In January of 2019, I wrote a post asking if, thanks to the internet, we had achieved a state of maximum inescapable bullshit. But whether we were there almost two years ago, we are certainly there now. It took less than a decade for the internet—and, it turns out, mostly Facebook—to destroy American democracy. I know that’s fatalistic, but even ...
Social media platforms were practically designed to foster whataboutism. So, we should hardly be surprised that this lazy form of erroneous reasoning dominates so much of our contemporary politics. At least that was one thought that crossed my mind while reading the recent BuzzFeed article describing why so many Facebook employees are lately coming to grips with the kind of ...
In 2012, I wrote a post called In Defense of (a little) Elitism, which was naturally criticized by some in the tech-utopian world for being, y’know, elitist. The apparent good in this digital-age model — that it is populist — is also its own weakness when we look at results in various media. Most obviously, it doesn’t take more than ...
It is impossible to look at the landscape of America, at this burning city on a hill, and not weep. Or scream. Because this blog advocates the legal rights of creators (copyrights), and because those rights historically enjoy bipartisan support, I have tried to maintain a politically balanced tone when writing about most policy matters. That was a lot easier ...
About ten minutes after the world went into self-quarantine, and we all instantaneously became more dependent on internet platforms, you could almost hear the keyboards clacking, as various pundits raced to announce that the techlash is officially over. And that it never should have happened. For instance, Ryan Bourne of the libertarian CATO institute said as much. Writing on April 9 for The ...
