jakarta
Well-known member
- Thread starter
- #21
I saw an article the other day by the Filipino writer journalist and Nobel peace Prize winner Maria Resser....
"Social media platforms are biased against facts and creating “a virus of lies” that threatens all democracies, the Nobel peace prize-winning journalist Maria Ressa has said.
Ressa, one of the Philippines’ most prominent journalists, said social media platforms were “manipulating our minds insidiously, creating alternate realities, making it impossible for us to think slow”.
Focusing simply on moderating social media content was a distraction, she said, and it was the design of platforms, and the algorithms they used to promote content, that were in need of an overhaul.
Speaking at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s Sydney Dialogue, Ressa accused social media companies of misusing arguments around freedom of speech. “It’s a freedom of reach issue, not a freedom of speech issue,” she said.
“There’s something fundamentally wrong with our information ecosystem. Because the platforms that deliver the facts are actually biased against the facts,” she added, pointing to Facebook as the world’s largest delivery platform for news.
Ressa was awarded the Nobel prize along with the Russian journalist Dmitry Muratov last month for their “courageous fight for freedom of expression, a precondition for democracy and lasting peace”.
She co-founded the news website Rappler in 2012 and it hasbecome one of the Philippines’ most popular news outlets, known for scrutinising Rodrigo Duterte’s administration.
Rappler has not only covered Duterte’s war on drugs and exposed government corruption but also explored the ways in which social media can be manipulated by populist leaders.
Ressa said no democracies were immune from such threats. “I think what the tech platforms have shown is exactly how easy it is to use technology to manipulate human biology,” she said, adding that this transcended different countries and cultures.
While regulation had been put in place by many governments to protect against other potentially dangerous technologies, they had failed to do the same for information technology, which would continue to develop in sophistication. “[Technology] is thinking word for word faster than any human being ever can. And you’re not going to be able to get AI to fix the problems that human beings have created.”
This on a day when our Culture secretary Nadine Dorries, rebuked Laura Kuenssberg for telling the truth and also suggested that social media and " Woke " Cancel Culture were the domain of Left Wing groups. Its easy to see the world of smoke and mirrors that now pervades social media and those who claim to be telling the truth.
We should applaud Bozza for his stand but I fear it is too late already as the rot has well and truly set in when you see the small, but incredibly vocal, lunatic fringe on here persist with their windups.
Blimey Vegster, I was only talking about biscuits as a relief from writing up a ballsaching Workplace Noise Survey report...