INTERNET ADDICTION?

It is not necessary to have any sympathy for Zuckerberg to recognize how spurious the attempt, by a number of states, to sue Meta for virtually its entire market value is, for allegedly hooking young people on sites like Facebook. Never mind that if you mention it to any young people they will tell you that “Facebook is for old people.” This is a transparent attempt by politicians and lawyers to legally steal someone else’s resources, in a way that will primarily benefit themselves. This is based on the flawed notion that Meta has effectively hooked children on their site. This is wrong, and I’m going to tell you why. 

Assume for a minute that Meta didn’t exist. People, including the young, would still flock to something else, like Tik-Tok,  with the same results. That they may have taken some steps to maintain the attention of their customer  is hardly sinister or illegal. The thing is that getting people to keep scrolling is not restricted to a few companies; it is in fact characteristic of the whole internet. Yet it would be absurd to attribute this to some evil cabal when it is in fact people doing it themselves. 

Every site wants attention from more people and will try to maintain and expand its audience. I’ve yet to watch a Podcast (apart from something on YouTube), but increasing numbers of people are watching them, and the more outrageous and sensational a program is the more likely it is to attract viewers. It is just another conscious method on the part of providers to attract an audience. The reality is that social media, and the entire web, are driven in the same way. Are we now going to assign the government the task of controlling marketing? 

The truth is that the entire Internet is what hooks people of all ages. This is clearly obvious when you see people universally and constantly engaged with their screens. It’s not just social media sites; it’s everything. Take email. What about all the scrolling through that? Yet no one was deliberately compelled to this behavior, and that is true of almost any way the Worldwide Web is utilized. 

We have a problem, but it is hardly restricted to a couple of social media sites, or young people in particular. It is everyone, everywhere all the time, and it has serious consequences for other aspects of life that are more important, based upon the time wasted and deviation from purpose. The only way to mitigate this is for people to wake up to what they are doing and exert some self-control over how their time is being used. 

As far as children go it is primarily the responsibility of parents to address this, not someone else, and certainly not the state, notwithstanding “democratic socialist” impulses. Focusing on children obscures the problem. Of course some of it may be harmful to them, but such things as social pressure would be there regardless, whether handwritten or electronic. Anyone who has gone through high school over the last hundred years can understand this. 

What is warped and missing here is that this is a universal phenomenon, affecting people of all ages. Nor is it the Internet to blame, which after all, is just a neutral conveyor of information. It is us. It is our behavior overall. But it  didn’t have to be this way. I recall in the early days of public use in the 1990s, initially using plain old modems, and then the old Compuserve, where your identity was just a number, and you were charged for your usage by the hour or minute. (If that were still the case you would not see such a widespread waste of time, given the cost). 

Back then the prospects were wonderful. You could research and access information everywhere, saving countless hours of contacting multiple institutions, and I and others still primarily use it that way. It was a living encyclopedia. As a result, universities and research institutes were the first online. That was unfortunately followed by pornography, which seems to attach itself to anything new, going back to videotapes. No one anticipated social media then, until it sprung out of coarser use as the Worldwide Web unfolded and everyone came on board. Once it essentially became free, usage exploded. 

Thus the Internet itself and all the players in it are not to blame for where we are. It is how we have come to be engaged with it, which is to say our behavior. That is the real problem we face, and it is up to us to change.  

TIKTOK AND SOCIAL MEDIA

Due to the recent headlines about TikTok I decided to check it out. Most of what I saw was exceedingly stupid, but otherwise fairly innocuous, so I’ve become more skeptical about the claims of politicians. It is one thing if it in fact is a vehicle to enable the CCP to spy on us, in which case it might then be a threat. They are also tracking and collecting personal information, but so are all the other platforms, and at present they may be having enough trouble keeping track of their own people to bother much with ours. Otherwise, I can’t imagine much use for a collection of dopey videos. There may or may not be something more there, but the only way to find out is to do some serious research instead of shooting first and asking questions later.

