Social Media & Big Tech news and discussions

[firestar464]

f*ck AMAZON #MakeAmazonPay

[weatheriscool]

[caltrek]

Zuckerberg Sold Nearly Half a Billion Dollars of Meta Stock In Last Two Months
by Rachel Phua
January 4, 2024

Introduction:

(Bloomberg) -- Mark Zuckerberg sold nearly half a billion dollars of Meta Platforms Inc. shares in the final two months of 2023 after a two-year hiatus in which the company’s stock price hit its lowest in seven years.

The Meta chief executive sold shares on every trading day between Nov. 1 and the end of the year, unloading nearly 1.28 million shares for about $428 million, according to a Tuesday regulatory filing.

Further extract

Zuckerberg, 39, owns about 13% of Meta and has a net worth of about $125 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, making him the seventh-richest person in the world.

Zuckerberg primarily sells Meta shares to fund philanthropic initiatives, according to company spokesperson. He has pledged to give away 99% of his stake to charitable purposes.

Read more here: https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/other/ ... A1mqxfb

[caltrek]

January 6 Was an Example of Networked Incitement − a Media and Disinformation Expert Explains the Danger of Political Violence Orchestrated Over Social Media
by Joan Donovan
January 5, 2024

Introduction:

(The Conversation) The shocking events of Jan. 6, 2021, signaled a major break from the nonviolent rallies that categorized most major protests over the past few decades.

What set Jan. 6 apart was the president of the United States using his cellphone to direct an attack on the Capitol, and those who stormed the Capitol being wired and ready for insurrection.

My co-authors and I, a media and disinformation scholar, call this networked incitement: influential figures inciting large-scale political violence via social media. Networked incitement involves insurgents communicating across multiple platforms to command and coordinate mobilized social movements in the moment of action.

The reason there was not more bloodshed on Jan. 6 emerged through investigation into the Oath Keepers, a vigilante organization composed mostly of former military and police. During their trials for seditious conspiracy, members of the Oath Keepers testified about weapons caches in hotels and vans, stashed near Washington, D.C. As one member described it, “I had not seen that many weapons in one location since I was in the military.”

The Oath Keepers were following Washington law by not carrying the weapons in the district, while waiting for Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which gives the president the authority to deploy the military domestically for law enforcement.

Read more here: https://theconversation.com/jan-6-was- ... -220501

[caltrek]

What Happens When AI and Big Brother Get Together to Spy on You?
by Faiza Patel
January 7, 2024

Introduction:

(Common Dreams) Your friends aren’t the only ones seeing your tweets on social media. The F.B.I and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), as well as police departments around the country, are reviewing and analyzing people’s online activity. These programs are only likely to grow as generative artificial intelligence (AI) promises to re-make our online world with better, faster, and more accurate analyses of data, as well as the ability to generate humanlike text, video, and audio.

While social media can help law enforcement investigate crimes, many of these monitoring efforts reach far more broadly even before bringing AI into the mix. Programs aimed at “situational awareness,” like those run by many parts of DHS or police departments preparing for public events, tend to have few safeguards. They often veer into monitoring social and political movements, particularly those involving minority communities. For instance, DHS’s National Operations Center issued multiple bulletins on the 2020 racial justice protests. The Boston Police Department tracked posts by Black Lives Matter protesters and labeled online speech related to Muslim religious and cultural practices as “extremist” without any evidence of violence or terrorism. Nor does law enforcement limit itself to scanning public posts. The Memphis police, for example, created a fake Facebook profile to befriend and gather information from Black Lives Matter activists.

Internal government assessments cast serious doubt on the usefulness of broad social media monitoring. In 2021, after extensive reports of the department’s overreach in monitoring racial justice protestors, the DHS General Counsel’s office reviewed the activities of agents collecting social media and other open-source information to try to identify emerging threats. It found that agents gathered material on “a broad range of general threats,” ultimately yielding “information of limited value.”

Read more here: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/a ... veillance

[wjfox]

X Purges Prominent Journalists, Leftists With No Explanation

09 January 2024, 3:21pm

The X accounts of several prominent journalists and leftist pundits were suspended from the site, formerly known as Twitter, on Tuesday morning with no clear explanation.

