11 ms·

Yup. People in the West don't understand how much of an advantage social media has been in countries where media was always controlled by corrupt businessmen or

Yup. People in the West don't understand how much of an advantage social media has been in countries where media was always controlled by corrupt businessmen or politicians. The fact that information about government's actions can spread to a large number of people, without any control from authorities is a first time in history for many. Organising protests without government censorship. Publishing investigations. Alerting the entire country to corruption as it happens. It's really life-changing and unfortunately I don't think it will last. It's already routine when civil unrest happens to shut down internet. Facebook is a good one to censor but other networks take its place so creating Great Firewalls is next for many (somewhat rich) governments.

pjc50 6y ago
Yes. The big question is: what happens in the west when social media is also controlled, exploited or mastered by corrupt businessmen or politicians? May not require active complicity from Facebook and may even happen despite them.
- mindslight 6y ago
  People who clear the effort bar for the dweb can read subversive takes but not effortlessly share them with everyone else. And low effort normies can go back to consuming state media cud that doesn't whip them into a violent frenzy. At least we can hope.
- dnissley 6y ago
  People will leave certain platforms if they become unpalatable. Look at the amount of outrage generated by the very small level of tampering that facebook and twitter do currently. There is a tremendous amount of scrutiny on these platforms.
  - dmix 6y ago
    Which has already happened on on western social media. I wouldn’t be surprised to read FB has a policy of deleting the ‘leaked’ information and subsequent pages because an authoritative source (seeded by the government and/or at the will of some random uninformed employee) claims its fake news or some unsubstantiated claim or it’s some ‘terrorist’ group or something. Since only expert verified news from pet western sources are fully allowed to post anything controversial. This seems to be the direction we’re moving towards. Their only saving grace is that it’s in a fringe political system that not enough people care about. Or maybe the opposite, there won’t be enough counter outrage to handle the gov organized information suppression networks set up during some past emotionally volatile times without thinking of how easy it will be to abuse. FB has been only slightly better in this context, by not being stupid enough to interfere with politics of random countries, which might explain the ban.
  - bogomipz 6y ago
    It's worth mention that there is also a tremendous amount of effort being made by Facebook to prevent such scrutiny. See: https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-is-going-after-its-critics-in-the-name-of-privacy/ https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-is-going-after-its-crit...
- optimuspaul 6y ago
  was this comment written in the past? social media is already controlled, exploited, and mastered by corrupt businessmen and politicians.
  - jvanderbot 6y ago
    Well, technically ... yes.
  - dnissley 6y ago
    Which businessmen and politicians control facebook?
    - ptd 6y ago
      Whichever are willing to pay the most.
      - dnissley 6y ago
        Let's say I have loads of cash to spend. How do I spend it to get control of facebook? Presumably there are limits to that control -- what are they? Is "buying ads on facebook" the same as "controlling facebook"?
        deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
        shadowgovt 6y ago
        Buying a massive ad slate on Facebook doesn't give you direct control but does give you a lot of say in their policies because keeping you happy becomes tied to their bottom line. Compare YouTube policy adjustments in light of P&G announcing they were planning to yank their advertising from the platform because it wouldn't rope in what P&G considered to be its worst content.
        smokey_circles 6y ago
        This is... Silly. 1) You can look at the 5 eyes alliance's assault on encryption. That's literally forcing their will on the company (and others) 2) The TikTok ban demonstrates not only capacity but an appetite to exert to control over this domain 3) That whole "summon the CEO of the company to directly answer questions from the group of people literally in charge of policies around reform and control" Or we could sidestep these questions and conflate income with ownership
- Bukhmanizer 6y ago
  The major issue with social media right now is that people put an absurd amount of trust into them. It’s a new medium, like radio or TV, which also were major sources of misinformation. As time goes on, people will put less and less stock into sources of information that have proven faulty in the past. However, I think this kind of thing takes way longer than anyone thinks, and will play out over many years or decades.
  - Loughla 6y ago
