Society/Culture Toxicity of social media

Apr 23, 2016
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Glad it amused to you. But although one's position on Australia Day is not entirely a left/right thing, you'd be a fool to claim it doesn't almost invariably fall along those lines. Come on!

I suspect if you want to pick a kneejerk division, there are far better examples.

I know you guys love your simplistic binaries, but the world is a little more nuanced than that.
 

chunkylover53

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Great article. Ban from Twitter all politicians who have the capability to destroy the world with a push of a button.


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Been saying it for a while, how long until a country drops a bomb on another due to a Tweet?

Ban 'em all. There is absolutely nothing positive about politicians beefing with each other on Twitter.
 

Eagle Wrath

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How is facebook going for everyone?
Now banning news and weather from Australia.
 
How is facebook going for everyone?
Now banning news and weather from Australia.

Well they weren't bluffing, we know that now. To be honest, I'm on the sides of the tech giants here. Facebook mentioned that news content contributes to only about 5% of newsfeed anyway, whereas many media companies rely on their content being shared.
 

The Passenger

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It's an interesting thing to think about...

On one hand I'm very pro free speech, pro liberty and I love how technology enabled people to talk to their supporters directly (this isn't just politics - music, sports people etc)...

On the other hand social media has become completely misused and there are a lot of politicians exploiting the gullibility of internet users - particularly of the older generation who are still fairly accustomed to being fairly trusting of the media and can't differentiate that Facebook and Twitter (etc) are not traditional media (which has a pretty dodgy history itself). Also if there is one group of people who you could argue (on fairly dubious grounds, I must admit) that you could control their social media use it's politicians - they are elected by us after all.

But even if you could write and pass this dubious legislation, who gets to decide what does and doesn't pass the test for acceptable social media posts? The obvious current affairs issue is Trump and his claims of the election being stolen. So far that has gone nowhere in official terms, but there's still a huge proportion of the US who believe what he's telling them.

If you go full nuclear and politicians aren't allowed to use social media, then they are behold to whatever that countries media outlets want to decide what they get to say... Not a good situation either. Also that creates a vacuum about said countries political situation that more nefarious countries will exploit.

And beyond all this, social media is not (in the western world) a government run platform. These are private companies and they have a right for whom they want to associate with. Free speech does and always should be in the realm of what that means between you and your government. Australia does not have the right to free speech in the way the US does. But even taking the US version of free speech, the right to non-association is basically an extension of that. As far as I can see, there is nothing in US law which says you have to provide a platform for anyone who wants it (and if there was I would assume Trump and left and right wing voices who Twitter have removed) would have invoked such law to be reinstated.
 
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Well they weren't bluffing, we know that now. To be honest, I'm on the sides of the tech giants here. Facebook mentioned that news content contributes to only about 5% of newsfeed anyway, whereas many media companies rely on their content being shared.

Agreed.

Facebook are more than entitled to stop sharing the news if they don't want to pay for it, and why should they? They are a sharing platform.

As you said news content makes up 4-5% of their total content, Journalists + News Companies would get far more out of the exposure on a platform like Facebook than Facebook would actually generate revenue out of.

Paying for something that doesn't make you money is just a s**t business decision, which at the end of the day is what Facebook is. A business.
 
Apr 23, 2016
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Australian media: Facebook must stop stealing content.

Facebook: But... you post the content yourselves...

Australian media: FACEBOOK MUST STOP STEALING CONTENT!!!!

Facebook: OK, we'll stop you posting the content you claim we're stealing from you.

Australian media: NOOOOO!

It does seem bizarre that the Government wants Facebook to pay for content the media companies are posting on the Facebook platform. I haven't read a good argument as to why Facebook would bother paying for it yet?
 

chelseacarlton

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Got off FB and Twitter(rarely looked at it anyway, horrible platform) during the melbs lockdown last year, best thing I ever did, that and getting my dad to switch from sky news to abc24, he’s also much happier, who woulda thunk it?!👍
 

Golden_6

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In all seriousness, I hope this gets sorted out seriously. I'm ignoring the Herald Sun, 7News etc. factor.

They've blocked local football sites from publishing any posts on their pages. Everyone uses that platform for any information regarding it.
 

Ok Boomer

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Would anyone truly miss Facebook?

As far as I am concerned it is a cancer on developed Western societies in particular.
 
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In all seriousness, I hope this gets sorted out seriously. I'm ignoring the Herald Sun, 7News etc. factor.

They've blocked local football sites from publishing any posts on their pages. Everyone uses that platform for any information regarding it.

Yeah, Queensland Health, Neighbourhood Watch Victoria, Royal Children's Hospital, the ACTU - all have been hit by this.

The Government's proposed legislation is flawed and imperfect. But that doesn't justify Facebook's response here, and I don't think they should be supported. Remember they are a monopoly, and this is their attempt to bully a government attempting to regulate them. That they previously said it was impossible for them to intervene when their platform was a driving force in the genocide in Myanmar, only to show how they respond to possible regulation, tells you a lot about the corporation.
 
In all seriousness, I hope this gets sorted out seriously. I'm ignoring the Herald Sun, 7News etc. factor.

They've blocked local football sites from publishing any posts on their pages. Everyone uses that platform for any information regarding it.
The blocked Betoota Advocate - the bastards

I hope Zuckerberg gets caught in the rain and short circuits.
 
No, social media hasn't always been this toxic.

Nowadays we have person specific content targeting which inevitably leads to confirmation bias.

People are being fed the s**t they want to hear, sure, but also fed the stuff that OUTRAGES them and thus provoking interaction.

Outrage is lucrative.
 
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