I only bothered to look up what Trump actually tweeted and the reasoning for suspending the account after seeing your post.

Welcome to the Minority Report:

https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topic...uspension.html

I think it's moments like this where social media users briefly realize they are the product...and then largely continue on as before. The company always knew the people were the product.

Exactly. I think i tried to make this point a while ago: both product and target audience. It's ingenious, really. In a devil's deal kind of way.

Terrific article by Glenn Greenwald which is well worth the read. It is long but salient in my view given recent events:

https://greenwald.substack.com/p/the...r-on-terror-is

For those concerned about Greenwald; he typically runs left leaning...

https://www.allsides.com/news-source...ald-media-bias

And you're very likely to change one "tyrant" with another but I guess that will be noted when they'll gather a larger user base.

Yes. Profit making is ingenious. Social media giants don't really aim to offer each and everyone a safe space.

Time to introduce social media and internet studies in schools so people know from an earlier age what they're getting into and how to protect themselves against disinformation or misinformation, data sharing, online privacy etc I think Axa has nailed it: time to pause and think about parasocial interactions.

Good morning children, today we're going to teach you how to meme

I do think this is a good point though, this does need to be on the curriculum. Many parents just can't cope with it. The speed with which social media has taken over the planet has just caught everyone cold.

President Von der Leyen spoke yesterday on the subject of tech censorship and had this to say "We want it laid down clearly that internet companies take responsibility for the content they disseminate."

"Politicians and parliaments, not Silicon Valley managers, should decide who to ban from platforms".

It was probably going to happen eventually anyway, but Twitter may yet live to regret the banning of President Trump once the chains of regulation start to impact the platform. Maybe the regulators will be the new "tyrant" you speak of?

Hehe, they know that, don't worry. What most of them don't know are other things...much more important. I don't know, it just bugs me to see very young kids completely wired to this stuff. Not FB specifically, that's mesozoic era for them.
But then again their parents do the same so....

I think Twitter et.co took advantage of the existent legislation or lack thereof and profited, pirate style, for a very long time. Now things got worse because many people live in their computers instead of libraries (for instance) and they decided to act so they can't be accused of anything later on. Was it really necessary? If so, why so late? Frankly I don't know, like really know, not "I don't have an opinion".
Oh, and politicians deciding who gets banned.......another huge can of worms.

If parents can't cope, what chances do teachers have. I know there are some teachers up to date on these things, the same as parents but I wouldn't hold much hope on putting the emphasis on school teaching about social media.
With memes, they change so fast so that whatever has been added at the start of a course year is already a year out of date by the time its shown. Crazy speed.

Except that it is in the school curriculum. It is the parents who have no clue about the fact that it is being taught, and well. The experts are well paid, the brochures on expensive paper, the language is accessible...and the lectures fun.

It is the parents who need to be taught how to use the internet. I am worried the least about the kids.

If not school then who? As you said, many parents need some teaching too.

And of course there are teachers who seem to live on the internet too so.....you want them to teach kids responsible use of social media for instance?

It was going to happen eventually anyway. But the recent events have provided a useful excuse for a clampdown.

Like the old German joke:

- Herr Goebbels, ze Reichstag is burning.
- Wot? Already?

I think many teachers are not sufficiently aware of what their pupils are up to.

When I was at school back in the 1980s, one teacher had obviosuly read something disconcerting in the newspaper or something and came into the class in a huff and launched into a long lecture about how one of the music groups who were popuar back then, I think it was Metallica or one of those groups, were full of hidden messages that were out to harm young people and bring them into Satanism and all that.

After half an hour of ranting and warning us not to touch that stuff with a bargepole, the teacher actually asked, how many people here have actually ever listened to that stuff. And it turned out there was nobody in the class who had not listened to one song at least once. So the teacher asked if we had an example and somebody happened to have a cassette in their walkman so the teacher played the first bit on his radio and then ended up coughing and huffing and said, "well, maybe not all their stuff is bad, and this song is Ok, but the other stuff they do must be bad. So stay away from that."

Not all teachers are out of touch of course. Present company deserving a special mention.

Not all social media users are that naive, some do understand that nothing is for free and one pays with their data for that entertainment, piece of info, connection or whatever it is people are looking to obtain by literally living on these virtual networks (some of them). And yes, they do continue on as before, sometimes only changing the platform not their hardwired habits.

Some things are taught in school, true, but only in the secondary school where we live.
And it's not a subject btw.

AKA Lying Ursula.

Tom

That's why the oft-maligned and dismissed subject of Media Studies is more relevant and important than ever. It's neither an easy subject or a light one.

You think so? It's been blatently obvious for over a decade, esp in schools. I'd say a good 80% of bullying/social issues between peers in schools are social media based - it happens out of school hours and gets dragged in to be sorted out. Is a mega PITA.


I believe the majority are. Survival of the fittest etc!

Media Studies, baby. All the way. Semiotics, social history, gender, race, socio-economic issues, haves vs have nots, what constitutes popular culture anyway, news bias, media industries, power of advertising, product placement, the power of media institutions and their octopus arms. Love it.

Media studies is rubbish.

Liberal arts as well.

Tom

What I noticed on social media (Facebook) is that many people would become irrationally defensive about it any time something critical about social media was mentioned, because they were so addicted to it, and often without even being fully conscious of their addiction and/or just being unwilling to admit it. It's really creepy how those sites play on people's dopamine levels (and are intentionally designed to), trapping them in a dopamine feedback loop and generating the need for constant 'rewards' in the form of likes, hearts, etc. Behavioral conditioning. Those sites are like virtual Skinner Boxes.

I only ever used FB, and deleting my account on there is one of the best things I've ever done. I could immediately feel myself becoming more at peace and my mind more still. I think a lot of people don't realize that those sites are designed to re-wire their brains, causing them to constantly crave more dopamine, which in turn results in a suppression of serotonin. That's one reason why those sites often cause depression and anxiety. What's also frightening is that a heavy social media user's brain is very similar to brain scans of known psychopaths in that their brains are 'wired' to produce more dopamine -- and thus also crave more dopamine - than 'normal' people. Those sites are also intentionally designed to exploit weaknesses in human psychology such as the need for "social validation."

This, from one of the founders of Facebook:

Your studies are in engineering? Ok then.

You know a lot about it in order to dismiss it so easily, eh? I guess it depends on how much interest you have in unimportant stuff like people and history and how everything works...

Life would be a hell of a lot more bleak without the Arts.