social web

Social Internet Is Dead. Get Over It.

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The New Yorker

The social-media Web as we knew it, a place where we consumed the posts of our fellow-humans and posted in return, appears to be over.…In large part, this is because a handful of giant social networks have taken over the open space of the Internet, centralizing and homogenizing our experiences through their own opaque and shifting content-sorting systems.

The Atlantic

Algorithms optimized for engagement shape what we see on social media and can goad us into participation by showing us things that are likely to provoke strong emotional responses. But although we know that all of this is happening in aggregate, it’s hard to know specifically how large technology companies exert their influence over our lives.

Bloomberg

The moment exposes the tension between how social networks wish people used their services and the reality … Asking users to unlearn the habit of relying on social media will take

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My Essays, Technology
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Threads, Twitter, & Social Photos

a laptop computer sitting on top of a wooden table
Photo by Hendrik Schuette on Unsplash

It has been a few months since Mark Zuckerberg & Co. decided to launch a direct attack on Elon Musk and the anti-social network formerly known as Twitter. Threads, which was bootstrapped off Instagram’s social graph, became one of the fastest-growing consumer Internet services, though things have cooled a bit there.

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Technology
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Can we ever become Post-Social?

water droplets on glass panel

With all the conversation of breaking free from big social platforms, owning your own digital identity, and being independent, I have been asking myself: how can all of us who have slowly become online performance artists ever be post-social? 

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For the past two decades, most of us have grown accustomed to the idea of being online, being connected, and being part of a larger collective. It might have started as a social network of friends, but the social Internet has become a performative art since then. A decade ago, in an essay, Now You, Starring in a movie about you, I pointed out that “In our 21st-century society, we all want to stand out and get attention.” 

Today we have easy and free access to platforms that help spread the word about the movies of our lives — quickly. The Internet makes easy work of distribution. The concept of “followers” and

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A Letter From Om, Technology
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The Internet of Love

These days, Internet in general, and specifically social media, is taking a lashing worse than an offender in a boarding school. Thanks to the free for all nature of the social web, anyone can say, do, or fabricate anything and get away it. You don’t even need to have a hand on the nuclear button. A lot of these troubles often distract us from what is good about the Internet – the ability to communicate, establish relationships and learn from each other.

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Musings
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Shouty

I have been enthralled with the Internet for over 25 years, warts and all. I have found magic in its mysterious ways, but this week I found myself wanting to escape it. The events of this week — more killings, more outrage and more hatred — left me emotionally drained, wrung dry with a distaste in my mouth for everything. How did the social web become loose with its sociability? What triggered this downward spiral was perhaps the cynicism around Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to create an initiative that will put 99 percent of his wealth to work on initiatives that he and his wife, Priscilla, deem worthy of support.  

What Mark wrote in his letter to his newly born daughter isn’t anything new — it is part of his stump speech, and he often talks about the topics he addressed. The only difference was that he had created a separate

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Musings
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