Facebook Is a Doomsday Machine
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/facebook-doomsday-machine/617384/
Adrienne LaFrance notes:
“The social web is doing exactly what it was built for. Facebook does not exist to seek truth and report it, or to improve civic health, or to hold the powerful to account, or to represent the interests of its users, though these phenomena may be occasional by-products of its existence. The company’s early mission was to “give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” Instead, it took the concept of “community” and sapped it of all moral meaning. The rise of QAnon, for example, is one of the social web’s logical conclusions. That’s because Facebook—along with Google and YouTube—is perfect for amplifying and spreading disinformation at lightning speed to global audiences. Facebook is an agent of government propaganda, targeted harassment, terrorist recruitment, emotional manipulation, and genocide—a world-historic weapon that lives not underground, but in a Disneyland-inspired campus in Menlo Park, California”.
From Voter Fraud to Vaccine Lies: Misinformation Peddlers Shift Gears
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/technology/from-voter-fraud-to-vaccine-lies-misinformation-peddlers-shift-gears.html
Welcome to the ‘Turbulent Twenties’
https://www.noemamag.com/welcome-to-the-turbulent-twenties/
https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/12/facebook-doomsday-machine/617384/
Adrienne LaFrance notes:
“The social web is doing exactly what it was built for. Facebook does not exist to seek truth and report it, or to improve civic health, or to hold the powerful to account, or to represent the interests of its users, though these phenomena may be occasional by-products of its existence. The company’s early mission was to “give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected.” Instead, it took the concept of “community” and sapped it of all moral meaning. The rise of QAnon, for example, is one of the social web’s logical conclusions. That’s because Facebook—along with Google and YouTube—is perfect for amplifying and spreading disinformation at lightning speed to global audiences. Facebook is an agent of government propaganda, targeted harassment, terrorist recruitment, emotional manipulation, and genocide—a world-historic weapon that lives not underground, but in a Disneyland-inspired campus in Menlo Park, California”.
From Voter Fraud to Vaccine Lies: Misinformation Peddlers Shift Gears
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/technology/from-voter-fraud-to-vaccine-lies-misinformation-peddlers-shift-gears.html
https://www.noemamag.com/welcome-to-the-turbulent-twenties/