Social Media
Social media is the interaction among people in which they create, share or exchange information and ideas in virtual communities and networks
Buried in Facebook’s announcement that Cambridge Analytica had improperly gathered data from up to 87 million users was the stunning admission that “malicious actors” exploited the site’s search features to collection information from “most” of its 2 billion users.
“This Panda Is Dancing – Time Well Spent” is a poetic short film by Max Stossel & Sander van Dijk. In the Attention Economy, technology and media are designed to maximize our screen-time. But what if they were designed to help us live by our values? What if news & media companies were creating content that enriched our lives, vs. catering to our most base instincts for clicks? What if social platforms were designed to help us create our ideal social lives, instead of to maximize time-on site and “likes”?
After a New Zealand man named Dylan McKay called attention in a viral tweet last week to the alarming fact that Facebook had collected his “entire call history” with his partner’s mother and “metadata about every text message [he’s] ever received or sent,” other Facebook users began downloading their archive of personal data the social media giant had stored and discovered that McKay’s experience was hardly anomalous.
There are six primary reasons why we need our social media run through the blockchain technology: distributed consensus mechanisms ensure better security and privacy; blockchain eliminates censorship and safeguards freedom of speech by anonymizing user meta-data; in a blockchain, you aren’t the product (your meta-data is not harvested for commercial gain); by eliminating a central server, users have more control over their own content; blockchain’s tokens, coins, and smart contacts make transactions, payments, and peer-to-peer commerce smoother; decentralized networks sans external payment methods mean crowdfunding for startups is much easier.
#DeleteFacebook started trending on Twitter late Tuesday as users complained about “trust issues” regarding how the company shares their personal data. It gained a notable booster when WhatsApp co-founder Brian Acton tweeted that the time has come for Facebook users to delete their accounts. “Delete and forget. It’s time to care about privacy,” he tweeted.
We’ve heard about censorship before… but is what is happening now on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter an all-out purge of dissenting voices? Ben Swann addresses this question and more on Reality Check.
Governments around the world employ armies of keyboard warriors to spread propaganda and disrupt their online opposition. Their goal? To shape public discourse around global events in a way favorable to their standing military and geopolitical objectives. Their method? The Weaponization of Social Media. James Corbett discusses in detail.
Bloomberg Technology reported Tuesday on Steemit, an increasingly popular blockchain-based social media and blogging platform that allows participants to earn cryptocurrency for posting, commenting, and voting on content.
Soros also said that giants like Facebook and Google should be looked at as public utilities, calling for government regulation of the platforms, a move which would completely solidify political control over the a vast majority of content on the internet. As it is, the censorship we see emerging today is motivated by corporate elites, however regulating these companies would introduce federal control over content as well. An Orwellian nightmare.
“I feel tremendous guilt… I think in the back deep, deep recesses of our minds, we kind of knew something bad could happen… It literally is a point now where I think we have created tools that are ripping apart the social fabric of how society works… The short-term, dopamine-driven feedback loops we’ve created are destroying how society works” ~ Chamath Palihapitiya, former vice-president of user growth for Facebook.
Former child star Corey Feldman is crowdsourcing $10 million for a film that promises to out a network of Hollywood pedophiles, a sick ring that the 46-year-old insists “thousands” of industry insiders are well aware of. In the wake of the Harvey Weinstein revelations, there’s been a push to bring what The Daily Beast’s Ira Madison called “Hollywood’s other ‘open secret’” to light, and Feldman is leading the charge.
Have you ever fallen into the social media energy vampire trap? You may have been preyed upon by an energy vampire and have not been aware as it was happening as others are feeding off of your energy. This can and does often occur as a direct result from your emotional reactions.
Could there be some greater meaning to the handful of hurricanes threatening and attacking in the Gulf of Mexico? Jacob Israel, an internet commentator seems to think so. You will probably find his interpretations of these weather phenomena at least interesting if not compelling.
In the last week, we’ve witnessed a massive crackdown on alternative media — the likes of which are unprecedented. Quite literally overnight, YouTube issued a sweeping update and demonetized thousands of video in accounts across all political spectrums.
Male suicide has gone up 40%(!!) in the U.K. since 2008. Russell Brand says some smart things about what needs to change. Watch this video!
