Social Media
Essays and more on social media
Packy McCormick and
Social Media
Advertisers love how non-paid content blurs with paid content because it makes their ads feel more "authentic." Platforms love it because advertisers love it.
... See moreAs late as 2011, journalists and technologists were praising social media’s emancipatory power in light of the role of Facebook and Twitter in the Arab Spring revolts. But, as has been noted many times, after the U.S. presidential election in 2016, such optimism increasingly appeared naïve and misguided. Now Facebook and Twitter are seen as... See more
L. M. Sacasas • The Analog City and the Digital City
fuel to the fire
A decade of reporters working for Twitter’s algorithm while their bosses desperately tried to work for Facebook and Google did not result in stable business, happy reporters, or even satisfied audiences. Instead, the platform era hollowed out journalism, destroyed trust across the board, and resulted in a lot of shitty, boring work. It was a... See more
The tech platforms aren’t like the Medici in Florence, or those other rich patrons of the arts. They don’t want to find the next Michelangelo or Mozart. They want to create a world of junkies—because they will be the dealers.
Ted Gioia • The State of the Culture, 2024
With billions of people using the major social platforms, and the people who remember a pre-social-media web increasing in age while decreasing as cultural force on the internet, we’re rapidly losing fluency in what the internet could look like. We’ve almost forgotten that links are powerful, and that restraining links through artificial scarcity... See more
Anil Dash • “Link in Bio” Is a Slow Knife
Social media to social Media
As corporations drape themselves in rainbow colors for Pride month, remember that they only engage in such activism in the West where it's fashionable, and not in the East where it's actually needed, because their activism is motivated not by principles but by PR. https://t.co/jV1VCCRCxZ