The takeaway from all of this is that it’s undeniable that as compromised as they are, social media platforms play a fundamentally important role in our social lives, our economy and our democracy. Whether they are akin to the town squares of old, as Musk argues, is kind of irrelevant. When it comes to how we live in 2022, people work, argue, fall in love, are entertained, harassed, and radicalised on social media.
It’s important to acknowledge that there is no perfect model for regulating public space, speech and human interaction, and social media platforms are a convergence of all three. Governments, open source collaborative efforts, publicly listed companies, private owners – all of these approaches have their drawbacks, though some are clearly more democratic and inclusive than others. Seven years ago,
pointing out that social media platforms were “infrastructure that plays too socially and politically useful a role to be left in the hands of investors and stockbrokers”.Since then, it’s become even more obvious that the social media platforms that dominate the modern internet are akin to a sort of commons, but without the collective ownership or regulation we normally associate with such things.
We shouldn’t just accept that these places that occupy enormous amounts of time and where we spend so much emotional energy should be the playthings of private investors and corporate juggernauts, who run mass-scale, real-time experiments on our mental health to extract as much revenue as they can. I don’t know if it’s more government intervention, or some sort of collective framework similar to how Wikipedia is run that might get us something that feels more human. But I do know we can’t leave the future of our online experiences to the likes of Musk or Zuckerberg.
Irony? How ironic, especially when it comes from 🤔
'Writes Osman Faruqi...' Well that's all I needed to see. The left are just butt-hurt the shackles have been taken off anyone with slightly conservative views. Deal with or leave... Why don't you make your own platform
The irony is this article.
Zuckerberg controlling Facebook was ok though.
The Age is Peter Costello's rag, he is rich and Osman Faruqui is working for a rich LNP's paper.
Hey Age, do what you threatened to do and leave the platform! Yes- we can’t do that can we! “OPINION”
This whole article just means Elon is right over the target
Someone has to in charge and at least he will own the decisions - unlike the previous board and workers who had no stake in the profitability of Twitter and were allowed to run it into the ground.
The poor are not all good; the rich not universally evil.
But SMH sees itself as a legitimate town square. It ain’t. What gets on its pages is manicured, kneaded, artificially added to, distorted and contorted, not fit for public consumtion. Businees demands and ideology and ignorance are the drivers.
👇
Now do the ownership of Tic Toc
It practically takes a billionaire to stand up to the tyranny of the majority, or even loud minority.
But when it was banning elected people and being used as a toy by faceless insiders it was fine. The trouble with Age writers is they just can't think outside of their narrow personal opinions.
Good luck controlling the Public Square.
What’s the difference between newscorp, Murdoch, Zuckerberg Nothing. All media is controlled by rich ass hats
Osman preferred it when a minority of loud leftists policed the public square
Should’ve paid 45 billion champion
One has to chuckle at these articles from Nine Media. Lets face it, mainstream media just regurgitates a given narrative from powerful groups & organisations, be it NATO, CIA, AFL, or business interest groups.
If Osman and his mates had their way, the government would have control of everything.. political overreach hasn’t worked so well the past few years 🤔🤦♂️