Number of Posts: 12
Posts 1 - 10
Twitter founder: Trump presidency is product of short attention spans
Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 13.9.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | politics, social media, threat, Twitter
Summary | Evan Williams, one of Twitter's founders, claims that Donald Trump's online behavior is showing how social media platforms are making us dumber. Indeed, social networks are based on short attention spans, and they also undermine open-mindedness and our sense of truth. According to Williams, advertising models are to be blamed.
Image Description | Portrait of Donald Trump.
Image Tags | male(s)
How Hate Groups Forced Online Platforms to Reveal Their True Nature
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 21.8.2017
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, politics, social media, threat
Summary | Ever since the fatal Unite the Right protest in Charlotteville, social media and other internet companies seem to be washing their hands from any connection with far-right groups. Facebook has deleted such groups off of their platform, Reddit has done the same, Spotify is deleting white supremacist music from their libraries, and so on. Now far-right groups are building online alternatives for themselves and lamenting the censorship they have been victimized by.
Image Description | Illustration of hands around some crumpled-up paper.
Image Tags | hand(s)
Review: When the Digital World Is Judging Your Every Thought
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 17.3.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | marketing, politics, social media, threat
Summary | The new novel "I Hate The Internet" by Jarett Kobek poses a lot of interesting questions about how social media is affecting our society. The main question is: why is everyone willingly giving away their intellectual property on platforms owned by for-profit corporations? How did these capitalist platforms become to be perceived as the most appropriate space to exercise one's freedom of speech? Wannabe social activists think they are helping a cause by posting provocative comments on social media but few people are getting active for real social change.
Image Description | Image of the book and a portrait of the author holding a giant plush emoji.
Image Tags | emojis, male(s)
Obama Shifts Online Strategy on ISIS
Newspaper | The New York Times
Date | 9.1.2016
Language | English
Country | U.S.
Topic Tags | censorship, law, politics, social media, threat
Summary | President Obama is sending his representatives to California to speak to the major social media platforms in order to find ways to stop ISIS from recruiting new members on social media. The terrorist organization has proven to be very successful on social media and stopping their success on social media is a good proactive measure in defeating ISIS. Removing threatening content from social media however always risks being likened to censorship.
Image Description | Portrait of an Apple representative.
Image Tags | male(s)
Der Shitstorm vom Fließband
(Shitstorms from the conveyor belt)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 3.4.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | artificial intelligence, politics, social media, threat
Summary | Social bots are becoming more frequent on social media. Some are quite believable, other not so much. Nevertheless they can reak quite some havoc on social media. They can be vocal supporters of an opinion and voice that opinion very stongly all the time, like in a shitstorm. They are responsible for much of the hate language online. Social bots can be assumed to have influenced political elections as they were used to push an opinion. The technology is similar to that of chatbots but they are designed to be assisting humans through conversational orders.
Image Description | N/A
Die gefährlichen Nebenwirkungen der totalen Vernetzung
(The dangerous side effects of the complete network)
Newspaper | Welt
Date | 29.10.2016
Language | German
Country | Germany
Topic Tags | cyberbullying, politics, social media, threat, WhatsApp
Summary | In this age of massive amounts of data being generated every day, we face a lot of dangers. We are at greater risk of being ideologically radicalized because the social media only show us content that we like and even so, there is too much information being thrown at us that we can even comprehend. There is no protection against online slander and bullying. People are becoming reluctant to take political offices because of it. We should be mindful of our data use in the same way that we try to minimize our energy use. We waste a lot of our concentration on irrelevant WhatsApp messages.
Image Description | An @-sign made our of a lit bomb fuse and a compilation of Facebook sites.
Image Tags | Facebook
Ignoranz ist Stärke
(Ignorance is strength)
Newspaper | Tages-Anzeiger
Date | 3.2.2017
Language | German
Country | Switzerland
Topic Tags | fake news, politics, privacy, smartphone, social media, threat
Summary | Kellyanne Conways term "alternative facts" remind of Orwell's fictional language Newspeak which also changes meanings by renaming. Many facts of contemporary life (especially under the Trump administration) remind of dystopian novels "1984" by G. Orwell and "Brave New World" by A. Huxley. We all carry smartphones with us at all times with which we can send information but which also receive and document information about us like our location, who else is in that location, our communications, purchases, and so on. Privacy has become impossible in the digital age.
Image Description | Images and videos of the film "1984" and George Orwell as well as the news clip where Kellyanne Conway mentions "alternative facts".
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), TV
Big data’s power is terrifying. That could be good news for democracy
Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 6.3.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | fake news, politics, social media, threat
Summary | Big data makes big new innovations possible. It has already been assumed that recent elections were manipulated by fake news targeted to gullable individuals on social media. Other people are looking into options of how big data can be used to improve democracy, for instance the Pirate Party in Iceland.
Image Description | An illustration of hands 'cracking' a computer and an image of female Icelandic politicians from the Pirate Party.
Image Tags | female(s), hand(s), keyboard
Fighting fake news: societies using technology to search for truth
Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 0.0.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | censorship, Facebook, fake news, politics, social media, threat
Summary | Many countries are trying to combat fake news and urging Facebook to find ways of combatting fake news. They influence elections by deceiving people and that is a great problem. It is nearly impossible to identify fake news with a program, it takes a human. Facebook is now allowing users to flag suspicious content, which is then reviewed and if deemed fake, labeled as such and displayed with a lower priority. Fake news are not taken off of Facebook because that would be censorship.
Image Description | Shutterstock images of protesters against fake news.
Image Tags | female(s), text
No, wealth isn't created at the top. It is merely devoured there
Newspaper | The Guardian
Date | 30.5.2017
Language | English
Country | UK
Topic Tags | politics, social media, threat
Summary | The new rising technology firms like Facebook, Airbnb, and Uber are the new class of rentiers. The do not create anything new, they claim control over goods and services and cash in on transactions made on the platform they provide. That is all they do: provide a platform. It is only profitable because people willingly share content and offer their services on these sites. But these firms also have not invented the technology (internet, computer devices, etc.): that technology was developed with the tax payer's money. So technically they are just selling and reselling already existing goods - like a rentier.
Image Description | Getty image of a protester, an iPhone, the Facebook campus, a bunch of bank signs, and a Mexcan capitalist.
Image Tags | female(s), male(s), smartphone, text
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