+1. I personally think this near-constant bashing of social media is getting ridiculous. These past two weeks have been all-in, article after article, non-stop.
Is social media bad? You can definitely have a non-healthy relationship with it. But it didn't "break politics" [1] or "elect Trump" [2]. It was mostly just another vector for advertising.
We've known of the privacy issues with Facebook for a while and the whole Cambridge Analytica thing had been in the news before this spree of bad press. We've known Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are distracting for years.
I'm starting to wonder if what's going on here is some sort of war/defence by established media against big tech/social media. We know Murdoch was straight about going to war against Facebook [3] (apparently they lobbied heavily against Google in Europe before too). It wouldn't surprise me if other big-media magnates are in on this too. After all, didn't Facebook cut a bunch of newsfeed traffic to news sites in January?
Big media has always been an incredibly lucrative, power-wielding business, because it largely controls the public's opinion. I almost feel like it was bound to happen; big media was bound to claim it's the bastion of truth and scare people out of social media.
Now, of course, things aren't black and white. I'm not saying one is good and the other is bad, but that's precisely my point. I see traditional media focusing very heavily this past two weeks on painting social media as bad. Trumps election and the whole "fake news" accusations apparently was amazing for their business [4]. The NYT crossed $1billion in revenue in 2017, with strong growth [5]. Asking people nicely won't get you subscribers, when people are scared because "democracy is at stake" then they pour in.
I don't know. Uber literally just killed a woman with a self-driving car: I would've assumed the repercussions of that would be huge and everyone would be talking about the legal aspects of self-driving tech, the future of testing, security, safety, and investigation, etc. But I have seen more articles about Facebook and social media in general in a day than I saw about Uber all of last week.
I'm not fan of conspiracy theories but that's where my head has been too. None of the Cambridge Analytica stuff is as bad for facebook as the media is asserting, and none of the data Cambridge Analytica acquired is available anymore through public APIs. Yet the New York Times is buying ads on facebook telling people how to quit facebook... Either news orgs don't understand the real issues (totally a possibility) or are using this moment of weakness to wrest some control back from facebook after facebook's blatant land grabs throughout the last decade.
I recall seeing editorials in the past (not NYT) about how facebook is kicking the feet out from under content producers by making facebook the only viable source for content. Producers began promoting their content through FB to reach a wider audience, but the audience has grown in a walled garden and now facebook has total control over what content is shown and what isn't, so are now charging producers to promote their own content. And fake news is prominent throughout social media. I can see why news organizations would want to fight both of those things. Feels pretty underhanded if that's what they're doing today though.
If you downvote, please comment a counter argument. I'm posting this to contribute a perspective to the discourse, and would love to know where people disagree specifically.
Is social media bad? You can definitely have a non-healthy relationship with it. But it didn't "break politics" [1] or "elect Trump" [2]. It was mostly just another vector for advertising.
We've known of the privacy issues with Facebook for a while and the whole Cambridge Analytica thing had been in the news before this spree of bad press. We've known Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat are distracting for years.
I'm starting to wonder if what's going on here is some sort of war/defence by established media against big tech/social media. We know Murdoch was straight about going to war against Facebook [3] (apparently they lobbied heavily against Google in Europe before too). It wouldn't surprise me if other big-media magnates are in on this too. After all, didn't Facebook cut a bunch of newsfeed traffic to news sites in January?
Big media has always been an incredibly lucrative, power-wielding business, because it largely controls the public's opinion. I almost feel like it was bound to happen; big media was bound to claim it's the bastion of truth and scare people out of social media.
Now, of course, things aren't black and white. I'm not saying one is good and the other is bad, but that's precisely my point. I see traditional media focusing very heavily this past two weeks on painting social media as bad. Trumps election and the whole "fake news" accusations apparently was amazing for their business [4]. The NYT crossed $1billion in revenue in 2017, with strong growth [5]. Asking people nicely won't get you subscribers, when people are scared because "democracy is at stake" then they pour in.
I don't know. Uber literally just killed a woman with a self-driving car: I would've assumed the repercussions of that would be huge and everyone would be talking about the legal aspects of self-driving tech, the future of testing, security, safety, and investigation, etc. But I have seen more articles about Facebook and social media in general in a day than I saw about Uber all of last week.
[1]: https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/4/12/15259438/s...
[2]: https://www.theverge.com/2018/3/20/17138854/cambridge-analyt...
[3]: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/facebook-rupert-murdoch-thre...
[4]: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2017/02/06/is...
[5]: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/08/business/new-york-times-c...