Tags
- addiction (1)
- agencies (1)
- Amazon (1)
- ATA (1)
- BBC (1)
- bottomfeeder (1)
- broker (1)
- business (5)
- Carl_Sagan (1)
- CCJK (1)
- China (2)
- conference (1)
- cyberspace (1)
- delusion (1)
- English (1)
- euphemism (1)
- Facebook (6)
- god (1)
- Goodreads (1)
- Gorham (1)
- internet (1)
- iso_9001 (1)
- issue (1)
- Japan (1)
- Japanese (1)
- language (1)
- Lanier (1)
- manipulation (1)
- militia (1)
- persona (1)
- problem (1)
- religion (1)
- revolution (1)
- Russia_investigation (1)
- sales (2)
- science (1)
- Seattle (1)
- sharing (1)
- slide_rule (3)
- social_media (11)
- technology (1)
- tier (1)
- translation (14)
- Trump (1)
- Twitter (1)
-
Recent Posts
- Know Your Masters November 5, 2018
- No More Help in Sharing to Social Media Company Platforms November 4, 2018
- Bad Water at My Doorstep November 3, 2018
Archives
- November 2018 (3)
- October 2018 (8)
- September 2018 (8)
- June 2018 (1)
- March 2018 (1)
- February 2018 (2)
- January 2018 (5)
- December 2017 (2)
- July 2017 (1)
Meta
Tag Archives: social_media
Know Your Masters
I suspect that most Africans who were being sold into slavery and sent to the New World realized almost immediately that they were being traded as products. This is a radical difference from what we see with social media. Too few users of social media realize that they and their every action on social media are products and that they are being encouraged to perform (and are indeed performing) for the benefit of the owners of big data empires. And people who contend that what they get on their side of their Faustian contract with social media companies is worth it either don’t value themselves sufficiently as individuals possessing agency … Continue reading
No More Help in Sharing to Social Media Company Platforms
I just removed the Facebook share icon from all my blog postings. I have no desire to have anything connected with social media companies on a webpage or blog article that I control. If you must share somewhere, however, it is easy. Just click on the title of the article that you want to share, thereby bringing up just that article in your browser, and then grab the URL for that article in the URL field of your browser. You can then share it anywhere. Knock yourself out, but I am no longer placing icons of social media companies on my blog or any other content that I control.
Posted in General
Tagged sharing, social_media
Comments Off on No More Help in Sharing to Social Media Company Platforms
Even Freer Yet
In searching around the web for information about myself, I encountered an orphaned Twitter account that I had not once used. I made it as an experiment and never tweeted one tweet. It turns out, however, that it was not as easy to delete as I thought. For a few email exchanges, I pretended to believe that the messages from Twitter Support were from human beings (albeit perhaps in Mumbai), but they were singly unhelpful, merely repeating the same sad news that to delete the account I would need to have and use the email account I used when I made the account. Alas, that email account was made at … Continue reading
Free at Last from Facebook Manipulation
I have finally deleted the only remaining account I had on the social media platform run by the company Facebook. This will free up lots of time previously wasted in the orchestrated cyberworld of Facebook, enabling it to be spent in the real world. People can reach me by email (remember email?) at the address disclosed on the page appropriately named Email.
Posted in General
Tagged Facebook, social_media
Comments Off on Free at Last from Facebook Manipulation
Not One Yoctofuck
The real world (including most people addicted to Facebook) doesn’t give a yoctofuck* about: the trip you just started; that you were upgraded (or not upgraded) to first class; that you arrived at your destination; the country you’re visiting; the city you’re visiting; the bar you’re visiting; the drink you’re drinking; the breakfast you’re eating; the lunch you’re eating; the dinner you’re eating; the hotel you’re staying in; that you’ve come back from your trip; your qualification as a certified trainer (and downline developer) for some new-age feelgood activity; your dietary religion; a picture of your cat; a picture of your dog; a picture of you standing in front of … Continue reading
Social Media: Making Honesty Seem so 1980
If you spend the amount of time required to create a Facebook persona that securely posits you as the best thing in your field since sliced bread, it’s unlikely that you will have the time to actually live that persona by walking that walk. I sometimes wonder whether people who post over 50 times each day (sometimes at great length) ever step back for a moment and think about whether people will believe that they are actually walking that walk. Some of these personas are at best harmless fantasies, but some could also indicate a serious addiction to social media and an obsessive need to be liked and looked up … Continue reading
Posted in General
Tagged addiction, Facebook, persona, social_media
Comments Off on Social Media: Making Honesty Seem so 1980
Jaron Lanier’s Reasons for Our Leaving Social Media
I have just finished reading Jaron Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now” and find that Lanier’s revelations about what social media platforms are doing pretty much match my apprehensions about social media. In fact, in some areas, particularly regarding the automatic fine tuning of and learning by algorithms, Lanier reveals ways that opaque social media algorithms operate that I had not imagined. Lanier refers to what social media platforms do as BUMMER (Behaviors of Users Modified and Made into an Empire for Rent), although he appropriately replaces modified with manipulated where appropriate, and it is clear that the term manipulation is often appropriate. He lists the … Continue reading
Posted in General
Tagged Facebook, Lanier, manipulation, social_media
Comments Off on Jaron Lanier’s Reasons for Our Leaving Social Media
The Translator Echo Chamber: The Effect of Social Media
As I wrote in a recent article, it appears that translators of a feather flock together in social media groups, and that the grouping is generally in line with their position on the continuum between the bottom of the bulk market and the top of the premium market. Having come together in this manner, it appears that a group mentality is formed, with translators reinforcing each other’s views of what is common and expected in translation and resisting opposing views. If a newcomer to translation wanders into a group populated mostly by translators near the bottom of the continuum, the takeaway is likely to be that normal and expected characteristics of … Continue reading
Posted in General
Tagged social_media, translation
Comments Off on The Translator Echo Chamber: The Effect of Social Media
Meet Me Under a Bridge for Some Exciting News
Executive summary: Anonymity in cyberspace should be eliminated. There has been lots of talk lately about the responsibility of social media companies for removing content that promotes terrorism. I agree that they should do that. But complaints about terrorist hatred and recruiting people to implement their ideas completely ignore the root problem, which is that social media companies (and the internet in general) virtually assure their customers that they can remain anonymous, even to the social media companies themselves. It becomes easier to be irresponsible or criminal if you are assured of your anonymity. For example, you can establish any number of fake accounts and anonymous pages on Facebook without … Continue reading
Posted in General
Tagged Facebook, internet, social_media
Comments Off on Meet Me Under a Bridge for Some Exciting News
The Dumbing Down of America: Someone Got it Right
In 1996, concerned about Americans losing the ability to understand, think, and question, someone wrote: I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time–when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical facilities in decline, unable to distinguish what … Continue reading
Posted in General
Tagged Carl_Sagan, science, social_media, technology
Comments Off on The Dumbing Down of America: Someone Got it Right