My belated condolences. I always enjoyed reading his posts and will miss his insight and wide ranging views. May hew…
Redux from 13th April 2018 – The end of the happy time.
There are a number of articles over the years I’ve written on the censorship and propaganda tendencies I thought big tech and the media would take. Excess is the invariable trait of any monopoly. At the time, I suspect they were greeted with mild skepticism, but as we’ve found in the recent presidential election, they weren’t too far off the mark. If anything, they’ve proved to be too conservative.
As they drill down to a more detailed depth than the articles I’m currently producing on particular big tech companies and issues, I think it useful for them to get another airing. I’ve prefixed them with the word redux and their original publication date, but not a single word has been changed.
These two articles were on Facebook and the abusive practices its monopoly position has led to. They cover its selective stranglehold on both news dissemination and the airing of conservative views. They both put into perspective how unexpectedly sudden and aggressive were the legal difficulties it found itself in last week.
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“If you’re a regular follower of this blog, you’ll know I’ve had deep concerns about the direction the Internet has been going in for the last decade. A handful of individuals atop huge corporations like Google, Twitter and Facebook have established near total monopolies over massive swathes of it, and as usual in such situations, have been abusing that position with gusto and an arrogant disdain of anyone who objected to it. They’ve been taking the piss for years, and what’s more, nobody seemed to care, never mind giving them a bloody good slap for it.
You were totally free to express your opinion on anything in their nicey nice social media universe, but unless it happened to agree with their world view, their version of morality and most especially their politics, your social media life got hard, your opinion somehow disappeared, got shadow banned or in the end, you yourself just got banned. Everybody knew it was going on, but like child sexual abuse in a family, the whole grubby thing was either swept under the carpet or people looked the other way, not interested in getting involved in such an ugly problem.”
Click Here to read on …
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The second related article is from from 23rd March 2018 and entitled “Facebook – hero or villain?” It covers issues such as the business model, data security, deception of Facebook users, censorship and the wholesale data mining and sale of personal data.
“When it comes to social media, there are a number of totally unwarranted assumptions being made by the people using it, and some outright lies being told by the providers of such free services. If you’re not terribly knowledgeable about that scene, by social media I mean Facebook, Twitter and any “free” application that allows you to interact with friends or acquaintances using the internet.
Dealing with the assumptions first, there’s nothing for free in this life, and believe it or not my younger readers, that does include the usage of social media. Rest assured and despite whatever PR spin is being put out by the providers, they’re looking to make a buck out of you. Sure, the story they spin is something like they’re working towards making the world a better place by bringing people together, or some other feel-good PR bollocks to that effect, but the bottom line, as in a profit/loss ledger, is they want to make money out of your ass.”
Click Here to read on …
©Pointman
Related articles by Pointman:
What’s happening with Facebook?
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