This war shows just how broken social media has become — The global town square is in ruins::The global town square is in ruins.
This War […]
Unfortunately you’ll have to be a bit more specific than that, too many wars going on at the moment…
This war shows just how broken social media has become — The global town square is in ruins
Submitted 1 year ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
Perhyte@lemmy.world 1 year ago
nodsocket@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Imagine believing that a service as important as a “global town square” should be a private company.
SinningStromgald@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The news, as always, is conflating capitalism with freedom and truth. Capitalism promises neither, only money.
davidgro@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Do you think it should be run by the (US) government instead?
I’m pretty lefty and think the government should be large and powerful, but not like that.
Fediverse is the best compromise I’ve seen, still private but a little bit democratic because of instance hopping if you don’t like the policies of the one you started on.
JasSmith@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
I have whiplash watching the left argue that Twitter was a private company so they could censor anyone they liked, then immediately 180 when Musk bought it and decry private ownership and operation of de facto town squares. For the record, I don’t think town squares should be privately owned, but at least I’m consistent. Apparently on the internet ethical beliefs are a shiny coat to put on when it’s convenient.
davidgro@lemmy.world 1 year ago
My personal opinion is that “digital Town Square” is just nonsense that Musk made up. Twitter is not the first big privately owned social network and won’t be the last.
The closest thing to that town square idea that actually exists is undermoderated cesspools like 4chan, which is not a good thing. Good moderation is simply necessary to have reasonable discussions/communities, and I feel like I believe that consistently.
I don’t know if you think the (US) government should have that role, I think it would be a bit of a conflict of interest.And I think what’s happening to Twitter is unfortunate, but yeah the owner can do whatever he likes to it. However that still doesn’t mean I have to approve of his choices or stay quiet about them either, that’s not inconsistency to praise a company or its owner when they do good things and boo them when they do awful things. I’m certainly not going to say that he shouldn’t have the right to censor whatever he wants, but it’s still reasonable to complain about which things he chooses to exercise that right on.
The only reasonable alternative to these big private social networks I’ve seen is the fediverse, still private, but a slight bit more democratic in that if you disagree with your instance’s moderation or administration, you can just use a different instance and usually still access most of the same communities.
uriel238@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 year ago
In the aughts we had to hunt down page ten articles from foreign papers to find out the latest on the CIA torture program and the actions of Blackwater PMCs in the kill zone.
In 2014, Twitter had streaming journalists on the streets of Ferguson during the unrest.
In 2020 reddit protest watch subs (some made specifically for the purpose) were showing hourlies, dailies and incident videos from the George Floyd unrest and protests. Like Ferguson it mostly was law enforcement misbehaving and calling it law and order.
In 2022 the Iranian civil unrest went hot when the government doubled down after killing Mahsa Amini. Protestors went from defying hijab and tapping imam hats to throwing Molotov cocktails and burning down state buildings. Far right militants started nerve-gassing girls’ schools and the police engaged in mass executions. Then a deal was made. (Today 2023-10-16, a 16 year old teenage girl was put into a coma by the morality police. So stay tuned.)
A single platform is and never can be the global town square, partially because information about hot zones have to get through the fog of war and active measures to impede that content from getting to the public. Much like revolutionaries or resistance, information gets through when there are multiple avenues for traffic, enough that not all can be intercepted.
One billionaire (with some collaborators) spent $44 billion to neutralize one centralized information platform. Reddit and Google have also taken hits, but that isn’t all of the internet. If our shadowy plutocratic masters are able to douse all the surface web, I suspect it’ll be conspicuous and the public will want information, and access to the dark web may have to be transmitted.by word of mouth, but it will happen.
For all of us who are not conservatives, we’ve learned we can’t trust official sources nor rumors that sound too good (or too awful) to be true.
Steeve@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Same as it ever was
PoliticalAgitator@lemm.ee 1 year ago
I predate the internet and honestly I can’t remember people ever being so aggressively stupid. Social media has fucked them up.
Sure, we’ve always had reactionaries shovelling Murdoch dogshit directly into their skulls, but they weren’t cults.
Steeve@lemmy.ca 1 year ago
Yeah I mean instead you just had an entire country pretty much unanimously vote for Reagan economics that we’re still feeling the brutal affects of today while the dissenting voices were just entirely unheard.
People are louder, they aren’t stupider.
Cannibal_MoshpitV3@lemmy.world 1 year ago
The internet shows you what you are looking for. Rather than find several sources to make an informed argument, most people Google something along the lines of why their stupid opinion is correct.
btaf45@lemmy.world 1 year ago
I predate the internet and honestly I can’t remember people ever being so aggressively stupid. Social media has fucked them up.
Right wing hate radio was the main culprit.
Edgelord_Of_Tomorrow@lemmy.world 1 year ago
Fox News wasn’t founded until 1996 so the internet actually predates “reactionaries shoveling Murdoch bullshit”
generalpotato@lemmy.world 1 year ago
This war uncovered the conventional one sided “reporting” by most big media outlets especially here in the US which was in favor of Israel, turning a blind eye to the blight of the Palestinian civilians. People called them out because of social media and media outlets changed their tune to be more “neutral” as a consequence.
Social media sucks and but one thing it’s extremely good at is disseminating information, good and bad, and it should be used with that in mind.
By comparison, that Atlantic “article” is paywalled and can’t even disseminate its point beyond the headline.
Lol.
MargotRobbie@lemm.ee 1 year ago
Global town square? If anything, social media in the modern age is like Time Square: dirty, overcrowded, covered in billboard ads for brands, filled with cartoon characters in costumes and CD hawkers who are only there to take your money, and of course, the people shouting their political agendas at you through megaphones.
Candelestine@lemmy.world 1 year ago
… I guess the concept of internet cancer is finally breaking into the mainstream.
_number8_@lemmy.world 1 year ago
once musk jumped the gun and started openly making the site shittier without even bothering to justify it with UX positives, everyone else eagerly followed
atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
Why do people operate under the assumption that the “town square” was anything other than crazy people shouting at each other? In the US in the 1600’s we had witch hunts where people were killed over vague claims made by malicious people spreading lies. Why would people today be any better?
_number8_@lemmy.world 1 year ago
now we have community notes!
atzanteol@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
“Solving the problem once and for all.”
burntbutterbiscuits@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
You heathen!