In all the talk about eliminating Section 230, I think this gets lost, and I’m glad Jessi is writing about. “Our reliance on the Internet, especially during the pandemic, is evidence that Section 230 continues to work as intended, despite its age. To set an expiration on the law is to accept that maybe we’ve…
This is an interesting post, first because I’m surprised the iTunes gift card scam is still happening, and people are still falling for it, but secondly because I think the conversation is educational. Notice all of the weird excuses for why they can’t do it themselves, why they are unreachable by phone, the avoidance of…
One of the most popular arguments we hear, and one I’ve made myself, is that to truly stay informed, and avoid living in the bubble of our own political bias, we need to make sure we are getting information from a variety of sources, including ones we may not agree with.
This study seems to be telling us that isn’t enough, and it can easily be manipulated. If I read an opposing viewpoint, and there’s no reward for doing so, I’m unlikely to really be influenced by it, but if I read an opposing viewpoint and get rewarded for it, I’m more likely to change my mind.
Now, remember that emotional contagion we might get from social media? What if I shared one side of a political view, and got rewarded by the algorithms or whomever with lots of likes and comments, and the post got shared a whole bunch, but posts from the other side, got none of that? Which side am I more likely to agree with? Right, the one that I got better grades on. Not because it’s true, better, or more accurate, but because I am rewarded for thinking that way. Rewarded the way I’ve been my whole life, since I was a little boy, from the first time my parents wanted me to behave a certain way, all the way through my school years, and for all of my career.
How hard would that be to fight against? Almost impossible, I’d say. How easy would it be for social media to do it, either the companies themselves, or large groups of users?
How does that influence what we do see on social media?
I found this article from The Hill to be rather enlightening on the subject of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act. Because it shows that most of the critics of it, on both sides of the political spectrum, simply don’t understand what it is. Most of them seem to think it either: Frees big…
Parker’s story isn’t about the legal industry, but I think we could easily recognize ourselves in this statement, couldn’t we? “The modern work culture’s new mantra slightly expands that weathered phrase: “The customer is always right, and the clock is always ticking.” This mantra resounds the constant hum of a connected world in which instantaneous…
I can’t claim credit for the hashtag, it actually came from Dennis Kennedy, who is tired of writing articles for other publications, and then finding that the link disappears from the website and he can no longer point people to it. As he explains: For new articles that I write not done as a favor…
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