 The more salient concern is what negative impact it is having on vulnerable, impressionable young people. But that feature of social media is hardly unique to TikTok, so the Chinese element may be irrelevant, apart from sour grapes from Silicon Valley over the success they have had. Instagram, which began as a place to share photos, has been transformed into a clone of TikTok, with identical short, mindless videos, and there are others, so the phenomenon would persist even if there were no TikTok.

 

Throughout almost all of history there was no “gap” between generations. Even in modern times, the 1960s, and possibly the 1920s were aberrations. Thus, we have the phenomenon of younger people still connecting with music that is five or more decades old.

 

But now there is something that really is different and barely perceptible to most adults. These kids have grown up with an almost integral connection to social media. The rest of us grew up with a variety of experiences and venues such as movies, television, publications, as well as far more interaction with the physical world. For these kids everything, all of it, is online, especially social media, which has resulted in a very different perception of the world around us as well as what matters. If you’re not “there” you basically don’t exist. The paramount path to notoriety now is there, not in other media, which has generated a horde of aspiring “influencers,” as well as outsized significance provided to the insignificant. 

 

If it was simply a different perspective it wouldn’t matter so much, but with a growing realization of how much real harm is being done, it is very consequential, if not critical. 

 

Social media has become a vehicle for boundless narcissism, not just for kids but for adults as well. In this world everybody is a star (which can also effectively mean that nobody is). When someone puts up a video of themselves doing silly, or routine things like exercising, frequently lip-synching with a dreadful soundtrack, they do so in the hopes of gaining recognition, likes, followers, and other forms of positive feedback validating their lives. But what happens to the vulnerable when the feedback is negative? Clearly it can be devastating. 

 

Even adults are not immune to this sort of exposure to the extent that they can bristle at any negative reactions to what they post. Thus, what social media fundamentally gives us, to the extent that we allow it to, is naked, exposed egos. For the young, or those with fragile egos, the consequences can be  catastrophic.

 

Yet much here is not new. Even in the earliest years of the Internet there was negativity via “flame wars.” A quarter of a century ago AOL provided essentially the same material as Facebook but arguably better. Then there was MySpace, where everyone soon had a Page, but with the technology of the time pages rich with graphics and blasting music incessantly, they took forever to load, so the plain, simple interface of Facebook left them in the dust. But both heralded something new- the real you. 

 

Back on AOL virtually everyone had a handle, not many real names were used, personal information wasn’t exposed, and there were few photos. Thus, you really couldn’t know who was and wasn’t real, but at the same time you were reasonably safe. Here may lie the crux of the matter and possibly the easiest solution to the social media conundrum.

 

Banning a service or attempting to control it all is neither viable nor desirable, with the possible exception of platforms. But if people were limited in their personal exposure, many problems would dissipate. Furthermore, under current conditions privacy has been shredded. As long as personal information is out there, or worse even promoted, problems will persist. What we really need to do, for the protection of the public, is simply limit the exposure of personal information, especially on public venues. If this were to come about there would likely be a healthy loss of interest, once “me” or “I” were out of the picture. Life then might hopefully return to normal.  

THE WORST COMPANY IN THE WORLD

Facebook, excuse me, "Meta" is the worst company in the world. I was putting this together when I found that I was hardly alone in this opinion as Facebook came out on top as the worst entity in a Yahoo Finance survey as well, so this judgement is widespread. How then has it managed to so dominate social media?

 A lot was simply luck, but even more, the missteps of potential competitors. Let’s start with MySpace, which should have been in this position, given its early start, and the fact that it had far more customers initially than Facebook. It had the field to itself initially but blew it by having slow loading pages, blasting music on each one, along with much too heavy individual graphics and multimedia. Still people might have stuck with it except for the painfully slow loading. Fox blew $250 million purchasing  it without realizing what the problem was, so there was plenty of room for Facebook to grow, given its very plain, simple, and consistent interface that loaded right away and focused more on personal connection. But that was really all. 

