Tag: Social networking

Elon Musk is the king of trolls in an age of troll politics / What better owner for Twitter than master of the ill-advised tweet?

Even while hammering out the final details of his £35bn ($44bn) purchase of Twitter, Elon Musk took some time out this weekend to tweet. He likes tweeting, does the world’s richest man, usually from what he calls his “porcelain throne” (that detail disclosed on Twitter, naturally enough). This one was a photo of Bill Gates, zeroing… Read More Elon Musk is the king of trolls in an age of troll politics / What better owner for Twitter than master of the ill-advised tweet?

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Book review: The revolution will not be tweeted / Jeffrey Lawrence: Who Owns Your Academic Community?

The Quiet Before: On the Unexpected Origins of Radical Ideas, Gal Beckerman Reviewed by Kit Wilson Radical change, as any good historian will tell you, never just comes out of nowhere. Even the most seemingly unexpected shifts in history can, with hindsight, be traced back to specific material, intellectual and political preconditions – even if,… Read More Book review: The revolution will not be tweeted / Jeffrey Lawrence: Who Owns Your Academic Community?

Dilip

Facebook Papers paint damning picture of company's role in insurrection

The documents, including an internal post-mortem and one document showing in real time countermeasures Facebook employees were belatedly implementing, paint a picture of a company that was in fact fundamentally unprepared for how the Stop the Steal movement used its platform to organize, and that only truly swung into action after the movement had turned… Read More Facebook Papers paint damning picture of company's role in insurrection

Dilip

Siva Vaidhyanathan: Facebook has just suffered its most devastating PR catastrophe yet / Jonathan Freedland: Is Facebook the tobacco industry of the 21st century?

In recent days, Frances Haugen, a former member of Facebook’s “civic integrity team”, has launched a deft and professional public assault on the company. Unlike previous Facebook whistle-blowers, like former Facebook data scientist Sophie Zhang, Haugen managed to capture the interest and attention of policy leaders and journalists around the world. We have to ask why Haugen… Read More Siva Vaidhyanathan: Facebook has just suffered its most devastating PR catastrophe yet / Jonathan Freedland: Is Facebook the tobacco industry of the 21st century?

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‘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

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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

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‘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

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