{"id":1122,"date":"2021-11-22T17:40:38","date_gmt":"2021-11-22T16:40:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/11\/22\/stop-blaming-facebook-and-twitter-for-societys-alleged-ills-forbes\/"},"modified":"2021-11-22T17:40:38","modified_gmt":"2021-11-22T16:40:38","slug":"stop-blaming-facebook-and-twitter-for-societys-alleged-ills-forbes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/2021\/11\/22\/stop-blaming-facebook-and-twitter-for-societys-alleged-ills-forbes\/","title":{"rendered":"Stop Blaming Facebook And Twitter For Society&#039;s Alleged Ills &#8211; Forbes"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"cfbc967f0983488262956e73eca9483a\" data-index=\"1\" style=\"float: none; margin:10px 0 10px 0; text-align:center;\">\n<script async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-3859091246952232\" crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\r\n<!-- blok -->\r\n<ins class=\"adsbygoogle\" data-ad-client=\"ca-pub-3859091246952232\" data-ad-slot=\"1334354390\"><\/ins>\r\n<script>\r\n     (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({});\r\n<\/script>\r\n\n<\/div>\n<p>Every so often it\u2019s entertaining to read old magazine issues to remind oneself of how much things have changed. The January 10, 2005 <em>Sports Illustrated<\/em> cover featured USC quarterback Matt Leinart after the Trojans\u2019 thrashing of Oklahoma in the BCS National Championship Game, 55-19. <br \/>Inside the magazine the still nascent <em>F\/X Network<\/em> was heavily promoting what it presumed was its next great show, <em>Tilt<\/em>. In a look ahead to the 2005 college football season, the expectation was that USC would repeat since its BCS victory (a second straight national championship) signaled the \u201cmakings of a dynasty.\u201d The top SEC team at the time, basically the Alabama of the early 2000s, was Tennessee. The Vols were expected to contend alongside Texas, Michigan, and USC. In reality, Alabama wasn\u2019t even the next SEC dynasty in 2005. Figure that Urban Meyer was still coach at Utah, and had yet to take the Florida Gators on what turned out to be an all-time-great run. <br \/>Notable about the issue mentioned was a full-page ad that asked somewhat raffishly, \u201cWho\u2019s Your Girl?\u201d <em>SI<\/em> was conducting a search for swimsuit models. Can any reader imagine <em>SI<\/em> placing an ad like this today? Without a major societal outcry? Of course, that would presume anyone would notice. What was once a weekly magazine is now an every-so-often publication that can sadly claim much smaller circulation relative to \u201905. <br \/>Still, the call for models was telling. Or is telling. It turns out people have been judging other people based on their looks long before the internet was such a thoroughly dominant factor in our lives. This is important only because it\u2019s increasingly bruited by the supposedly deep-in-thought that Facebook, Instagram and others have made people, and in particular girls, extra sensitive about their physical appearance. Supposedly all those pictures scrolled through on the various sites have generated envy, anger, and unhealthy outcomes of the anorexia and bulimia variety. <br \/>Except that eating disorders and splashy female imagery well predate the internet. Before the latter rendered magazines yesterday\u2019s media to varying degrees, those same magazines were chock full of pictures of the beautiful. And some females were binging and purging. Related? The guess is no, but who knows? What we know is that life as we know it progressed. There was no mass societal breakdown, nor were college and high school campuses bereft of females who\u2019d been hospitalized for a difficult-to-shake habit of throwing up what they\u2019d eaten. <br \/>Which brings us to politics and the internet. According to AEI senior fellow Peter Wallison, Facebook and other social media are using \u201calgorithms\u201d that are \u201cembedded in their systems to discover their viewers\u2019 particular interests. This enables them not only to personalize advertising to a viewer\u2019s interests, but also to present information that will hold their viewers\u2019 attention for extended periods while the advertising is presented.\u201d How dare an entity offering a <em>free service<\/em> cater to its users\u2019 needs! For shame!<br \/>Except that\u2019s what the normally free-market leaning thinker in Wallison believes; that Facebook is acting badly, and in catering to our needs, the social media giant is dividing the U.S. as a nation more than we\u2019ve been divided \u201csince the Civil War.