Category: Internet & Social Media

Issues and musings about the online world; social media, website design, web content, privacy, interactivity, connectivity and engagement.

Why Are People Leaving Xitter En Masse?

Culture wars / Internet & Social Media / MAGA cultists / Trump fascism6 Comments

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The exodus from X to Bluesky has happened – the era of mass social media platforms is over. That’s the headline for a piece in today’s Guardian newspaper. People and corporations are turning to other social media platforms because of what Xitter has become since Musk bought it and started using it as his own platform to spread racist hatred, lies, disinformation, and AI fakes, while enabling the far-right extremists to spread their own propaganda. Anyone surprised that users and advertisers are fed up with the toxic, angry, anti-democracy, pro-fascist quagmire that Xitter has become? Me, either. Xitter has been … click below for more ↓

The Book of Knowledge: 1

Books & Reviews / Daily life / Internet & Social Media / Learning & Education / Musings / Pop Culture / Reading & Literacy4 Comments

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When I was growing up in the Fifties and Sixties, having an encyclopedia in your home was the bee’s knees, to use my grandmother’s phrase. It was a sign of sophistication and learning, of culture and wisdom. And being reasonably well-off, because encyclopedias were not inexpensive. I can still hear Jimminy Cricket singing the song (it’s how I learned to spell encyclopedia). Many school libraries had them, although usually only one set and not always the most current or the best. You could find more sets in the local public library, including in the bigger library branches the vaunted Encyclopedia … click below for more ↓

The day that reason died

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Conspiracy Theories / Creationism / Critical Thinking / Education & Learning / Internet & Social Media / New Age Codswallop / Political fads / Politics / Pseudoscience & Quackery / US PoliticsLeave a comment

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I’m not a believer in alien visitations and UFOs, but I’ll bet if an alien did swing by, after an hour or two observing us, checking out Facebook or Twitter, they’d lock their doors, hang a detour sign around our planet, and race off. They’d tell their friends not to visit us because we were all nuts. Scarily, dangerously crazy. Seriously. What sort of world can be called civilized when it has people touting — and believing — homeopathy? Reiki? Chemtrails? Anti-vaccination screeds? Anti-mask whines during a frigging pandemic? Wind turbines cause cancer? 5G towners spread COVID-19? Creationism? Reflexology? Alien … click below for more ↓

Goodbye, Information Age

Critical Thinking / Culture / Internet & Social Media / Literature / Media / Social Order & Disorder / US PoliticsLeave a comment

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“Say goodbye to the information age: it’s all about reputation now,” is the headline of an article by Italian philosopher and professor Gloria Origgi, published recently on Aeon Magazine’s website. She writes: …the vastly increased access to information and knowledge we have today does not empower us or make us more cognitively autonomous. Rather, it renders us more dependent on other people’s judgments and evaluations of the information with which we are faced. I no longer need to open a computer, go online and type my questions into Google if I want to know something: I can simply ask it. … click below for more ↓

Dictionary vs Dictionary.com

Books & Reviews / Daily life / Internet & Social Media / Literature / Musings / Personal Reminiscences / Reading & Literacy / Style & usage / TV / What I'm Reading Now / Words & etymologyLeave a comment

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Did you know that doxastic is a philosophical adjective relating to an individual’s beliefs? Or that doxorubicin was an antibiotic used in treating leukemia? Or that doxy is a 16th century word for mistress and prostitute? That drack is Australian slang for unattractive or dreary? Drabble means to make wet and dirty in muddy water? A downwarp is a broad depression in the earth’s surface? Drail is a weighted fish hook? Dragonnade means quartering troops on a population while dragonet is a small fish but a dragoman is an interpreter? That a dramaturge is a literary editor on a theatre … click below for more ↓

The bucket list, kicked

Critical Thinking / Culture / Internet & Social Media / Logic and reason / Memes; Internet & Social / New Age Codswallop / Personal Reminiscences / Philosophy2 Comments

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Nowadays the “bucket list” concept has become a wildly popular cultural meme, thanks to the movie of the same name. Subsequent marketing of the idea to millennials has proven a successful means to derive them of their income, with which they seem eager to part. I don’t like the concept. The list, I mean, not necessarily the plucking of the millennial chickens who willingly hand over their financial feathers. They get what they deserve. Bucketlist.org has, at the time of this writing, more than 5.317 million “dreams” for you to pursue. Contributed by more than 450,000 people. And your individual … click below for more ↓

Server upgrade coming

Blog & Blogging / Computers & Programming / Internet & Social MediaLeave a comment

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Sometime in the next two weeks, I will be amalgamating servers for the several sites I manage and conflating them onto one, new and (I hope) faster and more efficient server. There may be some downtime while the files and databases migrate, like virtual birds, to their new home. I hope that the digital gods of server migration allow my moves to go smoothly. I would sacrifice a virtual dove to propitiate them, if I could only find their virtual altar… would that I were the digital Odysseus… For most users, it will, I expect, be but a momentary blip … click below for more ↓

