Bidisha Mamata Last month, Elon Musk walked into Twitter and then all the good people left. I quit, too. It was a time-sink, a brain drain and an eye strain. In 12 years, I gained nothing, while witnessing peers and colleagues at their worst. Oh, the bliss of not turning every little thing into a quip. The… Read More I too quit Twitter this week – and have never been more relieved
Jeff Sparrow The higher the monkey climbs, the more he exposes his backside. So too with the super rich. Oxfam tells us that a mere 10 people now possess more wealth than the bottom 40% of humanity – and that the richest 20 tycoons collectively own more than the entire GDP of sub-Saharan Africa. You’d think that… Read More The grotesque inequality embodied by Musk, Bezos and Zuckerberg is a threat to democracy
By Suzanne Bearne When Gayle Macdonald reached a summit in Spain’s Sierra Nevada mountain range earlier this year, she didn’t just stop and take in the moment. Instead, the 45-year-old did what a great many people would do – she looked for the best spot to take a selfie for her social media accounts. Gayle… Read More ‘It’s so liberating’: The people quitting social media
Understanding the far right’s online powerbase Millions of people are consuming, repeating and disseminating far-right ‘culture war’ material online, but if you do not seek out that content and are not served it by algorithms, you may never know it was there. Ben Little: People have used the term ‘culture wars’ for a long time, especially… Read More Digital culture wars
The Indian government will create a three-person grievance redressal committee to veto moderation decisions made by social media platforms, according to legal changes adopted on Friday. The panel, which will be set up by the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), will effectively have the final say on social media content. The changes were first made public earlier… Read More India tightens grip on social media
The rise of online humiliation Charlie Tyson “Egged on by algorithms,” Cathy O’Neil writes in her book The Shame Machine, “millions of us participate in these dramas, providing the tech giants with free labor.” Pile-ons increase engagement. Our fury pads the purses of tech capitalists. MEN PUNISH WITH SHAME,” wrote the sixteenth-century poet Thomas Wyatt. It… Read More Theater of Shame
By B. D. McClay The Internet has only one currency, and that currency is attention… whataboutism solidifies the online sense that the appearance of paying attention is paramount – not actually paying attention… Remove the clowns from your sphere of attention, and keep the people whom you judge to be worth taking seriously. Repeat as… Read More What about Whataboutism?
Lisa-Maria Kellermayr, an Austrian GP, was a doctor who dedicated her life to her patients and was vocal about the risks of Covid-19 on Twitter and in the media. She had endured months of death threats from Covid conspiracy theorists and anti-vaxxers. Colleagues expressed frustration with the lack of support she received for dealing with… Read More Devi Sridhar: A scientist in the public eye has taken her own life. This has to be a wake-up call
In April, the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt published an essay in The Atlantic in which he sought to explain, as the piece’s title had it, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” Anyone familiar with Haidt’s work in the past half decade could have anticipated his answer: social media. Although Haidt concedes that political… Read More Gideon Lewis-Kraus: How Harmful Is Social Media?
Jordan Peterson is an academic, an internet personality, and a big fan of beef. A man of many accomplishments, he’s most famous for writing a bestselling book called 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos while simultaneously living what can only be described as an incredibly chaotic life. The latest Peterson drama comes to us via Twitter,… Read More Don’t worry, he’s not going quietly into that tweetless night. By Arwa Mahdawi
After the truth-shower 