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
Social media platforms are devised by a Californian tech scene committed to competition and social hierarchy. Twitter’s protocols treat us as wannabe celebrities, striving to produce storms of admiration and rage. It is a complex evolutionary system that selects the vacuous grandstanding and sniggering boorishness of adolescent personalities… So much the better if, like Musk,… Read More RICHARD SEYMOUR – Musk & Twitter: the first lab rat to take over the laboratory
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?
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?
