Re:Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fi...
by rbecker on Saturday August 29, 2020 @12:44PM
(#24317372)
> I'm sure they are, but are they more useful than what was before? [..] TV, radio, newspapers
False dichotomy. Lets not skip over irc, xmpp, and all sorts of free, variously encrypted communication platforms that Facebook muscled out.
Re:Facebook’s ties to India’s ruling party complicate its fi...
by luckylion on Saturday August 29, 2020 @01:02PM
(#24317529)
But those were for individual communication, I understood the parent comment to mean mass media ("useful for those in power"). I don't think the powerful feature of Facebook is the messenger, it's the ability to rapidly disperse information through sharing. IRC & similar communication tools weren't made for that.
WhatsApp is a hybrid, I suppose, but even there I think the share/forward feature is what drives the political usefulness, which is also why they're limiting that for some media, so you can't spread messages as easily (if it has been forwarded five times, you can only forward it individually, not to multiple contacts/chats, from what I understand).
I'm sure they are, but are they more useful than what was before? Facebook & Co have some random element, it's not a one-way-communication device like classic media (TV, radio, newspapers) are/were.
The government has much less control over Facebook. You can't just go in and take it over like you could with a radio station, you can either use it and accept that others can as well, or you can block it in your country, but then you can't use it either.