Zuckerberg and me E-Book

Devrim Karahasan

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 34

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Social media have become very popular. Yet, we lack sufficient standards and rules in order to guarantee a well functioning democracy. On Twitter, Facebook and Co. many debates take place, but often rules are violated. Manipulation and profit seem to be paramount. This book is an autobiographical contribution to the experiences with social media. The keywords "freedom" and "security" make clear that this is always a balancing act.

Leseprobe

TABLE OF CONTENT

Debating social media

Promises for a better future

Personal experiences

Communication from a distance

Language politics and humour

Safety is hard to attain

The internet, contemporary politics and research

Paris is a world of its own

Racism without race

Social media and conspiracy

Childhood days

Virtual new world

Debating social media

Social media are en vogue. Contributions and discussions around the globe in images, texts and audio formats, vivid exchange often funny and satirical, but sometimes also very serious and below any moral or ethical standards: this is the media age in which we have all come to live in and that tries to dictate how we ought to communicate, above all with the help of algorithms and social bots. There is nothing to be said against this as the outcome is often highly creative. But the transparency of every single one of us often goes too far. Especially when data is transmitted without explicitly asking and data protection turns into an empty promise through offences which threaten psychic and physical health and security, a red line is reached.

It would be desirable that no one should avoid the debate, however, as contemporary politics that affects us all does not stop short at the gates of the internet. Just to the contrary: for the owners of the platforms this is a huge business. And naturally for all those influencers who participate in this. Whoever does often pays the price of being transparent, all pervasive and unlimited. The future is digital. And in order to keep it worthwhile to live in we need a vivid debate on the standards of the internet.

This debate started on 29th October 1969. The “Arpanet” was designed to connect the computers of universities and research institutes in the United States. An elite affair at the beginning the internet has turned into a medium for the masses. Today, nearly the whole world is connected and in the modern world virtually no one takes a step without the internet any more. Listening to music, researching, following the news, playing/gaming, buying/consuming, navigating, chatting, watching films and videos – all of these activities form part of our modern lives.

As to social media most of us know them as funny, satirical and informative in the best of cases. They entertain us, we are having conversations and we are permanently connected if we want to. Debate and exchange, but also offences and threats are part of the reality of users of all age groups which seem to celebrate this new media age. José van Dijck has called this “the culture of connectivity”. And Nena Schink even calls us to “unfollow” instead of following those who seem to be doing nothing else than posting messages, videos and images all day long. (She was referring to Instagram which belongs to Facebook meanwhile, just like the messenger service WhatsApp, too.)

In 2019, Stefan Thurner posed the question of whether there is any rescue for us at the face of the influence of Big Data. It looks like we can only manage the crisis instead of solving it. As presently there reigns some kind of anarchy in the net with the darknet as its most abject virtual reality. There, sale of weapons, drugs and porn are prevalent without any stringent control. Whole investigation teams, however, have been set up at police departments in order to survey such nonsense and abuse. How successful they will be also depends on the democratic participation of us citizens who defend values such as security and well being.

The lack of data protection and standards which have not yet reached the level of sophistication that is required in order to have a well functioning and vivid democracy are the price to pay. When Cathy O´Neil speaks of “weapons of math destruction” she is pointing at the explosiveness of the algorithms that make up our communication these days. Our democracies are indeed threatened above all by right wing activists and all sorts of