Memes, Amish, Social Media, YouTube Face, and no GDPR
Thoughtful Net #58: curated links from the past few weeks
Well hello again! It’s been a while since the last issue; I would apologise, but I figure you won’t have time to be angry at me because you’ll be too busy reading emails about GDPR.
The Best
I chose two best this time, because while I think the first story is actually the best, it’s also behind the Medium paywall and some of you may not be able to read it. So I’ve included the second because it’s really good, and free.
The Age of Post-Authenticity and the Ironic Truths of Meme Culture.
On fake news, authenticity, hipsters, finstagram, memes, millennials, and much more besides; this is really smart contemporary writing by Jay Owens.
The post-authenticity of fake news isn’t solely a technological or media problem, but a social one, symptomatic of declining trust in a shared civic project. Nonetheless, new media technologies really aren’t helping.
The Amish Understand a Life-changing Truth About Technology the Rest of Us Don’t.
Michael J. Coren interviews social researcher Jameson Wetmore. I have to admit, I was prepared to dismiss this as another ‘down with tech’ story, but it has some really fascinating insights on values and choices.
People have constructed their own rules to make sure that they really prioritize what they value. And this is our way of negotiating with technology. Rarely do we as individuals outright reject technology, but we carefully calibrate the role that it plays in our lives.
Social Media
“We Had To Stop Facebook”: When Anti-Muslim Violence Goes Viral.
Megha Rajagopalan and Aisha Nazim on the problems caused by Facebook’s inability — or lack of desire — to address hate speech in potential conflict zones.
Screenshots of Facebook posts from the days before and during the violence show extremists stoking fear of Muslims and calling on fellow Buddhists to target them. The dates on the screenshots show that the content was allowed to stay on the site for days despite having been reported.
Are You Really the Product?.
Will Oremus on the history of the phrase ‘if you’re not paying, you’re the product’, whether it really applies to Facebook and Google, and what it means when we say it.
There’s something nihilistic about telling people they’re the product of a gigantic corporation and there’s nothing they can do about it. “You are the product” paints us as powerless pawns in Facebook’s game but gives us no leverage with which to improve our predicament.
Why Good People Turn Bad Online.
Gaia Vince looks into the reasons that bullying flourishes on the internet, and investigates efforts to counter it.
The internet offers unparalleled promise of cooperation and communication between all of humanity. But instead of embracing a massive extension of our social circles online, we seem to be reverting to tribalism and conflict.
The Death of the Newsfeed.
Ben Evans on algorithmic sorting, the decline in engagement on Facebook’s newsfeed, the growth in private messaging, and more.
If the feed is focused on ‘what do I want to see?’, then it cannot be focused on ‘what do my friends want (or need) me to see?’ If every feed is a sample, then a user has no way to know who will see their post.
Other Stuff
Your Pretty Face is Going to Sell.
Joe Veix investigates the ‘YouTube Face’ phenomenon, and the increasing homogeneity of content designed for algorithmic commerce.
The Face is hard to miss once you first spot it: an exaggerated expression, an overreaction to a given video’s subject, typically conveying heightened states like disgust, anger, or ecstasy. The assault of a bad smell; a bite of something intensely sour; a faked orgasm; an elbow to the guts.
Alexa Is a Revelation for the Blind.
Ian Bogost on his vision-impaired father’s burgeoning relationship with the smart speaker and digital assistant.
The recordings Alexa delivers to me are comprehensible, but Dad’s mumbles and pauses make the transcriptions incomplete or inaccurate. This mode of communication feels like something between leaving voicemails and texting, a technological pidgin that travels across eras in time as much as it does across the space between my father and me.
Blockchain Is Not Only Crappy Technology but a Bad Vision for the Future.
Kai Stinchcombe takes apart the problems that blockchain promises to solve, and finds the solution severely lacking.
I would assert that there is no single person in existence who had a problem they wanted to solve, discovered that an available blockchain solution was the best way to solve it, and therefore became a blockchain enthusiast.
The Thoughtful Net is an occasional (less than weekly, more than monthly) publication collecting great writing about the internet and technology, culture, information, society, science, and philosophy. If you prefer to receive it in your inbox you can follow this publication or subscribe to the email newsletter.
