Yes Geof, but is also means that the data that up until now has been gathered, used and abused by a corporations, particularly Google and Facebook, is in the hands of a totalitarian government.
This is the worst of all possible outcomes IMO. The Chinese Government knows were TikTok users are, where they have been and what they and their friends and associates have been looking at and writing online.
It makes the KGB and Stasi look benign.
This quote from the article explains how Facebook can track you even when you are not using Facebook. Anybody who uses it to log into other accounts thinking it is just a convenience is making a massive mistake. It is mass surveillance and it enables Facebook to data gather far beyond the borders of Facebook. It was one of their cleverest strokes.
âWhere we can now log in to Tinder, Spotify and hundreds of other apps and websites using our Facebook account, soon we could do the same with TikTok.â
Indeed - for precisely these reasons I never use Facebook etc to log in to other sites, never use it outside a âcontainerâ, use ghostery, etc, etc.
I wouldnât argue that Facebook is not terrible - itâs just typical of âsurveillance capitalismâ - but I would argue that it can be used - is being used - for both good and bad, whereas conventional mass media often leaves less room for the really âgoodâ stuff.
The current Afghanistan crisis is a good example: The Guardianâs âexplainerâ on the Taliban and its origins entirely omitted mention of the fact that itâs development and arming had been supported by America - cynically as a tool to use against the Russians.
My Facebook feed, on the other hand - because my âfriendsâ and âgroupsâ are actually carefully selected trustworthy sources of first-hand accounts, from all over the world - gives me the real facts.
Of course, the US supported Bin Laden and the Afghanistan Mujahideen in the proxy war against the USSR. Then having unleashed Bin Laden they lost control of him. Iâve always considered 9/11 as an appalling âown goalâ.
Please donât take this as a criticism of your Facebook feed, but I think a lot of people think the same but in their case they have been carefully selected by untrustworthy sources.
I think this depends on what you mean by âa lot of peopleâ. There are many stories in conventional mass media about how dangerous Facebook is - but, like the âfilter bubbleâ article John kicked this thread off with, I find both the argument and the evidence unconvincing. That doesnât mean âsurveillance capitalismâ is not dangerous, or that the dangers it presents are no different from previous developments in media technology. They are different - but then theyâve always been different⌠radio from newspapers, television from radio, etcâŚ
The underlying problem is that given our social and economic formation, all mass media has to some extent play the game of serving the interests of wealth and power. If you single out Facebook, even if you single out âthe internet giantsâ in general, you miss a large part of the point.
My own guess is that the number of people seriously misled by Facebook is relatively small in comparison to those misled by other media. Certainly, among people I know about for certain, most are like me - careful about sources - or only really use Facebook for personal stuff, and avoid news or politics entirely - or if under 30, like my kids, have accounts but rarely look at them at all.
The thing is most people are not like you those of us that have used Facebook extensively and the younger generation that have been brought up with it, know just how a lot of people believe anything posted there, itâs on Facebook so it must be true.
When you see how well the Daily Flail, Daily/Sunday Sport, Sun, Star do/have done well, there is and will always be a large section of the population who donât want to do the research or use their brains to form an opinion of their own, they like to believe totally what is fed to them, whether it is fact or fiction.
Facebook is now a huge part of their lives, why read a book, go to the library, research anything when all the guff they want to believe is 4" from their noses, continually being fed to them.
This is what weâre told - mainly by other media that have a vested interest. But there seems to be a paucity of actual evidence. (Donât get me wrong - there certainly is evidence that individuals and groups such as violent right-wing extremists, âincelsâ, etc, say horrible things online to each other - but I mean evidence that such stuff is reaching and convincing millions of otherwise sensible people, in the way that it did, say, in 1930s Europe, when fascists took over several countries without the benefit of Facebook.)
The âsurveillanceâ issue is separate from this, and more worrying - but letâs be clear: it is aimed overwhelmingly at making money for online platforms and their advertisers. It indeed has the potential to undermine human and democratic rights - information is shared with American government agencies with a long history of rights abuse, and probably also already with the Chinese and other state bureaucracies - but the primary form of exploitation online is no different from that offline: itâs advertising.
I think you you do a great disservice to people with that generalisationâŚthey are leaving fb in drovesâŚ
Maybe my generation (closer to 60 than 50) have been off and on with fb deactivating accounts and then reactivating again when world events got criticalâŚ
I reactivated again recently to find my fb feed is mostly advertising and I had to search for my friends in Gaza and Palestine and my activist on many diverse topics friendsâŚsome had even moved countries in the time I was awayâŚ
Most of my family left a long time ago
Maybe you know people who are influenced by fb and mainstream media but thatâs not my experienceâŚ
Helen, many, many millions of people are influenced by FB and it is increasingly used by authoritarian regimes to misinform and manipulate. I cannot overemphasis the risk FB, Google, Twitter represent. Hereâs an example.
Nobody doubts that you can find that kind of racist stuff online though John.
But there are 2 key points here:
The articles youâre finding are not convincing - and not only because they are from sources very highly invested in conventional media. This last article is over 3 years old, and documents a problem that has been well-recognised in Myanmar for many years (long before Facebook). And there was no real attempt at contextualisation: a thousand racist posts out of how many? by how many actual users? over what period (the examples are from the entire history of Facebook in Burmese)? Itâs a rant rather than a serious study.
Moreover, where is the evidence that âmany, many millions of people are influenced by FBâ? The fact that racist comments are made online does not in itself establish influence, let alone the extent of it. Any fairly open forum is going to feature racism - because, er, lots of people are racist.
And of course the Myanmar generals are trying to use Facebook etc⌠only rather less effectively than they use conventional media.
