The Myth of Social Media and Populism
Why the moral panic is misplaced. Read More Here
Why the moral panic is misplaced. Read More Here
Around the world, Facebook has been used to sow distrust in democratic institutions, and its algorithms have facilitated real-world violence, even genocide. Regulating the use of algorithms that micro-target users would be a first step toward ending the barrage of disinformation the company has unleashed. Read More Here
Big Tech’s post-insurrection backlash against U.S. President Donald Trump and the right-wing online incitement machine were unprecedented… There are three conclusions to draw about this whiplash reaction. First, Big Tech’s raw power to redirect online discourse. Second, the opacity, capriciousness and inconstancy with which they wield that power. Third, that Big Tech companies—some of the […]
Big Tech companies do own their respective platforms. They have the right to devise terms of service and standards. Those are decided unilaterally, even if some companies undertake an elaborate exercise of consulting affected stakeholders. But their actions do not follow due process, and they rarely explain their decisions clearly. Read Here | Foreign Policy
For the first time in his tweet-driven presidency, Trump wasn’t able to employ his preferred method of communication to stoke or incite supporters. He wasn’t able to launch at leaders of his party his usual mob-boss loyalty tests. And he wasn’t able to distract and divert and defend himself in the telltale ways to which […]
Not too long after Donald J. Trump was elected president, a pattern started to emerge on Facebook that had not taken place in the company’s history. Millions of young people started to abandon the social network, either quitting Facebook entirely or deleting it from their phones and other devices… in recent weeks it’s become clear that the […]
Humanity would have suffered had Facebook been allowed to use Libra to privatise the international payments system. But the authorities that are now strangling Libra should look to the future and do with it something innovative, useful, and visionary: hand Libra, or its core concept, over to the International Monetary Fund so that it can […]
Elites have always used their privileged position and access to resources for self-serving purposes, not for the greater good of humanity. And this abuse continues, disguised, as elites harness artificial intelligence and other new technologies to reach new levels of power previously undreamed of. A new breed of elites is born: “ailites”. Read Here – South […]
Facebook Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has had a very bad week, even in the context of a very bad year. The week of bad news actually started March 8 with a proposal from U.S. senator and presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren to break up the company. Then there was the longest-ever outage of Facebook’s social network and services, which […]
Mark Zuckerberg isn’t the first person in human history to draw inspiration from Augustus Caesar, the founder of the Roman Empire, but he’s one of a very few for whom the lessons of Augustus’s reign have a concrete urgency. Both men, after all, built international empires before the age of 33. Read Here – New […]