The real, puzzling might-have-been is AOL, which had a better setup over twenty years ago than Facebook does today. They could and should have dominated this field but failed to adjust. Emerging from the earliest days of the Internet most users went by handles, rather than their real names, and their personal information remained as private as they wanted it to, which in retrospect may have been a plus given the state of privacy these days. But their search mechanism was far better in terms of finding people, they didn’t control who and what you could see, and they didn’t bombard you with ads, but also failed to monetize the service properly. Others, notably Google and Yahoo also tried, but it was too late and they simply abandoned their half-hearted efforts.

So that left Facebook by default, which now owns the field simply because it has the critical mass, which is to say you can assume everyone is here so you basically have to be here to reach them, notwithstanding the fact that you have very little control of who you can actually reach. You can have thousands of friends but only few of them see your posts and vice versa, and you don’t even have any control over what you do see; instead they do based on what their algorithms tell them you want to see. Still the result has been that people have drifted away from sites like Classmates to their equivalent on Facebook because everything now winds up here.

But these algorithms are inexact to say the least. They basically have virtually had a license to print money to the extent that they can micro-target ads to you by tracking your web surfing. But again it is far from perfect and sometimes laughable insofar as you often see ads for something you already just purchased which makes them obviously useless and a complete waste for the advertisers. Only recently have people begun to resist being tracked, and at least one major company, Apple, now makes privacy a priority, making it more difficult for Facebook to follow you without your permission. 

Worse they don’t even screen their advertisers so that people are getting burned by bogus vendors, with, i.e. storage devices with impossibly large memory that simply don’t work. So greedy and warped are they that they ignore crooked vendors but regulate users with a heavy hand. But they have also failed even functionally and aesthetically. Given all that power and control they could have done so much better than they have, but somehow it still feels like black and white in a world of color, there being remarkably few features available. 

But worst of all is the arrogant, almost complete indifference to users. It is just outrageous that a company of this size has no real customer support. If you need help with something you are out of luck. There is simply no one there. There is no number you can call nor even an email address you can write to. You are left with very limited and often useless help pages, or forums of other Users that costs them nothing. I, personally have been struggling for months to fix the link to my personal Home page that neither I, nor anyone else can now see or get to since they zapped the link to it when I set up a public page to post some writings, and switched it to the new page. So far my efforts have been in vain. 

So there’s no staff available to do anything useful so you have to wonder just what all the people working there do. Basically a lot of them just monitor and spy on you, and will interfere with your communications if they don’t like what you’re saying. So we have a situation where some kid is sitting there deciding what you can and cannot say. As if that weren’t bad enough, they are doubling down on it by adding yet more staff to do this sort of thing while still neglecting the basics of customer service that every other company provides. As a result you see more and more “corrections,” advisories, and labels covering your posts that you, of course have no ability to rebut. 

The icing on the cake is the blatant political bias and the concerted attempt to suppress not kooks, but ordinary conservatives from expressing themselves freely. They have censored people, they have blocked people, or arbitrarily completely shut down people, most notably a President of the United States in a breathtaking abuse of power. Even if you loathe the man, the very fact that they have the power to censor even a sitting President ought to be troubling to everyone. The end result is that in this private, not-so-little world, there is effectively no free speech and an inordinate amount of control over what you can do. 

As a private company they have the right to do so, but the result is that people are increasingly chafing under their yoke, and vast numbers of people have become disenchanted, to say the least, with their skulduggery. So although now nobody likes them, users are basically trapped to the extent that if they leave the service they are cut off from all the connections they have accrued and interacted with. No surprise then that they have turned themselves into the most hated company in the world, and I mean that literally because they have also alienated countries everywhere.

But worse for them, soon there are going to be consequences. You don’t screw around with people like this and get away without paying a price. I predict that price will be heavy as sentiment and power increasingly shift in this country. As that power begins to manifest itself they may pay dearly for their transgressions, and it is quite possible that the company will collapse over the next few years. As much as he may try, this time Zuckerberg is not going to be able to buy his way out of the situation he has created. Not only is the public disenchanted, for those likely to assume power are genuinely infuriated with these shenanigans. But if they fail to do anything in spite of all of this abuse, they too will be culpable and the time for revolution then may really have arrived. 

