The DDoS attack on X.com this week provided a certain amount of schadenfreude for people less than enamored by Elon Musk. It also rang alarm bells in the cybersecurity community.
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There has been a lot of debate regarding the imposition of moderation on social media and whether that constitutes censorship and violations of the right to free speech. That argument is specious at best. Offending content on commercial social media is removed only when it negates profitability.
Most humans moderate their speech. Sometimes we think about impulsively speaking in reaction to something that incites strong emotions. People who do not react have what is called, “self-control”. Some people don’t have that filter (I’m looking at you, Elon) and blurt out offensive, nonfactual, or dishonest responses. Sometimes they aren’t atypical, they are just selfish people without manners (still looking at you Elon). Moderation of your speech is just a civilized attitude.
Profit motive
When it comes to social media, however, especially for-profit social media, the primary factor is profit. That has been the guiding principle of all social media moderation.
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Mark Zuckerberg made two announcements about major changes in Meta in the past two weeks. The first was the revelation that they would be creating hundreds of AI-driven bots to interact with users. The second was the announcement that they would stop moderation of content, “except for dangerous stuff,” according to a video posted by Zuckerberg. With a certain amount of schadenfreude, we note that Meta had to pull the accounts they had already made as users started engaging with them, finding their inherent flaws and raking them over the coals for how piss-poor their execution was.
Both of these announcements validated a decision I had made earlier this year to start divesting myself of Meta platform accounts. I made the request to deactivate all the accounts (Facebook, Instagram and Messenger) a week before both announcements. I would have done it sooner if I had known it would take Meta 30 days from my request to deactivate everything. This morning, however, I received a text from my partners in Cyber Protection Magazine asking if I thought we should deactivate our Facebook account.
Frankly, I had forgotten we had one, basically because we received zero engagement from the platform, despite the amount of content we put up there. That,.too, is a result of Meta de-emphasizing legacy media. Of course, I concurred with the team. Sometime in February, we will disappear from Facebook.
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Our current election season faces the same problems as in 2016 and 2020. Foreign adversaries are interfering with the election process. This time we know it’s happening we know where it’s coming from and we have ways of dealing with it. The question is, is it enough?
Frontline documentary on Facebook
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That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t buy those whizbang, nifty gifts this weekend, you just need to go into it knowing what you are unleashing upon yourself and those you are buying the gifts for.
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Company is a ‘paid informant’ Threads, Meta’s new microblogging platform, could be considered a clear and present danger to womenmore
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