    >It’s a new medium, like radio or TV, which also were major sources of misinformation. >people will put less and less stock into sources of information that have proven faulty in the past. Do you have any idea of the number of people who inherently trust a 'fact' because it was on a radio or television program? I'm not sure that your assessment is correct. I think what we're seeing is what we see with TV, there is just less of a way to track it with those stations. - when I buy cable, I get both left and right news stations. I only watch one, but nobody but me knows that. When I use social media, I can access right and left, but everyone can see what I access, and the people who see it can cater their message to me specifically. Anyway, I think you're wrong. I don't believe people inherently distrust traditional media. I think they distrust traditional media they don't agree with.
    - Izkata 6y ago
      > Do you have any idea of the number of people who inherently trust a 'fact' because it was on a radio or television program? Back when it was new? More than you'd think: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)#Public_reaction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_...
    - Bukhmanizer 6y ago
      I’m not saying people no longer trust traditional news sources, but there is a difference in degrees that has to be appreciated. Think about the way that FDR used his “fireside chats” to directly message the American people. By making them feel like he was speaking directly to them, many Americans felt like they were given access to a greater level of transparency of government. 50 years later, Reagan and Clinton both still made regular radio addresses, but failed to control their narratives the same way FDR did. Why? Because by that time the farce was up. Most Americans knew that radio wasn’t some intimate conversation between the president and them. There was a greater cynicism about the medium, everyone knew that lying was just as easy over the radio as compared to written statements. Now think about how many assumptions people make about social media. Even forums like Hackernews. You’ve engaged with me, so you probably have made several assumptions about me. 1. I’m an actual person and not a bot 2. I am personally commenting my opinion and not the opinions of someone who has compelled my opinion 3. I am arguing in good faith 4. I am a single person, not multiple people with the same account. I’ve made the same assumptions about you. But the funny thing is that NONE of these things is guaranteed to be true. And in some cases it’s not even likely that all of these things are true. Eventually people will stop making these assumptions, and learn to mistrust the Internet to the degree that they probably should.
pfisch 6y ago
Unverified information about a government's actions.* Not saying that is the case here, but the truth is this cuts both ways, and I would say this development of free flying unverified information is overall more helpful to bad actors than good.
- adrianb 6y ago
  I agree. The unverified information needs to be investigated by the relevant authorities (prosecutors and the justice system). Under normal circumstances the information would be swept under the rug.
  - zests 6y ago
    Interestingly enough, a story about government corruption was recently censored by major social media companies.
    - pfisch 6y ago
      This is exactly what I'm talking about. That laptop was verified by no one. The media wasn't even allowed to access it. Yet the story was able to spread like wildfire through the US. I don't know if it was authentic or the origins of it, and no credible media source was able to verify it. Frankly, the story of where it came from was absurd. So did that story help bad actors or good actors? I would say bad actors because the people pushing the story seem to be playing fast and loose with verifiable facts and truth. This is tearing the US apart by the seams. We are now in a situation where the president is openly attempting a coup on the popular vote, and using massive amounts of unverified information that is mostly false to push his agenda of destroying democracy.
      - CapricornNoble 6y ago
        >>>I don't know if it was authentic or the origins of it, and no credible media source was able to verify it. Frankly, the story of where it came from was absurd. Much like the contents of the Steele Dossier...
shi314 6y ago
It has also caused massacres in these countries like in case of Myanmar. Facebook is an effective media outlet in cases where country are too poor to bribe Facebook and too small for Facebook to ignore market altogether.
- megaman821 6y ago
  What is your standard here? If the massacres had been riled up by spreading paper pamphlets you would want to shut down the printers? If it had been though the TV news, shut down the TV stations? I think Twitter and Facebook should continue to do more to mitigate harms, but the people doing the harm don't get a pass. The Myanmar government must think Westerners are idiots. They kill tens of thousands of people and the general response is Facebook is bad.
  - mlavin 6y ago
    If you incite violence against a specific group using a specific platform then yes, the publisher has some degree of responsibility for that. What's wrong about that observation?
    - polishdude20 6y ago
      He just told you what's wrong. It's like putting the blame on the messenger. People need to take responsibility for their actions rather than blame the platform for allowing it to be said. How about you don't say it in the first place? What are we going to do next, ban the air because it enables some bad people to tell and shout their violent opinions and transmits sound pressure waves?
  - amcoastal 6y ago
    You don't shut down all printers but do you think a company that would let Myanmar print thousands of pamphlets calling for genocide should suffer no consequences or at the very least critcism?
