Re:Facebook Morale Takes a Tumble Along with Stock Price
by int_19h on Thursday November 15, 2018 @03:34AM
(#18457746)
The problem is that the thing you're really trying to control here is technologically-enabled gossip. You don't need a behemoth the size of Facebook for that. Stuff like Myanmar, that could happen just as well with simple text messages (1 guy sends to 2, each of those sends to 2 as well, and it goes exponential).
Re:Facebook Morale Takes a Tumble Along with Stock Price
by Barrin92 on Thursday November 15, 2018 @03:57AM
(#18457853)
we've had popular and commercial peer or group based messaging for more than two/three decades now, but nothing has rivaled the virality and speed of Facebook, twitter and so forth. There's a difference between propagation in a private network of a handful of people at a time, and the sort of mass agitation of public social news feeds.
If twitter would only allow direct sharing between say, a personal circle of friends, I'd bet you a lot of money that we'd see very different outcomes.
Re:Facebook Morale Takes a Tumble Along with Stock Price
by int_19h on Thursday November 15, 2018 @10:44PM
(#18466208)
In Myanmar, it was the private network of individuals, resharing posts on WhatsApp. Everyone only shares to their direct friends - but then those friends share with their friends etc. And I don't see how you can restrict that technologically - I mean, you could block share-of-share, but then people will just reshare screenshots (it's already common enough as it is).
We have international nuclear arms proliferation agreements that are reasonably effective. We keep the worst actors in the world from possessing biological weapons. But we cannot control what social media company Mark Zuckerberg let's loose on the world?
And we can't stop greed? Compared to the robber baron era we're all bleeding heart socialists. Change is possible and we can determine what technologies we want to live with as a society.