The Guardian had an interesting read today (as they often have):
It will take you 15min to read, but I think it is worth your time. It raises a lot of interesting issues about US society, the role of Facebook/Instagram. Sadly it only paints the picture of the problem, without offering solutions. Which i can relate to, the solutions to this are rather hard to come by. How do we protect people, uneducated, uninformed, from being seduced by social media? That’s not a trivial charter.
And, just to clarify, this applies to EU societies as well. It’s not like we are above that. We have luckily not a mainstream party that is as evil as the republicans in the US, but we have similar driving forces in most EU countries, and in Switzerland. Ok, we don’t have a Donald Trump Jr. – he is unique in his abilities and sentiments.
I see only 2 real options that would effectively prevent this kind of avalanche:
– Make social media a publisher. Make them reliable, responsible for what they are publishing. I think this is actually what needs to happen. Hiding behind the “it’s not us, we are just giving them a voice†is a bullshit argument. There is no reason, no law, no right, to give Nazis a voice that can reach billions. Yes, they have a right to publish, but they don’t have a right to have a world wide audience.
– Take the internet away from the population. Obviously societies with low levels of education, like the US, can’t be trusted with this.
It’s pretty easy, in my view, which of the 2 is the better option.