    - dane-pgp 6y ago
Juliate 6y ago
Oh yes they do. And were very happy with it until they understood the nature of social media is not to connect people, but to socialize them into bubbles that become antagonists to each other. In corrupt places as well as democratic, peaceful places, it creates disruption and discontent through dissemination of (true - or false - doesn't matter) informations that in turn fuels civil unrest. In corrupt places, this unrest is an opportunity for improvement. In non-corrupt ones, it is an opportunity for worsening.
- legulere 6y ago
  So corrupt Myanmar became better through ethnic cleansing organized with the help of Facebook?
  - Rmblnm4n 6y ago
    Why the pretense of nation states and corporations? Humans run these organizations and humans deflect responsibility for doing anything. Are you going around gathering a team to free kids in cages? Where is your group that is registering voters to save your democracy? What does Myanmar have to do with non-citizens? Why does the West think the world is their snow globe to ogle? I have a hard time feeling like this can approach anything resembling honest debate if we’re going to point at the behavior of ephemeral, external objects and ignore how we individually organize our daily life. You bow to the common time economy. Being good at rhetorical debate is, to me, nothing more than indifferent humans equivocating and deflecting with themes that sound good but mean nothing. Focus on your society and culture. More often value comes of it.
    - azangru 6y ago
      > Why does the West think the world is their snow globe to ogle? > I have a hard time feeling like this can approach anything resembling honest debate if we’re going to point at the behavior of ephemeral, external objects and ignore how we individually organize our daily life. How can these two sentences coexist in the same message? If you argue in favour of focusing exclusively on our personal daily lives rather than on amorphous imaginary entities (fine), then how can you write in an adjacent sentence about "the West", which "thinks"? And what's wrong with watching the world from afar, as if it were a snow globe, anyway?
sidlls 6y ago
People in the west understand it just fine, thanks. Some of us see an unfortunate trend recently, in which our political powers collude with or badger the owners of these companies to engage in censorship, and find it highly alarming.
Cthulhu_ 6y ago
Oh but "we" do; after WW2, freedom of the press was held in extremely high regard. It was only after a few decades and American interference (e.g. Rupert Murdoch's network) that the press became more and more political, pushing an Agenda. All bets were off when the internet came around. Anyway, during WW2 the press was controlled by the occupants (and before, possibly influenced?), so after WW2 we said never again. We still take the piss on newspapers that cooperated with the invaders instead of fold.
- nickpp 6y ago
  After WW2 the press behind the iron curtain was very much not free and controlled by the invading soviet power.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
colordrops 6y ago
The establishment in the US is also taking advantage of the absurdity of the Trump administration to push for censorship here too, but make no mistake, it's because they want to cover up their own corruption as well, despite arguments to the contrary.
randomsearch 6y ago
“Arab Spring”
cmroanirgo 6y ago
> Organising protests without government censorship. In Victoria, Australia, the government used social media to track people organising lockdown protests, which led people to be arrested for 'inciting' protest. Think speak 101.
- AnotherGoodName 6y ago
  'Think speak 101' huh. Like when people post that the government was arresting people for inciting protests without context why they were doing so? That kind of think speak? For those who want context. There's a pandemic. People are dying. The government stopped an anti-quarantine protest before it could cause harm.
  - cmroanirgo 6y ago
    In small rural towns people were trying to organise protests that followed social distancing guidelines. They were arrested for 'inciting protest'. Specifically, the accusatory wording by the police is 'inciting' which was then used to charge people, under dubious legal conditions. All they did was to suggest a protest. Here's some news articles: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/police-break-down-door-of-conspiracist-accused-of-inciting-an-anti-lockdown-protest-20200904-p55sd7.html https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/police-break-dow... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-04/victoria-police-arrest-fourth-person-for-supporting-protests/12630904 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-04/victoria-police-arres... https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/02/three-men-arrested-ahead-of-planned-anti-lockdown-protest-in-victoria https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/02/three... https://theconversation.com/protests-have-been-criminalised-under-covid-what-is-incitement-how-is-it-being-used-in-the-pandemic-145538 https://theconversation.com/protests-have-been-criminalised-... This was enough to get your door broken in and arrested: > As some of you may have seen the government has gone to extreme measures and are using scare tactics through the media to prevent the Melbourne protest... > Here in Ballarat we can be a voice for those in stage four lockdowns. We can be seen and heard and hopefully make a difference!
