Author: Casey Newton
Recently I ran into a well known tech CEO and asked him how he was feeling about social networks. (I am extremely fun at parties.) The CEO’s unequivocal response surprised me: “shut them down,” he said. His reasoning was simple: the networks undermine democracies in ways that cannot be fixed with software updates, he said. The only logical response, in his mind, was to end them.
Whether social networks can be fixed is the question looming over Amanda Taub and Max Fisher’s deeply unsettling new report in The New York Times. The report, based on academic research and bolstered by extensive on-the-ground reporting, finds a powerful link between Facebook usage and attacks on refugees in Germany:
Karsten Müller and Carlo Schwarz, researchers...
Continue reading…
Continue reading...
Recently I ran into a well known tech CEO and asked him how he was feeling about social networks. (I am extremely fun at parties.) The CEO’s unequivocal response surprised me: “shut them down,” he said. His reasoning was simple: the networks undermine democracies in ways that cannot be fixed with software updates, he said. The only logical response, in his mind, was to end them.
Whether social networks can be fixed is the question looming over Amanda Taub and Max Fisher’s deeply unsettling new report in The New York Times. The report, based on academic research and bolstered by extensive on-the-ground reporting, finds a powerful link between Facebook usage and attacks on refugees in Germany:
Karsten Müller and Carlo Schwarz, researchers...
Continue reading…
Continue reading...