The puzzle here for me is that there is bags of evidence that conventional media has a heinous influence on people, but (as far as I know) comparatively little evidence that the internet does so - yet peopleâs main concern (here at least) seems to be focused on the internet.
I have no doubt Geof that millions of people in the US and UK have been influenced by targeted advertisements. Notwithstanding that only a critical few are actually required to tip an election/referendum one way or the other. I have no doubt that FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) has also been spread by social media in less developed countries than our own. I have no doubt that authoritarian leaders have realised the utility of social media to monitor and influence, as the recent NSO group scandal highlighted.
This is a ticking bomb that needs urgent regulation and supervision.
I sort of agree with parts of @Geof_Cox arguments re social media. Indeed, social media can be a good thing ⢠and although I donât partake myself, I have many family members who do. Most just use it as a conduit to converse with family and friends, and have no interest in stepping outside that narrow remit. I do however have a sister in law who seems to mentally hoover up anything and everything that she comes across on FB. As a result she is pro Brexit, anti vax, and 5g and the rest. When I ask myself âwhyâ then there is to me an obvious answer. My sister in law is of an age where most of her life was lived without the benefit of modern data driven technology. She was an avid convert though. On top of that, she left school with no qualifications, got married very young, never worked and spent her life looking after children and grandchildren. That was her choice, and she has been a great mum and grandma. However, her life experiences have never really taught her how to think critically or how to evaluate information in a logical way. Thatâs not her fault, itâs just the way it is. I think that many people like my sister in law, who have not had the life choices or life experiences that some of us have had can easily be taken in by the persuasive shills you find everywhere on social media. Itâs this sort of person (amongst others) who are targeted on social media, and who were very successfully targeted by the Leave Campaign.
This may be a bit of a contentious opinion, but then opinions foster discussion.
BTW, I love my sister in law greatly. Sheâs a wonderful person who would, does and has helped many people within the family. She is a real Family person. If only I could persuade her from some of her more extreme opinions, but I know I canât. We agree to disagree and get on just as we always used to ⌠I.e well.
Edit: I have purposely not really been involved in the anti vax discussions that revolve around helen6 , as I realise that, like with my sister in law, I would rather not engage in what I know will be fruitless argument. I would rather have a different discussion.
Very good points. Now if one adds the tens if not hundreds of millions in developing countries who are equally non critical to that equation you can see why I consider FB (2.701 billion monthly active users), Google, Twitter, et al threats.
Yes, I can, and I agree that social media can be a threat, not just personally (body shaming, bullying etc) but also to society. However, I donât think we should just be concentrating on the bad aspects of social media (which are legion), but also accept that there are good aspects as well. This is why I said that I agree with parts of @Geof_Cox arguments. How do we find a way to keep the good aspects of social media whilst trying to minimise the bad ? I really donât have an answer to this question, but we really shouldnât be throwing the baby out with the bathwater. My own objections to FB et al stem more from privacy issues rather than misinformation, but the misinformation issue is real and serious.
There are so many human rights issues being trampled on and have been trampled on for so many years that sometimes being an empath in nature makes my head explode with trying to make sense of the sheer scale of the problems we as humanity face when confronted with what seems like an unstoppable bulldozer (Rachel in Palestine comes to mind)
I try to never give upâŚI try to remind myself that I and we and many others amongst us chose to be here on our planet right here right now at this point in timeâŚthat we can come together and stop the seemingly unstoppableâŚ
(Not necessarily my favourite genre of music (!) but does he have a point with âthe stepsâ and the fabricated division of right and left and black and white etcâŚthis track went viral within 4 hours of releaseâŚ)
I agree with Tim.
All social media should come with a health warningâŚnot just Facebook.
It is so easy to be totally candid on here and be misunderstood,
We paint our own character sketches with our words,
So we need to take care.
Perspectives like that offered by this article are really important, I think, in understanding the issues in this and many other threads.
Covid-mask-vaccine-etc-scepticism are nothing new - they do not originate in social media misinformation - rather, their currency and severity depends on pre-existing social tensions - which might also explain why the pandemic is more âpoliticisedâ in America than western Europe.
The same applies, I think, to many other supposed phenomena of the internet: the cause is not, in fact, online, but in the social and economic formations in which new media spread - which is why you read in history books the same worries, and often almost exactly the same words used when radio, television, etc were introduced, as people are now using about the internet.
I do agree that it has become wholly politicised and polarised and I was hoping that this article might have gone some way to easing tensions and promoting open dialogue and transparencyâŚciting factsâŚ
So I was really disappointed to see that heâs the guardian columnist for Australia ending his article with:
â For now, the anti-vaxxers are a noisy minority. Although dangerous to the people around them, they havenât yet succeeded in turning people against any minority groups.â
Itâs a really strange peculiar unfounded conclusion to his article in my viewâŚ
Today Iâve watched the protests in Australia and an ex airforce Australian trying to explain right and left to a non mainstream USA presenterâŚand probably worse of all the most arrogant ignorant Australian âofficialâ at a press conference talking over people who wanted to ask questions of the doctor sitting next to himâŚeach questioner had 1 minute 30 seconds to ask and not one of them got to speak because he spoke over them and ridiculed them the whole time and told them he didnât have to be there as if he was gracing the questioners with his presenceâŚ! No transparency and in my opinion made himself and the Australian government look absolutely foolish bombastic petty little dictatorial tyrantsâŚ
My personal opinion is that Australia is a tinder box at the minute (like many countries)
It looks like the Australian truckers many who donât want the vaccine and donât want it for their kids are going to blockade and kick up a storm any time now
those of us that have used Facebook extensively and the younger generation that have been brought up with it, know just how a lot of people believe anything posted there, itâs on Facebook so it must be true.