Rmblnm4n 6y ago
Why does “the West” need to care how “free” other nations are? Meanwhile in America people get maced in the face for a sit down protest. The West hasn’t realized their glass house was swept into the dumpster a while ago
companyhen 6y ago
The serverless/decentralized web could potentially keep it going once that's more scalable and user friendly.
trianglem 6y ago
All it does is further tribalise people. I would be okay with a social media system that did not serve people only the content they would like to see. Also there has to be some sort of gatekeeper to weed out false information. I don’t know how the latter can be implemented in a fair manner besides some sort of arbitration AI that we don’t currently have.
- nickpp 6y ago
  Who should decide what content people should see? Who decides who are the gatekeepers? We are not living in a SciFi world.
  - Fricken 6y ago
    Traditionally the media decided what content people should see. It kept most people on the same page.
  - trianglem 6y ago
    As Fricken mentioned the media has traditionally played this role especially before they got rid of the fairness doctrine.
LocalH 6y ago
>in countries where media was always controlled by corrupt businessmen or politicians I think much of the West has always fallen under that umbrella in many ways. Look up "yellow journalism". Hell, look at how the media is currently controlled by corrupt businessmen.
josefresco 6y ago
>People in the West don't understand how much of an advantage social media has been in countries where media was always controlled by corrupt businessmen or politicians. You severely overestimate the independence and faux-organic nature of "western" social media. Every last aspect of it is controlled by "corrupt businessmen or politicians". If you're in "the east", wishing for a system like in "the west", be careful of what you hope for and be cautious of what you actually build.
sjm 6y ago
On the flip-side, social media has also been exploited by those same corrupt businessmen and politicians. For example, in Cambodia, Hun Sen uses Facebook as his main media platform while forcibly closing independent press. At times his page has had more followers than the entire population of Cambodia (reportedly buying followers to cement a vision of popularity). Source: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/2132827/how-cambodian-government-and-prime-minister-hun-sen-are https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/213282...
fastball 6y ago
Social Media is a vehicle for (somewhat random) change. If your status quo is shit, random change is statistically likely to improve the situation. If the status quo is decent, random change is statistically likely to worsen the situation.
- Barrin92 6y ago
  >If your status quo is shit, random change is statistically likely to improve the situation I even question that. Didn't we have this exact discussion after the 'Arab Spring' already? For a year everyone was elated because the internet was ending the evil autocracies of the Middle East. Turned out in most cases the chaos was even worse than the corrupt status quo even if you're in a bad place turns out there's still way more ways for it to get even worse rather than better if you roll the dice, you can't fall up a hill
jacobwilliamroy 6y ago
Freedom trancends brand names. You don't need facebook to create an encrypted communications channel. You don't need facebook to reach a wide audience either. Honestly, these days it's better not to fly under recognizable brand names or logos because your movement can be easily hijacked by anyone downloading those symbols and reproducing them in different contexts. It seems the way moving forward will be "crypto-activism" where key individuals distribute information through end-to-end encrypted messaging channels; when they act in the public eye, it will not be obvious that they are affiliated with an organized group. In this way their actions will appear to represent "the will of the people" rather than the agenda of a single organization and it will also shield the organization itself from misinformation. Just my two cents based on what I observed this year.
roamerz 6y ago
Except now we have corporations controlling the free flow information - which is worse? In a semi free country such as the usa at least we can vote someone out of office that we don’t like. At least we used to be able to and now with all the corruption in voting i’m not even certain of that any more.
gentleman11 6y ago
In those examples, the authoritarian government isnt tech savvy and able to control the platforms. In China, social media works against people because it’s the main way to communicate and it’s entirely monitored and filtered and meshed with social credit
aleksjess 6y ago
Tor was released in 2003, and yet people don't realise that it's that project (and others like that one) that gives people the freedom of speech. Tor isn't particularly difficult to use (client-side), the only obstacle is having to remember the links
jollofricepeas 6y ago
This means nothing when facts themselves are widely discredited. Until, we curb massive disinformation campaigns and lack of fact-checking in media and political speech... There will be always be politicians and government officials who will spread falsehoods and work to discredit the truth. It’s not important for everyone to believe a lie. Corrupt, despots only need enough votes to obtain power and then subvert established norms and laws.