 

THE FADING PROMISE OF THE INTERNET

The early days of the Internet provided us with a marvelous tool to access libraries around the world, collaborate on projects, and have access to informational previously not easily available. The educational possibilities were endless and sites soon sprang up covering almost any imaginable interest. Email made it possible to communicate instantly with anyone anywhere. The Worldwide Web made it all even more accessible to the average person, and the promise was great. There would be a new birth of freedom and power would become decentralized.

But then came pornography (always an early presence with new technology) and baser subject matter as more and more people gained access, as well as predation, epitomized by hackers who were able to break into and compromise various sites which then required increased security. Internet chat became available and the groundwork was laid for social interaction. AOL provided an easily accessible organized framework, enabling millions of people to communicate and discover others to an extent that still hasn’t been realized by Facebook, which became ubiquitous much later on. At the turn of the century there were several search engines available and no one had yet heard of Google.  As the new century progressed the current incarnation of the Internet emerged, and it is deeply, perhaps irredeemably flawed. 

Today, despite billions of people being online, only a handful of sites get most of the traffic. Only two companies get more than half of all online advertising and that share is increasing as almost 90% of new revenue goes to Google and Facebook, leaving little for everyone else.

As indicated by the chart above this duopoly also gets 25% of all advertising (i.e. including, and at the expense of, newspapers, magazines, TV and radio) and that share is constantly  increasing as well, while the rest shrink. Indeed, for many, if not most people, they are the Internet. As a result the duopoly dominates most of the information on the Internet and have amassed an unprecedented amount of power that the “Robber Barons” of the past could never dream of. 

They are not handling it well. Facebook actively decides what information you get or don’t get, and  Google searches are skewed, yielding paid advertising first, so that you have to scroll down to get to what you are actually looking for. Barring some kind of change or intervention this is only going to get worse. Services are constantly monitoring us yet people have a depressing herd mentality in these things. 

There is even greater peril in other areas. We have a huge amount of personal exposure online. There are constant security threats and your information is simply not safe, and certainly not private. Every other day we read of an organization’s data being compromised, or  even worse, the government’s security being breached. The Internet in its present state is simply not safe. Reliance on the “Cloud” makes this even worse as we become increasingly dependent on being connected. But what happens if it goes down?

A few decades ago there was a vision of a future that had people telecommuting and working from home in the countryside, a small town or anywhere. But it didn’t happen. Instead  companies that allowed this are increasingly reversing themselves and bringing workers back into the office. 

Then there is the social cost, as millions of people have become addicted to social media, and the young are especially vulnerable to predators and character assassination that can have deathly consequences for those who are emotionally overwrought. Indeed some people have become so confused they believe the online world is reality, and if something is on the Internet it must be true, when in fact, it conveys a huge amount of misinformation. Never mind the enormous amount of time wasted online. 

Between emails, chat, and the sites you visit you leave a trail on the Internet that you might one day regret. 

Since people online want everything for free, there is an incalculable amount of theft of intellectual property and creative work, so that many of those that produce these things can no longer make a living. 

Our critical infrastructure is now so wired that we have enabled serious threats like a catastrophic attack on our electric grid, which would cause the collapse of our civilization. 

To fend off many of these perils you are required to maintain ever more complex and varied passwords for the sites you visit.  As things in your home become ever more “smart” via wifi you are that much more exposed. 

Thus, the online world is fraught with peril and must be used with a great deal of caution; hardly the future we expected. There may be a bright future somewhere, but this can't be it.

EMOTION AND POLITICS

Much of the rancor one sees in political life is basically rooted in emotion, and therefore irrational in its fundamental state. Ideology stems from the same root, which is also not rational, and hence the more ideological things become the less reason prevails and the more susceptible people become to nonsense claims, usually about the other “side.”  Now since the response is emotional it is also personal, which frequently involves projecting personal concerns or deficiencies out onto others, or society. That being the case it can never be ameliorated as long as that false understanding prevails, and so such people are never happy, and seemingly always angry about something someone else is doing. 

