As one of the last 50 or so American independents, I wish each side would watch each other's news and opinions for about a month. As it stands, not only do the polarities think the others are bad people, but they wouldn't even be able to articulate correctly what their viewpoints are.
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Tim Cook Implies That Facebook's Business Model of Maximizing Engagement Leads to Polarization and Violence
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His name is Tim Cook, not Timmy. Please spare us from the attempt at trolling.
Is that not what he's doing by forcing Facebook to comply, or not be allowed on the appstore?
Yup, this exactly. I trust Apple on this issue because their interest (financial) are aligned with mine (privacy).
I agree wholeheartedly here with Tim. Only caveat is: if social media is going to police their platforms, they must do so equally and across the board. Any calls for violence should be treated the same way. The political affiliation of the perpetrators, location of the violence, reason behind the violence, etc. should all be irrelevant.
I think it would be an interesting case to see reach the SCOTUS. You would have one company de facto drafting the TOS of another company which would de facto touch the right of expression of the users. One company provides the distribution, the other provides the service (and it's not clear yet if they are editors or public place equivalents). It's messy!
The US had been bombing Afghanistan way before 9/11. The US constantly murdered civilians, sending Americans thousands of miles away to massacre more people than were ever lost during 9/11. Most of the people on that flight were from Saudi--a huge US ally.
9/11 was terrible, but the US already had so much blood on their hands
Facebook and Google don't share data with advertisers either (why would they? that data is incredibly valuable), that doesn't mean Apple wouldn't be using our data in the same way they do, which is the issue. Even the ghost of what remains of iAd in the form of App Store Search Ads and Apple News Advertising uses quite a bit of our data for targeting.
You're right. I found out recently that FB can even be worse than Twitter.
Since it's on topic, this is what I wrote last Friday on the "What's on your mind" thread:
My news diet experiment is ongoing. Some findings so far... some surprising.
What I did:
What I found so far:
- I basically stopped watching and reading all news a few weeks ago, gradually.
- I removed ALL political accounts from my IG, Twitter feed, and Facebook.
- I removed reddit.
- I removed the few youtube subscriptions to news.
- I removed all the subscriptions to political podcasts.
- I cleaned up the gmail account I use for newsletter. All of them (except one) go in the trash now before I even see them.
So far, very interesting experiment. I'll let you know!
- I do NOT miss watching/reading the news. I mean, not at all. My mind seems way clearer.
- It seems that so far I am still able to "receive" important news. I heard, through word of mouth or a random comment on social media, about some major events, or some executive orders.
- It seems that I am mostly out of irrelevant stuff; I just do not have any clue about this or that gossip, although something still arrives to me.
- To my huge surprise, not only twitter is bearable, but I actually like it. I have motivational follows, I have fitness follows, I have bookish follows, and a few friends in there. I am using it to motivate myself, and it's working. To my double surprise, so far I haven't seen a single political post, or a single controversial post on it since I started the test. (by controversy I mean something serious, I don't mean "Do you like director X?") I also noticed that the little non-political controversies on Twitter are not really as "violent" as the political ones.
- Instagram can be a double edged sword. I have mostly fitness related follows... and a few IG-models
I noticed that some controversy might happen on there, and I noticed that somehow political posts will appear. I also noticed that it's inevitable, but it's also very very contained to big events and just a few accounts for one or two days (e.g. after the presidential inauguration people, groups, heck even IG-models posted something political).
- Instagram also makes me aware of some minor event via meme. I started observing many memes on Senator Sanders, and it took me two or three posts to understand what it was (many are incredibly hilarious) even if I haven't seen a single video, and even if I haven't seen the actual picture. Comments on IG can be really nasty, but mostly are good.
- Some friends are way too political even on IG and I muted them.
- Facebook is the worst. I did not expect this, but it's all about politics. After removing all the political follows, and all the news channels, and even many groups I used to follow, politics is there. Always. Every two posts there is politics + controversy. Many of the so called Friends talk about politics, even the unsuspecting ones, and they usually do it a-la PRSI style (@Scepticalscribe my comment on the Feedback forum comes from this observation).