pjc50 6y ago

Yes. The big question is: what happens in the west when social media is also controlled, exploited or mastered by corrupt businessmen or politicians? May not require active complicity from Facebook and may even happen despite them.

mindslight 6y ago
People who clear the effort bar for the dweb can read subversive takes but not effortlessly share them with everyone else. And low effort normies can go back to consuming state media cud that doesn't whip them into a violent frenzy. At least we can hope.
dnissley 6y ago
People will leave certain platforms if they become unpalatable. Look at the amount of outrage generated by the very small level of tampering that facebook and twitter do currently. There is a tremendous amount of scrutiny on these platforms.
- dmix 6y ago
  Which has already happened on on western social media. I wouldn’t be surprised to read FB has a policy of deleting the ‘leaked’ information and subsequent pages because an authoritative source (seeded by the government and/or at the will of some random uninformed employee) claims its fake news or some unsubstantiated claim or it’s some ‘terrorist’ group or something. Since only expert verified news from pet western sources are fully allowed to post anything controversial. This seems to be the direction we’re moving towards. Their only saving grace is that it’s in a fringe political system that not enough people care about. Or maybe the opposite, there won’t be enough counter outrage to handle the gov organized information suppression networks set up during some past emotionally volatile times without thinking of how easy it will be to abuse. FB has been only slightly better in this context, by not being stupid enough to interfere with politics of random countries, which might explain the ban.
- bogomipz 6y ago
  It's worth mention that there is also a tremendous amount of effort being made by Facebook to prevent such scrutiny. See: https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-is-going-after-its-critics-in-the-name-of-privacy/ https://www.wired.com/story/facebook-is-going-after-its-crit...
optimuspaul 6y ago
was this comment written in the past? social media is already controlled, exploited, and mastered by corrupt businessmen and politicians.
- jvanderbot 6y ago
  Well, technically ... yes.
- dnissley 6y ago
  Which businessmen and politicians control facebook?
  - ptd 6y ago
    Whichever are willing to pay the most.
    - dnissley 6y ago
      Let's say I have loads of cash to spend. How do I spend it to get control of facebook? Presumably there are limits to that control -- what are they? Is "buying ads on facebook" the same as "controlling facebook"?
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - shadowgovt 6y ago
        Buying a massive ad slate on Facebook doesn't give you direct control but does give you a lot of say in their policies because keeping you happy becomes tied to their bottom line. Compare YouTube policy adjustments in light of P&G announcing they were planning to yank their advertising from the platform because it wouldn't rope in what P&G considered to be its worst content.
      - smokey_circles 6y ago
        This is... Silly. 1) You can look at the 5 eyes alliance's assault on encryption. That's literally forcing their will on the company (and others) 2) The TikTok ban demonstrates not only capacity but an appetite to exert to control over this domain 3) That whole "summon the CEO of the company to directly answer questions from the group of people literally in charge of policies around reform and control" Or we could sidestep these questions and conflate income with ownership
Bukhmanizer 6y ago
The major issue with social media right now is that people put an absurd amount of trust into them. It’s a new medium, like radio or TV, which also were major sources of misinformation. As time goes on, people will put less and less stock into sources of information that have proven faulty in the past. However, I think this kind of thing takes way longer than anyone thinks, and will play out over many years or decades.
- Loughla 6y ago
  >It’s a new medium, like radio or TV, which also were major sources of misinformation. >people will put less and less stock into sources of information that have proven faulty in the past. Do you have any idea of the number of people who inherently trust a 'fact' because it was on a radio or television program? I'm not sure that your assessment is correct. I think what we're seeing is what we see with TV, there is just less of a way to track it with those stations. - when I buy cable, I get both left and right news stations. I only watch one, but nobody but me knows that. When I use social media, I can access right and left, but everyone can see what I access, and the people who see it can cater their message to me specifically. Anyway, I think you're wrong. I don't believe people inherently distrust traditional media. I think they distrust traditional media they don't agree with.
  - Izkata 6y ago
    > Do you have any idea of the number of people who inherently trust a 'fact' because it was on a radio or television program? Back when it was new? More than you'd think: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_radio_drama)#Public_reaction https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_War_of_the_Worlds_(1938_...
  - Bukhmanizer 6y ago
    I’m not saying people no longer trust traditional news sources, but there is a difference in degrees that has to be appreciated. Think about the way that FDR used his “fireside chats” to directly message the American people. By making them feel like he was speaking directly to them, many Americans felt like they were given access to a greater level of transparency of government. 50 years later, Reagan and Clinton both still made regular radio addresses, but failed to control their narratives the same way FDR did. Why? Because by that time the farce was up. Most Americans knew that radio wasn’t some intimate conversation between the president and them. There was a greater cynicism about the medium, everyone knew that lying was just as easy over the radio as compared to written statements. Now think about how many assumptions people make about social media. Even forums like Hackernews. You’ve engaged with me, so you probably have made several assumptions about me. 1. I’m an actual person and not a bot 2. I am personally commenting my opinion and not the opinions of someone who has compelled my opinion 3. I am arguing in good faith 4. I am a single person, not multiple people with the same account. I’ve made the same assumptions about you. But the funny thing is that NONE of these things is guaranteed to be true. And in some cases it’s not even likely that all of these things are true. Eventually people will stop making these assumptions, and learn to mistrust the Internet to the degree that they probably should.

