(Feel somewhat vindicated for leaving a 4,000 follower FB account of many years and going with my gut and not opening an IG account like most everyone I know. Yet it hurts bc everything exacts a price).
Thank you Asha. Please “follow / subscribe to her if you don’t already.
Agree -- a well constructed post. At the end of the day, the craven and morally hollow Zuckerberg is no different from any other industrial titan throughout US history buying favorable treatment in one form or another from the government, customers and social consequences and anything other than maximum profits be damned. Nowadays, that process is brazen and open, all attendant subtlety to the bribery process (if there ever was any beyond the thinnest veneer) scattered like dust in the wind.
We can also see the transference in value that abandoning fact checking represents -- and we can easily find analogues in many other corporations whose products or services have become crappier and crappier and more and more expensive -- as a contemporary expression of the "enshittification" process Cory Doctorow identified a couple of years ago. He originally wrote about TikTok, but it applies here and in many other instances throughout life, not just to social media platforms, as well.
Essentially, at the outset a company's product delivers value in the form of good service to customers, something helpful and useful that does much more good than harm. Ideally, it even creates dependencies and high switching costs, to keep customers hostage. Recall AOL's "walled garden" from back in the day.
Then over time the company claws back more and more of the value delivery for itself, offloading as much of the operating cost and responsibility as possible onto suppliers and customers. In so doing it wins in two ways:
(1) It monetizes whatever good will it had previously succeeded in creating and captures the value for itself as lower overhead or operating cost;
(2) It captures non-monetary value from having less accountability and greater attractiveness to a specific market segment or two without having to engage in a lot of marketing.
Again, it's all about the bucks, nothing more and nothing less. It's not about being nice or fair or responsible or doing the right thing or taking care of other people, etc. It's about getting as much money as fast as possible from as many people as possible and giving the least possible in return, regardless of consequences. That's capitalism, folks, at least the only minimally constrained form of it we're beholden to in this country.
Hello Asha, From the beginning here of your writing, we are very interested in the knowledge and scope thus far. - The Freedom Academy with Asha Rangappa deserves more of our attention forthcoming. Thank you, - joeward 'herbalist32'
Great article on Meta’s cave-in to dictator trump and his fellow lunatics. Yesterday’s editorial comic in the Globe and Mail (Toronto), showed the head of the Statue of Liberty poking out from her base building, her words were “Call me when it’s over”. How appropriate!
It IS censorship when something like a Meta fact checker (or fact-checking algorithm) refuses to publish something; it's just not GOVERNMENT censorship.
We have replaced a democratic government with a criminal enterprise modeled on Putin and Hitler.
It’s that simple. And sadly we chose it .
“ Falsehood flies, and truth comes limping after it. “. Johnathan Swift .
Beautifully written … and an important read.
(Feel somewhat vindicated for leaving a 4,000 follower FB account of many years and going with my gut and not opening an IG account like most everyone I know. Yet it hurts bc everything exacts a price).
Thank you Asha. Please “follow / subscribe to her if you don’t already.
Honestly I was going to say that this will blow in his face ultimately, but weasels have a way of getting by.
Thanks Asha - useful clarifications re: Meta recent moves.
Agree -- a well constructed post. At the end of the day, the craven and morally hollow Zuckerberg is no different from any other industrial titan throughout US history buying favorable treatment in one form or another from the government, customers and social consequences and anything other than maximum profits be damned. Nowadays, that process is brazen and open, all attendant subtlety to the bribery process (if there ever was any beyond the thinnest veneer) scattered like dust in the wind.
We can also see the transference in value that abandoning fact checking represents -- and we can easily find analogues in many other corporations whose products or services have become crappier and crappier and more and more expensive -- as a contemporary expression of the "enshittification" process Cory Doctorow identified a couple of years ago. He originally wrote about TikTok, but it applies here and in many other instances throughout life, not just to social media platforms, as well.
Essentially, at the outset a company's product delivers value in the form of good service to customers, something helpful and useful that does much more good than harm. Ideally, it even creates dependencies and high switching costs, to keep customers hostage. Recall AOL's "walled garden" from back in the day.
Then over time the company claws back more and more of the value delivery for itself, offloading as much of the operating cost and responsibility as possible onto suppliers and customers. In so doing it wins in two ways:
(1) It monetizes whatever good will it had previously succeeded in creating and captures the value for itself as lower overhead or operating cost;
(2) It captures non-monetary value from having less accountability and greater attractiveness to a specific market segment or two without having to engage in a lot of marketing.
Again, it's all about the bucks, nothing more and nothing less. It's not about being nice or fair or responsible or doing the right thing or taking care of other people, etc. It's about getting as much money as fast as possible from as many people as possible and giving the least possible in return, regardless of consequences. That's capitalism, folks, at least the only minimally constrained form of it we're beholden to in this country.
https://pluralistic.net/2023/01/21/potemkin-ai/#hey-guys
Brilliant!
Well written, Asha.
Hello Asha, From the beginning here of your writing, we are very interested in the knowledge and scope thus far. - The Freedom Academy with Asha Rangappa deserves more of our attention forthcoming. Thank you, - joeward 'herbalist32'
Hi Asha,
I shared your site on Bluesky tonight. Hope you get some subscribers. Thanks for doing this.
Thank you!
Good rant Asha. I always enjoy your comments.
Thank you, Asha. I got to listen to you talking to me as I drove around this morning. Glad you’re on the job!
Great article on Meta’s cave-in to dictator trump and his fellow lunatics. Yesterday’s editorial comic in the Globe and Mail (Toronto), showed the head of the Statue of Liberty poking out from her base building, her words were “Call me when it’s over”. How appropriate!
It IS censorship when something like a Meta fact checker (or fact-checking algorithm) refuses to publish something; it's just not GOVERNMENT censorship.
Very interesting but................
I think we are going to have to face the simple fact that the US is now a nation of wimps and stupids.
I don't think all the fact-checking in the world can help people that are dumber than boxes of rocks.
https://open.substack.com/pub/georgeallenbooks/p/the-brain-and-mind-of-democracy?r=4pmgma&utm_medium=ios
Don Basilio describes the path of discrediting.
Here's his aria from the comic opera The Barber of Seville:
"Calumny is a little breeze,
a gentle zephyr,
which insensibly, subtly,
lightly and sweetly,
commences to whisper.
Softly softly, here and there,
sottovoce, sibilant,
it goes gliding, it goes rambling.
Into the ears of the people,
it penetrates slyly
and the head and the brains
it stuns and it swells.
From the mouth re-emerging
the noise grows crescendo,
gathers force little by little,
runs its course from place to place,
seems the thunder of the tempest
which from the depths of the forest
comes whistling, muttering,
freezing everyone in horror.
Finally with crack and crash,
it spreads afield, its force redoubled,
and produces an explosion
like the outburst of a cannon,
an earthquake, a whirlwind,
a general uproar,
which makes the air resound.
And the poor slandered wretch,
vilified, trampled down,
sunk beneath the public lash,
by good fortune, falls to death."