- It seems to me that most of the controversies on IG and FB come from a small % of accounts (more on FB than IG), while Twitter is the opposite: most of the good stuff comes from a small % of accounts.
(this post is 100% apolitical)
Interesting post. I have no doubt your newsless experience is easier on your mind and probably blood pressure too.... but in the end I think its not a winning strategy for someone that wants to contribute. Today more than ever it's important to stay informed and make your own decisions. Bullet two of what you have found is you are relying solely on word of mouth which almost by definition is a filter of someone else's thoughts, not actual facts to form your own conclusion on. I myself go to sources that at least try to present the raw data in form of folks actual words and not just short soundbites. I look at someone's credentials and weigh that against what they are claiming. I listen more to meteorologists on climate change versus sport figures for example. I may not change the world by staying informed, but sometimes I do change someone's mind with the facts.
carry on.
You underestimate how clueless and lazy people are.
Good move though, I kicked facebook to the curb years ago.
It breeds stupidity or at the least, ignorance.
Oh absolutely, there is no way that this experiment can be carried out in the long term - especially with my job in government! I would also never advocate for ignorance, the same way I wouldn't advocate for overload or single-source/biased-source information gathering. I see it more as a Marie Kondo-ing of my news consumption, it's allowing me to 1) refocus 2) see how much crap I am fed with 3) see how many unsuspecting sources are actually dangerous (friends included).
For what I can see, I'll probably go back to what I did two or three years back (then I got sucked in by the electoral tornado… MY FAULT!): paper newspaper. For a year I completely removed online news and read at least two morning papers (the actual paper, you know the one that is curated and edited by professional journalists that actually need to make a point and for which clickbait is useless as you can't click on a piece of paper), and serious quarterlies (Foreign Affairs, National Affairs, Public Administration Review, The Atlantic etc.). It was a good mean and I was the most/deepest informed of my entire circle.
Since Apple got us into this pickle by inventing the iPhone, they darn well should feel responsible for the mess they've created
Good that at least one large company is standing athwart tech oligarchy. But it will need to go further. If Facebook and Twitter are functioning as a defacto public square, then they need to held to the First Amendment. We may not like what others have to say, but the best disinfectant is sunlight. Suppression of speech will never work.
Parler was easy and obvious, Facebook less so.
And while I suspect a few people would switch I doubt it would hurt their bottom line all that much. I’d give up Facebook before my iPhone and I suspect that’s pretty universal. And facebooks mobile web app is the same as their App Store app. You just get slightly more screen real estate on the App Store app.
They won't kick it off, 2.7 billion users, 1 billion iphone users, do the math, people are addicted to facebook, they'll go elsewhere for their fix.
For reference, Parler had 15 million users, no loss.
Fortnite had 360 million users, I don't know how many of them were exclusive to ios.
I'd love to see them kick it off though, anything to slow the behemoth that is facebook.
Yep. I erased discus account to stop myself from feeling as if I have to chime in everywhere. The internet seems to be going on fine (or not fine) without me.
I pretty much only make comments here about tech, which is how things used to be back in the day of comment sections mostly on tech sites. And even then people (even cnet) try to suck others in to a political, moral or ethical debate, and sometimes I bite. Then I slap my wrist.
Interesting. The same is true for using the phones while driving. Looking forward to Apple leading the way with more protection to prevent distracted driving. With UWB and Carplay, distracted driving could be stopped while still allowing for reasonable interaction.
He shouldn‘t just imply it.
This should be said clearly, loudly and often!
This should be said clearly, loudly and often!
Reddit is still there too, and the shi… stuff that is in there can really be bad.
He's 100% accurate here. I think Facebook doesn't have a shot if they sue Apple and it will only expose their corrupt business practices even more so.
Remember when it used to be integrated into iOS. I really resented that move and am glad they undid that.