Headnote: The nation of Finland seems willing to say that social media can be fake news (link)
On one of my favourite blogs the host abandoned twitter about the time that platform began having blue checkmarks for special commenters.
Someone who was obviously not part of his ongoing blog community, and didn’t know that history, lambasted me, but not by my name, for slagging social media, thinking I didn’t get it that not all channels were bad like twitter. Rather than argue, I tried again, writing what I could have said:
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I suppose if I wanted to be part of the solution, not part of the problem, then I could be be going onto the bad social media and disagreeing, saying things like, “no, Roe versus Wade does not legislate abortion at eight months.”
My problem is I don’t like going on bad social media…
Better to stay in the real world and when someone says something from social media ask them, “Does the legitimate media say so?” Then again, followers of bad media won’t get into such academic dialogue. Better to spout, “That’s social media!” And let them think on their own.
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Of course, maybe my error was not making allowances for computer nerds having stars in their eyes regarding the minority of good social media. So I commented again, referring to earlier positive parts of the thread, not caring if doing so made the guy who lambasted me look stupid:
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I could sooth our host, before slagging social media, by saying, “But I don’t mean Mastodon or Bluesky and so forth where of course, from your own experience, you know you can civil conversations with interesting people, like early twitter, where you can get responses from famous writers and so forth…”
But does our host need soothing? Better to assume a measure of good sense and good will. Because soothing in advance is like throwing a blanket on my mind. I can say this from (a) me, and (b) intrepid internet essayist Paul Graham, titled “Persuade Xor Discover” Here’s the link: https://paulgraham.com/discover.html
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Of course about the time the blog host dropped twitter, a lot of his followers did so too. For my part, I only followed twitter from links to his blog, and other bloggers, so I never had to “get off twitter.” I suppose it’s only fair, for those who have read this far, to assuage their curiosity as to what I said. It was a brief comment:
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Some believe in religion. Some believe in science. And some believe in social media. Right now meteorologists are getting death threats because social media says they are creating and steering hurricanes.
If people didn’t believe so deeply then I could use a “pejorative” when they say something crazy by responding: “That’s social media!” I don’t like to hurt people’s feelings, but ya, I should say that more often.
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Actually, I do have a response prepared: Next time I hear hearing something unsubstantiated by regular media I could fall down on my back laughing, waving my arms and legs.
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For those who are stuck in the 1990’s and chant that “information wants to be free” or “social media is not a problem” then here is today’s October 25 article, a TLDR for most: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c99v90813j5o
For those who do extra reading, (video)
here is a Bill Maher video clip where he’s talking with an expert who knows that social media is a Bad Thing, a Thing hosted by folks don’t take responsibility. Here’s the link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O2kPL_7f4g
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Sean Crawford
Taking responsibility
October
2024
