I’m of an age when I have fears for the future of mankind. We all have an element of addiction in our makeup, be it alcohol, smoking, football, food or online. I’m just as guilty of it as millions of others. However, I foresee a future when every decision about humanities continued existence will be decided by the malign actions of those controlling social media. That being said, it’s not a future I want and am relieved that I’m nearing 80 years of age.
I too am more worried about the future for my grandchildren than for myself; it feels rather selfish to say, as I have done many times in the past few years, that I'm glad I'm nearer the end of life than the beginning! I couldn't have imagined back in the 60s the things that are raising my blood pressure now and can only hope that there are enough of the 'good guys (gender neutral use of the word!)' left to curb the worst excesses of the 'bad guys'.
I recall my mother saying she didn’t like the world we were living in and wouldn’t be sorry to leave it, that was in the 60’s. I now find myself feeling the same way!
The key to understanding the failure of regulation to keep up is that, when the Web burst forth in popularity in the mid-90s, the concept of Platforms didn't exist. If you wanted a presence on the Internet you had to build a web site. You could get an account with a hosting company, and register a domain name, but to make anything work you had to build your web site before your URL would display anything. And in those early days, tools to build web sites were primitive to non-existent, so it was hard work - you basically had to hand-craft HTML, so was a job for nerds (being a software engineer, I was one, and I'd been using the Internet since before the Web had been dreamt up!).
In my understanding, the law was to protect hosting companies from being responsible for anything their customers put on their own web sites - pretty reasonable since those companies weren't expected to monitor every page on every customer's site.
Prior to the Web there had been platforms; they offered dial-up services, with Compuserve and AOL being the principal ones. But their use was pretty much restricted to those with a techy bent, so were all very wholesome.
I'm pretty sure that Facebook was the first real platform, where you could just create an account and post stuff, without having to jump through hoops or needing any technical knowledge. It was certainly the first to be really widely adopted. I never liked it and have never used it (I created an account in the early days, but then soon deleted it), because I could see that it was really about harvesting users' information, and I didn't want to play.
In hindsight, the regulations should have distinguished platforms from hosting, but didn't. Platforms should be considered to be publishers, and have responsibility for content their customers post. They can't claim it's too much to monitor everything that's posted, because their algorithms already do that. Unfortunately, given the power of the platform owners, I don't think there's a cat in hell's chance of that happening.
Dear Bear. First the positive- an excellent piece which explains to the tech illiterate,like me, where and when it all went wrong. Less positive - you write better when you're not transcribing. I really admire your writing style but something goes AWOL when your thoughts go straight to publish rather than via the page. Just a thought.
The internet could’ve been the most fantastic invention for the benefit of mankind, endless real time communication and all of human knowledge in one place…
However, greed/the dark side of human nature (ALMOST) outstrips the good…
There’s still good pockets within the system and these need to be protected, while the dark side needs to be watched/monitored and dealt with strictly and legally.
Unfortunately it wasn’t that difficult to predict what would happen, but as long as politicians chase popularity and are desperate to encourage free markets and free speech humanity will never get control of this unless we can turn off a majority of servers and start again.
The provision of worldwide networks and standardisation of communication protocols has provided incredible benefits and productivity gains, but it is the consumer side that is out of control. We have provided a quite phenomenal tool for criminal use, with much of that ‘moral criminality’ currently legal, and we are now about to do the same thing with AI…..for all the benefits that will be delivered behind the scenes in areas such as health, the exploitation of narcissistic, vulnerable people will be the headline and will continue at pace.
We have enabled even more scum to rise to the top,and humanity is once more demonstrating its pathetic stupidity by facilitating the self interests of a minority. We are doomed
I’m of an age when I have fears for the future of mankind. We all have an element of addiction in our makeup, be it alcohol, smoking, football, food or online. I’m just as guilty of it as millions of others. However, I foresee a future when every decision about humanities continued existence will be decided by the malign actions of those controlling social media. That being said, it’s not a future I want and am relieved that I’m nearing 80 years of age.
I too am more worried about the future for my grandchildren than for myself; it feels rather selfish to say, as I have done many times in the past few years, that I'm glad I'm nearer the end of life than the beginning! I couldn't have imagined back in the 60s the things that are raising my blood pressure now and can only hope that there are enough of the 'good guys (gender neutral use of the word!)' left to curb the worst excesses of the 'bad guys'.
I recall my mother saying she didn’t like the world we were living in and wouldn’t be sorry to leave it, that was in the 60’s. I now find myself feeling the same way!
The key to understanding the failure of regulation to keep up is that, when the Web burst forth in popularity in the mid-90s, the concept of Platforms didn't exist. If you wanted a presence on the Internet you had to build a web site. You could get an account with a hosting company, and register a domain name, but to make anything work you had to build your web site before your URL would display anything. And in those early days, tools to build web sites were primitive to non-existent, so it was hard work - you basically had to hand-craft HTML, so was a job for nerds (being a software engineer, I was one, and I'd been using the Internet since before the Web had been dreamt up!).
In my understanding, the law was to protect hosting companies from being responsible for anything their customers put on their own web sites - pretty reasonable since those companies weren't expected to monitor every page on every customer's site.
Prior to the Web there had been platforms; they offered dial-up services, with Compuserve and AOL being the principal ones. But their use was pretty much restricted to those with a techy bent, so were all very wholesome.
I'm pretty sure that Facebook was the first real platform, where you could just create an account and post stuff, without having to jump through hoops or needing any technical knowledge. It was certainly the first to be really widely adopted. I never liked it and have never used it (I created an account in the early days, but then soon deleted it), because I could see that it was really about harvesting users' information, and I didn't want to play.
In hindsight, the regulations should have distinguished platforms from hosting, but didn't. Platforms should be considered to be publishers, and have responsibility for content their customers post. They can't claim it's too much to monitor everything that's posted, because their algorithms already do that. Unfortunately, given the power of the platform owners, I don't think there's a cat in hell's chance of that happening.
yes, the voice 👍 👂 👍
Just to say, you have a wonderful, rich speaking voice.
That's very kind of you to say, thank you, Peter 🐻
Dear Bear. First the positive- an excellent piece which explains to the tech illiterate,like me, where and when it all went wrong. Less positive - you write better when you're not transcribing. I really admire your writing style but something goes AWOL when your thoughts go straight to publish rather than via the page. Just a thought.
The internet could’ve been the most fantastic invention for the benefit of mankind, endless real time communication and all of human knowledge in one place…
However, greed/the dark side of human nature (ALMOST) outstrips the good…
There’s still good pockets within the system and these need to be protected, while the dark side needs to be watched/monitored and dealt with strictly and legally.
Thank goodness for silly cat videos 🐈⬛
Unfortunately it wasn’t that difficult to predict what would happen, but as long as politicians chase popularity and are desperate to encourage free markets and free speech humanity will never get control of this unless we can turn off a majority of servers and start again.
The provision of worldwide networks and standardisation of communication protocols has provided incredible benefits and productivity gains, but it is the consumer side that is out of control. We have provided a quite phenomenal tool for criminal use, with much of that ‘moral criminality’ currently legal, and we are now about to do the same thing with AI…..for all the benefits that will be delivered behind the scenes in areas such as health, the exploitation of narcissistic, vulnerable people will be the headline and will continue at pace.
We have enabled even more scum to rise to the top,and humanity is once more demonstrating its pathetic stupidity by facilitating the self interests of a minority. We are doomed