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Do you honestly think your examples are even in the same league as Facebook? Were TV ads ever as granular in its tracking as Facebook is today?
tv is exactly in the same league as Facebook. Video games is pretty close too. Neither one are recognized as addictions.
Sorry, I'm simply not convinced that monetizing and marketing people's attention is all that much of a social ill. There is nothing about Facebook that's in any way worse than the old ways companies used to do this. Does nobody remember the 80s? TV was turning people into fricken' zombies. People would sit on the boob tube for days at a time, stopping only to go to work to mindlessly knock out chores for a shift, the…
I honestly find myself scratching my head every time George Soros speaks. He almost comes across as someone desperate to be taken seriously, to be viewed as a visionary, a thought leader, a prognosticator. But what has he down to justify this? Nothing as far as I can tell. He made a bunch of money as a currency speculator, most famously breaking the British pound. Sure. Good for him. But if we're going to talk about…
I had the understanding his currency speculation and breaking of the British pound was based on some prognostication, visionary understandings of currency in the modern world? So a great level of insight was achieved leading to adding value to himself, but not to society.
Can we stop calling this addiction? The DSM V doesnt recognize process addictions, with the exception of Gambling Disorder, and many of the symptoms don't apply to social media use. Even Internet addiction wasn't included for lack of proof. Substance Use Disorder (the new category for chemical addictions) has specifics such as withdrawal and physical dependency that you don't get from turning off your Facebook accoun…
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It's got approximately the mass reach and appeal that television did. It doesn't have nearly the impact that TV did. I wonder what makes you think that Facebook is in any way the same league as TV. TV transformed society. Facebook just makes it easier for people to argue with each other.
Your gross simplification of the issue is unfortunate. TV has never been able to track you and change its programming to the extent Facebook can.
The question is actually about the counterfactual impact of Facebook's addiction machine. In the absence of social media, do people simply replace their wasted time there with leisure like video games, television, texting, and the like? If yes, the net impact of Facebook is small. Or, have the addictivity wizards actually managed to increase the amount of time spent in leisure, taking away from familial connection an…
Interesting question to raise, but you really can't come come to a conclusion without evidence.
Sorry, I'm simply not convinced that monetizing and marketing people's attention is all that much of a social ill. There is nothing about Facebook that's in any way worse than the old ways companies used to do this. Does nobody remember the 80s? TV was turning people into fricken' zombies. People would sit on the boob tube for days at a time, stopping only to go to work to mindlessly knock out chores for a shift, the…
This statement is laughable:
> The thing that actually holds old friendships together and provides endless opportunities to interact with other people that you would have never done otherwise
Facebook's innovation was trapping users in a walled garden with omnipresent surveillance and advertising, perfectly timed with mass adoption of social media.
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> I'm rather bothered that I know nothing about Soros > He's some kind of evil mastermind destroying civilisation with his vast wealth. Those characterizations may have their origins in an element of truth, dating from the early 90s. Paul Krugman described his Soros's actions thusly: > [N]obody who has read a business magazine in the last few years can be unaware that these days there really are investors who not onl…
The principals of finance are the same for everyone. Just because the UK (like Mexico, Argentina, and most of SE Asia) decided to ignore the rules, doesn't make him a bad person. It makes him an intelligent investor. When you're screwing with monetary policy and most college kids (in finance and economics) know what you're doing will blow up in your face. To assume investors won't take advantage is not only naive but…
It might not be illegal but ethics come back to you
I'm rather bothered that I know nothing about Soros except a bunch of vague, negative feelings about him that have pop-culturally osmosed to me through constant usage of his name in 4channish/the_donaldish media. He's some kind of evil mastermind destroying civilisation with his vast wealth. I know this is almost certainly not true, but I'm so bothered that this is my immediate thought. I feel like the alt-right has…
You noticed propaganda because you have built mental roadblocks for the alt-right.
You would probably have just operated on the assumption, if it wasn't for the fact your brain also noticed the links to something you distrust and kicked the thought upward for further inspection.
I don't think you're an easily manipulated idiot. It happens to all of us. Propoganda works; that's why people use it.
BUT, now that you have seen exactly how it works, you owe it to yourself to leverage that discovery into making your brain reject more propaganda (especially the kind you're predisposed to agree with).
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Have you tried reading something about it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Soros#1992_pound_short George Soros is an investor that has never been shy about using his wealth to support his political positions (that are generally very liberal). Now you know pretty much all there is to know, and why the al-right hates him. Oh, and that he survived Nazi-Germany occupated Hungary. The last thing especially hurts the…
>Now you know pretty much all there is to know From a Wikipedia page? Don't be naive. > although I prefer to call them Nazis. I guess you just like to speak in hyperbole.
Some excerpts from a detailed article[1] about an alt-right leader:
It was in this spirit that Anglin “doxed” Gersh and her husband, Judah, as well as other Jews in Whitefish, by publishing their contact information and other personal details on his website. He plastered their photographs with yellow stars emblazoned with jude and posted a picture of the Gershes’ 12-year-old son superimposed on the gates at Auschwitz. He commanded his readers—his “Stormer Troll Army”— to “hit ’em up.” ...
On July 4, 2013, The Daily Stormer launched in beta mode, replacing Total Fascism. Anglin named his new site after Der Stürmer, a virulently anti-Semitic Nazi-era weekly that Hitler had read devoutly. (As Anglin would later write, the official policy of his site was: “Jews should be exterminated.”) ...
The Stormers had a private chat server through a company called Discord, and I used an alias to listen in as they talked amongst themselves about genocide, often in graphic terms. “All I want is to see [Jews] screaming in a pit of suffering on the soil of my homeland before I die,” Auernheimer wrote. “I don’t want wealth. I don’t want power. I just want their daughters tortured to death in front of them and to laugh and spit in their faces while they scream.” ...
So yes, at least some prominent members of alt-right are nazis in deeds and words.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/12/the-mak...