Tag: Intelligencer

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A private Facebook is a supplement, not a replacement

Brian Feldman in Intelligencer reports plains laid out my Mark Zuckerberg for a “social network that wasn’t aggressively tracking everything its users did”.

Intelligencer

I agree with the basic tenet of Fieldman’s piece. A “private” Facebook doesn’t address the bad features Facebook already has.

For me the notion of a “private” Facebook is a distraction. It’s the same strategy employed by old media for decades. Faux outrage is routinely spewed by populist newspapers trying to distract us away from the real issues. They function like a pickpocket pulling our attention, getting us to look at this shiny thing over here, while they steal the Apple Watch from our wrist. But distractions are just that, a distraction. Sooner or later we’re going to realise, our watch is gone.

The question then becomes, do we care?

So many of us seem wilfully ignorant of the manipulations we are subject to. Perhaps we accept these manipulations because the “truth” is too painful to accept. We all like to believe we have agency. Accepting that we are being manipulated removes that agency. It’s easier to accept that a “private” Facebook will give us back what they took, what we wilfully gave them, than accept we have no power in this dynamic.

I don’t think a “private” Facebook will change anything. Ephemerality doesn’t remove the ethos at the core of Facebook, an ethos that believes because they own the platform they own what we share.

It is easier to accept a shiny promise of a private network than accept, Facebook owns us, and we are but serfs to Lord Zuckerberg’s want.

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The Brexit Crisis Finally Engulfs the Party That Started It

A stinging and accurate assessment of Brexit and the growing crisis we’re facing. It doesn’t mention that Vote leave and BeLeave are under investigation for election over spending. It does say what the commentariat in this country are not, that “with both major political parties in the U.K. in terminal disarray, its government on the verge of collapse, and its relationship with Europe tainted, that Russian money is looking ever more well-spent.”

Intelligencer

Think about that for a moment. Russian money bought the referendum. All of the xenophobic rhetoric of the Brexit campaign was used to hide a strategy that will seed control of this country to either Russian money or American multinationals. Trump isn’t under investigation for collusion with Russia for nothing. We need clarity. We need to press pause on Article 50 and have another general election.  That election needs to be framed as an in or out vote on Europe. The Tories have made their position very clear. Labour needs to back remain. What is the alternative, stumble eyes open into economic oblivion. Cost of living in this country is already high. It will be unliveable should we go to WTO rules. Labour’s strategy  has been to let the Tories implode. Labour now needs to step up and offer a real alternative.