Tag: Social networking

‘Moral bankruptcy’: whistleblower offers scathing assessment of Facebook

Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! – Karl Marx, Capital, volume 1, Chapter 24, Sec 3.    It might, as one senator put it, be remembered as “the big tobacco jaw-dropping moment of truth”. The truth-teller was former Facebook data scientist Frances Haugen, appearing on Capitol Hill on Tuesday to testify that the online platform… Read More ‘Moral bankruptcy’: whistleblower offers scathing assessment of Facebook

Dilip

DANIEL BLOCK: How the Facebook-Reliance combine and the farm laws pave the way for digital colonisation

In April 2020, Facebook purchased a 10-percent stake in Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Jio, the telecommunications arm of the Reliance empire. In addition to dominating telecom, Reliance is the largest player in petrochemicals and in retail. When its latest acquisition is complete, the company will control 40 percent – a large plurality – of India’s organised groceries sector. That could… Read More DANIEL BLOCK: How the Facebook-Reliance combine and the farm laws pave the way for digital colonisation

Dilip

‘It is obscene’: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pens blistering essay against social media sanctimony

Sometimes… silence makes a lie begin to take on the shimmer of truth…   Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written a detailed essay about the conduct of young people on social media “who are choking on sanctimony and lacking in compassion”, who she says are part of a generation “so terrified of having the wrong opinions that… Read More ‘It is obscene’: Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie pens blistering essay against social media sanctimony

Dilip

China’s feminists protest against wave of online abuse with ‘internet violence museum’

Late last month, an “unknown hill in the Chinese desert” was blanketed in scores of large red and white banners, flapping vitriol in the breeze. “I hope you die, bitch,” said one. “Little bitch, screw the feminists,” said others. They were all actual messages sent to women, a direct act of harassment anonymised by social media.… Read More China’s feminists protest against wave of online abuse with ‘internet violence museum’

Dilip

Suhas Palshikar: A monumental failure of governance // ‘There should be no clampdown on information, people can voice grievances on social media’: Supreme Court

NB: The only caveat I have to make on this incisive comment refers to the (admittedly conditional) phrase: “instances that must haunt any ruler left with an iota of conscience.” Our rulers do not have an iota of conscience. Within days of the latest lockdown, the RSS general secretary was talking about anti-national forces conspiring to… Read More Suhas Palshikar: A monumental failure of governance // ‘There should be no clampdown on information, people can voice grievances on social media’: Supreme Court

Dilip

Marina Hyde: The question every politician should be asking is, what does Mark Zuckerberg want with us?

NB: Those who have made capitalism into a religious cult, and who resist social regulation as an impingement on the freedom of the market (as if liberty is al about the liberty of corporates) may reflect on why the likes of Zuckerberg and Murdoch have acquired so much power. DS   This is about more than… Read More Marina Hyde: The question every politician should be asking is, what does Mark Zuckerberg want with us?

Dilip