Shared Links (weekly) Jan. 22 2023

Shared Links (weekly) Jan. 22 2023

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

Social Media Has Everyone Using Fear and Outrage to Get Attention, even the NY Times

Social Media Has Everyone Using Fear and Outrage to Get Attention, even the NY Times

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

I’m making an example of the Times because they like to consider themselves America’s “Paper of Record”, and even they are now using fear and outrage to gain attention, no better than a Twitter or Facebook troll, but it’s happening everywhere. It’s also no surprise that it’s becoming popular among all media outlets because it works. If we’ve learned anything from fake news sites, biased cable channels, YouTube “experts” and social media influencers it’s that you will never lose an audience by making people afraid. You will get their attention, you will stimulate a fear-based response that causes their brain to kick into survival mode and become hyperalert to dangers, which you are happy to continue to feed them.

Shared Links (weekly) March 7, 2021

Shared Links (weekly) March 7, 2021

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute
Linked: Section 230 and the complications of free speech on the internet
|

Linked: Section 230 and the complications of free speech on the internet

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

This is ultimately the nightmare scenario for the internet if Section 230 is just wiped out. “Example: if platforms are made responsible for everything millions of users post on their sites, they will have to read it all first. This would mark the end of the internet as a forum for real time communication. It…

Linked: Game Of (Internet) Life: How Social Media Reacts To Questionable News
|

Linked: Game Of (Internet) Life: How Social Media Reacts To Questionable News

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

I thought this look at how the news about someone’s death spread, and then became questionable, is very interesting. The thing that jumped out at me, which I’ve talked about before, is the likelihood that by linking to an old article about the person’s life, suddenly the tweet became more legitimate in some eyes due…

Why We Can’t Expect Facebook to Fact Check Our Feeds

Why We Can’t Expect Facebook to Fact Check Our Feeds

ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

I’ve held this opinion for awhile, that no matter what Facebook does, there’s no way it’s going to be able to deal with the scope of fake news, harassment, etc. that rolls through their platform every day. (Or any other social media company.) Anything they do simply won’t scale. Let’s take fact-checking, for example: What…