Facebook, Likes and Big Data

Computers & Programming / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Social Order & DisorderLeave a comment

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I suppose you could call it ironic. There was a story from a ‘friend’ on my Facebook news feed today called “Quitting the Like” all about escaping Facebook’s data collection processes by simply not “liking” items or comments you see. Right below this ostensibly anti-Facebook story were three related links produced by one of the Facebook data-collection bots all about the same thing: breaking free from Facebook’s data mining. I suspect the FB programmers hadn’t planned it that way. But aside from the irony, it caused me to read them all. The first story, fully titled “I Quit Liking Things … click below for more ↓

No Data Are Better Than Bad Data

Collingwood / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Media IssuesLeave a comment

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The full name of an article I read today is, “The Fallacy of Online Surveys: No Data Are Better Than Bad Data.” It’s from 2010 and very good. You can find it on the Responsive Management website. It makes some key points about the invalidity of online surveys: For a study to be unbiased, every member of the population under study must have an equal chance of participating. When online surveys are accessible to anyone who visits a website, the researcher has no control over sample selection. These self-selected opinion polls result in a sample of people who decide to take … click below for more ↓

Social media and social dialogue

Internet & Social Media / Manners & Civility / Media Issues / Social Order & DisorderOne Comment

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A recent poll done by Pew Research reiterated what I’ve been saying for the past two years: social media (SM) doesn’t necessary facilitate social debate and in fact may be stifling it. Discussion on many SM platforms tends to reinforce existing beliefs because in general only those who feel their beliefs are shared by their circle of “friends” or followers will express them. It’s called the “spiral of silence.” The Pew report noted: …social media did not provide new forums for those who might otherwise remain silent to express their opinions and debate issues. Further, if people thought their friends and … click below for more ↓

Crossing the line

Internet & Social Media / Media Issues / PoliticsLeave a comment

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There’s a story on ipolitics that in part echoes my own thoughts about media and responsibility. Yet the author draws different conclusions than I believe I would have, were I still in the media. It’s called “Paul Calandra and the tale of the naked senator” and it’s written by Paul Adams. Worth reading regardless of whether you agree or not. Adams writes about the quandary many reporters and editors find themselves in: trying to define the boundary between public interest and privacy. It’s an issue that has raised its head many times in the past, but moreso this past year. … click below for more ↓

Six Rules for Politicians Using Social Media

Internet & Social Media / Media Issues / Municipal Politics / Personal ReminiscencesOne Comment

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This is an updated version of the talk I presented at the the eighth annual Municipal Communication Conference in Toronto, November 2013.   I use social media regularly and frequently. As a politician, that makes me either very brave or very stupid. But I’ve been doing this for the last 30 years, long before I ever got elected. Social media isn’t new to me.* It may be slicker than it was in 1983, but it’s essentially the same text-based, monologue, just with chrome added. In fact, the tone of the conversation seems to have gone downhill since the 80s. Back then … click below for more ↓

We have heading up for your net

Blog & Blogging / Internet & Social Media / Science & TechnologyLeave a comment

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I have to admit that I frequently read the spam comments WordPress traps for my moderation, and I often do so with a smile. The clumsy, crazy constructs, the awkward English, butchered punctuation and the twisted word use just make me laugh. Yes, like everyone else, I detest spam, and I quickly delete the comments into whatever digital wastebin they descend to. But I often chuckle to read them first. They make me wonder: are they deliberately written poorly, are they the sincere efforts of someone struggling to learn English, words strung together in random order by a bot, or … click below for more ↓

Anti-Intellectualism: The New Elitism

Balderdash & Hoaxes / Books & Reviews / Conspiracy Theories / Critical Thinking / Internet & Social Media / Science & Technology11 Comments

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There’s a growing – and disturbing – trend in modern culture: anti-intellectual elitism. The dismissal of art, science, culture, philosophy, of rhetoric and debate, of literature and poetry, and their replacement by entertainment, spectacle, self-righteous self ignorance, and deliberate gullibility. These are usually followed by vituperative ridicule and angry caterwauling when anyone challenges the populist ideals or ideologies. As if having a brain, as if having any aspirations to culture, to art, to learning – or worse, to science – was an evil, malicious thing that must be stomped upon. As if the literati were plotting world domination by quoting … click below for more ↓

Words, words, words

Books & Reviews / Critical Thinking / Culture / Internet & Social Media / Language & Grammar / Literary pretensions / My Writing / What I'm Reading NowLeave a comment

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Writing before the arrival of the internet*, Bob Blackburn commented on the nature of exchange on then-prevalent BBS (Bulletin Board Systems), words that could as easily be written today about the internet: “…the BBS medium reveals not only a widespread inability to use English as a means of communication but also a widespread ignorance of that inability, and, in consequence, a lack of interest in doing anything about it.” Words that were prescient. As if he could foresee Facebook. Blackburn also wrote that most people thought they spoke and wrote well… “The majority of English-speaking people I’ve come across…think they … click below for more ↓

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