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1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 12-Jul-2018 06:21:44 EDT Strypey

   More disturbingly bad pop psychology misdiagnosis of the "social media" problem ...

   > "The mainstream social internet is so big; everyone is connected to everyone, over a billion on Facebook alone. The consequences of connection — fake news, radicalization, massive targeted harassment campaigns, algorithmically-generated psychological torment, inane bullshit — were not part of what we were sold."
   https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/28/16795090/internet-community-2017-post-mortem-tumblr-amino-drip-tinyletter

   1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 12-Jul-2018 06:28:14 EDT Strypey

      in reply to

      I agree all these things are bad, but they're not new, and they're definitely not "consequences of connection", but the consequences of corporate-owned media, ad-based revenue model, and political bitterness caused by rising inequality. We migrated to the net in the 90s because the same perfect storm had hopelessly warped TV, and we naively thought the net might be different.

      1. Râu Cao (raucao@kosmos.social)'s status on Thursday, 12-Jul-2018 06:33:01 EDT Râu Cao

         in reply to

         @strypey I think there's also a narrative being pushed to discredit the Web in general at the moment. Precisely because it is better than centrally controlled and state-censored broadcasting in many ways. Just look at how NYT & Co are suddenly able to claim that they are the ones protecting the world from bullshit, when it was them who provably indoctrinated audiences with BS and fake news for decades.

         1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 12-Jul-2018 09:18:43 EDT Strypey

            in reply to

            @raucao exactly. The corporate news media invented "fake news" (also know as "public relations"), starting with Bernays and WWI propaganda in films and newspapers, and segueing smoothly through ad-funded "news networks" on radio and TV stations, to corporate "social media" platforms.

            1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 12-Jul-2018 09:22:21 EDT Strypey

               in reply to

               @raucao The doco 'Psywar' tells the story of Bernays and the rise of PR and ads in a fairly compact form (don't let the title put you off, no #TinFoilHat required), but if you have the patience for about 3 hours of viewing time, #AdamCurtis knows his subject much better in his 'Century of the Self' series than he does in '... Machines of Loving Grace'
               http://metanoia-films.org/psywar/

      2. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 12-Jul-2018 06:34:30 EDT Strypey

         in reply to

         All the pearl-clutching and hand-wringing over weird YT kids videos makes we wonder if any of these people ever saw kids TV? I well remember the terrifyingly weird psy-op tactics advertisers used to prime kids to use "pester power", both in the "programs" themselves (remember Transformers and Masters of the Universe toys and their "TV shows") as well as in the ad breaks between them.

         1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 12-Jul-2018 06:38:14 EDT Strypey

            in reply to

            The good news is, it's still much cheaper and easier to set up a webserver or any other kind of internet server for ourselves, individually or as a community, than it has ever been to set up a micro-radio ("pirate radio") or micro-TV ("pirate TV") broadcast. I helped set up some micro-radio stations in early 2000s, so I'm speaking from experience here. Plus, servers can do a much greater range of things, and any webserver has much greater potential reach than local radio or TV (cool as they are)

            1. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 12-Jul-2018 09:33:03 EDT Strypey

               in reply to

               Imagine a federated platform like #PeerTube that replace #iTunes for distributing podcasts. It would have all the benefits of pirate radio (or #HackerPublicRadio); diverse voices, a plurality of sources, decentralized production and consumption, plus all the benefits of iTunes; any podcaster can potentially heard by anyone in a global audience, and without the downsides of a platform controlled by a single gatekeeper like Apple corporation.

         2. Strypey (strypey@mastodon.nzoss.nz)'s status on Thursday, 12-Jul-2018 06:42:56 EDT Strypey

            in reply to

            Some examples of said pearl-clutching about kids YT...
            https://www.theverge.com/culture/2017/11/21/16685874/kids-youtube-video-elsagate-creepiness-psychology

            ... and ....
            https://medium.com/@jamesbridle/something-is-wrong-on-the-internet-c39c471271d2