pfisch 6y ago

Unverified information about a government's actions.* Not saying that is the case here, but the truth is this cuts both ways, and I would say this development of free flying unverified information is overall more helpful to bad actors than good.

adrianb 6y ago
I agree. The unverified information needs to be investigated by the relevant authorities (prosecutors and the justice system). Under normal circumstances the information would be swept under the rug.
- zests 6y ago
  Interestingly enough, a story about government corruption was recently censored by major social media companies.
  - pfisch 6y ago
    This is exactly what I'm talking about. That laptop was verified by no one. The media wasn't even allowed to access it. Yet the story was able to spread like wildfire through the US. I don't know if it was authentic or the origins of it, and no credible media source was able to verify it. Frankly, the story of where it came from was absurd. So did that story help bad actors or good actors? I would say bad actors because the people pushing the story seem to be playing fast and loose with verifiable facts and truth. This is tearing the US apart by the seams. We are now in a situation where the president is openly attempting a coup on the popular vote, and using massive amounts of unverified information that is mostly false to push his agenda of destroying democracy.
    - CapricornNoble 6y ago
      >>>I don't know if it was authentic or the origins of it, and no credible media source was able to verify it. Frankly, the story of where it came from was absurd. Much like the contents of the Steele Dossier...

shi314 6y ago

It has also caused massacres in these countries like in case of Myanmar. Facebook is an effective media outlet in cases where country are too poor to bribe Facebook and too small for Facebook to ignore market altogether.

megaman821 6y ago
What is your standard here? If the massacres had been riled up by spreading paper pamphlets you would want to shut down the printers? If it had been though the TV news, shut down the TV stations? I think Twitter and Facebook should continue to do more to mitigate harms, but the people doing the harm don't get a pass. The Myanmar government must think Westerners are idiots. They kill tens of thousands of people and the general response is Facebook is bad.
- mlavin 6y ago
  If you incite violence against a specific group using a specific platform then yes, the publisher has some degree of responsibility for that. What's wrong about that observation?
  - polishdude20 6y ago
    He just told you what's wrong. It's like putting the blame on the messenger. People need to take responsibility for their actions rather than blame the platform for allowing it to be said. How about you don't say it in the first place? What are we going to do next, ban the air because it enables some bad people to tell and shout their violent opinions and transmits sound pressure waves?
- amcoastal 6y ago
  You don't shut down all printers but do you think a company that would let Myanmar print thousands of pamphlets calling for genocide should suffer no consequences or at the very least critcism?
  - dane-pgp 6y ago

