This is really the problem with social media algorithms, not outright censorship: TO SEE HOW this algorithm amplification works, simply look to RT, or Russia Today, a Russian state-owned propaganda outlet that’s also among the most popular YouTube presences. RT has amassed more than 6 billion views across 22 channels, more than MSNBC and Fox…
I was listening to the latest Akimbo podcast and Seth Godin said something very interesting about how his blog helps him. He talked about how it forces him to focus, and to think about what he wants to say, etc. Having been a blogger for as long as I have, I paused to think about…
In other words, you get more of what you measure. “When reward is tied to measured performance, metric fixation invites just this sort of gaming. But metric fixation also leads to a variety of more subtle unintended negative consequences. These include goal displacement, which comes in many varieties: when performance is judged by a few…
I’m barely a Snapchat user, but this comment reminds me of what Instagram recently did as well. Nothing really makes sense in the main app now, it’s only in Stories that the timeline makes any sense at all. “Because I am not a teen and have not been for several years, Snapchat’s interface has always…
There’s a lot of interesting things in this article, you should read it. This one, however, is one that I want to specifically mention: “Notifications are unnecessary and they’re poison. If we enable them, we are asking our phones to interrupt us. Don’t do it.” This is true. It’s also hard to get people to…
This is disconcerting, because they are right, Germany is asking social media platforms to decide what is hate speech and what is not, like that’s an easy thing to do. And they have actual laws on the books about what is hate speech. How will they determine what hate speech is in other countries where…