"Leaders" now acknowledge the dangers of social media

"Leaders" now acknowledge the dangers of social media

If the last decade of SXSW celebrated the promise of social media, the next years may well be dominated by the reckoning. Questions about the unintended consequences of social networks pervaded this year’s event. Academics, business leaders, and Facebook executives weighed in on how social platforms spread misinformation, encourage polarization, and promote hate speech.

Source: The reckoning over social media has transformed SXSW – The Verge
Good to see that “leaders” have caught on to what seemed obvious to us peons 🙂
Glad I was ahead of the curve but I learned through this and my involvement in my work on defects in the ACA, it does not matter if you have facts and logic on your side. Unless you are one of the “Academics, business leaders or … executives“, no one will listen to what you have to say!
This is also a clue as to how propaganda works! As mentioned on this blog, one of the most frequent propaganda methods is “the appeal to authority”. While it is considered among the weakest of argumentative forms, it is commonly used in propaganda messaging because it works.
It works, in part, because it does not require thinking on the part of the message target. If “so and so” says so, then it must be true!
Further, “appeals to authority”, even when lacking facts and logic, are difficult for peons to counter. How dare you question so-and-so, she’s an expert? Who are you? And that line of questioning immediately derails further discussion on the facts and logic of the argument.

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