild west" vibe of the 1990s internet have continued indefinitely? No...but had it not been intentionally steered into this direction, it would be an entirely different beast.
The internet used to offer near infinite choices....blogs, bulletin boards, general websites, chat rooms, etc. It barely had any ads.
It's been consolidated into a few massive platforms where the users are being socially engineered, farmed for data, and bombarded with ads.
It needed some form of regulation years ago.
Yeah it goes deeper than facebook but it's about the period where facebook came out that things went downhill I think.
The mainstreaming of social media is what ruined it... along with smartphones. This allowed it to take over people's lives. It turned a huge percentage of the population to become dopamine addicts feeding on outrage and the level of manipulation is unprecedented.
We also now live in a world where kids no longer wish to be doctors, astronauts, scientists, and lawyers when they grow up....
They want to be YouTubers and "influencers".
MySpace was so much more pure and not tainted.
Social media never should've evolved beyond this point.
Having said that... Myspace probably would have become a monster as well had smartphones fueled its rise instead of its user base being on desktop/laptop computers.
There are a lot of fake accounts on Twitter -- it's pretty obvious when an account is part of a farm
I remember reading years ago that almost half of Twitter's users are bots...and Twitter knows this. They don't remove them because it would wipe out a huge portion of its site and this would impact the stock price.
All of these platforms need an overhaul.
Re: Current Events Thread
The internet wasn't designed to be the corporate, dystopic wasteland it became.
Would the "wild west" vibe of the 1990s internet have continued indefinitely? No...but had it not been intentionally steered into this direction, it would be an entirely different beast.
The internet used to offer near infinite choices....blogs, bulletin boards, general websites, chat rooms, etc. It barely had any ads.
It's been consolidated into a few massive platforms where the users are being socially engineered, farmed for data, and bombarded with ads.
It needed some form of regulation years ago.
The mainstreaming of social media is what ruined it... along with smartphones. This allowed it to take over people's lives. It turned a huge percentage of the population to become dopamine addicts feeding on outrage and the level of manipulation is unprecedented.
We also now live in a world where kids no longer wish to be doctors, astronauts, scientists, and lawyers when they grow up....
They want to be YouTubers and "influencers".
Social media never should've evolved beyond this point.
Having said that... Myspace probably would have become a monster as well had smartphones fueled its rise instead of its user base being on desktop/laptop computers.
I remember reading years ago that almost half of Twitter's users are bots...and Twitter knows this. They don't remove them because it would wipe out a huge portion of its site and this would impact the stock price.
All of these platforms need an overhaul.
I agree with all of this. Social media is pretty much a waste at this point for me outside of news (from solid sources and occasional analysis of that). I mean you basically need to weed out all the bs'ers and people who have no clue what the fuck they are talking about.
Funny you should mention the 90s, I was watching a little of Mission Impossible (1996 one) and Cruise's character is on the internet using/searching for a usenet newsgroup for info. And I was wondering how the fuck did we go from that to this?
Mentioning youtube, my nephews watch that stuff a lot. And do you know what they watch? Not anything informative or that type of stuff but youtube videos of people PLAYING video games. Sigh. As far as infleuncers go, they had an episode of Law and Order where the older cops (around our age) who had a WTF look when interviewing 2 "infleuncers" that were involved in a case. That's my reaction. I have no idea what that is nor will ever.
The last point is key, these guys in charge of these media outlets are making way too much money to care. They know that their outlets are harmful and just dumping false info or just allowing people to voice this stuff (this is nonpartisan issue to me) and still they do nothing because they are rolling in dough. It's become a business now and they only do shit when there's really bad optics or some sort of scandal that is unavoidable.
Re: Current Events Thread
Russian soldiers were living in the most radioactive parts of Chernobyl. Insane. I'm hearing there have been over 4,000 killed in this campaign. Now there could be a friggin health catastrophe. They could tell where the soldiers had been by the spikes of radiation because they were carrying the radiation ON THEM. And they took it with them when they left.
