Tag Archives: social_media

Social Media: Making Honesty Seem so 1980

Posted on September 23, 2018 by William Lise

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 →

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My Personalized Plan to Distance Myself from Social Media

Posted on September 21, 2018 by William Lise

In my program at least to distance myself from social media (and trash my Facebook account on October 1), I have identified a number of things I should do. These are not necessarily presented here in the sequence in which they are going to be executed, particularly because some are predicated on others happening first. Some of these are currently underway or have already been achieved. Because I have set the date for trashing my Facebook account as October 1, this original list has become extremely short. Never post anything to my Facebook timeline except links to blog articles until October 1. Start selecting websites of creditable news outlets to … Continue reading →

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Jaron Lanier’s Reasons for Our Leaving Social Media

Posted on September 21, 2018 by William Lise

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 →

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The Translator Echo Chamber: The Effect of Social Media

Posted on January 14, 2018 by William Lise

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 →

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Meet Me Under a Bridge for Some Exciting News

Posted on January 1, 2018 by William Lise

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 →

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The Dumbing Down of America: Someone Got it Right

Posted on December 23, 2017 by William Lise

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 →

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A Plea for Responsible Engagement in the Lawless Land of Facebook

Posted on December 21, 2017 by William Lise

I wonder whether people stop to think before they knee-jerk share or like.  Think about what? Well, for starters: Most Facebook pages (not user accounts, although tens of millions of those are also faked) are anonymous and therefore not credible. And many Facebook pages list a URL, but that is almost never any help in discovering who is posting their content and operating the Facebook page and website, because they are masked. How in the world can such a masked website purporting to operate a Facebook page have (1) a privacy policy and (2) a terms of service page if they hide the identity of the owner of the website … Continue reading →

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