The suspensions affected several journalists and commentators, including Texas Observer journalist Steven Monacelli, Ken Klippensten of The Intercept, podcaster Rob Rousseau, and Alan MacLeod of MintPress News. The landing page for their accounts says it’s been suspended, but does not give any explanation as to why. A message on the profiles simply states “X suspends accounts which violate the X rules.”

The ban didn’t just hit journalists either. Several prominent-left leaning accounts were also purged from the website, including the account for the TrueAnon podcast and @zei_squirrel, a cartoon squirrel that tweets media criticism of figures like Glenn Greenwald.

The ban was carried out with no overarching explanation; suspended accounts link to the X terms of service, which cover a wide range of possible violations.

“I haven't received any communications from Twitter/X about why I have been suspended,” Monacelli told Motherboard in an email. “I can't think of anything I've posted lately that would be worthy of suspensions. Although I have written multiple critical reports about Twitter/X and Elon Musk.”

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d948x/ ... xplanation

[firestar464]

ok; once again the world needs to get over this dumb platform

[Tadasuke]

If I had the power to do so, I would also completely silence some people on some platforms. Leftists want to silence rightists and rightists want to silence leftists, etc. I don't partake in political discussions anymore. The last time I want active was in 2020, when I was politely explaining, why BLM is not making the whole racism issue/problem better, it is not based on actual data and the situation has gradually been becoming better over the previous decades anyway (one bad policeman doesn't make all white men bad). However, I know personally how anxiety and stress can make you significantly dumber and more prone to getting angry or irritated. That's also how social medias get more activity on their platforms.

Here's a long, wise and important conversation about the ongoing attention crisis, negative effects of misusing the Internet, World Wide Web, social media and smartphones on people, I recommend to watch on YT or listen on Spotify/iTunes:

We are living in a time of upgraded technology and downgraded humans.
Our collective ability to resist distraction and sustain attention is in decline.

Although will power plays a role, this problem is not entirely our fault—it’s the by-product of powerful forces incident to modern life.

Disconnection from nature. Disrupted sleep. Toxic environments. Predatory tech.

What exactly does a focus-less future augur? And what can be done to reclaim our ability to truly concentrate?

So if you spend your time switching a lot, then the evidence suggests you will be slower, you’ll make more mistakes, you’ll be less creative, and you’ll remember less of what you do.

Here is one of Johann Hari's books: link to Amazon

For me, social comparison isn't the biggest problem with social media. It does sometimes make me feel worse or inferior, but other problems with social media are more pronounced in my case, but it differs from individual to individual. I certainly know that social media makes my mental health worse.

[wjfox]

[erowind]

There are two major problems with social media I'm able to identify, misinformation and narcissism. I wouldn't just ban misinformation platforms, I'd also ban social media platforms in general where people easily post thousands of pictures of their own faces. It's completely ruined dating and is actively destroying community and family.

People who don't take photos of themselves "doing cool things" constantly are socially disadvantaged. They might be really interesting people, but narcissists would never know because they don't see it on a social media platform. This goes beyond dating, you won't get invited to some artistic events, or tech meetups, or other such things from people within cliques that form around these platforms and it genuinely does harm your ability to network. But it shouldn't, making friends and colleagues should happen through the subject matter itself or in person not through a giant dick waving contest.

If someone really genuinely wants to take thousands of photos of themselves that's their right and they can. But they can do it on their own blog they put work into. I think these bad behaviors are being exaggerated in society because they are being made easy and encouraged. Narcissism is bad for everyone even the narcissist because it gives an inaccurate perspective on other people, oneself and makes forming intimate relationships and community more difficult. Social media provides a lot of surface area for shallow relationships, but not much else.

None of this applies to forums, chat rooms, message boards, etc in the same way. Though it does apply to reddit, any platform with a ranking system where the content is filtered algorithmically alongside some upvoting/downvoting mechanic is a problem imo. In the case of reddit the issue isn't narcissism most of the time, it's just misinformation.

Banning social media would face major pushback from advertiser interests and people who think it's a ban on free speech. It's really not, journalistic websites, weblogs, forums, etc all fine. The problem is a specific kind of website that feeds content algorithmically. Free speech would be unaffected.