Juliate 6y ago

Oh yes they do. And were very happy with it until they understood the nature of social media is not to connect people, but to socialize them into bubbles that become antagonists to each other. In corrupt places as well as democratic, peaceful places, it creates disruption and discontent through dissemination of (true - or false - doesn't matter) informations that in turn fuels civil unrest. In corrupt places, this unrest is an opportunity for improvement. In non-corrupt ones, it is an opportunity for worsening.

legulere 6y ago
So corrupt Myanmar became better through ethnic cleansing organized with the help of Facebook?
- Rmblnm4n 6y ago
  Why the pretense of nation states and corporations? Humans run these organizations and humans deflect responsibility for doing anything. Are you going around gathering a team to free kids in cages? Where is your group that is registering voters to save your democracy? What does Myanmar have to do with non-citizens? Why does the West think the world is their snow globe to ogle? I have a hard time feeling like this can approach anything resembling honest debate if we’re going to point at the behavior of ephemeral, external objects and ignore how we individually organize our daily life. You bow to the common time economy. Being good at rhetorical debate is, to me, nothing more than indifferent humans equivocating and deflecting with themes that sound good but mean nothing. Focus on your society and culture. More often value comes of it.
  - azangru 6y ago
    > Why does the West think the world is their snow globe to ogle? > I have a hard time feeling like this can approach anything resembling honest debate if we’re going to point at the behavior of ephemeral, external objects and ignore how we individually organize our daily life. How can these two sentences coexist in the same message? If you argue in favour of focusing exclusively on our personal daily lives rather than on amorphous imaginary entities (fine), then how can you write in an adjacent sentence about "the West", which "thinks"? And what's wrong with watching the world from afar, as if it were a snow globe, anyway?

sidlls 6y ago

People in the west understand it just fine, thanks. Some of us see an unfortunate trend recently, in which our political powers collude with or badger the owners of these companies to engage in censorship, and find it highly alarming.

Cthulhu_ 6y ago

Oh but "we" do; after WW2, freedom of the press was held in extremely high regard. It was only after a few decades and American interference (e.g. Rupert Murdoch's network) that the press became more and more political, pushing an Agenda. All bets were off when the internet came around. Anyway, during WW2 the press was controlled by the occupants (and before, possibly influenced?), so after WW2 we said never again. We still take the piss on newspapers that cooperated with the invaders instead of fold.

nickpp 6y ago
After WW2 the press behind the iron curtain was very much not free and controlled by the invading soviet power.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

colordrops 6y ago

The establishment in the US is also taking advantage of the absurdity of the Trump administration to push for censorship here too, but make no mistake, it's because they want to cover up their own corruption as well, despite arguments to the contrary.

randomsearch 6y ago

“Arab Spring”

cmroanirgo 6y ago

> Organising protests without government censorship. In Victoria, Australia, the government used social media to track people organising lockdown protests, which led people to be arrested for 'inciting' protest. Think speak 101.

AnotherGoodName 6y ago
'Think speak 101' huh. Like when people post that the government was arresting people for inciting protests without context why they were doing so? That kind of think speak? For those who want context. There's a pandemic. People are dying. The government stopped an anti-quarantine protest before it could cause harm.
- cmroanirgo 6y ago
  In small rural towns people were trying to organise protests that followed social distancing guidelines. They were arrested for 'inciting protest'. Specifically, the accusatory wording by the police is 'inciting' which was then used to charge people, under dubious legal conditions. All they did was to suggest a protest. Here's some news articles: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/police-break-down-door-of-conspiracist-accused-of-inciting-an-anti-lockdown-protest-20200904-p55sd7.html https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/police-break-dow... https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-04/victoria-police-arrest-fourth-person-for-supporting-protests/12630904 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-04/victoria-police-arres... https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/02/three-men-arrested-ahead-of-planned-anti-lockdown-protest-in-victoria https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/sep/02/three... https://theconversation.com/protests-have-been-criminalised-under-covid-what-is-incitement-how-is-it-being-used-in-the-pandemic-145538 https://theconversation.com/protests-have-been-criminalised-... This was enough to get your door broken in and arrested: > As some of you may have seen the government has gone to extreme measures and are using scare tactics through the media to prevent the Melbourne protest... > Here in Ballarat we can be a voice for those in stage four lockdowns. We can be seen and heard and hopefully make a difference!

