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The media narrative that social media is the cause of these societal ills, especially environmental problems is laughable. The real danger technology poses is
by dasil003 5y ago
The media narrative that social media is the cause of these societal ills, especially environmental problems is laughable.
The real danger technology poses is the increased leverage of ever-increasing automation consolidating in the hands of oligarchs who using it to enrich themselves and isolate themselves from the consequences with no regard for broader impact on the planet or future generations.
Despite the problems with social media, removing it would have no beneficial effect on this trajectory towards environmental catastrophe. To the contrary, I still believe that lowered barriers to global communication and information access are generally good for society. Sure it hasn't resulted in becoming a nation of philosopher kings in the utopian ideal envisioned by those early Berkeley engineers, but the problems we are seeing are just the same old dance of populism and propaganda that have always been at the heart of large scale politics.
- bumby 5y agoDon’t you think social media impacts policy though? Take your example of automation. Wouldn’t the way to counteract this be through smarter policy (like an automation tax as an off-the-cuff example). I think the angle of the paper is that social media makes enacting smart policy that much harder because weaponized misinformation can be used to stymie such policy.
- jkhdigital 5y agoI know how to solve this: no more democracy, just put the “smart policy” wonks in charge. What could possibly go wrong
- bumby 5y agoI know you’re being sarcastic, but in a representative democracy the people are largely the ones charged with assigning the “smart policy wonks” to their roles
- antifa 5y agoFeels more like choosing your ISP than it does democracy...
- bumby 5y agoCan you elaborate? Are you alluding to choosing between the lesser of two evils? Personally, I think this can be managed by bringing back the idea of Cincinnati-style civic duty, rather than relying on a professional political class but that ship may be too far gone