I found this article informative...and very applicable to our times:
Online media gives the everyperson access to channels of communication previously reserved for Big Business. Starting with the world wide web in the 1990s and continuing into user-generated content of the aughts and social media of the 2010s, control over public discourse has moved from media organizations, governments, and corporations to average citizens. Finally, people could publish writing, images, videos, and other material without first getting the endorsement of publishers or broadcasters. Ideas spread freely beyond borders.
And we also received a toxic dump of garbage. The ease with which connections can be made—along with the way that, on social media, close friends look the same as acquaintances or even strangers—means any post can successfully appeal to people’s worst fears, transforming ordinary folks into radicals. That’s what YouTube did to the Christchurch shooter, what conspiracy theorists preceding QAnon did to the Pizzagaters, what Trumpists did to the Capitol rioters. And, closer to the ground, it’s how random Facebook messages scam your mother, how ill-thought tweets ruin lives, how social media has made life in general brittle and unforgiving.
It’s long past time to question a fundamental premise of online life: What if people shouldn’t be able to say so much, and to so many, so often?
People Aren’t Meant to Talk This Much
Breaking up social-media companies is one way to fix them. Shutting their users up is a better one.
www.theatlantic.com
Online media gives the everyperson access to channels of communication previously reserved for Big Business. Starting with the world wide web in the 1990s and continuing into user-generated content of the aughts and social media of the 2010s, control over public discourse has moved from media organizations, governments, and corporations to average citizens. Finally, people could publish writing, images, videos, and other material without first getting the endorsement of publishers or broadcasters. Ideas spread freely beyond borders.
And we also received a toxic dump of garbage. The ease with which connections can be made—along with the way that, on social media, close friends look the same as acquaintances or even strangers—means any post can successfully appeal to people’s worst fears, transforming ordinary folks into radicals. That’s what YouTube did to the Christchurch shooter, what conspiracy theorists preceding QAnon did to the Pizzagaters, what Trumpists did to the Capitol rioters. And, closer to the ground, it’s how random Facebook messages scam your mother, how ill-thought tweets ruin lives, how social media has made life in general brittle and unforgiving.
It’s long past time to question a fundamental premise of online life: What if people shouldn’t be able to say so much, and to so many, so often?