There have been many academic studies purporting to explain irrational political behavior, but it is always ends up as characterizing only the right, thus betraying the left-wing bias of their world view, especially in fields like psychology. For while there is an emotional basis for ideology, it applies to both sides, and in fact there is arguably more intense emotion on the left. This is evidenced in the remarks of an actress suggesting that the new President hates “foreigners” among other things, irrespective of the fact that he is married to one, thus attacking a yahoo straw man that does not exist.  It was a perfect example of an emotional argument making absolutely no sense. The angry response was also beneath the dignity of a President, along the lines of: you attacked me so I’m going to attack you.

Nevertheless, the emotional component is far more prevalent among those on the left. They are forever trying to shut up and silence anything they don’t like, or preventing others from speaking. Failing this they will attempt to organize boycotts that never gain any support, and indeed often provoke a reaction that is the opposite of their intent. They will also threaten and blacklist, i.e. entertainers who have the temerity to try and appear at a presidential inauguration. If they can’t get their way directly they will try and get in indirectly, i.e. by trying to boycott advertisers on a medium they dislike. It is true that corporations have folded with this kind of pressure from the left, though whether that will continue in the age of Trump is another question. There is thus a disturbing totalitarian proclivity to shut others down, cause them to lose business, or even to ruin their lives. 

Surveys also show that those on the left are three time more likely than those on the right to “defriend” someone on Facebook over political matters. The reason for this disparity stems from a world view, unique to the left; one that believes that all aspects of life have a “political” dimension, and are therefore fair game for political action. That vast array of activities and circumstances that exist for most people in the private sphere are an inconvenience for them. If something is not perceived as political they will politicize it, and obsessed with symbolism, they will seek removal of the most innocuous  item that offends their sensibilities, even if totally innocent of their mischaracterization. 

This does not necessarily apply to true “liberals,” at least to the extent that they are true to liberal principles regarding freedom of speech and thought, although they are more likely to cave into the hard left when it comes to unreasonable demands. But this totalitarian tendency to threaten or force others to behave or think a certain way or eliminate what offends their sensibilities has to be vigorously resisted. Failure to do so undermines the legitimacy of  liberalism itself. 

Thus the more ideological the perceptions the more emotional and irrational the attitude the outlook and behavior. This does not characterize all emotional responses to things, i.e. empathizing with suffering, a swell of patriotic feelings, listening to music, etc. but rather emotional reactions that underly ideology and that are political in nature. Anyone whose world view leaves them constantly miserable and compelled to make political statements needs to engage in some honest reflection as to why they believe what they believe with such intensity, and the consequences it has for their personal life. It means perhaps recognizing that personal needs are being projected out onto society. Finally it means examining why political perceptions are so intense, and how they can cloud what truly exists in the present moment. Quo vadis.

FACEBOOK GOING DOWN THE TUBES?

I think Facebook is going to wind up being an ephemeral phenomenon just like many other “hot” things that have been part of the Internet. There was old AOL that actually did it all better with a minimum of hassle in its time, then MySpace, and then... -you get the idea. They appear to be changing processes and rules only to make it worse. For example, I used to get a lot more feedback on blog posts there, but then it mysteriously tapered off.

It turns out that your posts are no longer being seen by many, if not most of your friends. Due to some sort of formula they are now only visible to people who you have recently interacted with. So unless you spend all your time on Facebook "interacting" with particular individuals they don’t see your posts. This means they are following everything you do to get this information for their algorithm. This also means your friends are not seeing your posts either unless they tweak a setting on Facebook. This is ridiculous and defeats the whole point of the network.

There is a fix for this as explained here. I urge everyone reading this to follow the instructions to adjust their accounts so that we can continue to communicate. The more rules they throw on here the more irritating they become and the more they are going to alienate people.

Forward this to your friends to correct this nonsense.