Beware Before You Share!

Žiga Turk
Jul 22, 2017 · 2 min read

We Europeans have this thing for public transport. We like it. On my latest trip to Washington I was using the DC metro to commute from my hotel to the Capitol Hill. It was faster and more convenient than Taxi or Uber (at some point I should write a separate post on how Google Maps did more to promote the use of public transport than all the greenish propaganda).

On the metro, this at caught my attention. It reminded me on the brainwashing in the primary school in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia about not spreading hostile capitalist propaganda and “unfounded rumors aimed at undermining our socialist order”. It reminded me on the World War 2 posters of the type “loose lips sink ships”.

If I would be looking for a depiction of how a democracy slides do an Orwellian dystopia, this would be it. In the city once known as the capital of the free world :/

PS. In the small print I have learned that the poster is in fact an ad for some online media. While politicians in the US and in Europe are seriously debating plans how to “weed out fake news” I am not finding such ads funny.

On a positive note, though, the girl in the photo does not seem to care.

Žiga Turk

Professor, engineer, former politician, Ljubljana, Slovenia, EU. Interested in interplay between technology and society, future of Europe, liberty, BIM ...

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