\u201d Wallison seeks legislation that would \u201cforbid the use of algorithms that identify and reinforce the interests of social media users.\u201d It seems the Left want to neuter the rich by making them pay their \u201cfair share\u201d in taxes, while members of the Right want to neuter same by limiting their ability to meet the needs of customers. <br \/>Wallison is not alone. Both sides of the ideological divide increasingly feel victimized by Facebook et al. In a recent <em>New York Times<\/em> conversation between right-of-center op-ed writer Bret Stephens and left-of-center Gail Collins, Collins expressed agreement with Stephens\u2019s lament about Facebook\u2019s alleged impact on political thought. Stephens said he blamed \u201cthe algorithm people at Facebook, for accelerating our national descent into a collection of self-contained, self-reinforcing, mutually loathing echo chambers.\u201d <br \/>Yes, supposedly before Facebook, Twitter (Stephens says Jack Dorsey has reduced \u201cthe act of thinking into the act of grunting\u201d) and other spawn of the internet, the U.S. was populated by much wiser, open-to-opposing-thought people engaging in deep discussion that included expression of ideas that extended well beyond 280 characters. Presumably at Starbucks, <em>New York Times<\/em> editorial page readers were handing to <em>Wall Street Journal<\/em> op-ed reading customers the musings of Collins, Nick Kristof and Paul Krugman, only for the <em>Times<\/em> readers to devour the thoughts of Holman Jenkins, Mary O\u2019Grady, and yes, former <em>Journal<\/em> editorialist extraordinaire, Bret Stephens. <br \/>The thing is, Stephens knows well that discourse wasn\u2019t remotely civil before the internet. He also knows that the laments today about societal division along political lines resembles past laments expressed before the internet. The only difference before was that alleged echo chambers were filled with people whose opinions had supposedly been formed by quick \u201csound bites\u201d (remember those?) versus the Tweets and posts of today. <br \/>Rest assured that the \u201calgorithm people\u201d at Facebook allegedly capable of transforming \u201cthe national conversation\u201d (Collins) won\u2019t be capable of doing much of anything for long. It seems the only person who knows this is Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. His investment of tens of billions in an entirely different future (Meta) for his creation is evidence of just that. <br \/>Zuckerberg knows well that what dominates today in the dynamic economy that is the U.S. economy will almost certainly not dominate tomorrow. After which, what\u2019s ahead (will it even be called \u201csocial media\u201d?) will surely be blamed as the cause of some national division as though division is something new. Except that it isn\u2019t. <br \/>Better yet, media was never the cause of the division in the first place. Arguably the more realistic driver has been a long-term unwillingness of national politicians to swim within their constitutionally narrow lanes. In other words, the more that national politicians \u201cdo\u201d for us, the more they divide us. It\u2019s not Facebook, or Twitter, or Instagram, it\u2019s that Americans are far smarter than pundits realize. And they don\u2019t like national politicians making local choices for them. Facebook et al are where they express this truth.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/johntamny\/2021\/11\/21\/stop-blaming-facebook-and-twitter-for-societys-alleged-ills\/\">source<\/a><\/p>\n<!--CusAds0-->\n<div style=\"font-size: 0px; height: 0px; line-height: 0px; margin: 0; padding: 0; clear: both;\"><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Every so often it\u2019s entertaining to read old magazine issues to remind oneself of how much things have changed. The January 10, 2005 Sports Illustrated cover featured USC quarterback Matt Leinart after the Trojans\u2019 thrashing of Oklahoma in the BCS National Championship Game, 55-19. Inside the magazine the still nascent F\/X Network was heavily promoting [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"googlesitekit_rrm_CAow1sXXCw:productID":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1122","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-classe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1122"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1122\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monblogeur.tech\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}