social media



   social media  is the marketing term for silos and silo posts, ironically more anti-social than social, and encouraging of extreme opposition rather than medium perspectives, typically with like/repost counts UIs that incentivize inflammatory posts rather than considered thoughts &amp; dialog.

How to decentralize social media

 * 1) Get Started with decentralizing yourself first, to both understand the current challenges, and the benefits for doing so
 * 2) Participate in IndieWeb discussions for how to help others decentralize their own social media
 * 3) Keep iterating until you yourself are free of social media, and we have more people on the IndieWeb than social media, at which point momentum takes over.

Examples
See: silo

Specific Pages
See the following pages for more specific aspects of social media:
 * social media fatigue
 * social media break
 * lost infrastructure of social media
 * social media icon set
 * social media map

Possible Future
 via 2019-03-11: Comic by Joey Alison Sayers: Posting Your Opinions Online: A Timeline (@thenib)

Harmful To Democracy

 * 2016-11-15 (updated 2018-01-05) Vox: Why social media is terrible for multiethnic democracies
 * 2018-01-20 https://www.thedailybeast.com/social-media-shreds-the-social-fabric-one-click-at-a-time "Forget Russian hacking—the real threat to democracies around the globe is social media’s inexorable and unavoidable destruction of common ground and shared perspective."
 * 2018-08-28 How social media makes fascists of us all
 * 2018-12-17 NYTimes: Russian 2016 Influence Operation Targeted African-Americans on Social Media"The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of activity on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its posts on Facebook"
 * 2019-01-22 Vox: Social media is rotting democracy from within / How social platforms enable far-right politicians’ campaigns to undermine democracy. "At the inauguration of Brazil’s new far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, in early January, a crowd of his supporters began a surprising chant. They weren’t cheering for Bolsonaro or his running mate or their party; instead, they were reciting the names of social media platforms. “Facebook, Facebook, Facebook!” the crowd yelled. “WhatsApp, WhatsApp, WhatsApp!”"

Increases Polarization

 * 2018-03-20 PNAS : Exposure to opposing views on social media can increase political polarization


 * 2019-07-03 Stanford Engineering Newsletter: What is different about how Democrats and Republicans talk online? "Researchers examined 4.4 million tweets posted in response to 21 different mass shooting events. […] help understand the causes and consequences of social media polarization?"

Harms Productivity

 * ~2015(?) Neal Stephenson - Social Media "Though I never became a heavy poster on social media, I did reach a point last year when I was checking Twitter and my personal Facebook every few minutes. When I found myself manually refreshing the Facebook window in the hopes of dredging up posts I hadn't seen yet, I decided it was time to think a little harder about the effect that this was having on my ability to get things done."

May Harm Career

 * 2016-11-19 NYT: Quit Social Media. Your Career May Depend on It.
 * Counterpoints: 2016-12-03 NYT: Don’t Quit Social Media. Put It to Work for Your Career Instead.


 * 2019-04-13 NPR: Under Employers' Gaze, Gen Z Is Biting Its Tongue On Social Media "More than half of employers said they have not hired a candidate because of content they found on social media, but a similar number said if they can't find an applicant online, they are less likely to call that person in for an interview."

May Harm Business

 * 2019-04-26 How a social media network could bring down your business "According to a report by the University of Surrey, commissioned by IT security firm Bromium, cyber criminals are currently generating at least $3.25bn in revenue every year through their aggressive exploitation of social media."

Normalizes Surveillance Capitalism

 * 2018-03-17 https://twitter.com/Snowden/status/975147858096742405
 * "Businesses that make money by collecting and selling detailed records of private lives were once plainly described as "surveillance companies." Their rebranding as "social media" is the most successful deception since the Department of War became the Department of Defense." @Snowden March 17, 2018

Used For Behavior Modification

 * 2018-04-10 TED Conference: https://www.ted.com/talks/jaron_lanier_how_we_need_to_remake_the_internet "'what started out as advertising turned into behavior modification'"..."'I can't call these things social networks any more, I call them behavior modification empires'"

Encourages Inauthentic Representation

 * 2017-05-17 When You Love Your Friend But Hate Her Social-Media Presence

Used For Border Screening

 * 2018-03-30 NYT: 14 Million Visitors to U.S. Face Social Media Screening

Government Shutdowns of Social Media
Entries here are encouraged more thoroughly than documented in Wikipedia: Social Media: Censorship by governments

Sri Lanka 2019

 * 2019-04-22 Time: Sri Lanka Blocks Social Media Following the Deadly Easter Bombings "The block on social media including Facebook and its WhatsApp and Instagram … YouTube, Snapchat and Viber. Twitter appeared unaffected." Local wiki-links added.
 * 2019-04-22 NYT Opinion / Kara Swisher: Sri Lanka Shut Down Social Media. My First Thought Was ‘Good.’ / As a tech journalist, I’m ashamed to admit it. But this is how bad the situation has gotten. "… while social media had once been credited with helping foster democracy in places like Sri Lanka, it is now blamed for an increase in religious hatred."

Liberia 2019

 * https://twitter.com/glueckpress/status/1137102573364809729
 * "Aaaaand again. This is BAU in African countries, and increasingly around the world. Protest -- shutdown.  Now, imagine a social web where they can't do that. It exists. It's free (as in speech, not beer). It's standardised. It's semantic. It's accessible. It's yours. #indieweb" @glueckpress June 7, 2019
 * https://twitter.com/qzafrica/status/1137083314479779840
 * "Liberia has blocked social media as protesters demand the return of missing millions http://qz.com/africa/1638173/ via @qzafrica" @qzafrica June 7, 2019