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 ...
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 ...
There should be little doubt that the video clip doctored to make Speaker Pelosi look drunk should be seen as a sign of new hazards to come in the digitally-enhanced war on reality. The video is not even very sophisticated compared to what is actually possible right now with technology like “deepfakes,” and we can expect to see far more ...
At a recent gathering of college alumni, a friend asked, “Is it me, or are you less active on Facebook these days?” He was right. I have all but bailed on the platform. As a practical matter, it was just becoming a big time-suck; and as we all know from experience, engaging via social media doesn’t only occupy the measurable ...
It may be hip these day to talk about platform responsibility, but just a couple years ago, there were no mainstream conversations about how the operations and policies of online service providers might be enabling misinformation, hate speech, propaganda, etc. And while mea culpas from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey make headlines, and Google tries to pitch the ...
