Yesterday, parliament heard that the major parties will come together and pass a law banning teenagers from social media, after a period of careful thought roughly commensurate with that of a 15-year-old making a Black Friday impulse buy at Shein.com.

Annabel Crabb’s analysis of parliamentary goings on this week.

  • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
    31·
    1 month ago

    Meh, never liked the term.

    I never felt it captured the seriousness of the undermining of the public’s access to reliable information, by the ownership of these public sphere’s being captured by profit maximising entities.

    The temptation to skew algorithms to profit maximisation instead of best information delivery has proven too great, its why a fundamental shift away from the walled garden concept is required. In my view.

      • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
        4·
        30 days ago

        Certainly is better. But i don’t think it needs a ‘technology industry’ specific term.

        Old terms like market monopolisation, or corruption of the public sphere.

        Or something like those are better, because nothing the tech platforms have done is new, their tactics aren’t different from any other company seeking to dominate their respective product market. The key difference being the speed at which their product travels around the world.

        • zero_gravitas@aussie.zoneEnglish
          3·
          30 days ago

          You make a reasonable point. I think there is difference, though, which is the degree to which ‘the customer is the product’ for these platforms, and that’s a key ingredient in Doctorow’s original post:

          Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.

          Sure, advertising is nothing new, but the degree to which these platforms can target content and ads to the individual is qualitatively different to ‘old media’. Emphasis on ‘the customer’, singular, being the product, not ‘the readers/viewers’ as a whole.

          • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
            2·
            29 days ago

            I’s talking about products in general, not new v old media. I actually had Jack Welch of GE in my mind when i wrote the comment yesterday.

            That doctorow was a longer read than i’s expecting, clicked on a lot of links as well. This is why its taken soblong for me to reply :p I really liked the part about ‘heating’.

            The heating part made me think about how youtube rarely showed me videos from channels i’d liked previously, i had to go looking for them, while the recommended videos showed so much weird crap.

            I still think its no different to the ‘ever lasting search for the latest eFficiEnCeeeeee saving’ every MBA learns by rote.

            But i take your point, User Attention is what these companies are selling. Like good little MBA’s they are doing everything they can to exploit that value from the user attention assets they have, and are singularly failing to build any new assets of any value.