Rmblnm4n 6y ago

Why does “the West” need to care how “free” other nations are? Meanwhile in America people get maced in the face for a sit down protest. The West hasn’t realized their glass house was swept into the dumpster a while ago

companyhen 6y ago

The serverless/decentralized web could potentially keep it going once that's more scalable and user friendly.

trianglem 6y ago

All it does is further tribalise people. I would be okay with a social media system that did not serve people only the content they would like to see. Also there has to be some sort of gatekeeper to weed out false information. I don’t know how the latter can be implemented in a fair manner besides some sort of arbitration AI that we don’t currently have.

nickpp 6y ago
Who should decide what content people should see? Who decides who are the gatekeepers? We are not living in a SciFi world.
- Fricken 6y ago
  Traditionally the media decided what content people should see. It kept most people on the same page.
- trianglem 6y ago
  As Fricken mentioned the media has traditionally played this role especially before they got rid of the fairness doctrine.

LocalH 6y ago

>in countries where media was always controlled by corrupt businessmen or politicians I think much of the West has always fallen under that umbrella in many ways. Look up "yellow journalism". Hell, look at how the media is currently controlled by corrupt businessmen.

josefresco 6y ago

>People in the West don't understand how much of an advantage social media has been in countries where media was always controlled by corrupt businessmen or politicians. You severely overestimate the independence and faux-organic nature of "western" social media. Every last aspect of it is controlled by "corrupt businessmen or politicians". If you're in "the east", wishing for a system like in "the west", be careful of what you hope for and be cautious of what you actually build.

sjm 6y ago

On the flip-side, social media has also been exploited by those same corrupt businessmen and politicians. For example, in Cambodia, Hun Sen uses Facebook as his main media platform while forcibly closing independent press. At times his page has had more followers than the entire population of Cambodia (reportedly buying followers to cement a vision of popularity). Source: https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/2132827/how-cambodian-government-and-prime-minister-hun-sen-are https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/southeast-asia/article/213282...

fastball 6y ago

Social Media is a vehicle for (somewhat random) change. If your status quo is shit, random change is statistically likely to improve the situation. If the status quo is decent, random change is statistically likely to worsen the situation.

Barrin92 6y ago
>If your status quo is shit, random change is statistically likely to improve the situation I even question that. Didn't we have this exact discussion after the 'Arab Spring' already? For a year everyone was elated because the internet was ending the evil autocracies of the Middle East. Turned out in most cases the chaos was even worse than the corrupt status quo even if you're in a bad place turns out there's still way more ways for it to get even worse rather than better if you roll the dice, you can't fall up a hill

jacobwilliamroy 6y ago

Freedom trancends brand names. You don't need facebook to create an encrypted communications channel. You don't need facebook to reach a wide audience either. Honestly, these days it's better not to fly under recognizable brand names or logos because your movement can be easily hijacked by anyone downloading those symbols and reproducing them in different contexts. It seems the way moving forward will be "crypto-activism" where key individuals distribute information through end-to-end encrypted messaging channels; when they act in the public eye, it will not be obvious that they are affiliated with an organized group. In this way their actions will appear to represent "the will of the people" rather than the agenda of a single organization and it will also shield the organization itself from misinformation. Just my two cents based on what I observed this year.

roamerz 6y ago

Except now we have corporations controlling the free flow information - which is worse? In a semi free country such as the usa at least we can vote someone out of office that we don’t like. At least we used to be able to and now with all the corruption in voting i’m not even certain of that any more.

gentleman11 6y ago

In those examples, the authoritarian government isnt tech savvy and able to control the platforms. In China, social media works against people because it’s the main way to communicate and it’s entirely monitored and filtered and meshed with social credit

aleksjess 6y ago

Tor was released in 2003, and yet people don't realise that it's that project (and others like that one) that gives people the freedom of speech. Tor isn't particularly difficult to use (client-side), the only obstacle is having to remember the links

jollofricepeas 6y ago

This means nothing when facts themselves are widely discredited. Until, we curb massive disinformation campaigns and lack of fact-checking in media and political speech... There will be always be politicians and government officials who will spread falsehoods and work to discredit the truth. It’s not important for everyone to believe a lie. Corrupt, despots only need enough votes to obtain power and then subvert established norms and laws.