
Zuckerberg and Dorsey are 'handmaidens to authoritarianism': Journo - howard941
https://www.businessinsider.com/cambridge-analytica-zuckerberg-dorsey-ted-2019-4
======
strikelaserclaw
Humans more or less use the media and information found online to confirm
their deep rooted beliefs about the world. Even without facebook or twitter,
organizations will prop up to cater to this. The path to authoritarianism is
more and more deeply rooted in growing inequality of the world which
technology has expidited further. You could literally map wealth inequality to
rising populism since the time of ancient rome.

~~~
meowface
Exactly. It's extremely predictable and stereotypical that we tech workers
would make this argument, and there's the whole "it's difficult to get someone
to understand something when their salary depends upon their not understanding
it" thing. But it seems obvious to me that the problem is people and society,
and the media (which are just giving the people what they want, mostly), not
the social network companies. (The Cambridge Analytica incident is kind of a
separate topic, and does deserve criticism.)

~~~
claudiawerner
I would argue that as products of society and society's productive make up
(including its economic and ideological spheres), social networking giants are
not the root of social ills. But the structure of these networks originates
from the same place that society's problems come from, and in my view this
makes the problem worse by serving as a way by which society reproduces
itself.

A famous German philosopher once said that a society that does not reproduce
itself economically (through production and consumption) will be finished
within a week. Much later a French philosopher noted this is just as true for
ideology which must be reproduced (through schools, church, the media,
entertainment and social media) or society will change for better or worse.

