43 lines
1.5 KiB
YAML
43 lines
1.5 KiB
YAML
Title: Rethinking Social Media
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Subtitle: Exploring the Fediverse
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Event type: Talk
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Duration (in mins): 30
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Language: English
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Classifiers:
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- Ethics in Computer Science
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- Sustainability
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- Privacy
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Summary: |
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Social media - in their current form - are toxic. Instead of
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connecting people, they have become tools for disinformation,
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distraction, and divisiveness.
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Can we imagine a less harmful form of social media? If yes, how
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would it look like? And what role does free software play in this
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alternative?
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Description: |
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Social media - in their current form - are toxic. Instead of
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connecting people, they have become tools for disinformation,
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distraction, and divisiveness.
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The industry is a quasi-monopoly which disregards privacy laws
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day-in, day-out, yet goes unharmed because of regulatory capture.
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Their algorithms are built to capture as much of our attention as
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possible - leading to the promotion of the most inciting content.
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Having captured users and advertisers, social media platforms are
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enshittified to extract more money for shareholders. Sometimes those
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same shareholders have a weakness for antisemitic conspiracy theories
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and decide to stop moderating any content on the platform. Nonetheless,
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a lot of public political discourse is (still) happening on those same
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social media platforms - and immediately manipulated by political
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adversaries to serve their needs.
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Can we imagine a less harmful form of social media? If yes, how would
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it look like? And what role does free software play in this alternative?
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